Highlights and Activities for weeks 17 & 18

International Meetings

1.       High Level Internet Governance Meeting: The High Level Group on Internet Governance (HLIG) was commissioned by DG CONNECT Director-General Robert Madelin to act as a platform for exchange of information and coordination at European level on Internet Governance issues. During the third meeting, which was attended by our Chief Information Officer, a post-mortem of the 46th GAC-ICANN meeting which took place in Beijing (China) between 4 to 11 April 2013 was held.  Among the topics discussed at the Beijing meeting was the status of the new gTLD Program. The new gTLD program is an initiative that will enable the introduction of new gTLDs (including both ASCII and IDN) into the domain name space. There is a total of 1912 new gTLD applications which are currently being assessed by ICANN. A complete list of all gTLD can be viewed at: https://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationstatus The second part of the meeting was dedicated to the ITU Secretary General Dr Hamadoun Touré, who presented the ITU’s activities on Internet Governance. The Secretary General presented the current situation concerning the ITRs and the upcoming WTPF.

  1. FTTx summit Europe: One of our regulatory analysts attended the FTTx Summit Europe 2013 which was held in Berlin. Participants for the summit varied from NRAs, Operators, Vendors as well as consultants in the field. Operators case studies, the impact of regulation on FTTx and profitibality together with customer take-up, were amongst the main items presented. The FTTx summit was a unique opportunity for the MCA to interact and extended its networking contacts with peers in the field of FTTx.
     
  1. Postal Directive Committee: Our Manager on policy and planning attended the Postal Directive Committee meeting on the 24th April 2013.   The Committee discussed the state of play with regard to transposition of the Directive 2008/6/EC and  the development in postal policy and regulation.
     
  1. Council Working Party: During the Telecommunications and Information Society Working Party held on 25th April,  discussions continued on the Proposal for a Directive on the accessibility of public sector bodies' websites  and also on the Proposal for a Regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market. The Commission also gave a presentation on the outcome of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) held in Dubai last December. This meeting was attended by our External Relations Analyst.
     
  2. FT Digital Media 2012: Our Senior Manager on Information Society Services attended the FT Digital Conference 2013, Turning Disruption into Opportunity that was held in London between the 25th and 26th of April.  The conference focused on the latest developments experienced by digital media industries and on what may be expected in the coming months. The conference attracted participants and speakers from global content producers, distributors and technology firms.
     
  3. COCOM working group: Our Manager on Spectrum Management participated at the 11th meeting of the COCOM Working Group on MSS Implementation, which was held in Brussels on 26 April 2013.  The discussion at the meeting focused on the investigations being carried out by the Member States to assess the compliance of the 2 GHz mobile satellite service (MSS) operators with respect to EU law.
     
  4. COMREG Consumer Workshop: On the 2nd and 3rd of May 2013, our Chief of External Relations and our End-user Affairs Officer attended an End-User Workshop Event in Dublin.  The workshop covered a number of consumer topics and NRAs exchanged information, practices and experiences on issues of common interest.  During this workshop the MCA gave a presentation on the launch of ‘Telecosts.com’, an interactive website that allows end-users to select the most optimum local telecom tariff plan offered by different service providers based on their specific usage profile.
     
  5. BEREC WG Expert review team: On 31 January 2013, the Commission registered a notification from the German national regulatory authority, the Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA), concerning the markets for wholesale voice call termination on individual mobile networks in Germany. As one of its remedies, BNetzA proposed to set symmetric mobile termination rates (MTRs) for all SMP operators, by employing a LRIC+ costing methodology. Subsequently, the Commission sent a serious doubts letter opening a phase II investigation pursuant to Article 7a of Directive 2002/21/EC as amended by Directive 2009/140/EC. The Commission’s expressed doubts on the compatibility with EU law of BNetzA’s draft decision concerning price control remedies for wholesale call termination on individual mobile networks, due to the methodology proposed by the said NRA to calculate the costs of an efficient operator. In accordance with the BEREC rules of procedure an Expert Working Group (EWG) was established immediately with the mandate to prepare an independent BEREC opinion on the justification of the Commission’s serious doubts on the case. The MCA was respresented in this working group through its market analyst.  The EWG met in Paris on 13 March 2013, during which a session was held with BNetzA to gather further information and clarification in response to the questions sent the week before and to additional questions. The objective of the EWG was to decide whether, based on the information available, the Commission’s serious doubts were justified. The MCA drafted the section of the BEREC opinion concerning the competitive effects of BNetzA’s LRIC+ proposal on fixed network operators. It also contributed to the general discussion in the EWG and provided input to the finalisation of the BEREC opinion.

 

Events

  1. Announcement of new MCA Board Members: The Parliamentary Secretary for Competitiveness and Economic Growth, the Hon. Dr. Edward Zammit Lewis announced the new MCA Board comprised of Dr. Edward Woods as the  new Chairman and Phelim Cavlan, Sarah Mifsud and Godfrey Vella as Members.

 

Publications

  1. Consultation on Must Carry Obligations: The MCA is reviewing its 2012 must-carry determination, as a result of the addition of a seventh must carry channel, as well as substantial subscriber migration from the analogue cable platform. On this note, it has invited interested parties to submit their views by no later than 24th May 2013. The Consultation document is available through this link.  http://www.mca.org.mt/consultations/review-must-carry-obligations-consultation-document

 

  1. Consumer complaints report: The MCA has published its consumer complaints report for the month of February. To view this report, access the following link. http://www.mca.org.mt/consumer/statistics/consumer-complaints-received-and-dealt-mca-february-2013

 

Legal Update

  • The case of DHL vs MCA was heard infront of the Administrative Reviews Tribunal on 30 April 2013. This case deals with the contestation of the regulatory decision issued by the MCA.