WORKSHOP A
Investing in fibre: co-investment strategies and the role of High Speed Applications and Services

Collaborating on investments, choosing the right infrastructures and delivering the value added services that customers demand are crucial elements in establishing a successful business model for fibre roll-out. In this workshop we explore the different collaboration models that have been proposed around Europe and examine the advanced high speed services that are being developed to attract consumers and businesses onto high speed networks. The regulatory implications of these developments are also assessed.

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Legislators, governments and national courts are increasingly looking to ISPs to play a role in preventing users from accessing illegal content. In order to prevent access, hosting providers may be asked to removing illicit content from the server and/or access providers may be asked to filter or block certain content (for example child pornography, copyrighted materials and online gambling sites).
The European Commission’s DG HOME has issued a proposal that asks Member States to take measures to block access to Internet pages that contain or disseminate child pornography. This proposal is currently being considered by the European Parliament and Council and their conclusions are expected around the time of the ECTA conference.
Earlier this year, the Brussels Court of Appeal has asked the European Court of Justice to consider whether national courts can impose such obligations on ISPs exclusively at their own cost, and if they can, whether the national court has to apply the principle of proportionality when deciding the effectiveness of the dissuasive effect of such measures.
The legality of the UK Digital Economy Act has been challenged and ISPs (including BT and TalkTalk) are seeking a judicial review of the legislation.
Further, DG MARKT is also reviewing the IPR Enforcement Directive.

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Central & Eastern Europe plus Turkey provides an interesting mix of countries which are already members of EU (Bulgaria , Czech Republic , Estonia , Hungary, Latvia , Lithuania , Poland , Romania, Slovakia , Slovenia ), which are candidates (Turkey, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) and which are potential candidates (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo (under UN Security Council Resolution 1244), Montenegro and Serbia). The region, with a very vibrant young population and increasing consumer capacity also shows immense potential for development in the electronic communications sector.

Regardless of the fact that they are members or not, countries in the region closely follow up the regulatory developments in the electronic communications sector in the EU. In the case of candidate countries, alignment of national regulations with EU rules and regulations are persistently pursued and implemented by the national regulators. Given the high potential of the region a whole, it is crucial to evaluate the regulatory environment in the region with a focus on issues such as wholesale access issues, NGA deployment, Universal Service, spectrum reallocation, infrastructure sharing, reduction in MTRs, On-Net Pricing and mark potential areas for improvement to promote the development of a competitive and innovative electronic communications market.

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It is estimated that, on average, 80% of current revenues in the global telecom sector are generated by voice and data subscription services. However, this traditional model is showing signs of saturation in developed markets and, more seriously, exposes service provider weakness against non-traditional competition.
Network operators are hence exploring new revenue streams such as targeted advertising and the sale of excess capacity. Some have already entered into partnership business models to complement traditional revenue streams.
For example, in August 2010, Telefonica announced the launch of a new business area, focussed on data and video. In addition to the video content delivery network the company also plans to expand in the segments of eHealth, applications, security and financial services, cloud computing and machine to machine Internet communications. In July 2010 Telefonica bought the Spanish social networking site Tuenti and last year it bought the Internet-based telecommunications company Jajah.

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