LIST creates telecom platform with Luxembourg and Belgium regulators

In September a project relating to the telecoms sector was launched in LIST in collaboration with not only a regulative authority in Luxembourg, but also in Belgium.

Telco 2020, as the project is named, sees LIST working hand-in-hand with Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR) in Luxembourg and Institut Belge des Services Postaux et des Télécommunications (IBPT) in Belgium.

“We developed a platform in collaboration with software editor Westpole to support ILR and IBPT in their regulatory work in the telecom sector,” began Nicolas Mayer, Project Manager of Telco 2020, before outlining a bit of historical context. “There was a European directive with one specific article 13a that laid out requirements for competent authorities and regulated entities in relation to risk management and security. The landscape has now changed there is a new regulation superseding the previous one called EECC - European Electronic Communication Code - and the second main context changer is 5G”.

The recent introduction of the EECC brings some new challenges such as an extension of the scope of services to be regulated, new requirements, as well as an extension of the general scope and the security measures concerned. Together with the advent of 5G, it is clear that a project like Telco 2020 carries substantial importance.

Nicolas stated, “we need to take 5G into account when undertaking such things as security risk management, and due to these two triggers  - EECC and 5G – it is very important to revise, improve, innovate, and analyse what is taking place now and what we need to do in terms of innovation to enhance regulation capabilities to ILR and IBPT in the telecom sector”.

LIST and ILR have worked together already and completed preliminary work identifying different aspects of EECC and the 5G toolbox having an impact on the regulatory framework in place. The objective of the Telco 2020 is to address these new requirements and for ILR and IBPT to adapt the regulatory framework accordingly.

The platform used is known as SERIMA, but what does it do exactly? Nicolas explained that it is currently composed of three modules. “Two of them are used by the regulated entities and the first module is a risk management module so they are able to perform their risk management. At the end they generate a report that is submitted to the competent authorities”.

The second module is about incident notification. It is a digital form that can be completed in case of incidents and submitted to the competent authorities. Both activities in these modules are in fact compulsory activities according to the law.

“The third is a data analytics module performing analysis generating indicators, KPIs, that will be mainly used by the competent authorities with quite a big dashboard, a lot of statistics, indicators about security and risk assessment of the sector overall,” said Nicolas, “and part of these indicators are shared with the regulated entities. They have different indicators because we need to guarantee confidentiality about data between the industrial actors”. 

The next step for Telco 2020 is to organise workshops together with ILR and IBPT for 5G companies in Luxembourg in order to gather information related to assets and security risk with regards to 5G. This means collecting information directly with telecom companies in Luxembourg.

“A core aspect of the project is that it is really collaborative with the sector, so this is not something decided by ILR, IBPT or us that is imposed on the sector, we try to involve industries of the sector as much as possible in order to collaboratively build the tools and the requirements they will have at the end,” concluded Nicolas.