INTUG Responds to BEREC Report on Special Rate ServicesBEREC

Yesterday INTUG responded to a BEREC consultation on Special Rate Services, underlining the concerns business users have with the inconsistencies in the provision of these services between different EU member states, both in terms of numbering plans and charging principles.

Charging principles and structures, as in the analysis within the BEREC draft report, are also extremely complex and confusing, making costs for use and provision of Special Rate Services internationally unpredictable, costly, and a barrier to trade.

These services, like roaming charges and termination rates, do not easily lend themselves to structural solutions, which could introduce competition as a means of reducing end costs at wholesale and retail level, rather than price caps.

As many users contract for service bundles for fixed and mobile services, inclusion or exclusion of access to Special Rate Services becomes a significant cost issue.

International provision of special rate services must not suffer the drawbacks and failures linked to International Freephone, which was not implemented universally or successfully in Europe, which is sometimes blocked on mobile networks or not free, and which is still a required business service, nor those of the failed +3883 EU code.

Since convergence of fixed and mobile access is inevitable, and in many countries, for example in Eastern Europe, most private telephony is mobile, there must be no penalty for accessing Special Rate Services or Freephone Services from mobiles.

While the reputation of Special Rate Services has been damaged by association with “adult” service content, TV Show voting, fraudulent scams and excess revenue generation by long call hold times using multiple layer menus, they do provide vital facilities for business and residential users, such as directory enquiry, and must not therefore incur tariffs inflated by excessive costs levied by originating operators.

Download INTUG’s response.

Source: INTUG

Standards for “True 4G” Agreed at ITU Assembly

This week the specifications for next-generation mobile technologies – IMT-Advanced – were agreed by the ITU Radiocommunication Assembly in Geneva. The IMT-Advanced standard allows for capabilities that go beyond IMT-2000, widely deployed since 2000 and commonly referred to as 3G mobile technologies.

ITU has now specified the standards for IMT-Advanced, the next-generation global wireless broadband communications that provide access to a wide range of packet-based telecommunication services supported by mobile and fixed networks.

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré hailed the announcement as a landmark development in mobile technology:

“IMT-Advanced marks a huge leap forward in state-of-the-art technologies, which will make the present day smart phone feel like an old dial up Internet connection. Access to the Internet, streaming videos and data transfers anytime, anywhere will be better than most desktop connections today.”

François Rancy, Director of ITU’s Radiocommunication Bureau, said,

“IMT-Advanced would be like putting a fiber optic broadband connection on your mobile phone, making your phone at least 100 times faster than today’s 3G smart phones. But it’s not only about speed; it’s about efficiency. IMT-Advanced will use radio-frequency spectrum much more efficiently making higher data transfers possible on lesser bandwidth. This will enable mobile networks to face the dramatic increase in data traffic that is expected in the coming years”

IMT-Advanced systems support low to high mobility applications and a wide range of data rates in accordance with user and service demands in multiple user environments. The standard also has capabilities for high quality multimedia applications within a wide range of services and platforms, providing a significant improvement in performance and quality of service.

Over the last 25 years, ITU has developed the IMT framework of standards — or International Mobile Telecommunications system — for mobile telephony and continues to lead international efforts involving governments and industry players to produce the next-generation standards for global mobile communications.

Read the full press release.

Source: ITU

INTUG and Fair Roaming Group Press for Lower Roaming Charges

Over the last few days, the proposed new EU mobile roaming regulation has come before the European Parliament and the Council. While many of the proposed amendments to the regulation are going in the right direction, the price caps are still much too high and the EU is risking destroying the business of small operators wishing to enter the roaming market.

INTUG and Europeans for Fair Roaming therefore demand that the European Parliament and the Council take the right decisions now.

The retail price caps for mobile phone users must be set at lower levels than that currently proposed. The targets should be:

• No more than 11ct for calls made by 2014
• Free receiving of calls from 2014 onwards
• No more than 10ct/MB for data by 2014

Furthermore, INTUG and FairRoaming.org warn against erecting high hurdles for market entrance and access to roaming services for small and virtual operators. Bengt Beier of Europeans for Fair Roaming stated:

“If the new rules make it too hard for new and small operators to offer innovative roaming services, there will be no competition and roaming will remain as expensive as it is. And even worse, the existence of small operators and thousands of jobs could be threatened! The end users want lower prices for roaming and the new regulation has to deliver these.”

Nick White of INTUG stated,

“These are extremely important issues for business users. If the regulation fails to introduce lower price caps, new low-cost roaming services and the freedom of users to choose their roaming operators, European businesses will continue to be seriously hindered in their ability to introduce innovative and more efficient cross-border processes. The absence of an international market for mobile services with the obstruction of MVNOs, can only be overcome by some form of structural change in the mobile market. The current situation with unjustifiably high roaming charges, especially for data, is damaging Europe’s competitive position and blocking investment in growth generating and job creating activities.”

INTUG and FairRoaming.org issued a joint statement regarding their concerns.

Read the full press release.

Source: INTUG

EU Roaming Regulation Faces National Hurdles, Delays

EU’s Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes is under intense pressure from member states that are threatening to delay or water down her proposal to abolish cross-border tariffs on mobile phone calls within Europe by 2016.

The EU telecoms ministers, who were meeting in Brussels yesterday nearly unanimously underlined the necessity to further explore technical solutions to implement key aspects of Kroes’s proposal. They said that new roaming regulation should not include technical solutions but only general principles.

Last summer Kroes had proposed two important changes to the European market for mobile phone roaming services – decoupling and virtual operators.

Decoupling allows customers to switch operators when they are abroad, ensuring clients always get the best deal on offer in any given country without having to change SIM cards.

Linked to decoupling was the idea of opening competition for roaming services to completely new providers – so-called virtual operators – specialized in the sale of roaming packages.

Both provisions need technical solutions to be applied. But while time is running short – the existing roaming regulation expires in mid-2012 – an agreement on those is currently not in sight.

“We are in a hurry,”

said Kroes, speaking to the EU’s 27 telecom ministers during a public deliberation of the Council.

If the timeline is not respected, caps on roaming phone calls will disappear as of next summer, with the risk of bill shocks for European customers when they make cross-border mobile phone calls.

Despite the time pressure, many member states underlined that the market is not yet ready to choose one technical solution rather than another, especially when it comes to the thorny issue of decoupling.

Big operators like Vodafone could indeed benefit from the measure by exploiting their bigger trans-European networks to lure clients from smaller mobile phone operators.

Smaller operators could face higher competition also from new entrants and risk seeing their margins dangerously trimmed. Consumers would likely benefit from lower prices in the short term but lower competition would probably reverse this trend in the longer run.

Ministers therefore suggested waiting for technical advice from the group of telecoms authorities (BEREC) before applying a specific technical solution. The experts will have to look into the technologies available to allow dual identity SIM cards that are able to support the services of both a national and a cross-border operator.

Aware of the limited time frame, a few ministers suggested adopting a plan B if technical work took too long.

“The Commission should provide options in case we cannot adopt a new regulation by July 2012,”

underlined the British delegate.

Delays on decoupling will also likely postpone the European Commission’s other key proposal on virtual operators. As their name suggests, virtual operators do not have a network of their own and rely on established national telecoms firms, which have developed their network over the years.

Potential virtual operators are often active in the retail or postal services sector and include the likes of Carrefour, Tesco or Poste Italiane. Without decoupling, it would be impossible for them to enter the roaming market.

Further progress might also be hampered in the European Parliament where the MEP in charge of the roaming regulation, Angelika Niebler (European People’s Party), has proposed changes that could prevent virtual operators from entering the roaming market, even if decoupling were introduced.

Niebler wants to force virtual operators to follow a number of procedures that are seen by some experts as the reason why alternative service providers have never taken off in the European roaming market.

Read more on the EurActiv web site.

Source: Euractiv

Fifty % of European Businesses uses Mobile Broadband in 2011

In the EU27, enterprises
1
 use the internet for a variety of purposes, among others, to present information on a
website, offer online shopping facilities to customers and interact with public authorities
2
. In the  EU27, 95% of
enterprises had access to the internet in January 2011. The share of enterprises having a fixed broadband
connection
3
 to access the internet grew slightly from 84% in 2010 to 87% in 2011. On the other hand, the use of
mobile broadband connections
3
 by enterprises in the EU27 increased significantly in the same period, from 27% to
47%.
In 2010, the majority of enterprises in the EU27 used the internet to interact with public authorities (e-government),
with 74% of enterprises obtaining information from public authorities' websites and 69% submitting completed
forms electronically
4
.
These data come from a report
5
 published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, and form
part of the results of a survey  conducted at the beginning of 2011 on  ICT (Information and Communication
Technologies) usage and e-commerce in enterprises in the EU27 Member States, Norway and Croatia, with a
special focus on internet use to interact with public authorities.
Largest shares of enterprises with mobile broadband connection to the internet in Finland,
Sweden and Austria
The level of internet access and fixed broadband internet connections among enterprises in January 2011 was high
in nearly all EU27 Member States. The share of enterprises having mobile broadband connections to the internet
grew in all Member States from 2010 to 2011, with the largest increases registered in Estonia (from 9% in 2010 to
48% in 2011),  Germany (from 22% to 57%),  Greece (from 6% to 38%) and  France (from 28% to 60%). The
highest shares of enterprises with mobile broadband access in 2011 were found in Finland (77%), Sweden (67%)
and Austria (65%), and the lowest in Romania (15%), Latvia (23%) and Poland (24%).
Obtaining information from public authorities' websites common among EU enterprises
More than 90% of all enterprises in  Slovakia (94%),  Lithuania and  Finland (both 92%) and  Sweden (91%)
reported that they used the internet to obtain information from public authorities' websites in 2010, while it was less
than half of enterprises in Romania (47%) and the Netherlands (48%). On the other hand, 97% of enterprises in
the Netherlands reported that they used the internet in 2010 to  submit completed forms electronically to public
authorities, followed by 93% in Lithuania and 87% in Greece, Poland and Finland. In Italy and Romania (both
39%) and  Cyprus (40%) it was less common for enterprises to use the internet for the purpose of submitting
completed forms electronically.