The European Commission is getting serious about Polish regulation of mobile termination rates (MTRs), and has brought to a halt Polish plans to fix the rates for AERO2, the mobile operator.
Poland plans to set AERO2’s rates at more than double the…
The European Commission is getting serious about Polish regulation of mobile termination rates (MTRs), and has brought to a halt Polish plans to fix the rates for AERO2, the mobile operator.
Poland plans to set AERO2’s rates at more than double the prices offered by the company’s four main competitors, “without justifying why such rates are needed,” the EC criticised.
Under EU telecoms rules regulators may only impose price controls once their market analysis has concluded there is lack of effective competition.
However, according to the EC, the Polish regulator, UKE, has not conducted market analysis prior to imposing MTR caps. “The arbitrary nature of this proposal therefore violates a key EU regulatory principle,” the EC said in a statement.
The EC had already sent another warning to UKE earlier in November with regards to mobile termination rates. In its earlier warning the EC criticised that UKE intended to merely publish recommended MTRs on its website in a non-binding form, rather than making them legally binding.
Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, said at the time that there were concerns about “compliance with the regulator’s duty to promote regulatory predictability and symmetric tariffs”.
Today’s move is made using powers under the new EU telecoms directive, which gives the EC more direct influence over national telecoms regulators. Regulators of EU member states have to notify the EC of any plans to regulate markets.
