The Danish regulatory authority IT-og Telestyrelsen (ITST) proposed yesterday to declare six fixed network operators as having SMP on the market for call termination on individual public telephone networks provided at a fixed location.

This corresponds to Market 9 of the European Commission's Recommendation on Relevant Markets Susceptible to Ex-Ante Regulation.

The operators in question are TDC, TeliaSonera, Sonofon, Tele2, Colt Telecom and Consorte.

ITST explains this proposal as seeking to ensure that operators “not to abuse their monopoly position on their own network.” The regulatory authority links a number of remedies to its proposal and these remedies are differentiated:

1. TDC will be obliged to:

a. meet all reasonable requests for interconnection (i.e termination in TDC’s network)

b. be non-discriminatory in its offer

c. publish a reference interconnection offer

d. have a transparent offer with regard to interconnection, comprising the obligation to publish new offers and changes to existing offers

e. comply with the obligation of accounting separation

f. comply with the obligation to publish cost accounting data

g. cost-orientation

T-REGS Note: The obligation for cost-orientation is not in the ITST press release, apparently this has slipped the attention of the editor, but it is contained in the notification that has been made to the European Commission (which is due to be published on or around 10 April 2005).

2. The other 5 operators are only obliged to meet all reasonable requests for interconnection.

According to ITST, this means that the new entrant operators, who have until now been able to establish their termination rates freely, will now be obliged to charge “reasonable wholesale rates and impose reasonable wholesale conditions for this access”.

IT-og Telestyrelsen states that it will keep track of market developments, and that the regime currently proposed will only be maintained insofar as the new entrant operators offer interconnection services (termination services in this case) fairly, on a reasonable basis, and promptly. If this would not be the case, ITST can set stricter conditions by issuing a new decision.

The regulatory authority has published these six decisions for comments by the sector, and made a notification to the European Commission. The deadline for comments is 9 May 2005.

The six draft decisions (in Danish only) can be accessed by clicking here.