Telecom regulatory regimes vary greatly across Europe, though all original European Union (EU) member states were required to adopt the EU’s e-communications regulatory framework by last July, a European Competitive Telecom Assn. (ECTA) report said Tues. The scorecard, which surveyed the effectiveness of national telecom regulatory schemes in 10 of the original 15 member states at 2003’s end, also found widely differing levels of total investment by both incumbent telcos and new entrants, and a strong correlation between investment levels and regulatory effectiveness. Of the states studied -- the U.K., Ireland, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Belgium and Germany -- the U.K. came out on top, while Germany was last. The assessments were based on 66 criteria divided into 5 areas: (1) General powers of a country’s national regulatory authority (NRA), including the speed of its process, transparency of its activities and degree of independence. (2) The effectiveness of a country’s dispute settlement body, including the speed with which it exercises its powers, its respect for due process, and the effectiveness of its sanctions. (3) The application of access rules allowing new entrants to tie into the networks of significant market power operators. (4) The existence and availability of key access products such as fixed voice interconnection, wholesale leased lines, fixed-to-mobile interconnection services, local loop unbundling (LLU), and wholesale DSL services. (5) Whether a country has fully and effectively implemented the EU’s new regulatory framework. The U.K. scored high in most areas, but was weak in LLU and in the speed of its Office of Communications’s (OFCOM’s) dispute settlement process. Germany ranked strongly in the use of due process in its dispute settlement program and in the availability of rights of way over public land for access but was weak in nearly all other categories. The ECTA report also analyzed the relationship between the scorecard results and investment numbers from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development, finding that as much as 90% of the variation among countries in investment levels can be explained by the quality of regulatory environment. Telecom spending per capita ranges from $236 in the U.K. to $86 in Germany, ECTA said. The report covers only 10 states because they were the ones for which new telecom entrants provided data by the cutoff date, said ECTA Regulatory Affairs Dir. Andy Tarrant. Tarrant said he hopes next year’s scorecard will cover all 15 original members as well as most of the 10 new states. It’s likely “it will only be with the 2nd report that all new entrants in the new member states will buy into the idea,” Tarrant said. However, he said, next year’s report will, at a minimum, cover the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. OFCOM didn’t comment by our deadline. A spokesman for the German NRA, the Regulatory Authority for Telecom & Post (Reg TP), said he couldn’t discuss Reg TP’s reaction to the scorecard because “we have not had the opportunity to study the report in detail yet.”
SBC has joined Qwest’s court case against the FCC’s rules for determining the distribution of the “nonrural” universal service fund (USF), distributed to larger ILECs that serve rural areas, an industry source said. The 2 RBOCs have filed a petition with the 10th U.S. Appeals Court, Denver, to throw out the rules for the $260-million fund. Qwest has argued that the rules aren’t fair, since most funding goes to a few states, notably Miss. and Ala. The FCC determines funding levels on a statewide basis. Advocates for the Qwest approach have said that’s unfair to Western states, which have large land areas and sparse populations. Sen. Smith (R-Ore.)(S-1380) and Rep. Terry (R-Neb.) (HR-1582) have introduced legislation to change the system. The 2 bills have 110 co-sponsors, and nearly 75 independent groups have also signed onto the approach. However, an industry source said that while SBC is supporting Qwest on the court petition to abandon the old rules, SBC still isn’t actively supporting the bills.
Rights issues remain a big roadblock to expanding entertainment over wireless, said Elizabeth Sherman, vp- business development for Endemol USA, Thurs. at the Global Wireless Summit in L.A.: “As soon as you get a handset manufacturer and carrier involved, you open up very complicated rights issues.” Ralph Simon, chmn. of the Mobile Entertainment Forum, expressed frustration with U.S. record labels, which he said “have been placing onerous conditions for their content usage, as a way of asserting their providence. But in the process they are killing the goose that could lay them a golden egg in the future. The reason places like Japan are so far ahead of us in this technology is that the Japanese copyright organization did everything they could to facilitate rights and licensing. Record labels should not see this as a land grab but should find communion with [aggregators] to advance this technology.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a May 2004 version of a document entitled, "Compliance Summary Information: Prior Notice," which updates an April 2004 version.
Despite generally negative comments from many groups, the FCC will press forward with its investigation of “interference temperatures,” Edmond Thomas, chief of the Office of Engineering & Technology said Tues. Thomas told us he wasn’t surprised many comments asked the FCC to drop the proceeding. Several sources said that among FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force’s recommendations, the interference temperature proposal most clearly landed with a thud.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a notice announcing the availability of a draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) regarding potential environmental impacts resulting from its deployment of the Vehicle and Cargo Inspection System (VACIS) at various ports of entry through the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
The FCC will make a packed 4-day visit to S.D. and N.D. May 24-27 to hold consumer forums, demonstrations and discussions, with FCC Chmn. Powell delivering a speech at a regional workshop that’s part of the agency’s Indian Telecom Initiative. The sessions will focus on a variety of issues, such as use of satellite technology to bring information to rural areas, localism in radio and TV broadcasting, delivery of telecom services to Indian lands. An FCC official said the many events reflect the agency’s recent efforts to be more efficient in using travel budgets. The FCC is to hold its 3rd broadcast localism hearing May 26 in Rapid City, S.D. and other events were added, the official said.
In a move already causing anxiety among broadcasters, the FCC Thurs. approved a rulemaking that could clear the way toward the use of more unlicensed devices in the white spaces between TV channels, especially by wireless Internet service providers (WISPs).
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has issued an interim rule, effective February 4, 2004, which amends its regulations to prohibit or restrict the importation of certain birds, poultry, and bird and poultry products from regions that have reported the presence of the H5N1 subtype of highly pathogenic avian influenza (avian flu).
Gemstar-TV Guide International, at no extra charge, has begun bundling VCR Plus with its electronic program guide (EPG) licenses for DVD recorders in the European market, where demand remains strong for the VCR Plus technology that launched the company 14 years ago, company officials told Consumer Electronics Daily.