France
- Public consultation emphasizes need for technology-neutral regulation
NOTE: This note has been prepared by Craig
McTaggart and Tim Kelly of the ITU Strategies & Policy Unit (SPU).
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of the ITU or its membership. This note
is available on the ITU IP Telephony Website.
France is one of the very few countries which have held
wide-ranging public consultations on IP Telephony. In September 1999, the Autorité de régulation des télécommunications’
(ART) published a news release which cited seven key opinions which had come out
of this public process:
1. The regulatory treatment of IP
Telephony should be harmonized as much as possible at the international level,
and, in France’s case, at least at the European level.
2.
It is desirable that regulation be infrastructure and technology-neutral, and
therefore that the same rights and duties apply to substitutable services,
such as IP Telephony and traditional voice telephony. The rights and obligations of various parties should be, in
general, in proportion to their investments.
3.
With regard to the appearance of new services like IP Telephony, the major
objective of regulation should be to support their sustainable emergence, by
avoiding momentary reductions of tariffs unbalancing the market.
4.
Certain contributions underlined the advisability of extending the principles
of interconnection applicable to voice networks to data networks as well, due
to their character of offering services to the public.
5.
The attribution of numbering resources, making it possible to identify IP
Telephony customers within the national numbering plans, offers an interesting
prospect. In this area as well,
number portability appear to be an essential asset.
6.
The parameters influencing the quality of service of the various networks
involved will have to be clearly known, and the end-user will need to know
whom the operators of the various interconnected networks are.
7.
The absence of directories presents significant difficulties for IP Telephony
operators.
Perhaps the principal lesson of the consultation was the
necessity of technology-neutral regulation: regulation must relate to services
as they are perceived by the user, not to the technologies or infrastructures
which support them. Identical
services must be subject to the same regulation.
Source:
Adapted from Autorité de régulation des télécommunications’ (ART),
"Telephonie Sur Internet: L’Autorité rend publics les résultats de
l’appel à commentaires sur la téléphonie sur IP" (27 September 1999), http://www.art-telecom.fr/communiques/communiques/index-30-99.htm.
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