The European Commission announced late yesterday (Wednesday) that
it has begun legal proceedings against five member states for not
liberalising the local loop in their telecommunication
networks.
France, Ireland, the Netherlands - and for the second time, Germany
and Portugal - have all been accused of breaking the 15-month-old
European Union law commanding member states to unbundle the local
loop.
The local loop, otherwise known as the "last mile," is a common
term for the part of the telephone network that connects individual
users to telecom companies' central offices. Unbundling is a
process whereby incumbent operators allow competitors to service
individual customers on the local loop.
The commission said in a statement that the action is being taken
because national telecom regulators in the five countries have
failed to prevent the incumbent operators from putting up obstacles
to local loop competitors. The commission is the executive body of
the European Union. It has the power to fine member states for
failing to comply with EU law.
The local loop should be "sufficiently unbundled to allow
competitors to pay just for what they require, and must provide in
particular a breakdown of costs for the sub-loop so that an
operator can install equipment closer to customers' premises than
the local exchange," the commission said in a statement.
These proceedings follow the action taken last December against
Germany, Portugal and Greece concerning shared access to the local
loop, at which time the commission made it clear that further legal
action could be taken.
Two of the member states implicated in December, Portugal and
Greece, have already remedied the problem, and the commission said
today it is closing these two cases.
Germany has also reported positive steps to remedy the situation,
and the commission said it would consider closing that case
too.
"The action we have already taken has had immediate results, and I
hope that national authorities can move quickly to overcome the
problems that we are addressing in this latest decision on
unbundling," said Erkki Liikanen, commissioner for enterprise and
the information society.
"Regulators and operators have had time to implement the
requirements of the EU Regulation, and there can be no more delays
in opening up the local access market to competition."