Glossary

CEPT

| Laura Sear

CEPT stands for the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations. CEPT’s activities include cooperation on commercial, operational, regulatory and technical standardisation issues.

The CEPT logo, with the letters CE visible on top, and the letters PT visible at the bottom.
Source: CEPT

It’s a regional regulatory group in ITU Region 1 that creates technical rules, harmonisations and recommendations for member states that can adopt or tailor them to their countries’ needs. This builds consensus in Europe and neighbouring countries and helps economies scale for new technologies.

In preparation for the Word Radiocommunication Conference (WRC), the CEPT also facilitates study groups to form a European Common Proposal. This is the common position of all member states on the WRC Agenda Items, giving it more weight in international discussions than the position of an individual member state.

Presently administrations from 46 countries are members of CEPT including all EU member states. You can find a full list of the member states here.

As many of its members are also EU Member States, the CEPT has a special relationship with the European Union. The group is often mandated by the European Commission to establish technical reports and standards ahead of European Union decisions concerning spectrum harmonisations.

A map of Europe which highlights all CEPT member states in blue.

The regulatory group consist of the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) which is responsible for radiocommunications and telecommunications, the European Committee for Postal Regulation (CERP) which is responsible for postal matters and the Committee for ITU Policy (Com-ITU) which is responsible for organising the co-ordination of CEPT actions for the preparation for and during the course of the ITU activities meetings of the council, Plenipotentiary Conferences, World Telecommunication Development Conferences, World Telecommunication Standardisation Assemblies.

The CEPT is supported by the European Communications Office (ECO), they are responsible for the administration, drafting and publishing the reports, making the minutes of the meetings and addressing and collating consultation responses.

Glossary Term