RESEARCH PAPER
Creating a Single Digital Market for Telecommunications Services as a Challenge for the European Union
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Uniwersytet Szczeciński, Wydział Zarządzania i Ekonomiki Usług
Submission date: 2017-03-20
Acceptance date: 2018-01-24
Publication date: 2018-03-31
GNPJE 2018;293(1):159-181
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ABSTRACT
The aim of this article is to describe and evaluate action taken so far to create a unified digital telecommunications market in the European Union, with a view to proposing solutions that will facilitate the development of this market. The article is of a conceptual nature and uses a critical analysis of the domestic and foreign literature on the subject. The author also analyses EU regulations and documents and reviews studies by European institutes as part of research programmes commissioned by the EU. This made it possible to determine that EU authorities, in their efforts to create a unified digital telecommunications market, focused on regulating network communications infrastructure. Taking into account the main development trends for such networks, they focused their efforts on roaming, frequency management and network neutrality. The research also found that measures taken by EU authorities to form a unified digital telecommunications market have not been equally effective in all areas. Roaming is the only area that has been precisely regulated. These observations have led the author to conclude that the creation of a unified digital telecommunications market requires the development of generally applicable EU regulations on the allocation of frequencies and network neutrality. The article also points out that the creation of such a market would require the development of a comprehensive data protection and digital goods consumer protection regime in the EU. These conclusions can be used for further theoretical analyses and empirical research.