EU’s telecom regulatory body needs to change, says Commission’s director Kloc

The role of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) needs to change, given the expanding regulatory scope of its members in broader ecosystems, Kamila Kloc, the European Commission’s director in charge of the digital decade and connectivity, told Euractiv in an interview.

The EU telecom sector is currently caught between rigorous European legislation and the need to invest in infrastructure, argue incumbent operators. Yet consumer organisations and competitors warn against deregulation, which would pose a risk to small businesses and lead to higher prices for consumers.

Commenting on the fact that the Commission’s Digital Decade report showed an urgent need for reform while the next EU telecom act has been postponed for the next mandate, Kloc said the Commission has “done a lot of steps during this mandate”.

She quoted the initiatives of the 5G Cybersecurity Toolbox, the Gigabit Infrastructure Act, the gigabit recommendation, and February’s telecom white paper “which is basically paving the way towards building a more deregulatory approach with less burdensome remedies imposed on the operators”.

She said that “what we put forward in the white paper are some provisions related to deregulation”, explaining that these were provisional scenarios, currently open to consultation with stakeholders.

“One of the scenarios we are testing now with stakeholders [consists] of recommending less markets and recommending a single market at the EU level to be regulated,” she said.

“But we are also saying that we would keep the three criteria [to determine operators with significant market power], which allow the regulators to intervene if necessary.”

She explained that although “some might be disappointed that there is no regulation within this mandate, I think we are dealing with such complex issues […] that it was a wise decision to open a large consultation and consult many stakeholders in order to prepare the white paper, which is really looking into the technological market changes, and the huge changes happening in the telecom market”.

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Role of the European regulator

Observing that “national regulators sitting in BEREC are already regulating much bigger ecosystem because many of them are [or will be] involved in regulating platforms, data [or] artificial intelligence,” Kloc explained that in her view, the national regulatory authorities already recognise that the Commission is reorganising its relation with national administrations.

“BEREC’s role needs to change because of that,” she said.

Spectrum harmonisation

Building on the Commission’s call for a more integrated spectrum governance, Kloc said she believed that “everybody is realising that we are not the most successful with the roll-out of 5G”.

In her view, problems come from “completely different timing, but often very different conditions of allocation of the main bandwidths, which has an impact on the entire single market”.

She also recalled that the satellite industry also needed stronger spectrum harmonisation but explained that more harmonisation “does not mean it would be done at the EU level, and the Commission would be deciding and allocating spectrum and taking the fees”.

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Gigabit recommendation

Although some experts consider that the gigabit recommendation goes against the spirit of the European Electronic Communications Code, the EU’s telecom regulatory framework, Kloc said that “the recommendation by itself is not changing the law, it is giving guidance to the national regulatory authorities”.

She added that “it develops some concepts further, in the spirit of the Code. It gives guidelines to analyse how to impose remedies,” quoting access to ducts as an example.

“The main bottleneck for the deployment of networks,” she explained, is “access to civil engineering, [which] is the most expensive part of building the network. So, if you have to provide the ducts, that’s nearly 80% of the cost”.

“More and more markets are deregulated. So in that sense, [regulation] is a little bit narrowing down to specific situations when we still have significant market power”.

Gigabit Infrastructure Act

Coming back to the EU broadband law, the Gigabit Infrastructure Act (GIA), which aims to fasten high-speed connectivity, Kloc called February’s compromise about the access to ducts “the best mechanism”, even though the tacit approval principle suggested by the Commission has not been made mandatory.

Moreover, she said she was “satisfied with the compromise achieved” on the abolition of intra-EU communications surcharges, explaining that on the one hand, “it has a very clear perspective from the consumer side for the phasing out of surcharges, and on the other hand, it is safeguarding the business cases of the operators”.

Kloc is also convinced there will be no legislative void concerning intra-EU SMS and call price caps, as “the Parliament and the Council are absolutely committed to meeting the deadline” of 14 May.

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[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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