Will it be second time lucky for the European Commission?

The European Commission has published a summary of the responses it received during its recent consultation on the Lamy Report. The report made a series of proposals about the UHF bands (470–790 MHz).

The summary says 61 of the 96 organisations that responded to the consultation “see merits in an EU coordinated approach to clear the 700 MHz band for wireless broadband usage”. The EU coordinated approach that the Commission has in mind is a common European deadline of 2020 for the assignment of the 700 MHz band, plus or minus two years.

In a sense, this is no surprise: many considered Lamy’s report a reasonable compromise, even though the former WTO director general could not persuade the mobile operators within his “high level group” to sign it. Additionally, the two European Commissioners responsible for spectrum (and other digital matters), Gunther Oettinger and Andrus Ansip, revealed at the beginning of last month that there would be some pan-European measure to coordinate the assignment of this band. Commission officials told Brussels journalists they would have liked to have gone further and mandated the licensing conditions, but settled for the less ambitious proposal to secure agreement more quickly.

But on the other hand, do EU mandated deadlines really work? In 2011, EU member states signed up to the Radio Spectrum Policy Programme, that set them a deadline of 1 January 2013 to assign the 800 MHz band. More than half – 14 of what was then 27 member states – missed the deadline, much to the irritation of the “digital agenda” Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

Four years later, some EU states such as Poland, Bulgaria, and Cyprus are still to assign the band.

The 700 MHz band is a different proposition, as is the context for its reallocation and reassignment. The question is: will this deadline prove easier to meet? Will it be second time lucky for the Commission?

Toby Youell, PolicyTracker

11/6/2015