Telecommunications: interconnection, universal service and interoperability of networks and services, open network provision ONP

Commissioner Fischler welcomed the fact that Parliament and Council had agreed on the funding of the universal service, the cross-border arbitration process, cost-based pricing, reasonable pricing and number ‘portability’. In this last respect, the Commission agreed that the subscriber should be able to have any telephone call made to him at the former company transferred in return for a reasonable fee. The Commissioner also confirmed that Article 7(1) of the ‘Interconnection’ Directive would be applied to all organisations operating the public telecommunications networks and/or publicly available telecommunications services as set out in Annex 1.