20th BEREC Plenary Meeting in Italy
BEREC held its 20th meeting on 25 and 26 September 2014 in Rome (Italy), kindly hosted by the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (AGCOM). The plenary meeting was chaired by the BEREC Chair 2014, Mr Göran MARBY, Director-General of PTS (Sweden).
The meeting was divided into 2 parts, namely: meeting of the Board of Regulators and meeting of the Management Committee of the BEREC Office. The meeting was preceded by a workshop on 24 September 2014 dedicated to facilitating the roll-out of next generation network access (NGA).
The main results of the meeting are as follows:
Board of Regulators (BoR)
The BoR discussed the BEREC Strategy 2015-2017and the BEREC Work Programme 2015and approved these documents for a public consultationto be held in the period 29 September – 24 October 2014 simultaneously with the public consultation on the Draft BEREC Guidance on the regulatory accounting approach to the economic replicability test (ex-ante margin squeeze tests).
All the documents approved for public consultation will be presented during the 2nd BEREC Stakeholder Forum Meeting to be held on 16 October 2014 in Brussels.
The 2nd BEREC Stakeholder Forum Meeting is open for participation to all interested parties but a prior registration is required for all those wishing to attend. Due to the limited number of seats, the requests for participation will be satisfied on the basis of the “first registered - first served” principle. The registration for participation should be done via the BEREC web-site, not later than 3 October 2014.
BEREC and the European Commission had an initial discussion on the proposals to abolish international roaming retail surcharges, one of the pillars of the draft Connected Continent Regulation currently being considered by the European Parliament and Council of the EU. The future of roaming will be discussed with interested parties during the forthcoming Stakeholder Forum meeting. Subsequently, the BEREC heads will reflect internally on this important topic during a Heads’ workshop to take place on 3 December 2014 in Brussels.
Upon invitation of the BEREC Chair, the Chairman of the Puerto Rico Telecommunications Regulatory Board and REGULATEL Chair for 2015 presented the views of the Latin American Forum of Telecommunications Regulators on the scope of cooperation between BEREC and REGULTEL for 2015. Both sides assessed the cooperation developed under the umbrella of the BEREC - REGULATEL Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2013 as mutually beneficial and agreed to further deepen it in areas of common interest.
The BoR approved the Memorandum of Understanding between BEREC and the Group of Eastern Partnership Regulators for Electronic Communications Networks and Services (EaPeReg Network), which will be signed by both organisations at a suitable occasion. It will formalise and further deepened the cooperation already established between the two organisations.
Finally, BEREC voted to grant observer status to the Albanian national regulatory authority, the Electronic and Postal Communications Authority of Albania (AKEP), following the June decision of the European Council to grant Albania candidate status to the European Union.
All documents approved by the BoR for publication (including those for public consultation) are available here.
The results from the 20th BEREC plenary meeting were presented at a public debriefing held on 2 October 2014 in Brussels.
BEREC Office Management Committee (MC)
The BEREC Office MC discussed current issues related to the functioning of the BEREC Office. The MC approved the following documents:
- BEREC Office Work Programme (WP) 2015;
The MC was informed about the recent developments in BEREC Office human resources (HR), the on-going and planned procurement procedures and projects and the transfers carried outby the AM within the BEREC Office Budget 2014 in the period May-July 2014.
The MC took note of the recent activity of the BEREC Office Advisory Group (BAG), established by the 18th MC plenary meeting (28 February 2014, Stockholm) to advise the MC on issues related to the operation of the BEREC Office MC.
All documents approved by the MC for publication are available here.
Next meeting
The next BEREC plenary meetings meeting will take place on 4 and 5 December 2014 in Brussels (Belgium) and will be organised by the BEREC Office. The meetings will be preceded byHeads’ workshops on the forthcoming review of the EU Regulatory Framework for electronic communications and the future of roaming.