The European Commission today started legal action against Bulgaria and called on it to make sure the technical requirements are in place for hearing aids, social alarms and emergency buttons at home, for old and disabled people. Bulgaria has not followed EU rules saying the 169 MHz frequency band should be made available to applications of social value and electronic services such as asset tracking and paging systems. EU rules aim at harmonising use of this radio spectrum band in the EU to facilitate the development and take-up of such applications. Bulgaria should have complied with the Commission Decision on this band by 1 January 2007 and to an update of these rules by 31 October 2008.

The European Commission today ended legal action taken against Italy following confirmation that calls made to the single European emergency number 112 can be effectively transferred to the relevant national emergency service.

The European Commission today took legal action against Italy for not respecting EU ePrivacy rules. According to EU law, subscribers who are included in a public subscriber directory must be informed about the objectives of the directory and consent to the use of their personal data contained therein for marketing purposes. As Italy failed to comply with this obligation, the Commission decided to send a letter of formal notice (the first step of an infringement proceeding).

In a letter just sent the European Commission has informed the Polish telecoms regulator, UKE, that it has serious doubts whether UKE is right to define two separate markets for IP traffic exchange (IP transit and IP peering with the network of Telekomunikacja Polska). The Commission has also questioned the assigned incumbent with significant market power in those markets. During the following two months the Commission will assess further market data from UKE and consult with market players.

The European Commission has again reminded Polish telecoms regulator UKE that it should not unnecessarily prolong exceptions allowing higher mobile termination charges for certain operators. Mobile termination rates (MTRs) are tariffs that mobile operators charge each other for connecting calls to their customers on their network, and are eventually included in call prices. UKE intends to allow a new operator, CenterNet, to charge operators much more for calls to its customers than other established mobile operators. The European Commission today wrote to UKE calling on it to follow the guidelines for setting mobile termination charges adopted in May by substantially reducing the gap between CenterNet's charges and other operators'.

In a letter sent today, the European Commission has called on Danish telecoms regulator NITA to align the mobile termination rates (MTRs) of the smallest mobile operator, Barablu, with those of the other mobile companies as soon as possible. At the same time, the Commission welcomed NITA's proposal to review its cost model for calculating MTRs in the near future. The Commission stressed the need to bring NITA's cost model in line with the Commission's Recommendation on Termination Rates. MTRs are the wholesale prices which mobile operators charge other fixed and mobile operators for connecting incoming calls to subscribers located on their networks and are ultimately included in the phone prices of calls to mobile networks.

New EU telecoms rules will officially become EU law tomorrow following their publication in today's Official Journal of the European Union. The new rules composed of the Better Regulation Directive and the Citizens’ Rights Directive will need to be transposed into national laws of the 27 EU Member States by June 2011. The new Regulation establishing the new European Telecoms Authority called "Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC)" is directly applicable and will enter into force in 20 days. BEREC will provide a force for consistent regulation across Europe strengthening the single telecoms market. This final step in the EU legislative process follows the final agreement between the European Parliament and Council in November.

The Telecoms Ministers of the 27 EU Member States will meet at the Telecoms Council in Brussels on 18 December 2009 to agree on priorities for a new European digital strategy in 2020. This strategy should help EU countries to recover from the financial and economic crisis, while speeding up the move towards a smart and green economy. The EU 2020 strategy will build on the successes of the Lisbon strategy since its relaunch in 2005 and address some of its shortcomings. The European Digital Agenda is one of the key elements announced by the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, in his political guidelines for the new Commission (IP/09/1272) and in the EU's future EU2020 strategy (IP/09/1807; see also SPEECH/ 09/336). At this Telecoms Council, the European Commission will be represented by Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

The European Commission has sent a letter to the German telecoms regulator, Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA), calling on it to make the provision of fixed subscriber lines more competitive. Today the market is still dominated by the incumbent operator, Deutsche Telekom (DT). While Deutsche Telekom's offer means that other operators can sell-on to consumers the use of land lines that they have leased from the incumbent, Deutsche Telekom charges these operators the same price as it does its own consumers. This makes it harder for alternative operators to offer consumers a competitive deal. The Commission wants the German regulator to oblige DT to make its land lines available to other telecoms operators. It also asks BNetzA to supervise wholesale prices for alternative operators providing competing services using Deutsche Telekom's network.

From today, European citizens, businesses and organisations can register .eu website names using characters from all 23 official languages of the European Union. This means that registrants, for example, can use Greek or Cyrillic names. This was made possible thanks to new EU rules adopted by the Commission in June 2009.

The European Commission has given its green light to the amended definition of the wholesale broadband access market (WBA) notified by the Austrian regulator RTR (Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs GmbH). On 5 October 2009, the Commission had expressed serious doubts about the market definition as originally notified by RTR on 3 September 2009 (see IP/09/1414 ). RTR has now provided sufficient evidence that mobile broadband connections are substitutes to fixed line broadband connections for Austrian residential customers. RTR has also modified its wholesale market definition and now excludes all bitstream access for residential customers from regulation. Nevertheless, the Commission invites RTR to closely monitor market developments and to change the market definition if its forecasts on the continued substitutability of fixed and mobile broadband products and next generation access network (NGA) roll-out prove to be incorrect.

The European Commission has today approved the draft plans of AGCOM, the Italian telecoms regulator, to regulate terminating segments of leased lines in Italy except for connections where mobile network operators have replicated Telecom Italia's infrastructure or could easily do so. In a letter sent today, the Commission has endorsed AGCOM's proposals, asking it to remove regulation only after a transition period long enough for mobile operators to eliminate remaining bottlenecks in their networks. This is the 1000 th notification to which the European Commission has responded under the "Article 7" procedure of European Telecoms rules. Since 2003 this consultative process has guaranteed a competitive and consistently regulated single European telecoms markets for consumers and businesses.

How can victims of crime get assistance in the EU? Who should EU citizens call if they need non-urgent medical help or advice? New helplines like these should be available soon throughout the EU thanks to a decision taken by the European Commission today. It reserves two new "116" numbers for services of social value. The helpline numbers 116 006 and 116 117 will be reserved for victims of crime and for citizens calling non-emergency medical services across the EU.

In a letter just sent, the European Commission welcomed the proposal of the Lithuanian regulatory authority for telecommunications, Ryšių reguliavimo tarnyba (RRT), to decrease mobile termination rates (MTRs) in Lithuania by around 60% in the coming two years. MTRs are the wholesale prices which mobile operators charge for terminating calls on their respective networks. As a result of RRT's proposal, mobile termination rates in Lithuania will be amongst the lowest in the EU. In addition, as from 31 December 2012 at the latest, RRT plans to set MTRs at the level of the cost of an efficient operator, based on a cost model in line with the Commission's Recommendation on Termination Rates ( IP/09/710 ). However, RRT wanted to reserve the possibility to introduce a transitional period until July 2014 prior to reaching efficient termination rates. The Commission's letter stresses that no such additional transitional period should be granted. The Commission also reminded RRT that the obligation for operators to grant access to their respective networks to competitors is unilateral and unconditional.

In a letter sent today, the European Commission has asked the Polish telecoms regulator, Urząd Komunikacji Elektronicznej (UKE), not to unnecessarily prolong asymmetric termination rates in favour of P4, the latest entrant in the Polish mobile telephone market. Currently P4 charges other operators around 1.5 times more for connecting calls on its network than its competitors. The Commission calls upon UKE to bring its pricing methodology in line with the Commission's Recommendation on Termination Rates of May 2009 ( IP/09/710 ) and to swiftly reduce P4's mobile termination rates (MTR) to the level of the cost of an efficient operator. Termination rates are an important cost element when consumers call a phone which is connected to another network. They are included in everyone's phone bill and eventually paid by the calling customer.

With a broad majority across political parties, the European Parliament has today, at its plenary session in Strasbourg, formally approved the EU’s telecoms reform package, proposed by the Commission in November 2007. 500 million EU citizens will soon benefit from more consumer choice through enhanced competition on Europe’s telecoms markets, from better coverage with fast internet broadband connections across Europe, and from a stronger entrenchment of their right to privacy with regard to telecoms operators. European consumers will also enjoy a substantial number of new rights, such as the right to switch fixed or mobile operator in one working day while keeping their number; the right to be better informed about the services they subscribe to; and the right to be informed about data breaches from their telecoms operator. Operators must also give consumers the option of signing a contract which lasts no longer than 12 months.

In a letter sent today, the European Commission calls on the Lithuanian regulatory authority for telecommunications, RRT, to impose appropriate price control and access obligations on all communication providers regarding their fixed termination services. Fixed termination rates (FTRs) are the wholesale prices which fixed operators charge for terminating calls on their respective networks. FTRs in Lithuania are amongst the highest in the EU. A higher reduction of FTRs would speed up the transition to the approach set out in the Commission's Recommendation on Termination Rates, according to which FTRs should be set in all Member States at the level of the cost of an efficient operator by 31 December 2012. In addition, the Commission urged RRT to ensure that termination services are provided on fair and equal conditions to all operators and therefore requested RRT to also consider imposing non-discrimination and transparency obligations on alternative providers.

Today, the Council of EU Ministers unanimously approved the EU's telecoms reform package, first proposed by the European Commission in 2007. Today's Council decision comes after a political agreement on the package was reached in a breakthrough meeting between the European Parliament and Council on 5 November. The new rules will enhance competition and investment in Europe's telecoms market, by giving more certainty to companies investing in high-speed optical fibre and wireless networks. It will also open up airwaves for new mobile services. The European Parliament will vote next week, in its Strasbourg plenary session, to formally endorse the telecoms package. The reformed telecoms rules will become EU law once they are published in the EU's Official Journal in December 2009.

The European Commission today stepped up legal action against Italy because Italian emergency services still do not receive information about the location of people who dial 112 – Europe's single emergency number – from mobile phones despite a previous judgement of the European Court of Justice. The Commission has decided to send Italy a reasoned opinion, which is the final stage before the case is referred again to the European Court of Justice, who would then have to decide to impose financial penalties on Italy for lack of respect of a previous judgement. At the same time, the Commission also ended legal action taken against Lithuania as caller location details are now available for 112 calls from mobile phones.

With more than 11 million new fixed lines laid in a year, the take up of broadband internet continues to grow in Europe. According to a report published today by the European Commission, 24% of the EU population had a broadband access line subscription in July 2009, up from 21.6% in July 2008. The report also shows that mobile broadband is gaining momentum in Europe, with a 54% increase since January and now at a penetration rate of 4.2% per 100 citizens. Last but not least, broadband internet connections in Europe are increasingly faster. 80% of broadband lines in the EU now have download speeds of 2 megabits per second (Mbps) or greater (allowing the use of Web 2.0 and video streaming), which is 5% up from last year.