ITU says no to pan-Euro regulator

Pekka Tarjanne, director general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), claims that the communications industry should beware of calls for a pan-European regulatory body.

Throwing cold water on a call for such an authority by the EC's telecoms commissioner, Martin Bangemann, Tarjanne said the industry should not rush to set up new regulatory bodies on top of existing ones, as it risked creating an unwieldy and inflexible unit.

Bangemann, speaking at last week's ITU Interactive 97 show in Geneva, said he wanted to establish a pan-European regulatory authority for the converging IT and telecoms markets.

Bangemann said such a super-regulator would address the policy issues surrounding telecoms, the Internet and multimedia.

But Tarjanne said: "I think any setting up of a new level of bureaucracy or new mechanism for regulation and standardisation should be done very carefully, or not until there is a real need for it."

He said he agreed with the sentiments of Bangemann's speech, which called for greater co-operation between the different regions' authorities and sharing of best practice and experience.

"For the time being I'm in favour of the system we have already, where there are national regulators, and every state has its own system," he said.

On a national level, Tarjanne does agree there could be a single regulator overseeing both telecoms and broadcast content - as the UK government has suggested.