Our separated fortune / Shall keep us both the safer

Posted on October 3, 2007 | Filed Under communication technologies 

When British Telecom outsourced Openreach, it might have thought of Donalbain’s words, quoted in the title of this post (from Shakespeare’s Macbeth). Functional separation (described in this earlier post) could well prove a good way to keep both of the separated entities out the perils of too close attention by the regulators.

Whether the separated fortunes of the ERG and the European Commission will keep the ERG any safer, is open to serious doubt - at any rate, the Commission proposes to get rid of the ERG in the revised framework, by creating a new agency which then again will have an Executive Board that includes all those that now form the ERG - but what goes around, comes around.

Meanwhile the ERG keeps publishing papers - its (revised) opinion on Next Generation Network Access and an opinion on Functional Separation were presented today (see also the ERG press release). As for functional separation, it is not really surprising that

“ERG takes the opinion that the remedy of functional separation has to be solely within the discretion of NRA to decide upon its applicability”

Of course the ERG - at the time of presenting this opinion - was well aware that the Commission thinks differently: according to the draft proposal which still has to be accepted by the full Commission (or maybe will have to be revised before it can be accepted by the Commission) it will be the Commission that ultimately decides on functional separation, since imposing this remedy will require prior Commission approval (Art 13a (4) of the draft proposal).

The full texts of the proposals, as they are circulating in the industry (but not acknowledged by the Commission) are here:

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3 Responses to “Our separated fortune / Shall keep us both the safer”

  1. Commission Sale: Markets now 50 percent off! : contentandcarrier on October 14th, 2007 11:55 pm

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  2. “Un spectre hante l’Europe”: le spectre radioélectrique : contentandcarrier on October 25th, 2007 12:45 am

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