The Swiss Council of States, the lower chamber of parliament, has rejected a proposal to regulate wholesale access to Swisscom's fibre-optic network by 22 votes to 19, despite alternative operators push for the regulation. The regulation was proposed by the Federal Council.
Earlier, the upper chamber or National Council rejected the government's proposal to regulate unbundled access to the local loop on Swisscom's fibre network. Besides wholesale access, the Council of States voted on net neutrality, measures to combat child pornography and other prohibited pornographic content, roaming and replay TV.
In the final voting, the Council of States approved the revision of the Telecommunications Act by 33 votes to seven. The draft Telecommunications Act will now proceed to the National Council.
As regards the net neutrality rules adopted earlier by the National Council, the Council of States proposed exceptions to the rules, namely enabling providers to make their offers flexible via so-called special services, as long as this does not worsen the quality of the internet connection.
Another change concerns child pornography and other prohibited pornographic content. The National Council decided in its draft law to provide for the deletion of such content. The Council of States now wants to add that telecommunications providers would have to report suspected cases to the Federal Police.
In roaming, the Council of States followed the Federal Council without objections. This should provide measures to combat disproportionately high retail tariffs and to promote competition. In particular, it should be able to set price caps based on international agreements.
In the case replay TV, the Council of States brought up a clarification. This is to ensure that changes to the programmes may not be made to time-shift TV without the consent of the service provider.
