OPTA and Commission agree on cable

The Commission of OPTA, the Independent Post and Telecommunications Authority, and the European Commission have reached agreement on the regulation of the tariffs for the standard plans for cable of the three largest cable companies (UPC, Casema and Essent). The agreement covers the following:

as the cable companies already indicated last week, their tariffs will rise by no more than the rate of inflation in the year ahead;
OPTA will ensure that this occurs and may intervene if necessary;
in the interim OPTA will audit the expenses of these cable companies and could regulate them as of 2007, once the normal procedure has been followed;
the European Commission no longer sees any grounds to veto the draft decisions concerning the market, which OPTA presented to it for its approval at the end of September.

This agreement will prevent the unbridled increase of cable charges and will allow intervention in the future, if it appears to be necessary. According to Chris Fonteijn, OPTA’s Chairman, ‘We are satisfied that we have avoided a veto, because it would have benefited no one. Consumers would have been left with empty hands in that case. Now the door to the regulation of these tariffs is wide open.’

At the end of September OPTA sent draft decisions concerning the market to the European Commission for its consent. The Commission has the right to veto such decisions. After a month the Commission announced that it had serious doubts about the need to regulate the consumer cable market and that it required further investigation into whether any alternatives in the market could be expected to exert adequate pressure on prices. Thanks to this agreement it will be possible to finalise these decisions in an amended form and to ensure that they come into effect as soon as possible.

Recently, OPTA also investigated 18 electronic communication markets to establish whether there is a need to regulate them. The relevant decisions have already come into effect or will do so in the near future.

as the cable companies already indicated last week, in the year ahead their tariffs will rise by no more than the rate of inflation;
OPTA will ensure that this occurs and may intervene, if necessary;
in the interim OPTA will audit the expenses of these cable companies and could regulate them as of 2007, once the normal procedure has been followed;
the European Commission no longer sees any grounds to veto the draft decisions concerning the market which OPTA presented to it for its approval at the end of September.