The argument that this will allow new services to develop does not stand up, given that these services can be developed by the telecommunications organisations equally well and, without the strain of having to make huge profits, certainly more cheaply.

It is true that Council Directive 92/44/EEC of 5 June 1992 on the application of open network provision to leased lines, amended by Commission Decision 94/439/EC (8), harmonizes the basic principles regarding the provision of leased lines, but it only harmonizes the conditions of access and use of leased lines. The aim of that Directive is not to remedy the conflict of interest of the telecommunications organizations as infrastructure and service providers. It does not impose a structural separation between the telecommunications organizations as providers of leased lines and as service providers. Complaints illustrate that even in Membe ...[+++]r States which have implemented that Directive, telecommunications organizations still use their control of the access conditions to the network at the expense of their competitors in the services market. Complaints show that telecommunications organizations still apply excessive tariffs and that they use information acquired as infrastructure providers regarding the services planned by their competitors, to target clients in the services market. Directive 92/44/EEC only provides for the principle of cost-orientation and does not prevent telecommunications organizations to use the information acquired as capacity provider as regards subscribers' usage patterns, necessary to target specific groups of users, and on price elasticities of demand in each service market segment and region of the country. The current regulatory framework does not resolve the conflict of interest mentioned above. The most appropriate remedy to this conflict of interest is therefore to allow service providers to use own or third party telecommunications infrastructure to provide their services to the final customers instead of the infrastructure of their main competitor. In its resolution of 22 December 1994 the Council also approved the principle that infrastructure provision should be liberalized.

Under Directive 92/44/EEC, Member States must ensure that the telecommunications organizations make available certain types of leased lines to all providers of telecommunications services. However, the Directive provides only for such offer of a harmonized set of leased lines up to a certain bandwidth. Companies needing a higher bandwidth to provide services based on new high-speed technologies such as SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) have complained that the telecommunications organizations concerned are unable to meet their demand whilst it could be met by the optic fibre networks of other potential providers of telecommunications i ...[+++]nfrastructure, in the absence of the current exclusive rights. Consequently, the maintenance of these rights delays the emergence of new advanced telecommunications services and therefore restricts technical progress at the expense of the users contrary to Article 90 (1) of the Treaty, in conjunction with point (b) of the second paragraph of Article 86 of the Treaty.

(11) Newly authorized voice telephony providers will be able to compete effectively with the current telecommunications organizations only if they are granted adequate numbers to allocate to their customers. Moreover, where numbers are allocated by the current telecommunications organizations, the latter will be induced to reserve the best numbers for themselves and to give their competitors insufficient numbers or numbers which are commercially less attractive, for example, because of their length. By maintaining such power in the hands of their telecommunications organizations Member States would therefore induce the former to abuse th ...[+++]eir power on the market for voice telephony and infringe Article 90 of the Treaty, in conjunction with Article 86 of the Treaty.

(26) Given that the lifting of such rights will concern mainly services which are not yet provided and does not concern voice telephony, which is still the main source of revenue of those organizations, it will not destabilize the financial situation of the telecommunications organization. There is consequently no justification to maintain exclusive rights on the establishment and use of network infrastructure for services other than voice telephony. In particular, Member States should ensure that all restrictions on the provision of ...[+++]telecommunications services other than voice telephony over networks established by the provider of the telecommunications service, the use of infrastructures provided by third parties and the sharing of networks, other facilities and sites are lifted as from 1 July 1996.

In the framework of the adoption of authorization requirements under Directive 90/388/EEC, it appeared that certain Member States were imposing obligations on new entrants which where not in proportion with the aims of general interest pursued. To avoid such measures being used to prevent the dominant position of the telecommunications organizations being challenged by competition once the liberalization of voice telephony takes place, thus making it possible for the telecommunications organizations to maintain their dominant position in the voice telephony and public telecommunications networks markets and thereby strengthening the domi ...[+++]nant position of the incumbent operator, it is necessary that Member States should notify any licensing or declaration requirements to the Commission, before they are introduced, to enable the latter to assess their compatibility with the Treaty and in particular the proportionality of the obligations imposed.