TELECOMMUNICATIONS : THREE PRIORITIES FOR NEW DIGITAL AGENDA PORTFOLIO.

• Position: European Communities Trade Mark Association

Implementation of the telecoms package, deployment of broadband networks and management of radio frequencies are the three telecoms priorities that await the new Digital Agenda Commissioner, former Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

The three priorities were suggested by the current Director-General of DG Information Society, Fabio Colasanti, at a conference organised by ECTA, the association of new telecoms operators, on 9 December 2009 in Brussels. The association took advantage of the conference to make recommendations to the new Commission: "The challenges ahead for Commissioner Kroes will be to give fresh impetus to the single market in order to offer competitive telecommunications, better, more innovative and faster services at lower prices," noted ECTA President Innocenzo Genna. The former monopolies of ETNO stressed the urgency of deploying new networks in the EU.

The Commission has serious concerns for the moment over the implementation - within 18 months - of the telecoms reform, particularly in Central Europe. The Commission had sought a much more ambitious European regulatory agency than the office of 27 national regulators agreed in the end. According to Colasanti, Romania or Bulgaria, for example, simply do no have the staff needed to implement the package (aimed at boosting competition and consumer protection).

OPTICAL FIBRE

Commissioner Kroes will also have to support the deployment of new broadband networks in Europe. This is a tremendous challenge because so far the EU has only around 1.5 million subscribers to optical fibre networks, compared with four million in the United States and 23 million in Asia. The member states still need to make considerable efforts to bring down the price of infrastructure construction, said Colasanti. He noted that the Commission had approved the recent framework chosen by the French regulator, Arcep, for the deployment of broadband in France through the installation of several optical fibres per housing unit in large cities. This multi-fibre' framework is expected to give each operator the chance to get established on this new market and give...