EU telecom regulators have “significant concerns” about the...

regulators strongly support targeted harmonization of rules, the European Commission-proposed legislative package risks creating unnecessary complexity and more legal uncertainty, and could hamper investment and competition, it said. The EC hasn’t adequately shown that its proposals would generate value in European communications markets, and some of its ideas could be counterproductive, it said. The package must be based on an accurate diagnosis of market problems, and some parts of it “represent a significant shift in policy orientations, without proper consideration of its far-reaching consequences,” BEREC said. Regulators criticized the analysis for, among other things, overlooking that actual average broadband download speeds in the EU are much higher than in the U.S. across technologies, and for failing to refer to the dynamics of next-generation networks, which are being rolled out at an increasing pace. The EC also claimed that Europe trails other regions on 4G deployment when the main operators are investing heavily in very high-speed mobile networks, and when Western Europe has more operational LTE networks than any other region, it said. Although it shares EC high-level objectives, “the unbalanced picture of the EU market situation and the unsound assessment of problems allegedly stemming from the current regulatory framework make for a set of proposals which BEREC considers to be disproportionate, and in some cases counterproductive to their stated aims,” it said. Concerns included: (1) The proposal signals a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the EC and governments, BEREC and national telecom regulators. (2) The proposed EC veto power over competition conditions set by national authorities is unjustified and detrimental. (3) The plan to synchronize spectrum assignment procedures to enable operators to bid for spectrum in all or many EU countries could make it harder for players to take part in several spectrum auctions at the same time, given the capital and resource commitment involved, and could give large operators a competitive advantage. (4) The idea to convert national telecom regulators’ duty to “promote end users’ rights to access content” into a “hard-wired users’ right ’to access'” needs a rethink because it raises concerns about enforceability, given the number of actors involved in the process. Any net neutrality legal obligation imposed on ISPs should be based on a reasonable interpretation of the quality expected for the transportation of applications. (5) The proposed “unpicking” of the carefully negotiated roaming regulation within a year of its adoption and only a few months before one of its key provisions comes into effect “substantially undermines regulatory certainty.” Moreover, there’s nothing to stop mobile operators from boosting prices elsewhere to compensate for the proposed “roam like at home” pricing, potentially leaving consumers no better off overall, BEREC said.