Reding’s two cents (or three cents) for freedom of speech

Posted on August 29, 2008 | Filed Under communication technologies

Isn’t it nice to know that even though the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union will not become law any time soon, the Commission cares deeply for freedom of expression? At least that is the way Commissioner Reding likes to look at the Roaming regulation:

“The EU Roaming Regulation was introduced so that Europeans could exercise freedom of speech with their mobile phones without fear of excessive bills when travelling in the Single Market.”

I really had not thought of the Roaming Regulation as an instrument to safeguard fundamental rights - but, while we are at it: why not lower the postage rates, so I could exercise my freedom of written expression without fear of the excessive cost of stamps? Or, better still, why not lower the cost of train, airline or bus tickets and of petrol, so I could exercise my freedom of expression in person vis-a-vis any citizen of the Single Market without fear of excessive travel costs? And why limit all this to the Single Market - isn’t freedom of expression just as important when travelling, for instance, to Africa, Asia, the Americas?

Anyway, tomorrow the price limit for voice roaming in the community will sink another three cents for calls made (from 0.49 to 0.46 €, excluding VAT), and two cents for calls received (from € 0.24 to € 0.22); on the wholesale level, the average rate will also go down two cents, from € 0.30 to € 0.28. It is certainly nice, if you are on the consumer side of the business, but overall it might not be as important as Ms Reding thinks it is.

And here is my proposal for a rewording of Article 11, first paragraph, of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (words in bold face type indicate the proposed addition to the current text):

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without fear of excessive phone bills or of interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”

About this Post
author: hans peter | Permalink | | Print This Article | 1 Comment

Time out for SkypeOut: Austrian regulator acts against Skype

Posted on August 26, 2008 | Filed Under communication technologies

_skype.jpgIs Skype a publicly available telephone service (”PATS”) according to Art 2 c of the Universal Service Directive, or just a “little piece of software”, as Skype claims on its Website? The European Regulators Group addressed the issue in a common position last December, and identified a key problem in the legal texts:

“PATS providers are required to offer emergency calls, but providers only become PATS if they offer emergency calls. This is illogical”

The ERG proposed that all VoIP Telephony services providing access to the PSTN be required also to provide access to emergency services, so the consequences of the illogical legal texts would no longer be significant. In reality, however, nothing much changed.

So the Austrian national regulatory authority decided on 23 June 2008 (the decision - only in German -Â was published just today) to suspend the right of Skype Communications S.a.r.l. to provide electronic communications services establishing connections to the PSTN, especially the “Skype Out”-Service, in Austria until certain requirements - notably providing access to all emergency phone numbers - are met (legal basis are the provisions in the Austrian Telecommunications Act that transpose Art 10 of the Authorisations Directive).

About this Post
author: hans peter | Permalink | | Print This Article | Leave a Comment

“And lusty lads roam here and there so merrily”*

Posted on August 20, 2008 | Filed Under communication technologies

Roaming After a vacation roaming in the mountains (and I mean roaming in the pre-mobile phone-sense), I am back online - and catching up on the modern-day roaming issues. I have not yet written anything about “texting without borders”, the new pet project of Commissioner Reding, which is basically about applying the Roaming Regulation also to texting (SMS) and reducing tariffs (who would have expected that?). As the industry has not volunteered to cut its profits from SMS-roaming, Reding wants to apply the same style of price regulation as for voice roaming, and will present a proposal for the “Roaming II-Regulation” in September/October. Although Reding had set a target rate of € 0.12 in February 2008 (and the ERG came up with € 0.11 or € 0.15), I would not be surprised if the proposed price ceiling will be a neat € 0.10, around a third of the current average of € 0.29 - this would give some room for negotiations before we end up with 12 cents next summer.

Seen from the Commission side, regulating SMS-roaming has its advantages: it is a measure that is easy to communicate, and in addition it is very easy to regulate the price of a standard commodity (1 text message - x cents) - which sets it apart from data roaming, where things are more complex (at least if you follow the view of the European Regulators Group and the authors of a study on data roaming commissioned by the Commission). And as the Commission is desperate to get the “Roaming II-Regulation” out before the European elections (which would be another great success for the European citizens, as we will certainly read in at least a dozen press releases and statements from Commissioner Reding), the strategy to focus on the easy task (regulating the price of SMS-roaming) is obvious.

A few days ago, the ERG published its International Roaming Report (the ERG consistently uses the term “international roaming”, even as it only covers what the Roaming Regulation calls “roaming … within the Community”; of course there is a diference between the two, as you can find out when you roam outside an EU/EEA-country).

The report does not bring any big surprise: as the Roaming Regulation brought price caps that were lower than the average rates that applied before, prices did go down (definitely, as far as retail tariffs are concerned, and very likely for the wholesale prices where compliance can only be assessed when looking at a full year). Minutes billed exceeded actual elapsed minutes by around 24% on the retail level for calls made, due to “charging intervals of more then one second”. This was no surprise either, as the issue is well known to the regulators. In its Guidelines on the “International Roaming Regulation”, the ERG remained very vague about this aspect (see this previous post) and concluded that “the matter can be left to market players to adopt a convenient charging interval”. It seems that in the ERG’s view only operators, not consumers, are market players (or do you know of consumers who could adopt a more convenient charging interval?).

The approach to ask only the operators is very convenient for the ERG: thus we are assured that “the issue of inadvertent roaming was recognised by the majority of respondents to the data collection”, but - what a surprise - “this was not identified as a big problem with relatively few consumers adversely affected”. And still better, when asked about traffic steering,

“none of the providers that responded to the data collection stated that traffic steering was used to the disadvantage of consumers through higher charges. In general, such techniques were used to offer consumers a better deal, through either lower retail prices or enhanced services, or both.”

Unfortunately, we do not have the exact wording of the questions put to the providers, but obviously it must have read something like this: “Do you use traffic steering to intentionally harm your customers?” What would you have aswered?

*) Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Act V Scene 3

About this Post
author: hans peter | Permalink | | Print This Article | Leave a Comment

An update on the pending ECJ- and CFI-cases in telecoms and broadcasting

Posted on August 3, 2008 | Filed Under communication technologies

It was premature when I wrote some two weeks ago about just “one more telecoms-case before court vacation” (referring to the case C‑152/07 to C‑154/07 Arcor et al. v. Germany): for even though the vacation of the European Court of Justice officially started on 14 July, there was still another judgment issued on 25 July 2008. However, this case - C-493/07 Commission v. Slovakia (judgement not yet available in English) - was a straightforward infringement case, because Slovakia had not implemented caller location information for all calls to the 112 European emergency number, as is required by Art 26, third paragraph, of the Universal Service Directive. This was not denied by Slovakia, so the Commission had an easy victory.

Now that the court vacation is here for good, it is time to have a look at the cases still pending. I have updated my (non exhaustive) list of telecoms and broadcasting cases before the EU courts (see below). Of course, these cases touch a wide range of issues, but just as a very rough orientation, I would see these main groups:

  • There are two rather significant challenges to legislative instruments: the Irish action against the data retention directive (C-301/06; opinion of the advocate general expected[update:] delivered on 14 Oct 2008 - see here) and - via a request for a preliminary ruling - Vodafone’s attack on the roaming regulation (C-58/08); in addition, another request for a preliminary ruling (C-557/07) goes to the heart of the e-privacy directive, asking whether this directive allows communicating personal traffic data to copyright holders.
  • Most infringement cases are not very exciting, as they target 112 caller location (C-230/07, C-274/07, C-539/07) or rather technical issues (C-419/07, C-458/07 and C-492/97); there are, however, also two more interesting infringement cases, one on the German “regulatory holidays” (C-424/07), and one concerning the powers of the Polish NRA (C-227/07); on the latter case, the advocate general’s opinion has been delivered in June, and I have to admit that it left me a little bewildered; I do hope that the court gives a more coherent answer.
  • As for Competition cases, France Telecom (C-202/07 P) fights against the Court of First Instance’s (CFI) decision that it had abused its dominant position and practiced predatory pricing in broadband-access [I have no doubt that Deutsche Telekom also brings an appeal in its “magenta squeeze” case that it lost at the CFI; update 1 Sep 2008 - here it is: C-280/08 P]; still at the CFI is the margin-squeeze case of Telefonica (T-336/07). And there are also requests for preliminary rulings that touch competition issues (C-52/07, C-8/08)
  • And then there is a group of state aid cases both in telecoms (C-431/07, T-450/04) and in broadcasting (T-309/04, T354/05, T-193/06, T-96/07 and T-2/08)

And here is the current list of pending cases:

  • Read more

    About this Post
    author: hans peter | Permalink | | Print This Article | Leave a Comment