BEREC events 2015

On 15 October 2015, in Sheraton, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) gathered together more than 180 participants for the 3rd annual BEREC Stakeholder Forum. The topics for discussion were the draft BEREC Work Programme 2016, the draft BEREC report on the Internet of Things, and an open session on the challenges and opportunities for Europe in the digital ecosystem.

In her opening remarks, the BEREC Chair, Fátima Barros, underlined the changes and challenges brought by the new digital ecosystem and highlighted the importance of the meeting and participants’ inputs for BEREC in the drafting of its opinion on the regulatory framework review, within the Digital Single Market initiative.

The incoming 2016 BEREC Chair, Wilhelm Eschweiler, then introduced the participants to the main challenges of BEREC’s work programme for next year, emphasizing the tight schedule to implement the new  rules for international roaming. The participants of the forum recognized BEREC’s importance in assisting the European Commission on the Regulatory Framework review and were invited to pay more attention to investments in the internal market. The EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Günther Oettinger, stressed the importance of connectivity, and agreed that  ‘Europe needs a competitive telecom sector which invests for quality services’. As part of the process to approve its annual work programme, BEREC is publicly consulting on the document. The consultation is running until 30 October.

During the 3^rd BEREC Stakeholder Forum, the participants were also introduced to the BEREC draft report on Enabling Internet of things. The public contributions on the draft report must be delivered by 6 November. The report aims at presenting the most common M2M/IoT characteristics and assessing whether M2M/IoT services might require special treatment with regard to current and potential future regulatory issues. The multinationals Cisco and Microsoft gave their industry perspective in this area.

The last session of the Stakeholder Forum was dedicated to the future opportunities and challenges for Europe in the digital ecosystem. To share their views on what the future will look like in the electronic communications sector and the role of regulators in this space, BEREC invited some major global market players – Google, AT&T and Ericsson – and a representative who provided a vision from the academic world.

The 3^rd Stakeholder Forum was web-streamed and the recorded videos are available here:

• Opening remarks by 2015 BEREC Chair Fatima Barros
• Draft BEREC Work Programme 2016
• IoT/M2M communications
• Digital Ecosystem: Challenges and Opportunities in Europe
• Closing remarks by 2015 BEREC Chair Fatima Barros