Estonia referred to Court of Justice over impartiality of telecoms regulator

I came across this relatively recent EC press release, which comments that the European Commission has refered Estonia to the CJEU, for failing to ensure the independence of the Estonia telecommunications regulator, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications (as required by Article 3(2), directive 2002/21/EC):

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications in Estonia carries out some regulatory tasks, in particular over the allocation of radio frequencies and procedures for granting frequency authorisations.

At the same time it exercises control of the state-owned company Levira Ltd, the largest TV and radio broadcast network operator in Estonia, which provides telecoms services such as broadcasting and wireless broadband access

Parkinson's law

One of the classic organisational book in the United Kingdom is ‘Parkinson’s Law. It was first published in 1955 and in matters of detail is somewhat dated. Its key precepts rain valid and I would certainly commend the book as an entertaining and educative read. On law states that organisations reach the peak of their physical state at the point when terminal decline has already set in.

This weekend there has been quite a bit of publicity in the United Kingdom about the future (or lack of) for public  telephone call boxes. BT have argued that athird of their call boxes generate less than £1 in revenue each month

How does Parkinson’s Law apply to this? In 1998 around 25% of the UK’s population had a mobile phone. By February 2002, this had risen to 75%. Mobile phones, of course, make call boxes effectively redundant except in areas where there is no mobile phone reception. What else happened in 2002? You’ve guessed it. The number of call boxes reached its highest ever level.

Parkinson strikes again!