22nd August 2017

Radio Praha: Czech Telecoms regulator given ammunition for attack on mobile data charges

The Czech Telecommunication Office (ČTÚ) has made a call which many of its critics say should have been pretty obvious by now and should have been made long ago. The office has decided that competitive market conditions do not exist on the market for mobile services for data, Radio Praha reports.

The not so surprising conclusion is based on an analysis of the market which was published on August 17. Prices, it said, are being kept high because of the lack of market competition. And on the back of that the office is now promising action. 

Among the options available, the most direct and hard hitting would be for the office to intervene and dictate prices directly to the main Czech mobile phone operators. The government’s current coordinator for the digital economy and former member of the telecommunications office council, Ondřej Malý, told the business daily Hospodářské Noviny that the office must now send a clear signal that it is not happy with the state of the mobile data market. 

An efficient and economic mobile data market is seen as fundamental for the development of the new applications and services that are seen making their debut on the e-commerce and services market over the next decade. The problem from the Czech perspective is that mobile data charges are currently around three times those in neighbouring Poland and even higher than in much richer Austria, Radio Praha writes

Members of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic