Paris, 2 February 2004
Autorité de régulation des télécommunications (ART) recently modified its organisation.
It is increasing its economic expertise in order to better respect the "telecoms packet" directives which will soon be transposed into national law. Like other European sector regulators, ART is adapting to the new Community environment, which requires that national regulators analyse "relevant" telecommunications markets in order to determine their degree of openness to competition. They must then identify operators with significant power on these markets, and inform them of their new obligations-so-called "remedies"-in order to remove obstacles to true and fair competition.
This reorganisation will allow ART to better know the markets and their dynamics, and to monitor the operational regulatory process.
Moreover, this new organisation improves even more the overall efficiency of the structure, while maintaining the concern for cross-disciplinary cooperation and coordination which has always been ART's preferred way of working.
The main change in the new organisation, which was conducted by Philippe Distler, ART's Director General, resides in the creation of:
- two vertical departments: "municipalities and broadband market regulation" and "fixed and mobile market regulation", which are directly responsible for applying the new framework in defining pertinent markets, designating powerful operators, and for defining and applying obligations. These departments are managed by Laurent Laganier and Benoît Loutrel, respectively.
- a cross-disciplinary department: "economy and prospects", responsible for the economic doctrine, for defining economic models, for economic and technical prospects, and for studies and Observatories. This department is headed by François Lions.
Moreover, in order to offer assistance to municipal governments requesting our aid in their telecommunications projects, a "municipalities" unit has been created in the "municipalities and broadband market regulation" department.
In addition, the "administration and human resources" department will now handle relations with consumer associations.
The "operators and regulation of rare resources" department continues to be responsible for aspects affecting operator authorisations as well as for regulating rare or limited resources (frequencies and numbers).
The other departments-"legal", "international"-which are more cross-disciplinary, retain their current missions.
