Tidbits: CMT, termination rates and net neutrality in the Netherlands

On Benoit's blog Fiberevolution the Spanish Regulator CMT reacts to mrs. Reding criticizing them for their decision on the Telefonica's fibre network. They rightly state that mrs. Reding is incorrectly accusing them of using a loophole. Ms. Reding has no power over remedies and claiming she should is an abuse of democratic checks and balances. This doesn't mean that CMT shouldn't be questioned on its decision. From what I read of it, I have to disagree with it and point them to Opta's decision on KPN-Reggefiber. But still good call for them and good of them to be blogging.

In the UK the courts have brought down the terminating charges. BT succesfully argued against the height and this got them down to to 4p per minute by 2010/2011. The existance of terminating charges is still baffling from a competition point of view, but it's good to see the European regulators bringing charges down. The Indian regulator meanwhile is complaining about termination rates too. At 0.48 euro cents a minute for a fixed to mobile or mobile to mobile call they are clearly too high. The proposal is to bring them down to 0.16cents per minute. Meanwhile mobile usage has increased from '326 minutes per subscriber per month in October 2003 to 464 at present'. That's 2 times more than in the EU!

I'm also wondering which Dutch ISP's will be found out by Google's new net neutrality labs. Every now and then I hear rumours about shaping taking place. We'll see.