Translation of "Infrastructure des télécommunications " (French → English) :

Among other objectives, this cooperation shall seek to promote interoperability between networks in the area of telecommunications infrastructure in the Union and similar networks in third countries.

It is also a shame that because of pressure from the large telecommunications companies, access to major telecommunications infrastructures is not provided to new, innovative undertakings and there has to be a duplication of infrastructure.

It is true that Council Directive 92/44/EEC of 5 June 1992 on the application of open network provision to leased lines, amended by Commission Decision 94/439/EC (8), harmonizes the basic principles regarding the provision of leased lines, but it only harmonizes the conditions of access and use of leased lines. The aim of that Directive is not to remedy the conflict of interest of the telecommunications organizations as infrastructure and service providers. It does not impose a structural separation between the telecommunications ...[+++] organizations as providers of leased lines and as service providers. Complaints illustrate that even in Member States which have implemented that Directive, telecommunications organizations still use their control of the access conditions to the network at the expense of their competitors in the services market. Complaints show that telecommunications organizations still apply excessive tariffs and that they use information acquired as infrastructure providers regarding the services planned by their competitors, to target clients in the services market. Directive 92/44/EEC only provides for the principle of cost-orientation and does not prevent telecommunications organizations to use the information acquired as capacity provider as regards subscribers' usage patterns, necessary to target specific groups of users, and on price elasticities of demand in each service market segment and region of the country. The current regulatory framework does not resolve the conflict of interest mentioned above. The most appropriate remedy to this conflict of interest is therefore to allow service providers to use own or third party telecommunications infrastructure to provide their services to the final customers instead of the infrastructure of their main competitor. In its resolution of 22 December 1994 the Council also approved the principle that infrastructure provision should be liberalized.

(24) The abolition of special and exclusive rights in the telecommunications markets will allow undertakings enjoying special and exclusive rights in sectors other than telecommunications to enter the telecommunications markets. In order to allow for monitoring under the applicable rules of the Treaty of possible anti-competitive cross-subsidies between, on the one hand, areas for which providers of telecommunications services or telecommunications infrastructures enjoy special or exclusive rights and, on the other, their business as ...[+++]telecommunications providers, Member States should take the appropriate measures to achieve transparency as regards the use of resources from such protected activities to enter in the liberalized telecommunications market. Member States should at least require such undertakings once they achieve a significant turnover in the relevant telecommunications service and/or infrastructure provision market, to keep separate financial records, distinguishing between inter alia, costs and revenues associated with the provision of services under their special and exclusive rights and those provided under competitive conditions. For the time being, a turnover of more than ECU 50 million could be considered as a significant turnover.

Under Directive 92/44/EEC, Member States must ensure that the telecommunications organizations make available certain types of leased lines to all providers of telecommunications services. However, the Directive provides only for such offer of a harmonized set of leased lines up to a certain bandwidth. Companies needing a higher bandwidth to provide services based on new high-speed technologies such as SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) have complained that the telecommunications organizations concerned are unable to meet their demand whilst it could be met by the optic fibre networks of other potential providers of telecommu ...[+++]nications infrastructure, in the absence of the current exclusive rights. Consequently, the maintenance of these rights delays the emergence of new advanced telecommunications services and therefore restricts technical progress at the expense of the users contrary to Article 90 (1) of the Treaty, in conjunction with point (b) of the second paragraph of Article 86 of the Treaty.

(2) Subsequent to the public consultation organized by the Commission in 1992 on the situation in the telecommunications sector (the 1992 Review), the Council, in its resolution of 22 July 1993 (5), unanimously called for the liberalization of all public voice telephony services by 1 January 1998, subject to additional transitional periods of up to five years to allow Member States with less developed networks, i.e. Spain, Ireland, Greece and Portugal, to achieve the necessary adjustments, in particular tariff adjustments. Moreover, v ...[+++]ery small networks should, according to the Council also be granted an adjustment period of up to two years where so justified. The Council subsequently unanimously recognized, in its resolution of 22 December 1994 (6), that the provision of telecommunications infrastructure should also be liberalized by 1 January 1998, subject to the same transitional periods as agreed for the liberalization of voice telephony. Furthermore, in its resolution of 18 September 1995 (7), the Council established basic guidelines for the future regulatory environment.