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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: from Dave Farber's list: Ireland to regulate peering
In message <[email protected]>, Steve Bellovin <[email protected]> writes 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.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. 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):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. http://www.oftel.gov.uk/publications/eu_directives/2003/ispfaq0303.htm 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.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). -- Roland Perry, Director of Public Policy, LINX.
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