Reding's speech against incumbents.

Commissionner Reding recently published a speech clearly targeting incumbents that she had made in Venice last october. I remain somehow puzzled by some points in the speech:

1. she criticizes that the fact that the telecom markets remain in the hands of 4 to 5 players at EU level while at the same time calling for more consolidation across markets.

2. She criticizes the state ownership of some incumbents. She seems to forgot that under the EU framework, the shareholding of incumbents should have no effect on the regulation, in particular if functional or structural separation is imposed.

3. She suggests that Bill and Keep is an objective to reach in the medium term. Yet many economist and industry participants would agree that Bill and keep is not an ideal for consumer welfare and transparency (e.g., for pre-paid). It also remain highly questionable on which legal basis she intend to impose such system.

4. She generally present the US as the model to follow for telecom regulation. However, there has been much concentration at the US level since the break up of AT&T in the eighthies and one could wonder whether the US market is any more competitive than (at least some) national EU markets.

5. She suggests that national markets are a non-sense. However, she seems to forgot that this results precisely from the lack of EU harmonization on things such as spectrum at the start of the liberalisation process (resulting e.g., in differences in costs for operators). If she wants to add more regulation at EU level, she will need to get the right framework in place that allows the EU to act through binding decisions, rather than communications, recommandations, etc...

Of course, Commissionner Reding is at the end of her mandate and it remains questionable whether she would go for another mandate as EU commissionner for Information Society to see any of the above materialize...