Switzerland

[CH] Communication on a new Telecommunications Act

IRIS 1996-10:1/29

Ad van Loon

European Audiovisual Observatory

The Federal Council adopted an explanatory report on a new Telecommunications Act in June. This is intended to provide a basis for a wide range of inexpensive telecommunications services and also to ensure that basic services are available throughout the country to all sections of the population. Basic services available on the public telephone network are now to include, among others, transmission of the data needed for access to Internet and similar services.

Liberalisation of the law on telecommunications will have to be accompanied by partial revision of the Federal Radio and Television Act of 1992, and particularly the regulations on the retransmission of programmes. Free competition is to be substituted for Telecom PTT's national monopoly; the conditions for obtaining retransmission licences are to be brought into line with the regulations applying in the telecommunications field, giving interested companies easier access to the market.

The Cantonal Councils intend to discuss the new Act in December 1996. The Federal Council wants it to come into force on 1 January 1998. IRIS will keep readers posted.