Independent BEREC is a key to provide regulatory predictability and support long-term investment and innovation

On 28 November 2017 in Brussels BEREC Chair 2017 Sebastien Soriano and the incoming BEREC Chair 2018 Johannes Gungl gave keynote speeches at the ECTA Regulatory Conference 2017 to underline BEREC’s position in the context of the new Electronics Communications Code, specify important ongoing works and draw attention to the future priorities.

In his keynote speech, BEREC Chair Sébastien Soriano highlighted that, to boost connectivity, Europe needs investments and that, to this end, the whole sector has to work together to ensure the investments needed are there. He stressed it is therefore important not to oppose the different actors of the sector; everyone is needed, entrepreneurs, alternative operators, incumbents, to meet the connectivity challenge.

This challenge calls also for BEREC and regulators to help investors confront the new investment cliff that is marking the telecom sector: “Our job is not only to ensure competition anymore. Our new job is to accompany the telecom sector through the investment cycles of today and tomorrow”. In this regard, Mr Soriano acknowledged that a stable framework is of utmost importance in order to ensure predictability to operators and therefore facilitate investments. 

In addition, BEREC Chair Mr Soriano and Incoming Chair Mr Gungl emphasized that 5G and connectivity are strategic priorities for BEREC in the coming years with the aim to enable European-scale solutions. “It is our goal to help reap the benefits of an early roll-out of 5G in Europe. BEREC will actively and closely follow the development and will work to identify and eliminate potential hurdles to a smooth deployment of 5G,” said Mr Gungl.

BEREC Incoming Chair J. Gungl also stressed the importance of an independent BEREC and national regulatory authorities both from the industry and the governments to provide regulatory predictability and support long-term investment and innovation. “With significant investment ahead, transparency, continuity, predictability and consistency in an ever harmonized environment are more important than ever for the sector,” he said and underlined that the potential for such harmonization depends on the national regulators having a common set of competences to ensure a productive exchange at European level.

In his speech, the Incoming Chair has also highlighted the ongoing work on net neutrality implementation. “All national regulators gathered in BEREC are well aware of the fact that the execution of the net neutrality rules in a consistent way across Europe is of utmost importance,” emphasized J.Gungl.

On 7-8 December in Copenhagen at the last plenary meetings of the year, BEREC will discuss major net neutrality cases from different countries. On 13 December 2017, from 10.30-12.00 (CET) in Brussels, BEREC will hold a public debriefing to discuss, among other topics, net neutrality issues in light of the report presenting one year of implementation of net neutrality Regulation and related BEREC Guidelines.

It will be live-streamed on the front page of www.berec.europa.eu. During the discussion part BEREC will provide replies to questions received both from present participants and via Twitter (#BERECpublic) or [email protected].