The European Commission must fairly balance investment incentives for incumbent...
The European Commission must fairly balance investment incentives for incumbent telcos and competition measures to foster challengers’ investments and the growth of the sector, competitive telecom company chiefs told Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes Tuesday at the European Competitive Telecommunications…
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Association regulatory conference in Brussels. They asked Kroes to consider the central role alternative operators play in the growth of broadband markets as she prepares a recommendation aimed at boosting investment in and demand for next-generation broadband. The EC wants to stabilize and align wholesale network access prices at the current average level and give dominant operators pricing flexibility when they partly or fully upgrade their networks, but to balance that approach, Kroes promised to tighten nondiscrimination rules to ensure that dominant operators offer wholesale services on the same terms to all wholesale customers as they do to their own retail arms, ECTA said. Given the track record of dominant players to abuse their market power and squeeze competitors’ margins, a key element of a balanced approach is effective prevention of margin squeeze, said ECTA Director Erzsebet Fitori. There’s a particularly high risk of abusive pricing when wholesale access charges are increased without a hike in the underlying costs, or when major players are given pricing flexibility, ECTA said. The EC should make sure such abuses are prevented or face undermining the growth potential of the sector, it said.