Tech companies will fight tooth and nail against any move to hold them to the same obligations that telecom operators have to follow.
“The same service, same rules principle should be a no-brainer,” said Alessandro Gropelli, the boss of telecom trade association Connect Europe. “You cannot have competitiveness if one party is playing the game with their hand tied behind their back and the other party is playing the same game with both hands.”
Incumbents vs. challengers
Brussels’ deregulatory mood is further deepening rifts between Europe’s top telecom providers and their challengers, who have long praised the existing rulebook that they say enables them to take on legacy players.
“The Commission wants to deregulate dogmatically” in order “to boost the largest operators in Europe,” said Luc Hindryckx, the director general of the European Competitive Telecommunications Association, a trade body. “One way to do it is to weaken the competition to allow a few incumbents to make it through and pave the way for consolidation, because if the competitors are on the verge of bankruptcy, they will ask to be merged.”
Telecom challengers are up in arms against the direction of travel, which could see the Commission dial down the regulatory pressure on Europe’s legacy telcos to open their ducts and fiber lines to competitors.
The EU executive wants to move away from heavy, upfront rules and closer scrutiny of dominant players to prevent abuse, instead relying on standard law enforcement. It argues the current system worked to boost competition but has outlived its purpose.