PhoneAbility

7. The terminals directive

The Single Market Directive governing access to the European market for makers of telecommunications terminals is the Radio and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment (RTTE) Directive – 1995(5)EC. This Directive swept away most of the pre-market restrictions that remained from the days of the earlier State PTT monopolies and treated all fixed-line terminals and many types of mobile terminal as ordinary consumer goods. The requirement for a pre-market assessment by an independent body was retained only for terminal equipment for radio networks, and then only if its performance characteristics were not fully covered by harmonised standards. The RTTE Directive has its own administrative committee, TCAM, and it does not form part of the so-called Framework Package which governs most other aspects of electronic communications services. A review of this Directive commenced about a year earlier than that of the Framework Package, and remained quite separate, but it has yet to be concluded. 

It must be noted that domestic radio and television receivers are excluded from the scope of the RTTE Directive.

From the outset there were concerns that de-regulation to the extent intended would cause problems for disabled users, whose needs had generally been well heeded by the monopoly PTTs. These State-owned enterprises had made special terminals available and had subsidised the supply of equipment and services. In an attempt to answer these concerns the European Parliament called for the insertion of an additional clause in the RTTE Directive, by extending Article 3.3 which empowered the Commission to initiate specific requirements for terminals.   The new clause – Article 3.3(f) –allowed for the introduction of requirements that would improve accessibility for disabled users. 

Even before the RTTE Directive was formally adopted, TCAM’s predecessor –ACTE, with its technical sub-committee TRAC - was consulting on how the new light touch regulatory regime would operate. A series of working groups studied the clauses of Article 3.3 and examined the possible circumstances in which specific requirements might be applied.  Although the working group looking at requirements for disabled users included representatives of disability bodies, it was unable to produce a single instance where regulatory action would resolve an accessibility problem. Frequently this was on account of technicalities; for example requirements on access to public payphones were ruled out because such payphones were generally part of a network and therefore not within the definition of RTTE (and nor was the situation in which the payphone was located). A requirement for a tactile marker on the ‘5’ key of the keypad would have been accepted but for the fact that most suppliers already provided this - and it is a basic principle of EU regulation that it should be introduced only where it is needed. The working group came very close to a successful proposal over a requirement that text telephones should signal their presence to the network, so that the network and the called subscriber could register that this was not a voice call. If adopted, this would have led to standardisation of voice-band text traffic handling within the networks and common text telephone protocols. However, consideration was deferred because only the network operators could define the form of ‘handshake’ signal that would be recognised, and ACTE (or TCAM) could do no more than look at terminals issues.

Discussions over the use of Article 3.3(f) have continued in various groups associated with TCAM for several years, and have included the possibility of linking access issues for disabled people to the ‘citizen’s right’ of contacting the emergency services using the 112 number. No advance has been made and it must be concluded that the underlying problem preventing a regulatory solution lies in the shape of the Directives themselves, and the RTTE Directive in particular.  In order to make use of Article 3.3(f) effectively, it is necessary to set out a requirement that must apply to all terminals of a definable type; ‘consumer premises terminal equipment’ is not an equipment class within the RTTE Directive, so each type of terminal must be defined specifically. Further, it must be evident to the enforcement bodies (who will usually be Trading Standards or Consumer Protection Agencies) when a terminal is non-compliant.  The avenue of pre-market testing and acceptance is no longer available. Even when the equipment type and the technical requirement can be defined clearly and objectively, there is the fundamental difficulty that the range of sensory and motor disabilities is so large that it is impossible to cover all requirements in a single design of instrument, even allowing for plug-in adaptations and software customising. What is needed is a range of terminal types to select from and no-one has found a way within the European Single Market to compel manufacturers to produce a range of products. A labelling requirement would be helpful, and Article 3.3(f) could be used to initiate this, so that disabled users would know what accessibility features were included in any type of terminal. While it would not make any such features mandatory, it would causemanufacturers to examine the accessibility of their products and perhaps take steps to improve their standing in product comparisons.

The proposed extension of the Framework Directives to include some aspects of terminals will make it easier to achieve seamless regulation covering both networks and terminals, but only within the structure allowed by the RTTE Directive. It would have made resolution of the text telephone issues much easier had it been in force in 1995, but technology has moved on, voice-band text telephony is almost obsolete, and there are other network-based solutions which now address the needs.  PhoneAbility sees a wider continuing requirement for end-to-end operability, which will not be met for everyone through the operation of market forces and for which the regulatory tools are insufficient. Horizontal legislation covering equality or equivalence of access to services looks to be a far more effective measure, whether this is just across electronic communications provision or wider. The criticism is often made that this approach is too slow but practical experience suggests that for most cases it is likely to prove quicker than the alternatives.

PhoneAbility does see, and has for some time advocated, a role for NRAs which goes beyond simple regulation and extends into pro-active management of aspects of universal service. This would entail NRAs entering into procurement contracts for terminals having important accessibility features but not considered by the industry to be commercially viable, and then making them available to users at discounted prices as appropriate. Use of universal service funding mechanisms for this purpose would have to be sanctioned; the service could be delivered directly by the NRA or through an agency and the principle could be readily extended to network service facilities such as relay provision for disabled users. In our view, intervention of this kind would be far more effective in promoting effective end-to-end service provision for the widest range of users than the present approach of seeking legal powers to designate commercial operators to provide loss-making services.