Europe Seeks One Telecoms Regulator to Rule Them All – Replace Ofcom

The European Commission’s Digital Agenda boss, Neelie Kroes, will next month unveil her plans for a single telecoms market that is expected to propose the semi-abolishment of national regulators and the creation of one regulator to govern the whole of Europe (telecoms policy).

Europe has been slowly moving towards regulatory harmony for the past few years, bringing everything from radio spectrum policy to consumer protection measures and mobile phone charges under common rules. So it’s no surprise that Kroes, whom has long campaigned for a true single market, wishes to complete the picture before she leaves office around 2015.

Many of the proposed changes, such as further harmonisation of the various radio spectrum bands (e.g. 600MHz and 700MHz) and more frequencies for mobile broadband (4G and 5G etc.) services, are nothing new and have been expected for a while.

But EUobserver claims that the proposals could also contain some contentious ideas, such as plans for a single European telephone number (mobile operators won’t want to lose their roaming charges) and the adoption of a single telecoms regulator instead of the 27 national ones that we have today (e.g. Ofcom in the UK).

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the EC’s Digital Agenda, said last week:

“Currently, consumers and businesses have their choice limited to what’s on offer locally. Operators can’t serve an EU-wide market. So they can’t reach the size and scale to invest, innovate and compete globally.

But imagine a Europe where operators can provide digital services across the whole EU, wherever they are based. Where telecoms users can enjoy those same services, wherever they live or work. Offering a boost for the whole Internet ecosystem.

Barriers to the digital Single Market are barriers to growth. I’m determined to knock them down wherever I find them. In fact, I’m the same age as Alex Ferguson. But I have no intention of retiring until I’ve completed this task.”

Kroes was keen to stress that her proposals will be “a major priority for the rest of my mandate“. But as usual the devil will be in the detail and we won’t know precisely what that is until next month. Naturally ISPreview.co.uk attempted to contact Ofcom for a comment but the regulator declined to speak until after the proposals had been published.

In any case it’s perhaps fair to say that UK telecoms policy has already helped to set the stage for much of Europe’s current regulatory position, while in other areas Ofcom has had little difficulty in lapping up new measures from Brussels and adopting them as its own.

Meanwhile a key question for the UK government, which currently seems to go into paralysis whenever anybody even so much as mentions Europe, is whether or not the proposals will result in a loss of more control to Brussels.