EU telecoms report offers mixed signals

dahamsta

They're obsessed with unbundling. I mean, unbundling is a good thing, I have no argument with it and I'm glad that Ireland is slightly more advanced than other countries with it. But seriously, it's not the start or the end of the world. Get a grip, Eurocrats, there's more to comms than ULL!

adam

ENN

The European Commission has issued a generally positive report on the health of the EU's telecoms sector but said that local loop unbundling remains a problem.

The report, entitled "European Telecoms Regulation and Markets 2002", is the European Commission's eighth such report on the state of the telecoms sector in Europe since liberalisation began almost four and a half years ago. Overall, the report gave good marks for most telecommunication servcies in most of the 15 member states, but it said there is much work left to do.

"After four and a half years of liberalisation of telecoms services, the regulation put in place at national level is very substantially compliant with the EU framework," the report said. "Nonetheless, there are areas where work remains to be done, in particular in relation to pricing and access issues surrounding local loop unbundling."

[...]

ednwireland

is this the same report that the irish times headlines as

"EU report slams irish broadband access"

selected quotes

"overall incumbent operators like irelands eircom continue to be dominant in most areas except mobile networks"

"in general he said(erkki liikanen enterprise commissioner) access to true choice for consumers and for DSL lineswas much higher where there was competition with cable operators"

looks like telling us what we all know anyway
it seems the irish press at least is on message

I think you can download it here:

http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/availability/en_dpi_availability_month_2002_12.html

De Rebel

The report itself is an interesting read, Sections 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 in particular. What’s even more striking is that things are screwed up in many countries. And not just on the LLU front either. It’s a catalogue of shenanigans by incumbents right across the EU, in all areas including FRAICO. Particularly disappointing is the cursory mention of WLL, presumably indicating that this vital technology is not making serious progress anywhere else either.

On Adam’s point, it is interesting to look at the table on page 30 (same page in both the PDF and the Word doc). There is a wealth of information in that table and the accompanying paragraph. In particular:

• Bitstream is almost twice as successful as LLU at providing “New Entrant” access to DSL (477,573 lines vs. 282,837)
• That 282,837 is a gross overstatement, as 161,000 of these lines are in Germany, “where apparently healthy full unbundling numbers mask the fact that most unbundled lines are used for purposes other than the provision of DSL services”

If LLU were successful in Ireland, it would probably mean that we would be replacing Eircom’s monopolistic stranglehold on the infrastructure with an Ericom/ESAT cartel having a similar stranglehold. There is little chance of 10 operators having DSLAMS and other kit in an exchange. Here the best we could ever hope for is some kind of 3 legged race, one of the competitors being a DSL enabled equivalent of Meteor. LLU in this market will never be anything other than a chance for ESAT to make money. As far as competition on copper is concerned, Bitstream is the way to go. That and WLL combined are the way to a healthy market.

For me, this report substantiates the case, IOFFL must include as one of its key objectives CHEAP Bitstream. ASAP. No apologies. Not LLU, Not resale, but cheap unfettered access to Bitstream. That’s the best chance we have of seeing real competition, not this tweedle dumb tweedle dee Ericom/ESAT nonsense that passes for competition.


Incidentally, speaking about Bitstrean Access, the report also contains this little nugget:

“Among the countries that reported price data, the tariff for a 512Mbit/s ADSL configuration charged to a new entrant operator, for example, appears to be between €13.3 in Belgium to €25.4 in Austria ……”

GUESS WHICH LITTLE NATION STATE DIDN’T RETURN ANY BITSTREAM PRICE DATA ...............

On the other hand, given that Ireland's 1,714 DSL lines accounts for a superb 0.0227931897% of the total 7.52M lines, they probably just disregarded us and our data as a statistical error