Tiscali 2013 Annual Report Download - page 9

Annual financial report as at 31 December 2013
Date
File Name
Status
Page
-
Annual Report as at 31
December 2013
9
3.2 Regulatory background
2013 saw regulatory activities focus on the two main wholesale service markets: access and
interconnection as well as several times undergo interruptions to the procedures, in relation to critical
findings put forward by the European Commission with regard to the AGCOM regulation proposals,
the latter being a factor which led to an undoubted slowdown in regulatory activities.
In particular, during 2013, AGCOM focused on the following macro-areas of intervention:
regulatory framework of the wholesale access services and sales of dedicated capacity
circuits;
fixed network interconnection tariffs;
quality of the ADSL services;
surveys on the sector of internet and on-line advertising services .
The most significant measures originated by these activities are illustrated below:
Market analysis of the wholesale access services
During the year, AGCOM continued with the activities of the third cycle of market analysis on the
wholesale access services (LLU, Bitstream and WLR) aimed at defining the competition regulations for
the three-year period 2013-2015. The procedure, launched in the second half of 2012, underwent a re-
modelling at the beginning of 2013.
The Authority in fact decided to go ahead with the definition of the economic conditions of the access
services for 2013 separately from the process of market analysis, leaving the latter to the period 2014-
2016. Accordingly, AGCOM wished to ensure the market operators economic certainty for 2013,
avoiding that the protraction of the market analysis procedure should compromise the scheduling of
the investments and the financial year. What is more, this would have made it possible to carry out the
analysis of the market with greater serenity and in a more in-depth manner, also in light of important
elements which emerged during the year, amongst which first and foremost the declaration made in
May by TI of wishing to go ahead with the separation of the network and the plans to develop
vectoring technology for the wideband on the copper network.
Again in relation to its singularity, the procedure was subject to findings by the European Commission
(EC) followed by the opening of the so-called “phase II” which led to a standstill in the regulatory
activities for around three months. In particular, this is an exceptional procedure envisaged by the
European legislative framework which enables the EC - should it have strong doubts with regard to the
regulatory proposal of a national Authority - to submit the proposal for the further assessment of the
board of European regulators (BEREC).
The values relating to 2013 (with retroactive applicability as from 1 January), which were published
definitively in January 2014, will also represent the basis of the price shift for the three-year period
2014-2016 which will be defined at the end of the market analysis.