7 - 13 December 2000

Regulator studying legality of ISPs’ action

by David Kelleher

The telecommunications regulator is actively studying the implications and legality of the action taken by a group of ISPs on Tuesday, government sources told The Malta Business Weekly yesterday.
Nine Internet Service Providers announced that they had reached a high speed interconnection agreement between themselves that allows users to access each other’s content and exchange traffic at high speed. The agreement, however, does not include one of Malta’s major ISPs Video On Line.
Government sources said that the regulator was looking at the agreement to see whether the ISPs’ agreement allowed fair competition and was not in breach of the new Telecommunications regulations published a few weeks ago.
“The regulator is aware of the action taken by the ISPs. The new law stipulates that at no point should there be discrimination in the service provided either to another ISP or else to customers. In this case, the regulator has to see whether Video On Line and its subscribers are not being allowed to benefit from a better service,” the sources said.
Contacted yesterday, Joe Vella, personal assistant to Minister Censu Galea, told The Malta Business Weekly, that the government welcomes cooperation between Internet Service Providers.
“Cooperation between the ISPs is welcomed however the regulator will now have to see whether this agreement restricts access to those who are outside,” Mr Vella said.
He stressed that the new law does not permit such restrictions.
“If Provider A is able to access and send data at a certain speed, Provider B should also be able to benefit from the same access speeds. In today’s environment, speed is essential so any action preventing someone from enjoying the same levels of speed, is being discriminated against. The whole idea behind competition is to provide everyone with equal opportunities,” Mr Vella said.
Mr Vella added that the Regulator was expected to reach a decision within the coming days. “The law states that an answer has to be given within the shortest time possible and the regulator will be doing exactly this,” he said.
The nine ISPs – Comtel Ltd, Fastnet, Globalnet, Kemmunet, Keyworld, Nextgen Ltd, Telemail Ltd, Terranet Ltd and Waldonet – signed the agreement which will improve performance by a factor of 76 over the backbone that was in place until Tuesday.

The backbone will run over a state-of-the-art ATM backbone with 155Mbps connections between the ISPs. However, technical sources told The Malta Business Weekly that although the ISPs were connected on this high speed backbone, the access provided will depend on what type of access they have purchased.
“A company can be connected to a 155Mbps backbone, however users can buy various levels of speeds,” the technical sources said.
The action taken by the ISPs, however, goes beyond providing a much better local backbone for Internet users. That VOL have been excluded – and sources said, they were not even asked to join – shows that the ISPs were stepping up their battle against what they claim to be “market dominance” by Melita Cable, of which VOL is a subsidiary.
The ISPs are claiming that Melita Cable, which has been allowed by government to offer internet over cable, is in a dominant market position and therefore should allow them to offer cable internet. However, legal experts told The Malta Business Weekly yesterday that this was a case of “Infrastructure-based competition” and therefore Melita Cable could offer these services without opening access.
“Another infrastructure is providing a broadband technology and, in some cases, is considered better than cable internet. In this case, Melita Cable is not in a dominant position,” legal sources said.
The Malta Business Weekly received a number of complaints from VOL users who said that access speeds to local websites had deteriorated a lot and email traffic was taking extremely long. As VOL are not on the backbone, all traffic to and from VOL has to go through an international connection which results in lower access speeds.