Telecommunications: interconnection, universal service and interoperability of networks and services, open network provision ONP
1995/0207(COD)
The amended proposal incorporated, in whole or in part, 45 of the 69 amendments adopted by
Parliament at first reading. The Commission accepted the amendments:
- stressing the importance of guaranteeing universal service and a single European
telecommunications market;
- concerning number portability;
- stressing the need to protect the environment;
- increasing transparency and ensuring reasonable confidentiality;
- calling for greater coordination among national regulatory authorities and between them and the
Commission;
- clarifying the text in a manner consistent with the objectives of the Directive;
- calling for the possibility of setting up a European regulatory authority for telecommunications to
be studied in connection with the review of the Directive in 1999;
- which were compatible with existing European legislation.
However, the Commission did not incorporate the amendments seeking in particular:
- to restrict the scope of the Directive to interconnection between public networks of the same type
and extending the confidentiality requirement to all telecommunications networks (public and
private);
- to replace the requirement of complete accounting separation with a less stringent requirement that
accounts be transparent;
- to regard services which cannot at present be made available to all users as forming part of a
universal service obligation;
- provide for the costs of universal service obligations to be shared among all telecommunications
network operators (and not only among public network operators);
- to delete the concept of market advantage for organizations subject to universal service obligations;
- to reduce the role of national regulatory authorities in supervising contributions to covering
universal service costs;
- to make it possible to bring proceedings simultaneously in the national courts and at EU level;
- to delete certain elements from the definition of the concept of power on the market;
- to restrict the framework governing collocation and facility sharing.
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