All aboard for the Ministry of Truth

I return from holiday unsure whether I’ve really been in deepest Sussex or whether I’ve emerged into a regulatory time warp.  I dimly remember headlines in 2006 announcing Viviane Reding’s ambitions for a single EU telecoms regulator to replace the (then) 25 NRAs.  Seven years on, I see that the same European ambition has been advocated, this time by Joaquín Almunia, the EU's antitrust commissioner.  Apparently, he has been critical of the plans put forward by Neelie Kroes earlier this summer for a single market in EU telecoms.  She said then that a new EU telecoms package would be put forward in early September in a bid to ‘make it easier to run a network across borders, with better interconnections and new access products’.  However, Almunia is said to have described these plans as “suboptimal”, that they “lack ambition" and that creating a true pan-EU regulator would be the most effective way of harmonizing national differences in telecoms markets. The latter would clearly bolster the current intent to eradicate high roaming charges but the immediate objections to a single EU regulator are much the same as those voiced in 2006.  James Robinson, telecoms regulation analyst at Ovum, cited two obvious candidates:

"Firstly, spectrum that is currently auctioned on a national basis could fall under the jurisdiction of this new, super-regulator. Governments would certainly be reluctant to let this happen as such auctions have provided valuable revenue in recent years… A single regulator would also face issues with the inherent differences of national markets.  For example, EU member states are at varying stages with the rollout of next-generation broadband networks. The regulation of these networks also varies considerably: fibre unbundling has been mandated in Denmark whereas this obligation does not exist in France where next-generation broadband rollout has been relatively slow”.

As I’ve said, all of this is pretty familiar territory: a single EU regulator does indeed represent a ‘logical proposal’ on economic grounds but what surprises me a little is that I’ve seen no mention yet of the daunting scope of governance such a body might enjoy.  In an age of converged media, I assume that the Ofcom model of regulating telecoms, (postal services?); broadcasting and online media by a single body would persist.  But at a pan-European level, that implies an awesome sphere of influence!