Comreg may be Abolished , bon soir Bruxelles.

Sponge Bob

The EU commission is currently looking at proposals to dramatically reorder telecoms regulation in the EU according to the FT Here

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e8891934-0149-11db-af16-0000779e2340.html

Right down at the end there is an interesting snippet which was ignored by the FT because they live in Ofcom land.

The EU has noted that one of the barriers to competition is that small countries have incompetent and/or under resourced regulators such as Comreg and frequently have multinational telcos owning key networks and sharing regulatory 'management' information amongst each other .

Therefore the EU Commissioner Has Get Out Planned For These Small Countries

She will also raise the possibility of creating a pan-European telecoms regulator – a move certain to draw the ire of national regulators.

So that the small countries can hand their regulatory systems over to a single strong regulator in Brussels if they choose. The larger countries need not of course and will not.

YEsssssssssssssssssssSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !!!!!!

Hold that Communications Bill till next week Noel please

oscarBravo

If they choose. What are the chances of Ireland choosing to do so?

Sponge Bob

Give me one reason why we should keep them instead of reverse devolving the job to Brussels , just one reason .

Blaster99

Because the local boys are political appointments who will tow the line and not cause any trouble and will happily make up figures to make themselves, the department, and minister look good. Sounds like a complete disaster to hand over the regulation to some crowd who would actually do something.

OFDM

Let's not forget that ComReg don't regulate broadband, no one does. But of course then there's LLU...

dingding

And telephone number portability.:)

Praetorian

Please please get rid of comreg. We don't get any value for our money with them

DOLEMAN

Comreg are totally useless. I don't even know why people even talk about them anymore. I could set up a rival to them in my back garden and it'd probably get better results...

Sponge Bob

Just so ye know.

Comreg is utterly useless and has a staff of 120 for 4m People
Ofcom is useful and has a staff of 780 for 60m people but includes the UK version of the BCI , the BCI has 35 staff.

Ireland has 155 people doing what 780 do in the UK .

The UK have 5 times more staff but they ALSO have 15 time more people.

Therefore we can conclude that we in Ireland are grossly overstaffed . We should only need 52 people to do what the UK does given our population and thats for both regulators.

We can additionally conclude that if 3 times that many people cannot do the job properly ...just look at TV3 , YUK , .....that regulation in Ireland is an abysmal failure and that we should give up pretending we are any good at it and hand it to Brussels with an apology for the mess and some poodle trimming shears (disinfected)

Ireland is simply a disgrace , giving Comreg more powers and staff is pointless. They have an inbuilt culture of uselessness and of accumulated failure.

Abolish them now.

Blaster99

Typical problem in a small country, you don't get economy of scale. I'm sure the staffing levels can be justified because there aren't that many more regulatory issues in Britain than there are here.

So having a central regulator for all of Europe would make sense.

Sponge Bob

Not forgetting the astonishing cost of the thing .

Of the 120 Comreg 'employees' some 30 are on secondment from the dept of Comms and have their salaries paid by the Dept of Comms to my knowledge .

The other 90 are in house. The total cost of their salaries according to information I have seen is €7.5m or €83,000 each . OMFG :eek: €83,000 each . Even if all 120 were paid by Comreg it would still cost €62,500 each and they spend another 15% of the salary costs on expenses for jollies .

And for WHAT ??????

DOLEMAN

I wonder what they do all day...

zuma

DOLEMAN wrote:

I wonder what they do all day...

Probable read boards.ie and write up statements to counteract Ireland Offline!

Seriously though a Pan European regulator for the smaller countries at least would be a great idea....why one hadnt alrady been setup is beyond me!

Sarsfield

Viviane Reding doesn't seem to be messing about. She's already slapped the Germans before they even start to complain. ComReg wouldn't have a prayer!

BBC report wrote:

Germany is one country that has been singled out for not doing enough to open up to competition in the telecoms sector.

Ms Reding said she would not accept any German proposal or plans to delay the impact of competition.

"On the telecom markets, the Commission is concerned about obstacles to competition, whether today, tomorrow or in the long-term," she said.

"We therefore do not accept monopolistic situations even if we are promised that they would 'only' last four or five years."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5122206.stm

Sponge Bob

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/06/422&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Variations of regulatory approach are today an obstacle to the internal market and to effective competition: If a national regulator in country A applies the EU rules vigorously to the operators on its market, while the national regulator in country B adopts a more lenient policy towards the dominant operator by adopting remedies later or in a less efficient way, this gives companies in country B an unfair competitive advantage over companies in country A. In Europe’s internal market, this is unacceptable.

I therefore believe that the Commission should be able to ensure consistency in remedies proposed by national regulators to enhance competition in market dominated by one or more operators. This is a logical adjunct to our current role as regards market definitions and market power assessments.

I also plan to tighten up the timescales in which regulators must act, in order to avoid the long delays that we have seen in some countries.

The most effective way to achieve a real level playing field for telecom operators across the EU would of course be to create an independent European telecom regulator that would work together with national regulators in a system, similar to the European System of Central Banks. In such a system, national regulators would continue to act as direct contact points with operators and could directly analyse the market. At the same time, a light European agency, independent from the Commission and from national governments, could ensure by guidelines and, if necessary, instructions that EU rules are applied consistently in all Member States. I have personally insisted that the idea of creating a European telecom regulator is also included as a policy option in the impact assessment of the Commission Communication that I will present this week to allow a broad debate on all these issues.

Drat , abolition would be better. Better join this broad debate and make that a heavy regulator not a light regulator.

Comreg can do something useful like make the tea for them when they visit Dublin .

jwt

Or put them up in a nice ritzy hotel hotel, and wine and dine them ala the EU commision last year who were very happy with the creature comforts of the hotel, taxi rides and evening "meetings".


John

Sponge Bob

Consultation Opened Today

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ecomm/info_centre/documentation/public_consult/index_en.htm#communication_review

Closes in 4 months so we wont be rid of Comreg this year