03 August, 2015

Press Release: ETNO comments on the Draft BEREC Report on Oligopoly Analysis and Regulation

Brussels, 3 August 2015, ETNO, the Association representing Europe’s main telecom operators, has today published its response to BEREC’s public consultation on the draft report on Oligopoly Analysis and Regulation.

ETNO calls upon BEREC to assist policymakers in achieving the key goal of encouraging significant additional investments in the deployment of Next Generation Access networks, by simplifying and ultimately lifting unwarranted regulation.

ETNO also calls for a progressive removal of ex-ante supervision and a handover to competition law to monitor and address possible competitive concerns. BEREC’s proposals should incorporate this objective, which is foreseen in the current European regulatory framework for electronic communications.

It is ETNO’s view that an approach focusing on “tight oligopolies” runs the risk of having the opposite effect and increasing regulation, even in the absence of real competition issues characterised by the presence of single or joint significant market power in a given market.

The European Commission will soon launch a review of the current regulatory framework, aiming to create the right conditions for innovation and investment to flourish.

ETNO firmly believes that an investment-conducive regulatory environment, in which the deployment of high-speed fixed and mobile telecom networks is encouraged, is paramount to achieving the goals of the Digital Single Market Strategy.

For this to be possible, ETNO believes that the review should be broad, ambitious and forward-looking. It should significantly streamline and reduce sector-specific ex-ante supervision, and provide for a future-proof common framework for all digital services, taking into account dramatic changes in markets, consumer habits and new positions of market power in the digital economy.

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The full ETNO response can be found here.

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