The GSMA and ETNO welcome the possibility to comment on BEREC’s Draft report on M2M and permanent roaming based on BEREC’s call for input earlier this year. We first provide some general comments to the report followed by specific observations to the report findings including some suggestions for adjustments.

 

General comments to the report

Although the report’s data has certain limitations, the overall picture shows a dynamic and competitive market. Various figures show that both MNO’s and MVNO’s have completed a significant number of wholesale roaming agreements, which are increasing over time (last paragraph page 11, and figure 7) while wholesale prices/unit are decreasing over time (figure 10). This is in accordance with the expectations set forth in the current regulation that mobile network operators are increasingly responding and accepting reasonable requests for wholesale roaming agreements on reasonable terms, and explicitly allowing permanent roaming for machine-to-machine communications.

We believe these figures strongly indicate that the market is competitive without signs of market failures and the current framework should not be reviewed at all.

As the Commission rightly emphasized in the consultation on “How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?”, the telecoms sector is going through a period of weakened financial health and, currently facing a large investment need to meet the Digital Decade Targets.

New technologies, and notably M2M/IoT are the backbone of future productivity and competitiveness. Any overregulation of this sector will introduce further barriers to attract new investments in digital infrastructures.

Along these lines, we welcome BEREC’s general statement in chapter 1.3, based on its Wholesale Roaming guidelines, recognising that “If M2M communication services are used on a permanent basis in a visited network, for example in cases of prevailing roaming consumption and presence according to the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/2286 (CIR), wholesale roaming access should be subject to commercial negotiations”.

Notwithstanding the above, the report indicates various topics and proposals from certain players for regulatory intervention despite the report being a mere summary of questionnaire responses, and we believe it contains assertions that have not been sufficiently substantiated or researched. In our view, a survey should not be used to adopt recommendations to modify regulations; the objective should be limited to obtaining statistics, always considering the validity of the sample of responses in each case.

We believe that in a dynamically developing market segment such as M2M any intervention is inefficient by default, as it could impact the wider M2M/IoT ecosystem and place EU-based actors at a disadvantage compared to non-EU based actors. That also include eventual “softer measures”, be it a recommendation or enhancement of the existing recitals in the Roaming regulation setting certain “red lines”. However, we would like to emphasize that even “softer measures” , would still intervene into and constrain the fast development of a technologically sophisticated and innovative market segment and place competitive constraints on EU-based M2M providers

Finally, we wish to underline that if EU-based access providers are to gain presence also outside of the EU/EEAA, regulatory predictability is of paramount importance. This means that any national deviations, whether these originate from an EU-Member State or outside of the EU/EAA, will have a negative impact on the ability of the provider to grow its business.

Outside of Europe, Roaming for M2M devices and access to national IoT infrastructure, such as LPWA, are agreed upon based on technical and commercial considerations. In our experience this is quite important, as it is key for roaming providers to manage services in a way that justifies the network investments that is driven by the use of these technologies. The absence of regulated wholesale roaming also means, that providers of access outside of Europe can negotiate the terms of access to their networks. However, if wholesale roaming regulation would be further extended into M2M within the EU, the conditions of access are governed by a price book that is established by the regulator, and it is no longer determined by the commercial and technical needs determined between the two parties. It would create an imbalance between the negotiating parties (one in the EU subject to extended regulatory obligations and the other one outside the EU, being exempted from any regulatory obligations in its home market). This can have a negative impact on the ability of operators with EU presence to be able to compete against IoT deals that have an EU and a non-EU footprint.

From the perspective of the GSMA and ETNO, this potential fragmentation plays into our overall ask for more harmonisation of authorisation, numbering and related compliance and reporting requirements as being essential for the European M2M/IoT market to develop.

We elaborate more in the attached file. For any doubts about its content, please contact Benedict William Gromann (gromann@etno.eu), Policy Manager at ETNO.