Warsaw Concerto: Harmonising for Europe

Oftel's twinning project in Poland got underway in October 2000 when Chris Woolford, an expert statistician at Oftel, swapped his office on Ludgate Hill for an office in one of the burgeoning high-rise buildings in central Warsaw, home of the Polish Ministry of Post and Communications. Warsaw would now be Chris's home for the next 15 months, as Pre-Accession Advisor masterminding a twinning project.

Through this project Oftel, with the support of the UK's Radiocommunications Agency and the Swedish Regulator PTS (which is concentrating in particular on the postal remit), is helping Poland adopt the legislative and policy framework, and build up the institutions required in the areas of telecommunications, radiocommunications and post, for its successful accession to the European Union.

One of Chris's first jobs was to recruit Anna Najmola as his assistant in organising the project's activities. Anna arrived with some experience of telecommunications, having previously worked with the incumbent operator, TPSA, and saw this job as an opportunity to further this knowledge, use her language and organisational skills and at the same time participate in a process of great social, cultural and historical importancet: Poland's accession to the European Union. This report is Anna's take on her first months with the project…

My recruitment marked the start of a challenging and busy nine months, during which time the project has covered a huge range of activities related to the regulation of telecommunications, radio and postal markets.

The first couple of months of the project were especially hard work as we were faced with settling into the new organisation, getting to know the ways of working for a governmental institution, and at the same time getting the project's 18 separate work packages underway.

This involved setting up and participating in a number of meetings, which we called 'fact-finding missions' since our task was to explore the Polish market, and developing contacts with our new colleagues responsible for each of the project's areas.

Also, it is noteworthy that at that time I, acting as an interpreter, had to struggle with the intricacies of telecommunications language! Despite having some knowledge of telecommunications, conversations about exchanges, numbering resources and the systems used for measuring the quality of mail flows did not prove that easy!

I do not pretend (nor will I ever pretend) to be an expert on radio technologies or competition law or setting fair prices and accounting, but I am certainly acquiring a familiarity with essential concerns in all these separate, but complementary, disciplines that the project covers. With Chris's well-balanced explanations this is becoming more and more fun.

The meetings, however difficult to interpret they were, were the source of much essential background information on the Polish market and helped the project Team identify priority areas where assistance was most urgently needed and develop plans for taking the work forward.

And then, as set out in Poland's new (July 2000) Telecommunications Law, came a watershed event. On 1 January 2001, the Office of Telecommunications Regulation (Urzad Regulacji Telekomunikacji - URT - as it is known in Polish) became operational taking over much of the regulatory responsibilities of the Ministry. And taking the lead on the Polish side of the project, Chris and I moved our office to URT in March 2001.

Although the establishment of the URT did create some disruption as some of the staff changed and duties and responsibilities had to be transferred, the project now had the green light to start the series of seminars and workshops which form the core of the project.

By August nearly 30 such interactive sessions had been organised with audiences drawn from URT, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications and key staff from other ministries. The topics covered so far include the Acquis, interconnection and accounting, licensing, billing and numbering, consumer complaints and quality of service, spectrum monitoring, Internet, postal pricing policies, market surveillance and information requirements.

The formula adopted for the meetings seems to be working well. The visiting experts usually begin with a presentation of the relevant EC requirements, an explanation of how they are implemented in the present EU Members, which leads naturally into a discussion of the possible ways of implementing the requirements in Poland, taking into account the particular characteristics of the Polish market, and an identification of any further problematic areas which will be discussed and worked out in due course.

The impact of some of the work the project has been assisting with is already visible. In February the first-ever licence for the incumbent, TPSA, was issued, following a series of workshops with Oftel's chief licensing expert [Peter Davies?].

Much work has been done on drafting secondary legislation on such high-priority issues as interconnection and SMP - the results of our work on SMP can clearly be seen as the legislation has now become law.

The URT is also using Oftel's experience to develop mechanisms for ensuring compliance with cost orientation requirements and is currently developing proposals for new Interconnection rates.

All this is geared to ensure a level playing field for operators competing with the monopolistic legacy of TPSA. It is quite rewarding to see the legislation being shaped to comply with the European Acquis and being converted from the statute book into live activities that will most probably condition the lives of every single citizen.

Also, I had a chance to see two special high-profile sessions take place, one in Warsaw and one in London, with the URT's and Oftel's senior management team focusing on defining objectives of a regulatory authority and ways of developing appropriate high level strategies. Although I did not participate in the discussions myself, it is encouraging to see that there is international co-operation and a lot of work is being done to ensure that the Polish Regulator meets the demands of both the Polish market and the European Community.

While encouraged by the successes to date, I cannot say that the project has been all plain sailing. There is still much to do to deliver all the objectives, and Poland will most likely face even more challenges before effective competition is in place. And it will take some time for the URT itself to evolve, encourage more sharing of ideas, improve flows of information, facilitate a more transparent meshing of the various departments and become a strong and effective regulator.

But I think the project Team can be encouraged by the fact that we are working with a wealth of people with considerable specialist knowledge and expertise in many key areas, and by the recruitment of high quality new staff who are keen to join the URT, learn about different aspects of telecoms regulation, try out new approaches and contribute. We have established some excellent personal contacts with individuals who will most certainly take the project work forward. And we are confident that the project will, by the time it finishes, achieve its objectives in terms of preparing the Polish telecoms sector for EU Membership.

Looking back at this halfway stage of the project, I am very happy to have had the opportunity to be a part of the Team setting the pace for one of the key sectors of the Polish economy and helping Poland become a full EU Member. Despite tiny grievances and inevitable occasional frustrations, the work has been most exciting, challenging and fun. I really cannot face the prospect of the project ending in the end of February 2002 !

Anna Najmola, Assistant to PAA