from Dave Farber's list: Ireland to regulate peering

Sun Jun 15 13:52:31 UTC 2003

In message <20030615123423.ECA287B4D at berkshire.research.att.com>, Steve 
Bellovin <smb at research.att.com> writes

>>In brief: New rules being put in place by the Irish telecoms regulator
>>will regulate IP peering between ISPs as if it were a voice interconnect.
>>I'd love to hear from any other IPers who know if this is being proposed
>>anywhere else in Europe. As far as I know, this is unprecedented.

This regime has probably been the case throughout Europe for ISPs that 
were locally licenced telcos, for four years [under the Interconnect 
Directive]. Not that many countries actually believed it or did 
anything. But there are now specific new Directives about this.

>>The Irish telecoms regulator (ComReg) has announced a new set of licensing
>>rules for telcos. The bad part is that the rules have been greatly
>>expanded to include regulation of "all electronic communications
>>networks", including (apparently) ISP networks and VPN operators.

Indeed, this is just one instance of implementation of the new European 
Telecoms Directives across Europe, due this July. To see a FAQ on the 
UK's version (interconnection in section 5):

http://www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/eu_directives/2003/ispfaq0303.htm

>>The cherry on the cake is that ISPs can be designated as having
>>"Significant Market Power" (this used to be defined as having 25% of a
>>market, but the criteria are now more nebulous).

In practice, regulators will only intervene at all, if one of the ISPs 
has SMP. This is now almost impossible to achieve (tests of "dominance" 
apply) especially with the diversity of transit providers. An SMP ISP 
would have to dominate the *entire* market for wholesale transit in a 
country.
-- 
Roland Perry, Director of Public Policy, LINX.