Market Reviews

Background:

In 2010, the Authority published its Response to Consultation on its proposal for a new framework to regulate the telecommunications market in the Isle of Man. After considering all the responses from the Consultation, the Authority's recommendation was that the approach to regulation should be specific to the Isle of Man ensuring the provision of services and continued investment into the communications infrastructure through the introduction of a competitive market.

The Authority recognised that the underlying communications legislation needed re-examining, thus the Authority imposed ex ante regulation. This type of regulation is the application of regulation before an abuse of power has occurred. The reasoning behind choosing this form of regulation is to impede an operator who may hold Significant Market Power (SMP).

This is to stop the provider with SMP from exploiting the market to the detriment of its competitors and therefore negatively affecting consumers in the Isle of Man through the removal of available choices. By contrast, ex post regulation investigates incidents which have already happened. 

The EU market review process is seen as the 'gold' standard to follow and subsequently this process is replicated world-wide. The Authority has chosen to carry out a simplified variant of the EU market reviews thus the regulatory approach is considered to be appropriate to the size of the jurisdiction and focused on the Isle of Man's priorities. 

Please see below documents for the Fixed and Mobile Market Decisions which were implemented on 1^st January 2020.