Regulation without teeth?

Not only Sweden have problems with regulative decisions that does not have any impact on the market. Also the EU seems to have problems. In a Reuters article one can read that EU to send final broadband warning to Germany. The issue is that the EU (and noone else I have talked with) like the decision made by the German Regulator to give Deutche Telekom “Regulative Holiday” regarding new DSL services. Deutche Telekom asked the regulator to not be forced to sell bitstream access for a while after new faster DSL services was introduced. And thre regulator said that was ok.

I have been in a series of meetings where the German Regulator have tried to explain to other countries that they really thought this was ok. I can not see why (and noone else around the table either).

Allowing these kind of regulative holidays of course give an advantage to the player that will be the only one providing the new services. The ability to sell products on a market that grows (majority of customers are people that do not have a service, compared to the situation where providers steal customers from each other) is so important and one of the problems in for example Sweden. Delaying regulative decisions is a mechanism that is extremely effective for the one that have the decision against them.