With today's report by President Calabrò, the course of the second Council in the history of the Italian Authority aimed at protecting competition in the communications market ends. An important moment, not only for the venue where the speech was delivered (the Chamber of Deputies) and for the audience that attended it (the top exponents of the political world and the senior managers of the main telecommunications and TV operators, as well as of the big players in the world of digital content), but above all because it was an opportunity to trace the legacy and the challenges that the next Authority will have to take up.
Calabrò does not fail to devote his attention also to the "ordinary administration", with respect to which he claims the successes of an Authority that was able to ensure an "anti-inflationary contribution of telecommunications services", had to face the delicate task of guarantee television pluralism in such a politically delicate moment as that of the last few months and has managed to start a process of rationalization of the frequency spectrum with the tender that will take place in the next quarter.
The frame of the legacy of this AGCom Council and the prospects within which the next one will have to move are all in the development horizon outlined by the Digital Agenda for Europe: by 2020, 50% of European (and Italian) households will have to have a subscription “to the internet with connections above 100 Mbps”. An important goal, according to several commentators, almost utopian, which puts the Internet back at the center of the debate.
President Calabrò and this entire Council have accepted and in fact today relaunched two challenges: on the one hand, the development of new generation communication networks (the so-called NGN, fiber optic infrastructures with connection capacities far beyond the current ADSL ) and, on the other, the definition of the rules necessary for the Internet to become a factor of economic development in terms of new services and revenues for all players.
Calabrò reclaims the path taken by his Authority, the public consultation concluded a few weeks ago and the one started a few days ago, with which theAGCom wants to trace the regulatory framework of the new fiber optic network. It is a difficult exercise, the one carried out by the Authority, which moves on a thin ridge: on the one hand the need to guarantee rules that avoid the risk of a new monopolization of the market, on the other that of creating the conditions for there to be a incentive to invest. The Authority's final decision is expected in the next few weeks and it certainly won't be easy to find a summary. To the future Council, Calabrò leaves the task of defining and implementing this regulatory framework with measures capable of accompanying the development of the new network.
“Over-the-top services, software in the cloud, new applications, virtual reality, the internet of things: the digital scenario that opens up before us, which is already technically feasible today, is without borders,” explains Calabrò. Net neutrality and copyright protection have been and will be two reference beacons for AGCom's action, bearing in mind that "digital citizenship seems to represent the natural extension of traditional citizenship". Once again the task is not easy, it is necessary to find the synthesis between legitimate but opposing interests. "On net neutrality, it is essential to find a solution that safeguards interest in investing in the Net, without unbalancing the economic center of gravity too much in favor of over-the-top companies". Equally thorny is the regulation of copyright, for which the new Authority will need an intervention by Parliament which attributes to AGCom "more defined powers of intervention".
The value of the independence of the regulatory Authorities on which the President comments is the true legacy of this Authority and in reality it seems to us a real warning for politics, which in just under a year will be called upon to renew the Authority.
It is an essential condition "to preserve a capable, authoritative and independent arbiter" because, quite simply, the "definition and application of the rules for the proper functioning of the markets transcend the political majority of the moment".
Laura Rovizzi
www.opengateitalia.com
