The Tribune

By FAY SIMMONS

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

THE move by utilities regulators to consolidate competition supervision with an increased focus on ‘after the fact’ investigations has been welcomed “with open arms” by operators.

The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA), in its review and public consultation on com- petition guidelines for the electronic communications and electricity sectors, is planning to adopt a unified approach and consolidate these criteria into one document as opposed to nine.

The new guidelines include procedural aspects for after-the-fact, or ‘ex- post’ investigations into alleged anti-competitive practices and abuse of dominant market positions in both industries, as well as procedures for ex-ante (before the event) merger control. A legal and regulatory consultant for Cable Bahamas and its Aliv mobile subsidiary backed the switch to more “ex-post” regulations on the basis that the ex-ante approach can be “time consuming, tedious and bureaucratic” for both regulators and operators.

She said: “We note the movement to ex-post regulation from ex-ante regulation and we, of course, have been advocates for this for some time. And so we welcome the ex- post competition guidelines with open arms.

“Ex-post application is very welcomed because a fit-for-purpose ex-post regime is a key requirement for the reduction of the reliance on ex-ante regulations, which are very time consuming, tedious and bureaucratic not only for the operators but also for the regulators.”

She added that URCA, which last year voiced its displeasure with inconsistent and delayed reporting of network outages by communications providers, could have applied ex-post regulations that required operators to publish their outage statistics so that consumers can factor that in when choosing a provider.

She said: “And we go to the example of the outages consultation by URCA recently where, in our view, rather than the bureaucratic rules and regulations for reporting outages, a market ex-post based solution could have been or should have been considered rather than the bureaucratic proposals.

“In that ex-post example, URCA could have required operators to publish the statistics on their outages on their websites, and encouraged consumers when they’re making choices between the different operators to look at outages as a criteria for which operator am I going to sign up with or move over to. So that’s just an example of that how ex-post works and we’re very excited to see that come on board.”

Rupert Pinder, URCA’s director of electronic communications, said that although there is “value” in the publication of outages

the accuracy of data submitted by licensees has been a challenge for the regulator. He added that once URCA has addressed the challenges around outage requirements they can revisit the publication of related statistics.

He said: “A few years ago, it was a whole consultation around the publication of some of this information and data. I do see some value in that but, of course, that lends itself to some further discussion.

“One of the challenges that we have been having is really in terms of the completeness and overall accuracy from the reported data that we get from licensees. So, again, that requires a substantive work.

“In terms of the outage reporting, we do have some challenges with respect to the whole information symmetry and the whole purpose behind the outage reporting frame- work. Really, to address that information symmetry, and that is a real challenge for URCA,” Mr Pinder continued.

“Once we have closed some of these gaps with respect to the information symmetry, I guess we can look at more ways in terms of how we can work collaboratively.”