Art 7.: M7 in Poland

At the beginning of this month, the Commission published its comments on the draft M7 polish decision.

Those are as follows:

Need for regulating termination rates reflecting efficient costs

The Commission notes that UKE’s proposal will lead to mobile termination rates in Poland that seem to get closer to the cost of an efficient operator but that they are still based on individual operators' costs. The Commission appreciates, however, that UKE proposes to adopt from 1 January 2013 a bottom up Long Run Incremental Cost model (BU-LRIC) in line with the Termination Rates Recommendation.
However, it appears that UKE plans to adopt the currently consulted draft measures only in case the on-going negotiations with mobile operators concerning infrastructure investments fail. The Commission notes in this respectUKE's assurance that any other draft measure replacing the currently proposed MTRs will be consulted at EU level. Without prejudice to any position the Commission may take with regard to such future notification, the Commissionwould like to point out, already at this stage, that the Termination Rates Recommendation does not allow for granting of higher MTRs to a select number of mobile network operators in return for any sort of commitments by the latter, in particular if this leads to asymmetries of rates in favour of such operators. In particular, it seems difficult to justify higher than the currently proposed rates with objective cost differences outside the control of the operators concerned, which would be, however, one of the requirements of the Termination RatesRecommendation for higher rates. It would appear that a commitment to invest in rural areas is within the control of the operator concerned. The Commission would therefore like to invite UKE to take utmost account of the Termination Rates Recommendation when setting MTRs other than proposed under the current consultation.In any event, the Commission would like to reiterate as well that UKE should consider setting at glide-path for MTRs until the end of 2012 in order to ensure transparency and legal certainty for market players.

Now a question: why does a higher access tariff justified by investments in mobile networks constitute a problem while it does not for invetsments in fixed NGA network?