Broadband Internet services are regulated in order to guarantee the rights of end users in terms of access to services of sufficient quality, as well as the rights of different operators to be able to offer competing services.
Sectoral regulations:
The regulation of broadband Internet access services frames the legal regime of subjects, rights and legal limits of the activity of providing services through broadband telecommunications networks, highlighting aspects related to the rights and duties of users and service operators.
Sectoral competences:
The powers over telecommunications are exclusive to the State (art. 149.1.21st Spanish Constitution) which implements them through some of its agencies, mainly the State Secretariat of Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, belonging to the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC).
Regulation at wholesale level:
It includes the regulatory framework that regulates the conditions under which broadband service providers must relate in order, in essence, to ensure competition and avoid price discrimination.
These include:
- Obligations and reference offers of the Operator declared with Significant Market Weight (OPSM) of the regulated services.
- Wholesale price control and accounting separation: They establish the procedure for determining the wholesale prices of regulated services between operators and the mechanisms for controlling their compliance, in order to exchange services between them.
- Obligations of transparency and non-discrimination, in order to ensure equity in market behavior.
Regulation at retail level:
It includes the regulations that establish the relationship between the operators of broadband Internet access services and the end users thereof. It should be noted that it relates to:
- Rights of the users.
- Universal service.
- Quality of service.
- Retail price control.