Telecoms regulator set for increase in powers

TELECOMS regulator ComReg will be given robust powers, including the power to impose fines of up to €4 million, to speed up the opening of Eircom’s exchanges to competitors, according to Communications Minister Noel Dempsey.

The minister, in an interview with the Irish Examiner, is highly critical of what he sees as the slow pace of Eircom unbundling its local loops to its rivals — this “last mile” of cable to homes and businesses is seen as vital in speeding up broadband penetration in the country.

Mr Dempsey says the communications bill, to be published shortly, will give ComReg “co-competition” powers which will give it similar authority to that of the Competition Authority.

The minister is particularly keen to publish the legislation in the wake of last year’s crisis involving Smart Telecom.

At the time, it was argued that customers who wanted to switch from Eircom to its rivals faced too many hurdles and delays.

The minister said that the “local loop”, which Eircom still predominantly controls, was vital as it gave all players access to the last mile and would allow full competition.

“Eircom has resisted at every opportunity. It has used all sorts of ways and means of slowing down local loop unbundling,” Mr Dempsey said.

“ComReg has tried unsuccessfully a few times to speed up the process. But Eircom has been successful at court level or judicial level in thwarting that.”

The minister said that ComReg told him that its powers were not strong enough and that has resulted in his move to make it easier for ComReg to prove uncompetitive practice.

“When this happened in the UK, it led to a seachange in BT (British Telecom). BT suddenly said the game is up. The future is in opening up the system and selling the space online and having broadband for all.”

The minister said that it would give ComReg more robust means of dealing with Eircom if it believed it was acting in an uncompetitive manner. He pointed to the situation where competitors of Eircom’s have faced delays of 10 days in getting connections for customers who have switched to them.

“In other countries you can switch providers easily. It happens here in the mobile market; you go immediately from Vodafone to O2 or Meteor. It can be done there and then, broadband takes forever.

“What you want is seamless transition. What we want is competition on services and level of services,” he said.

Under the new legislation, ComReg will have power to impose stiff penalties of up to €4m.

While the Government wants more competition, broadband connections have been running far ahead of targets. By March, there will be 550,000 broadband customers, compared to only 58,000 in October 2004.