Most of Europe’s top companies put telecommunications at the top of the list of industries they want liberalised, according to a poll published by British Telecommunications Plc yesterday. It’s clear that business leaders in Europe want more choice in telecommunications services and they want it now, Jonathan Rickford, government relations director for British Telecom commented. The UK phone company, which claims to be the only European telecommunications operator offering services in a completely liberalised market, commissioned the survey, and according to Reuter, Rickford said the results showed that the European Community should speed up its planned timetable for opening up voice telephone calls to competition. Of the 500 senior executives polled by Harris Research Ltd, 60% said it was more important to liberalise telecommunications than railways, airlines, electricity, gas, water or health care; 85% said greater competition would reduce costs, 91% said it would expand the range of services and 92% said it would improve quality. The survey covered large national companies in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Satisfaction with existing telecommunications infrastructure varied from a low of 23% in Italy to a high of 89% in France but 70% overall said they were prepared to change telecommuncations suppliers. Daniel Cloquet, industrial affairs director for UNICE, the European employers’ confederation, said his group also wants the Community to speed up liberalisation of voice telephone services. After protracted resistance from the corporate statists, telecommunications ministers finally agreed in June that most Community countries should end national monopolies over telephone calls by 1998, but that Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain should have until 2003 – and UNICE is especially worried about the four exemptions, Cloquet said at yesterday’s announcement.
