Several leading Irish telcos have expressed unease about Eir’s recruitment of a senior official from the regulator’s office.
Comreg's head of regulatory finance Kjeld Hartog is leaving to join the State's largest telecoms firm as a senior adviser on pricing. Mr Hartog, who has been with Comreg since 2010, would have played a key role in shaping the regulator's pricing policy in the wholesale market, in which Eir is the dominant player. He carried out the review that led to Comreg's clampdown on mobile termination rates, which will affect revenue at Eir's mobile arm Meteor.
Mr Hartog also recently completed a report on access pricing in relation to fibre broadband, which the former semi-State is rolling out across its fixed-line network.
Eir’s main rivals in the Irish market are understood to have written to Comreg to express concern about Mr Hartog’s move, suggesting it may pose a possible conflict of interest.
In a statement, Comreg said: “In such circumstances, anyone leaving to work for a regulated entity goes on immediate garden leave for the relevant notice period and the normal confidentiality rules still apply.”
Pricing portfolio
Eir confirmed Mr Hartog would be joining the group later this year to work in the area of pricing, but insisted it had not initiated the negotiations that led to his appointment.
Separately, Comreg has announced the appointment of two teams of consultants to examine Eir’s dominant position in the wholesale telecoms market amid allegations of anti-competitive practices.
KPMG will review the company's regulatory governance model, including the relative independence of its wholesale arm, OpenEir, which sells space on its network to rival telcos as well as its own retail arm.
An assessment of Eir's day-to-day risk-management protocols relating to its regulatory obligations will be carried out by Cartesian Ltd. Both teams will also be tasked with considering the implications of a recent in-house report by Eir, detailing 22 areas in which it was failing to provide equal access to its network to non-Eir companies. The firm, however, claims most, if not all, of these issues have been resolved.
In a statement announcing the appointment of the consultants, Comreg said: “The overall objective is to establish whether Eir’s governance arrangements are and can be sufficiently robust to the extent that they demonstrate and ensure ongoing compliance with regulatory obligations.”
Regulator’s report
The regulator said the initial part of the review will be published later this year. The report may pave the way for a greater division of Eir’s wholesale and retail arms, analogous to what has been forced on BT, the incumbent telco in Britain.
BT’s wholesale business is separate from its retail arm, but the regulator there is seeking greater division so consumers and businesses get a choice of networks.
