How does BEREC work?

BEREC was created by the BEREC Regulation which was part of the European Parliament's telecom reform package.

BEREC is formed by representatives of the regulatory authorities of the 27 EU Member States.

Representatives of the 27 Member States form the Board of Regulators. This board elects one chairperson as well as vice-chairpersons from the BEREC ranks for a one-year term. Before a member can take over the chairmanship, he or she must have already held the vice-chairmanship and, in order to ensure continuity of BEREC's work, the chairperson must continue to hold the vice-chairmanship in the year following his or her term of office.

The Board of Regulators meets at least four times a year at plenary sessions to discuss the issues that are part of the Work Programme and to approve the respective reports on current telecommunications topics. The Chair presides over these sessions. The position papers and reports are prepared by the BEREC Working Groups (WGs). The WGs form the basis of the international work and, through their day-to-day work, bring many years of experience and expertise to the work of BEREC.

The Management Board consists of the same members as the Board of Regulators, but, additionally, the European Commission has also a voting right, whereas the Commission has only an observer function in the Board of Regulators. In contrast to the Board of Regulators, the Management Board deals with administrative tasks that affect the work of the BEREC Office based in Riga. The Management Board also selects the Director of the BEREC Office who is in charge of the BEREC Office in Riga.

The work of the Board of Regulators and the Management Committee is supported by the BEREC Office, based in Riga. The employees are responsible for administrative matters and answering ad-hoc questions on specific topics from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council.

The BEREC Office provides administrative support to the Board of Regulators in the preparation of meetings and the Working Groups in their day-to-day work.

The Contact Network is also composed of representatives of the regulatory authorities of all EU Member States. In the Contact Network Meetings, the work assignments of the Work Programme are discussed and possibly modified before they are presented to the Board of Regulators for final approval.

In 2020 the Contact Network is chaired by Ola Bergström from the Swedish National Regulatory Authority (NRA) PTS.

Dan Sjöblom from the Swedish regulator PTS chairs BEREC in 2020. Chair and Vice-Chairs are elected annually for the following year. Together they form the Mini Board.

One of the three additional Vice-Chairs is provided by the countries with observer status at BEREC. The Vice-Chairs support the Troika (Chair, Incoming and Outgoing Chair) in their strategic work. Usually each Vice-Chair is responsible for a specific topic.

The Mini Board meets twice a year and regularly before the plenary sessions to discuss current topics on the telecommunications markets and to ensure the implementation of the Work Programme.

Each year there are four Plenary Meetings and four preparatory meetings for these plenary sessions (Contact Network Meetings / CN Meetings).

The two-thirds majority applies at all BEREC Plenary Meetings. Member states shall be represented by the Executive Director of the national regulatory authority, who shall also exercise the right to vote for the Member State. Both the European Commission and the representation of the EEA States have observer status at these meetings.

The Contact Network Meetings and Plenary Meetings always take place alternately in other Member States.

After the plenary sessions a public debriefing in which the main results of the meeting are reported is held at the EC’s premises in Brussels. These debriefing sessions are open to the public. There is also a live stream for the interested public. BEREC's Twitter account or per e-mail can be used to ask the BEREC Chair questions about the results and presentations in real time. The videos are made available on Youtube after the event.

Working Groups (WGs) deal with the topics of the BEREC Work Programme. A major target of the WGs’ work is the harmonisation of the telecom markets in Europe. The work of the WGs includes commenting on decisions, recommendations and directives of the European Commission as well as developing guidelines for the implementation of the EU regulatory framework.

BEREC also answers ad-hoc questions from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council. In total, there are ten Working Groups that are permanently installed, plus one ad-hoc group that only take up their work for ad-hoc inquiries.

The working groups are chaired by two equal Co-Chairs, who ensure that the work assigned to the respective working group is forwarded to the Board of Regulators in a timely manner. The working groups process the work in so called drafting groups.

The BEREC Working Groups are of great importance to RTR, as the work in these groups gives RTR the opportunity to play an active role in shaping topics that are also important for the Austrian market.

What role do the WGs play for RTR?

In the "Fixed Network Evolution" and "Roaming" WGs, RTR holds the Co-Chair position. The Co-Chairs are responsible for the coordination of the work and the timely delivery of the respective work orders and also play an active role in the development of the BEREC Work Programme and the BEREC Strategy.

RTR is represented in all working groups as a "member" and comments on all drafts resulting from the respective draft groups.

In addition, RTR experts also work in all working groups as drafters. Drafter refers to members of a working group in a drafter group who are directly involved in the drafting process of the documents.

Reimbursement of travel expenses for WG experts

The intensive involvement in the work of BEREC and the presence in the different working groups incur travel costs. However, these are almost entirely taken over by the BEREC Office in Riga and thus financed by the European Union.

The tasks of the Work Programme are distributed among the different Working Groups. The work for 2020 is assigned to the respective Working Groups according to the list below.

Regulatory Framework (RF)

• BEREC Guidelines on common criteria for the assessment of the ability of undertakings other than ECN or ECS to manage numbering resources
• BEREC Opinions, Reports, position and input papers, and technical background analyses, depending on specific requests by the EU institutions (European Commission, Parliament and Council) or NRAs and on needs emerging during the implementation process
• Actions fostering the further population of the existing database as in Art. 109.8 (e.g. informal contacts, letters, workshop)
• Database of numbering resources with a right of extraterritorial use within the European Union
• Informal network of fraud-related experts in view of dealing with possible future cases of fraud and misuse of numbers
• European Database of General Authorization notifications
• List/snapshot of premium rate numbers/VAS number ranges in each EU Member State

Open Internet (OI)

• Update to the BEREC Guidelines on the Implementation of the Open Internet Regulation
• BEREC Report on the implementation of Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 and BEREC Open Internet Guidelines
• Internal workshop on IPv6 deployment across Europe – tentatively Q4 2020
• Internal workshop on practices used to implement zero-rating offers in different categories of traffic – tentatively Q2 2020
• NRA Deployment support and sharing of practical experiences of the Net Neutrality Measurement tool

Planning and Future Trends (PFT)

• Report on the impact of 5G on regulation and the role of regulation in enabling the 5G ecosystem
• Guidelines for developing BEREC Work Programmes
• Outline of BEREC Work Programme 2021
• BEREC Work Programme 2021
• Outline of BEREC Work Programme 2022
• BEREC Strategy

Market and Economic Analysis (MEA)

• BEREC Guidelines to foster the consistent application of the criteria for assessing co-investments in very high capacity network elements
• Stakeholder workshop to be held in Q1 2020
• BEREC Opinion on the review of EC Recommendation on relevant markets           
• Heads workshop to be held tentatively at Plenary 2 2020
• BEREC Report on Market & Economic analysis of Digital Platforms

End Users (EU)

• BEREC Guidelines detailing QoS parameters of IAS and publicly available ICS and the publication of information   
• BEREC Report on Member States’ best practices to support the defining of adequate broadband IAS        
• Report on how to handle third party payment charges on mobile phone bills
• Report on penalties
• External workshop with OECD on QoS and QoE of communication networks and services – to be held in June Q2 2020
• Adoption of final workshop summary report at Plenary 3 2020 for publication

Statistics and Indicators (SAI)

• BEREC Guidelines to assist NRAs on the consistent application of geographical surveys of network deployments, phase I and phase II
• External workshop to be held in June 2020
• Report on harmonized data collection regarding OTT services
• External workshop on a harmonized data collection regarding OTT services – Q4 2020
• BEREC input to the Commission’s delegated act setting single EU-wide maximum MTR and FTR
• BEREC Report on Termination Rates at European level

Roaming (ROAM)

• Update to the BEREC Guidelines on intra-EU communications
• 1^st Intra-EU communications benchmark report
• BEREC Input to the European Commission regarding the implementing acts setting out the weighted average of maximum mobile termination rates across the Union
• 24^th BEREC International Roaming Benchmark Data Report
• 25^th BEREC International Roaming Benchmark Data Report
• 8^th BEREC Report on transparency and comparability of international roaming tariffs
• Ad hoc works – Inputs to any potential legislative proposals of the EC on roaming

Fixed Network Evolution (FNE)

• BEREC Guidelines on very high capacity networks
• BEREC Guidelines on common approaches to the identification of the network termination point in different network topologies
• BEREC Guidelines on the criteria for a consistent application of Article 61(3) (concentration point etc.)
• BEREC Report on Access Regulation (including prices) based on EU State Aid

Wireless Network Evolution (WNE)

• Feasibility study on development of coverage information for 5G deployments
• As required, BEREC experts’ in peer review forums to discuss and exchange views on draft national measures related to internal market procedures for radio spectrum
• External workshop on whether NRAs could bring benefits to verticals, by providing information on coverage and QoS of 5G networks
• BEREC Guidelines on how to assess the effectiveness of public warning systems transmitted by different means

Remedies (REM)

• Internal workshop and summary report on whether there is a requirement to update the Article 7/7A Phase II process in the context of the EECC 
• BEREC Opinion on the review of the EC Procedural Recommendation, likely to be needed in Q2 2020
• BEREC Report on Regulatory Accounting in Practice 
• BEREC Report on WACC parameters

Ad-hoc 5G Cybersecurity (5GCS)

• Report on security issues related to 5G implementation