It's better in Belarus, telecoms boss warns Brussels

Belarus is better for business than Brussels, the chief executive of a top European telecommunications group said on Thursday, in an out­spoken attack on the European Commission’s efforts to cut mobile phone charges.

"We have been much better treated in Belarus than in Brussels. That's not a political statement. That's a business statement," Boris Nemsic, head of Telekom Austria, told the Financial Times in an interview.

Mr Nemsic was responding to comments by Viviane Reding, the European Union telecommunications commissioner, who called on the mobile phone industry last week to cut the costs of text messaging and mobile internet access for customers travelling abroad. Speaking at an industry conference in Barcelona, she set a deadline of July 1 for industry action.

Ms Reding's latest move against the mobile operators comes after a law she pushed through last year forced companies to cut the costs of making and receiving calls between EU member states.

Mr Nemsic made clear he was satisfied with the way the Belarusan authorities had treated the company last year when it acquired a 70 per cent stake in a leading local mobile operator for ?730m.

But Mr Nemsic, who was born in the former Yugoslavia, said the Commission's moves to establish retail price controls reminded him of communism. "I lived under communism and I hated regulated prices," he said.

Mr Nemsic said it would be reasonable for the EU to create a single telecoms market with an overall regulatory framework. But such a framework did not exist. Instead, there were layers of "incompatible" EU and national regulations.

"The European Commission says it's one market. But it's done nothing to make it one market. They're simply taking the low-hanging fruit in populist ways . . . The framework isn't there but the Commission is regulating retail prices."

He urged EU leaders to create a regulatory framework for the future as the telecoms industry prepared for the next big capital investments including fibre-optic networks and the roll-out of 4G new generation mobile telephony.

"This is a challenge for policymakers. If we want to make in Europe one telecommunications market - and I agree fully that we do - let's have one clear framework.

"You won't see the benefit in one or two years but in five or 10 years. I urge politicians to think beyond one election term."

The principal users of cross-border telecoms services were not tourists but business people. Making decisions on the basis of "extreme cases" of holidaymakers running up big bills made for "bad policy", Mr Nemsic said.

"The liberalisation of telecommunications [in Europe] was successful. Competition was established and it works. But you can't make more competition by regulating prices. If we get the same prices [because of regulation] there will be no competition."

By Stefan Wagstyl in London, ft.com

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