UK wins support from nine other EU countries on reforms to EU telecoms rules

In recent months the UK government has been vocal on how proposed reforms to EU telecoms laws should look, following the launch of a Commission review of existing rules in September last year. The Commission has said it intends to use the views it gathers through its review to inform new "regulatory proposals" expected to be published later this year.

In a document published in October 2015, the UK government said that "deregulation should … be the starting point" for the Commission's review. It specifically said the Commission should look to avoid increasing the regulation facing 'over the top' (OTT) communication providers, echoing views that UK culture minister Ed Vaizey had expressed before a UK parliamentary committee. Instead, the UK government said the Commission should focus efforts on reducing the regulatory burdens for traditional telecoms operators facing competition from the OTT providers, where possible.

Those views were restated in the UK government's official response to the Commission's review (36-page / 426KB PDF) in December and have again been emphasised in a joint letter and unofficial paper that the UK has now finalised with nine other EU countries.

"The Commission has identified that many consumers now consider over the top (OTT) communications services to be the same as more traditional telecoms services, yet these two types of service are often regulated in different ways," ministers from the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden said in a joint letter to EU commissioners Andrus Ansip and Günther Oettinger (3-page / 260KB PDF). "We do not believe that automatically extending all consumer protection regulation provided by the framework to OTT services is the answer."

"A proportionate approach is therefore needed to avoid unnecessarily burdensome regulation that will stifle innovative new services. Regulation should only be extended where there is strong evidence that the interest of the consumer should be protected. The Commission should also consider deregulation of traditional telecoms services where this does not harm consumer interests, undermine regulatory enforcement powers or competition in the market, or compromise national security, public security or prevention, detection and prosecution of criminal offences," the letter said.

The 10 EU countries also called on the Commission to ensure that the various separate initiatives they have embarked on relating to setting rules to support a digital single market are consistent and do not result in businesses facing overlapping regulatory obligations.

"The proposals resulting from the consultations on the electronic communications framework, platforms regulation, standards, consumer protection for digital content and Audiovisual Media Services Directive, plus the forthcoming e-Privacy Directive review must avoid regulating the same services in multiple ways," the ministers said in their letter.

Among the issues the 10 EU countries called for action on in their non-paper (4-page / 310KB PDF) was for greater freedom to be given to individual EU countries to apply their own minimum universal service obligations on broadband connectivity.

"Each member state should be left to decide needs, time schedule for availability, quality levels and preferred means of funding, based on national circumstances," the countries said in their paper.

"Publicly supported roll-out of broadband services, whether being broadband services under a USO-regime or as a general state aid scheme, should on principle be technologically neutral. The means of financing of such broadband roll out should be decided by each member state as long as state aid and other internal market rules are observed. Furthermore, each member state should have the competence to roll back obligations that are no longer necessary," they said.