Europe Overhauls Communication Regulations Adam Eisner, theWHIR.com
August 1, 2003 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — On July 25, the regulatory framework surrounding communications in Europe changed dramatically.
That’s the day when the European Union introduced a singular set of rules for all types of electronic communications in Europe, including data services, voice and video. This new set of directives replaced a great deal of the existing EU law on communications in Europe, and simplified it greatly. In fact, with the introduction of the new framework, the number of directives involved in regulating Europe’s communications sector has been reduced from 22 to six.
The new regulatory measures include a framework directive that details a harmonized structure for the new communications regulations, a directive on data protection and one dealing with the sticky issue of local loop unbundling (LLU).
One of the most immediate effects for service providers should be the acceleration of local loop unbundling, which is aimed at promoting competition among telcos and Internet Service Providers. Should the directives be successful in opening up competition in the access market, it will have a trickle-down effect on Web hosting companies: an increase in wired consumers and businesses would logically result in an increased demand for services like Web hosting (and could potentially mean an increase in traffic to sites already hosted).
Despite the July 25 deadline, however, several companies have apparently fallen behind in adopting the directives. According to the Yankee Group (yankeegroup.com), a leading research firm, many nations have not been able to keep up with the EU’s timeline for adoption. “The EC’s [European Commission, which develops policies and is responsible for general EU operations] original schedule of 15 months for adoption of the new laws was ambitious, given the major market assessment activities regulators required,” the firm said in a media advisory last week. “Even those nations that met the deadline face formidable challenges implementing and enforcing the raft of new laws.”
The company said 10 countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden, have yet to comply with the new rules, and that Germany already faces legal proceedings from the EC as a result.
Aside from the slow adoption of these new rules, there appear to be other challenges in the way. Because each member nation has to introduce legislation of its own to comply with the new regulations, each set of legislation is still subject to the “unpredictable national politics and compromise efforts” of individual countries, the Yankee Group said.
This delay in implementation could have a negative impact on the success of the new rules. Erkki Liikanen, European Commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society, said coherent and effective implementation of the directives was a key to their success. So far, however, the EU has yet to reach this objective. “We will monitor this very closely, and report on it in November,” he told a workshop on the rules in Brussels last month.
Regardless of the short-term outlook for the new rules, the European Union is well aware that most of Europe’s communications-based regulations in place were archaic and in need of an overhaul. “Convergence is happening,” Liikanen said at a workshop on the topic in Brussels last month. “Therefore, each network cannot continue with its own set of rules. The new framework addresses markets, not networks, and it does so in a technologically neutral manner.”
