Neelie Kroes, the European Union’s digital commissioner, is continuing her publicity campaign to win support for a single EU telecoms market. In her latest speech on the topic, at an industry stakeholders’ meeting in Brussels this week, she said Europe would lag behind other regions in 4G and broadband roll-out if it did not have the economies of scale of a harmonized market, and that in turn would stifle economic growth in an area already hit by recession.
‘Operators cannot reach economies of scale, and face barriers at every turn,’ she said. ‘They can’t think European and compete globally.’ Initial steps towards her goal, she proposes, should include the scrapping of roaming fees within the EU, and an ‘EU passport’ for carriers, to enable them to be recognized in all European markets.
‘Operators find it too hard to break into new markets,’ Kroes argued. ‘They need separate authorizations under separate systems, for each country of operation. A ‘passport’ would mean that if you can operate in one member state, you can operate in any member state, without extra bureaucracy.’
Kroes has stopped short of demanding a single European regulator, maintaining she sees a role for national agencies, but she does favor a ‘super-regulator’ to encourage harmonized approaches and accelerate the adoption of new policies, and said in the speech that ‘operators shouldn’t have to deal with a mess of different rules, regulators and remedies in each member state’. She also claimed that, because spectrum allocation was so fragmented, ‘handset makers largely ignore the European market when planning their latest gadget’.
All this is helping to push Europe behind other regions in terms of consumer and enterprise services. Average European mobile data speeds are half those of the US, she said, while 88% of current LTE connections are in the US, Japan and South Korea, with just 6% in the EU.
Kroes is currently in a process of consultation with stakeholders on the principles of a single EU telecoms market and how that might work in practice, and has pledged detailed proposals by September.