Wifi. Municipal public network

Commentary on the Audiencia Nacional of 9 september 2011

Abstract

The contested decision must be confirmed by declaring directly responsible to the City of committing a very serious offense in telecommunications for starting, before submitting to the Commission for the Telecommunications Market official notification, the activity of the operation of a public electronic communications network and provision of electronic communications service «Internet access Provider» and as such should proceed to pay the general rate of operators. The duty of prior notification and the corresponding general registration in the electronic communications operator has a goal of knowledge by the regulator, prior and independent nature that negative effects might exist after the competition. The only legal exception to the duty of communication is not outcome-assignment to competition, but lies only in self-provision actually attend. In this case there is not permissible self-provision, and who attend are two irreconcilable unique circumstances, according to the Chamber, with a true self-provision of Internet access service via Wi-Fi network Biznaga. The first of these is the ability to access a free navigation, understood as access to websites outside the municipal administration, and therefore have nothing to do with the requirement or complementarity of access to municipal services. On the other hand, the Court considers the system to remain in the contours of the self-provision should have sufficient safeguards or tools that that Internet access pages or features other than those strictly related to municipal utilities are not to occur. In sum, given the possibility that the service provides for access to websites outside the municipal utilities and given the lack of sufficient guarantees in the practical operation of the service, we conclude that Biznaga network and access to Internet by the system Wi-fi can not be articulated benefit of the exclusion of communication must be confirmed by the activity that would flow from being classified as self-provision.