Monti predicts action against EU telcos

neverhappen

Report on ENN says that EU Competition Commissioner, Mario Monti, will take "concrete action" this year to force telecoms to drop prices and open networks to more competition.

The EU Commissioner went on to say that he was working on competition cases involving abusive practices by incumbent telecom operators who bar newcomers from local markets, including both telephony and new broadband services. Investigation of such practices, involving predatory pricing and price squeeze situations, are at an "advanced stage" and "final decisions can be expected this year," Monti said.

The Commission is currently lobbying the EU Parliament and individual EU governments to give it a stronger role and more powers in forcing EU telecom directives. However, for the moment it has little power to intervene on a national level.

Maybe we should forget about the comms bill and try pushing for "direct rule"...

dahamsta

I was going to post that earlier, but I'm not 100% happy with Monti on comms. He's already as much as said that Ireland can take care of itself when he didn't include it in the list of countries that merit "further investigation" a couple months ago. He's also got a serious bee in his bonnet about the wireless (cellular) providers. Things must be /really/ bad in some countries if he thinks their wireless problems are worse than our wired ones. I would have thought wired should be a priority...

adam