UK
The CAT today rejected BT’s arguments that Ofcom has a narrow jurisdiction to accept and resolve disputes referred to it by Communications Providers pursuant to Section 185 of the Communications Act 2003. The CAT joined two cases (one relating to ‘ladder pricing’ and one to charges for ethernet services above DSAC) in both of which BT…
It is a logical quirk of the European telecoms regulatory system that the provision of call termination is a regulated activity for all Communications Providers – however small. This quirk comes about because rather than just regulating the big ugly beasts of the telecoms landscape, the European system regulates on the logically elegant basis of…
The UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (and although not in the title, telecoms) today published its response to the consultation on implementation of the revised EU electronic communications framework in the UK. In contrast to the original introduction of the current EU Framework in 2003 which necessitated tearing up the Telecommunications Act 1984…
In today’s connected world a lot of what passes for news is more of a rolling update – a snippet of new information that is not terribly unexpected. However, today’s announcement by Fujitsu that it is planning to deploy a fibre to the home (FTTH) network to over 5 million UK rural homes really is…
Whilst the Watcher was on holiday, the UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change published a series of documents on 30 March: Smart Metering Implementation Programme: response to prospectus consultation – overview Data access & privacy – Smart Metering Implementation Programme Roll-out strategy – Smart Metering Implementation Programme Design requirements – Smart Metering Implementation Programme…
I hope all readers noticed the date for Friday’s blog post (taken down on 2 April) and are not planning on bidding in the teleportation spectrum auction. Avoiding the obvious pitfall of announcing anything serious on 1 April, Ofcom today published its Annual Plan for 2011/12. As a regular, if not avid, reader of such…
Ofcom today started a consultation on price controls for local loop unbundling and wholesale line rental products provided by Openreach, the functionally separate local access division of BT. This consultation follows on from Ofcom’s finding in its wholesale local access and wholesale fixed analogue exchange line market reviews that BT held a position in those markets…
News item topics are like buses – nothing happens for weeks or months, then everything happens at once. Following yesterday’s publication of the Phonepayplus annual plan and a market study, today Ofcom approved Phonepayplus’ 12th edition of its Code of Practice, which will become effective from 1 September 2011. For those not familiar with UK…
Phonepayplus, the UK’s premium rate services regulator, has today published: a Report on Emerging Trends in the Premium Rate Services Market; and its plan and budget for the forthcoming year. Report on Emerging Trends in the Premium Rate Services Market Phonepayplus commissioned the report from Analysys Mason and deals with services which are billed via a consumer’s telephone bill. The…
Today post is a guest post from John Enser and Matt Phillips, and is the executive summary of Chapter 2 (‘Pipes’) of their 2011 Convergence Survey: The fundamental issue of how to deliver content and services is one that continues to dominate the industry, especially in the UK. The government needs to deliver on high-speed broadband…
Ofcom yesterday started a consultation on the rules for a proposed auction of 250 MHz of spectrum in the 800 MHz (aka ‘digital dividend’) band and 2.6 GHz band in the first half of 2012. This is equivalent to 75% of existing mobile spectrum. Whilst widely reported in the press as a ‘4G’ auction, apart from a proposed…
On 16 March the UK’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (although as regular readers will know, no longer telecoms) published a consultation on options to reform the UK’s competition regime. The lengthy consultation’s aim is to introduce reforms to stimulate growth and it covers a variety of topics including: merging the Office of Fair Trading with…