Brussels hosted last 27 January a meeting of the BEREC expert working group on Termination Rates (EWG TR), co-chaired by the Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) and the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (Agcom).
The meeting's agenda covered the current implementation status of the 7 May 2009 European Commission (EC) Recommendation concerning the regulatory treatment of termination rates for calls in fixed and mobile networks in the European Union (EU) - 2009/396/EC. It was stressed that with respect to mobile terminations and above all fixed terminations, many national regulators have yet to report the respective wholesale termination prices as specified in the recommendation, i.e. prices based on “pure” long run incremental cost (LRIC) costing models. The EC representative who was present said in this regard that the situation was being studied and intervention possibilities gauged with a view to ensuring that the recommendation in question is effectively taken into account when setting wholesale call termination prices.
Also regarding the same issue, the summaries of recent cases concerning article 7 of the Framework Directive (Phase II) were presented, involving draft decisions from Italy, Germany and Finland. The EC expressed serious doubts and thorough investigations have begun. The position of BEREC is to support the serious doubts expressed by the EC.
The meeting ended with the discussion of competition problems that may arise due to the existence of very different domestic internal and international wholesale termination prices. In this regard, the wholesale termination prices for short message service (SMS) particularly stand out. The discussion accordingly also covered international SMS termination asymmetries which may affect operators whose respective prices are regulated versus counterparts from other countries which are not regulated. These matters will continue to be discussed at upcoming meetings of the working group.
