French telecom regulator Arcep has published for consultation a set of guidelines on roaming and mobile network sharing. Under the statutes of the August 2015 Act on Growth, the authority has acquired the power to request that operators amend network sharing agreements when necessary to meet regulatory objectives.
The working document comprises draft guidelines and initial analyses of existing contracts with a priori warranted changes to be applied to existing network sharing contracts. Stakeholders are invited to submit comments by 23 February.
The document is also being submitted to the Competition Authority for an opinion. There are currently two major mobile network sharing agreements in effect in metropolitan France, a 2G/3G deal allowing Free Mobile customers to access Orange’s network (although with lower coverage and quality than available to Orange customers) and a 2G/3G/4G network sharing agreement between SFR and Bouygues Telecom.
For the first, which was permitted to enable new entrant Free to operate over an existing infrastructure, Arcep aims to define a roadmap for early termination. The regulator believes that the 3G component should be terminated sometime between the end of 2018 and the end of 2020, and the 2G element between the start of 2020 and end of 2022.
As for the SFR-Bouygues deal, Arcep said it wants to insure that it provides consumers with improved coverage and quality, as the operators claim. The authority is calling for a specific end date for 4G roaming between the end of this year and the end of 2018.
