European Telcos do not Like Regulation and OTT!

Surprised by the title of this post? You shouldn't be. We have seen this many times, and in this year's MWC was no exception (besides, maybe, the language used by the Mr. Bernabe):

• Telecom Italia: Mike Dano reports to Fierce Wireless: "The CEO of Telecom Italia, Franco Bernabe (pictured), used his keynote appearance here at the Mobile World Congress trade show to rally against over-the-top players, arguing that OTT vendors are sucking resources away from wireless operators .. OTT players hinder competition by relying on non-standardized technologies ..  such players also don't understand mobile, and therefore cause unintended problems like overloading mobile networks with unnecessary signaling .. This imposes a big burden on mobile operators .. average revenues per user in Europe have decreased from 26 euros in 2006 to 20 euros in 2011--at a time when operators are investing heavily in their networks to deal with traffic generated in part by OTT services".
  
  See " Telecom Italia CEO highlights 'burdens' created by OTT players" - here.

• Deutsche Telekom - Jeff Barak report to Amdocs Blog that "Deutsche Telekom’s Obermann (pictured) pointed out that in this new cloud era, ”best effort” connectivity won’t be enough – for example, medical cloud services can’t be allowed to fail – and operators will play an important role in providing end-to-end quality of service. The regulator, Obermann insisted, has to accept that non-discriminating traffic management is essential for delivering real quality of service".
  
  See "Who’s going to get left behind? (Live from MWC 2012)" - here. 

• TeliaSonera - Michelle Donegan reports to Light Reading "TeliaSonera said it will charge an extra fee for using free over-the-top VoIP services on its network and throttle bandwidth for users who try to use these services without paying. In an interview with Light Reading TV, Tommy Ljunggren (pictured), TeliaSonera's VP of system development, explained the operator's new strategy and pricing policy for OTT VoIP services. TeliaSonera's message is clear: If you want to use those services on our network, you have to pay; if you don't, those services won't work".
   See "TeliaSonera Chokes Free VoIP Services" - here; This follows TeliaSonera's subsidiary in Spain, Yoigo, recent action - see " Procera's DPI Enables Yoigo VoIP's Monetization" - here.