EU telecom regulators face deadline
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(InfoWorld) - The European Union's 27 national telecom authorities must submit plans to regulate the single European market by Feb. 16Â or face ceding those powers to the European Commission, Telecommunications Commissioner Viviane Reding has warned. The Commission wants the national regulators to join forces to form an E.U.-wide independent body akin to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. It gave them until mid February to submit plans so that it could draft legislation by July. "A European Union-wide regulator would be a temporary body. It would be disbanded once the transition to a single competitive telecoms market is over," said Martin Selmayr, Reding's spokesman, on Monday. Several of the national regulatory bodies have failed to prove they are independent from their governments and incumbent monopoly phone companies. Currently, the national regulators enforce Europe-wide telecom rules in their own countries. However, they take different positions in interpreting the same rules. The U.K., for example, has cracked down on former monopoly provider BT Group, while Commission officials complain that Germany has allowed Deutsche TelekomÂ to keep a grip on the fixed-line local loop and even receive permission to build a high-speed Internet network without sharing access with competitors. Some countries are creating their own telecom laws without consulting their E.U. neighbors. The German regulator, for example, has failed to stop the German government from proposing a law that would grant the former monopoly Deutsche Telekom protection from competition. Other countries have failed to transpose European telecom rules into their national statute books. In a letter to all national regulators sent at the end of last year, Reding warned that failure to submit a workable proposal for an FCC-type organization by Feb. 16 would leave her no choice but to propose greater authority for the Commission. Reding is conducting a review of all the laws agreed in the late 1990s designed to forge a single European telecom market out of all the national ones, with open competition throughout the E.U.
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Europeans are paying high prices to send cell-phone text messages or use mobile Internet services outside their own country, the EU's telecoms chief said Thursday, just months after the EU capped roaming charges for calls.
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The European Union's top telecoms  official said on Tuesday work on rules that will cap mobile  phone roaming charges is going "smoothly" and reiterated that  she expects an agreement by the summer.
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The European Union effectively set itself a deadline of late 2008 to end the institutional deadlock gripping it since last year, while insisting that reforms must continue in the meantime.
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Broadband access charges are still too high and need to be slashed further to bring them in line with other nations, the UK&#39;s media and telecoms regulator says.
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Europe's proposed satellite-navigation system is in danger of running into further delays and cost overruns.
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The European Commission's antitrust arm will use the next four weeks to pore over the specifics of the merger between Google and DoubleClick to ensure that it falls within the boundaries of the EU's strict laws regarding monopolies.
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But 8Mbit/s could happen...theoretically The Ofcom Consumer Panel has called on regulators to pull their fingers out and demand that ISPs are more honest with us about the limitations of broadband.â¦
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BISMARCK, ND - State regulators have delayed a ruling about whether an Internet access provider should be treated as a phone company, saying they will wait for a federal decision on the issue.
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Competition drive The concept of a European super-regulator has been considered in a report from the European Commission, looking at ways in which competition could be increased in the telecommunications business.â¦
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The European Data Protection Supervisor says he expects the U.S. and the European Union to reach an agreement on how to share information about passengers flying across the Atlantic -- but not by the July deadline.
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The European Union on Thursday set a new deadline of Nov. 9 to conclude its antitrust review of Oracle Corp.'s &#36;7.7 billion takeover bid for rival business software maker PeopleSoft Inc.
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(InfoWorld) - With the support of German lawmakers, incumbent telecommunications operator Deutsche TelekomÂ is racing into a head-on clash with the European Commission over a decision to keep rival operators off its new high-speed broadband network. The upper house of the German parliament approved a revised telecommunications law on Friday. The law will allow partially state-owned Deutsche Telekom to ban competitors from using its VDSL (Very high bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line) network to sell services. The decision flies in the face of Commission legislation that mandates member states to force telecommunications companies with dominant positions -- in most cases former state-owned monopolies -- into opening their network infrastructure to rival operators on favorable terms. While Deutsche Telekom eventually opened its local-loop infrastructure under pressure from Brussels, the operator has fought attempts to allow competition on its new network. It argues that the VDSL network represents a new market for combined triple-play telephony, high-speed Internet and TV services, and new markets are protected under European Union law; in addition, it needs to protect its â¬3 billion ($3.9 billion) investment in the super high-speed network. German lawmakers have become slightly sympathetic to Deutsche Telekom, which has been bleeding fixed-line customers by the millions and consequentlyÂ forced to lower operating costs, largely through job cuts. Since its privatization, the operator has reduced its workforce from more than 250,000 at the peak to around 180,000 today. Over the years, Deutsche Telekom and the German government have clashed with Brussels on issues including the divestment of the operator's cable TV network and local-loop unbundling. In repeated warnings over the past several months, the Commission has said it will take whatever action is necessary to make Germany observe E.U. law. The issue could land in the European Court of Justice, which is responsible for handling E.U. treaty infringements. Court decisions can take years, however. Rival fixed-line operators, including ArcorÂ & Co., which is owned by the Vodafone Group, have made it clear they don't want the former monopoly telephone operator to be given any advantages to dominate another market as it has with the market for telephone service.
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A ruling in Belgium that makes an ISP in that country responsible for blocking illegal file-sharing on its network could set a precedent for other countries in the European Union.
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Telecoms standards group seeks developers
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Late last month, the Court of First Instance in Brussels issued a decision ordering Scarlet, one of Belgium&#39;s leading ISPs, to begin blocking copyrighted material that passes through its servers. The court gave the ISP six months to implement one or more technologies recommended by a court-appointed expert, and threatened the company with fines of up to 2,500 euros per day (roughly US$3,400) if it fails to comply.
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The European Commission's telecommunications department on Thursday gave the go-ahead to U.K. telecom regulator Ofcom to deregulate the wholesale broadband market in more than half the U.K.