COMPETITION IN THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY (Notification)
PRESS RELEASE
On December 7, 1995 the Competition Authority submitted an advisory opinion to the Commission for Transport, Posts and Telecommunications of the Chamber of Deputies, on the legislative proposal dealing with the structural reorganisation of the telecommunications industry.
The advisory opinion, issued in compliance with Article 22 of Law No. 287/90, highlights the need to hasten the liberalisation of access to the telecommunications market in order to allow carriers to use alternative network infrastructures and to offer a wide range of services to consumers.
The Authority considers it necessary that the abolishment of administrative barriers which restrict the entry of telecommunications operators into the national market must be accompanied by a regulatory scheme aimed at fostering the pluralism of carriers and the development of competition. In view of this, the Authority urges the legislator to adopt the following provisions:
a) to switch from a concessionary scheme to an authorization regulatory scheme whose effect will not be to limit the number of operators in the market and also will not be to impose generalized minimum service requirements. The new scheme should allow any operator, in possession of the legal requirements, to begin offering telecommunications services (the legislative proposal maintains a concessionary scheme that applies only to new entrants);
b) to eliminate regulatory asymmetries which favour the current public carrier (as a matter of fact, according to the legislative proposal, the public carrier is entitled to freely implement networks all over the national territory, while the other carriers have to limit the potential extension of their coverage;
c) to introduce regulatory asymmetries aimed at limiting the public carrier's conduct on the market, and whose effect will be to favour free entry of competitors, especially those providing transmission networks;
d) to anticipate to January 1st, 1997, the liberalisation of the access to the voice services market and the full liberalisation for the experimentation of these same services (according to the mentioned legislative proposal, this might be timed following other countries' experiences. There are nonetheless still some provisions which favour the public carrier in relation to the abolishment of the monopoly regime. For instance, the reduction of the licensing costs, the updating of tariffs of the telephone services and leased lines, that are at the present time among the highest in the industrialised countries);
e) to liberalise completely the alternative telecommunications infrastructures owned by public utility companies (FS, ENEL, SNAM, AUTOSTRADE), and to impose a prohibition on the public carrier from using these same infrastructures;
f) to liberalise immediately the supply of satellite communications and to eliminate the present exclusive right enjoyed by the public carrier in this segment of the telecommunications market; in particular, it might be appropriate that an institution with supervisory and controlling powers - either a Ministry or an independent agency - be given responsibility for enforcing legislation on satellites communications in order to protect the market and the consumers;
g) to define non-discriminatory access conditions in order to ensure the interconnection to the network run by the public carrier. In view of this, a national regulatory agency should be given powers to avoid that carriers impede access to their own networks to operators who want to use them to offer services;
h) to define universal service obligations, related costs and financing mechanism in such a way as to foster competition in the telecommunications markets. These regulatory activities should be undertaken by the national regulatory agency.