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| The regulator that dare not speak its name |
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| Friday, 07 December 2007 | |
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Meet ETMA. It’s just what European ICT needs: another bloody regulator!
The European Telecom Market Authority. Read the name and weep if you have followed two decades or more of debate over the need for a European ‘super-regulator’ in telecom, aka the ‘Euro-FCC’.
The latter denigratory term speaks volumes: US regulation, overseen by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), is obliged to work in ‘tandem’ with the state-by-state public utilities commissions (PUCs – rhymes with?). The result is that petty-minded local bureaucrats in the PUCs clash with centralised politically-minded bureaucrats in the FCC. Neither side is blessed with particular competence in terms of telecom reality, although their opinions appear to be for sale at the right price. Now, this appears to be the model for European telco regulation. It’s a joke to pretend that this is anything other than dominant carrier regulation even a decade after the market was opened to competition. It’s European correctness gone mad! We’ve got perfectly good British (or French, or German or Italian or Spanish etc etc etc) regulators to look after our markets. Rubbish. Unbundling is too often unravelling and mobile operators could swap SIM-cards for hypodermic needles and end up with less blood than they are already leeching from their customers on a daily or monthly basis. In terms of customer-facing regulation, by and large Europe stinks. True, European telecom markets need another regulator just like they need a hole in the head. But through that newly-drilled hole, the authorities might just locate the darker recesses of partiality and unaccountability that smear a vibrant European ICT sector with the retardant gum of state or institutional shareholder self-interest. The sad fact is that EU’s 25 national regulatory authorities (NRAs) and their drinking club, the European Regulators Group, have had up to 15 years to stop this from happening. They failed as their craven positions on broadband and mobile charges have shown. Yes, the market must decide: but not if the market is a cartel. Too many European nations are struggling to reach the quorum required to constitute a cartel. Thus ETMA is inevitable however counter-intuitive it may seem. The worry, needless to say, is that it will indeed be and added layer of bureaucracy atop those already in place at national level. Worse still, it might end up being staffed by those bureaucratic time-servers who are ‘kicked upstairs’ or otherwise inept. A glance at the make-up of the European Commission itself shows how badly this procedure can backfire. And herein lies the problem. EU telecom should not need an ETMA if NRAs and the ERG were doing their job properly. They ain’t, so Europe needs an ETMA. But there is precious little evidence to suggest that ETMA can succeed where national agencies have failed. Instead, the EU is likely to swell the ranks of the Brussels equivalents of ‘K Street’ lawyers and lobbyists by making ETMA a reality. If you are looking for them (or looking for a job with them), they are in the Avenue Louise. Cue the song, memorably sung by King Louie of the Apes in Disney’s version of ‘Jungle Book’: “Oh, oobee doo, I wanna be like you; I wanna walk like you, talk like you, too. You'll see it's true, an ape like me Can learn to be human too.” ETMA: open season for laywers and economists; shame it’s not open season on them. And if you are still not quite there, click here: next time you meet one, hum the tune. It works. And I dare you not hum it, anyway. Jim Chalmers |
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