European Commission and RTR cooperate in organizing meeting of European telecom regulators in Vienna

Press release dated 7 October 2010

On October 7 and 8, 2010, Vienna played host to a meeting of high-ranking representatives from telecommunications regulatory authorities throughout Europe.

The event was organized jointly by the European Commission and the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications (RTR) in order to promote the exchange of ideas and experiences between EU regulators and their counterparts in the countries belonging to the EU's Eastern Partnership, namely Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

“A functioning telecom sector is crucial to a country’s development as a location. In organizing this high-level meeting, RTR has taken on the role of a bridge between the EU and its neighbors to the east by bringing together high-ranking representatives from 13 EU regulators with the heads of the six regulatory authorities in the Eastern Partnership,” commented Georg Serentschy, Managing Director of RTR’s Telecommunications and Post Division, in explaining the role of the Austrian regulatory authority. “In addition to knowledge transfer, I believe this activity may also open doors for the industry, as RTR is taking the opportunity to establish contacts and can thus act as a reliable partner and ‘agent’ for all participating countries.”

Conference topics range from spectrum management to effective competition regulation

In addition to European cooperation in telecom regulation, the agenda for this two-day conference covered the following focus areas: Next generation access (NGA):

1. Development and investment in state-of-the-art future telecommunications infrastructure;
2. Universal service: Nationwide coverage of the population with telecommunications infrastructure;
3. Market analysis as a basis for competition regulation;
4. Efficient spectrum management.

“In recent years, we have received many bilateral inquiries and requests for support regarding the topic of telecom market liberalization. These inquiries have mainly come from regulatory authorities in the Eastern Partnership as well as southeastern European countries,” Serentschy noted. "Since many countries have similar questions during the market opening stage, we came up with the idea of setting up an informal group with several countries in order to bundle those questions and address them jointly, thus maximizing the efficiency of the process. The European Commission has a similar perspective on the situation and suggested that we organize a high-level meeting, which is taking place in Vienna today and tomorrow,” commented Serentschy on the motives underlying the event.

The group plans to enhance its cooperation activities even further and has already initiated talks with the Commission for this purpose.

Attached you can find this press release in Russian language: