EU report on telecoms highlights Irish shortcomings
A new EU report also says that the €20 mobile phone companies charge one another for allowing a customer to move but keep their number unfairly affects new companies trying to break into the market.
Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding says the massive telecoms sector, worth €290 billion a year in the EU, is not breaking free of old monopolies or opening up to competition fast enough.
As a result, she will introduce a new, EU-wide regulator to work with the national regulators and insist that companies that infrastructure, such as Eircom’s, is operated separately from telcos’ service provider arms.
“The opening of telecom markets to competition is certainly one of the EU’s success stories, but the growth and investment is not good enough in times when Europe’s competitiveness is at stake,” she said.
Of all the telecoms sectors, Ireland performs worst in providing broadband, an imperative to attract hi-tech industry and grow a knowledge economy.
The country ranks 17th of 25 EU member states with just 10% broadband take-up. This is just a third of what world leaders the Netherlands and Denmark have achieved, and is less than half the rate for Finland, Sweden, Belgium, Britain and Luxembourg, who are all above the EU average of 15% broadband take-up.
The take-up of broadband in Ireland doubled in the past year, mainly thanks to alternative methods such as wireless local loops and cable, which avoid the need to use Eircom’s core network, according to the Commission’s annual report.
The report is critical of one of the most important Irish broadband projects, Metropolitan Area Networks (MANS), saying its impact was marginal in 2006. “These networks also seem to be a rather expensive connectivity solution, partly due to the fact that MANs are not connected nationally,” the report notes.
The report comments that long-delayed reforms of the wireless telegraphy act “would appear to be more than necessary”.
The legislation should be signed into law in the next few months. A spokesperson for ComReg said they said expect not to have any problems working with a EU Regulator.
