Other noteworthy regulatory developments week ending 26 March 2021 from the Assembly Analyst team
Ofcom has published its Plan of Work for 2021/22 following a consultation with the industry. As you’d expect, supporting connectivity and ensuring fairness for customers are in there. There is also reference to the work being done to regulate online harms and the resourcing needed to do that (Ofcom has just announced the creation of 150 jobs in Manchester). Most interesting perhaps is the inclusion of a review of the net neutrality framework to check it still makes sense for consumers and the industry. This wasn’t in the draft of the annual plan, but does feature in BT’s response to the consultation and follows remarks form the consumer division CEO about the need for reform.
A consultation is underway in Italy on guidelines for operators’ access to residential buildings to deploy FTTH networks. AGCOM’s guidelines aim to streamline the existing legal framework, which is subject to inconsistent interpretation and frequent litigation between operators and landlords. The objective is to facilitate the necessary wiring inside buildings, ensuring that landlords satisfy operators’ access requests, and to avoid unnecessary or inefficient duplication by allowing operators to access the existing network infrastructure in a building. Access prices will be freely negotiated, but AGCOM can intervene to solve disputes. The consultation is open until 8 May 2021.
In Sweden, the PTS is looking to reassign the spectrum in the 900MHz, 2.1GHz and 2.6GHz all in one go, and make it available for 5G. This would require bringing the expiry date of 2.1GHz licences forward to 2023 from 2025, so that the award can occur by 2023. The regulator is seeking input on this until 23 April 2021.
