EU gets to grips with telecoms reform

Telecoms regulation is seen as key to enabling a unified European market

European Union telecoms ministers meet in Brussels today to discuss a package of reforms and report back on progress towards the Commission's information society strategy.

Among the reforms on the agenda are coordinating pan-European use of the analogue spectrum freed up by the switchover to digital TV, changes to the GSM standard, coordination of mobile satellite services and adoption of IPv6.

The Commission is pushing for many of the changes to be adopted as law by Strasbourg before the end of 2009, which will be fast work for the notoriously glacial pace of EU reforms.

Top of the agenda is the establishment of the European Telecoms Market Authority (ETMA) which will operate in a similar way to Ofcom.

The ETMA said in the diplomatic language of EC prepared statements that it will "resolve some remaining fragmentation of regulation across the 27 Member States".

This will include the "choice of regulatory remedies [which] is hindering the development of the single market, and the emergence of cross-border services and cross-border competition".

Translated into plain English, the ETMA will have the power to unblock some of the stoppages to an open telecoms market caused by national governments protecting their erstwhile incumbents.

The ETMA will enforce regulations such as the right of consumers to switch operator in one day. It will also tackle roaming charges, for many years a philosophical anathema to the policy wonks of a so-called single market.

Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding is keen to drive the reforms. Telecoms regulation may appear as dry as dust, but it is seen as key to enabling a unified market with half a billion consumers.

The Commission's ambition to make Europe an information society is driven partly by fears that emerging economies in China, India, Brazil and Russia are flooding the market with cheap labour.

Thus Europeans must retreat to the higher ground of generating wealth through information-based jobs.

But there is also recognition that Europe's demographic is ageing, and part of the strategy is aimed at bringing older people into the information jobs market.