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Thursday, 14 June 2007 |
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EU telecoms commissioner wants spectrum for wireless broadband. A busy lady, but she hasn’t forgotten Telekom…
Addressing a broadband conference in Athens earlier this month Viviane Reding, the redoubtable Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media, spoke of plans for the introduction of WiMAX and called for the re-use of analogue TV spectrum to increase Europe’s broadband penetration levels. What with also masterminding caps on regional roaming charges Reding is a busy lady but, no, she hasn’t forgotten that the EC is suing
Germany over its attempts to exempt incumbent Deutsche Telekom from providing access to its VDSL network to its competitors (click).
“The Commission's spectrum policy aims to make spectrum usage flexible and market driven. Today the process for allocating spectrum is slow, bureaucratic and rigid, attaching technology and service constraints to spectrum usage rights,” Reding told her
Athens audience. “In the reform of the electronic communications framework, I will propose a change of approach: let's make flexibility the default, not command and control. I am already working with Member States to open up the 2.6GHZ band for innovative fixed wireless access applications, such as WiMAX in addition to 3G. But if we want significant wireless broadband speeds at a low price we will need more frequency in spectrum ranges that have high propagation characteristics. In short, policy makers need to look at the digital dividend created by the switch over from analogue to digital TV very closely to see if they can carve out space for wireless broadband in the UHF space.”
“We have to think how we can use this-once-in-a-generation opportunity, to make the best out these very valuable spectrum bands. Even a relatively small part of this spectrum range could provide the basis, bridging the digital divide in rural areas in a scaleable and cost effective manner, as well as providing the basis for an alternative infrastructure competition in both urban and rural communities,” added Reding.
Reding is also proposing giving national regulators a mandatory power – in exceptional cases - to impose functional separation on telecom companies with significant market power. “That is to say to force a separation within such a dominant company of the network access division from the services divisions,” stated Reding. “For alternative network operators and regulators this measure has attractions from a regulatory perspective where there are continuing difficulties in establishing non-discrimination. For incumbents we have seen that it can offer legal certainty – which is crucial to the long term investments that are now needed to move to next generation networks.”
Both the search for additional broadband radio spectrum and the possibility of separating access from service in the case of the dominant players are initiatives aimed at increasing competition to the incumbents. One of these – Deutsche Telekom – may have thought it was off the hook in terms of freeing up access to its €3bn VDSL network. Not so according to current reports. Despite the German regulator the Bundesnetzagentur having suggested changes to the disputed legislation the EC is apparently on course to sue
Germany before the end of the month.
John Williamson |
