On Monday the Gibraltar House of Assembly passed the Telecommunications Ordinance 2000, which transposes into Gibraltar law (when read with the corresponding regulations) the relevant telecommunications-related EU directives. The House has now adjourned until 23rd October, and has yet to finalise another Ordinance which will establish a Gibraltar Telecommunications Regulatory Authority; this Authority, together with the relevant minister, will have a statutory duty to ensure "fair and effective competition" in the commercial operation of telecommunications networks and the provision of telecom services in, from or through Gibraltar.
The Telecommunications Ordinance does away with the Rock's existing telecommunications monopoly. Currently, the Gibraltar Government has a 50% stake in Gibraltar Nynex Communications (NYNEX), which is now part of Verizon Communications, and the same stake in Gibraltar Telecommunications International (GIBTEL), which has British Telecom as its other shareholder. Nynex caters for the domestic telephone service and Gibtel for international services.
The Government had tried to merge the two companies, with Verizon selling its stake in Nynex to BT. But this deal has come unstitched, and the Government made clear recently that it is now for one company to take over the other. Either way, the Government ends up with 50% of what is still a monopoly.
There have been constant rumours however that new entrants to the market have simply been waiting until the ink was dry on the liberalisation legislation before moving in. Perhaps that will give the Government other options: if both companies can now tread on each other's turf, one of them could be attractive to outside predators. What about Vodaphone, for instance, which has been showing interest in offshore jurisdictions recently.
Of course, hanging over the future of Gibraltar telecommunications is the Spanish intransigence over freeing up additional phone numbers. While Gibraltar has been saying for some time that this did not affect capacity as such in terms of bandwidth, and thus might not matter to an operator whose interest was in Gibraltar as an international hub, it surely must compromise the attractiveness of the Rock as a base for call centres or other intensive telecommunications users.
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