BEREC events 2017

On 1 February 2017, BEREC  held an expert Workshop on the Internet of Things (IoT) in Brussels, with live streaming on the BEREC website. Dedicated to the topic “Enabling the Internet of Things”, the event brought together experts and stakeholders to discuss the regulatory implications and solutions required to ensure a large-scale and sustainable IoT roll-out, in order to deliver significant benefits to citizens and consumers across different industries.

While telecom-specific topics (such as scarce resources and interoperability) were tackled, the Workshop also considered broader issues pertaining to innovation and investment, consumer rights and data privacy.

The first session of the Workshop focused on privacy, network security and consumers’ rights, while the second session focused on diversity of business models and interoperability. The topic of scarce resources (numbers and frequencies) was presented in session 3, but in session 4 - IoT industry use cases related to energy and transportation.

Opening remarks were given by the BEREC Chair 2017 Sebastien Soriano (ARCEP), and Stephen Unger , BEREC Vice-Chair (Ofcom) closed the workshop.

Ongoing work on IoT

The Workshop is a follow-up to BEREC’s February 2016 report on “Enabling the Internet of Things”, which assessed whether, and to what extent, existing telecoms rules (primarily construed for voice telephony) are also a fit for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. In light of the European Commission’s review of the telecoms framework, BEREC considers that, in general, no special treatment of IoT services and/or M2M communication is necessary, except for roaming, switching and number portability. With regard to privacy, BEREC sees the need for a careful evolution, though not a complete overhaul, of the existing EU data protection rules.

This assessment does not preclude that within the European Commission’s review, further areas for amendments of the telecoms framework, taking into account the peculiarities of the Internet of Things services and/or M2M, might be identified.

Dialogue with authorities and stakeholders

With this workshop, BEREC provides a forum for dialogue between national regulatory authorities and authorities which are competent for other matters regarding the IoT as well as with other stakeholders in the industry in order to create awareness and foster both an innovation- and consumer-friendly environment.

The Workshop  was live streamed on the BEREC website (www.berec.europa.eu)
Video from the workshop:

Opening / Introduction to the IoT Report/ Session I: Privacy, network security & consumers’ rights
Session II: Diversity of business models & interoperability
Session III: Scarce resources (numbers and frequencies)
Session IV: Focus on IoT industry use cases (energy & transportation) / Conclusions