Cables On 22 May, promulgated by Royal Decree 899/2009 which approves the charter for the user of electronic communications services whose entry into force was set for Aug. 30. According to the Council of Ministers, makes Spain "at the forefront of European countries in this respect" and its provisions contribute "to competition, boosting the market, the choice by the users and the processes of change operator. This text is the transposition into domestic law of the Directive 2002/22/EC of the European Parliament and Council of 7 March 2002 fixed the date for coming into force on 25 July 2003 as comes almost six years of delay, regardless of the adoption of Regulation on conditions for the provision of electronic communications services, universal service and consumer protection in 2005.

The Royal Decree is a development of Article 38 of the Telecommunications Law and includes the rights of end users that operators are obliged to respect, in addition to those established in the General Law for the Protection of Consumers and Users. While the Commission's Telecommunications Market presents in its website a summary of these is appropriate to highlight a number of comments from the study of the legal text.

The regulation requires operators to provide a connection to the telephone network to enable Internet access and other services involved in the universal service "regardless of their geographical location, at an affordable price and specified quality, ensuring the user the connection to the telephone network and access to the provision of publicly available telephone service "provided that their applications are considered reasonable." Furthermore, "The connection should offer the possibility of establishing data communications access speed to permit functional Internet. No doubt he intends to redress the results indeterminate concepts that left Spain in the eleventh discreet Broadcast Performance Index published by the European Commission on 29 September 2008, among other studies in the same line.

In relation to the termination of contracts between the operator and subscriber, states that the user must advise accordingly at least two working days to have effect at the time and the operator "shall not bill and collect any amount you were able to earn , for reasons not attributable to the end user, after two days to take effect on the bottom ". Certain allowances are also contemplated by the temporary interruption of telephone service or internet, temporary suspension of service notice when wholly or partially delayed payment for over a month, respecting the incoming and outgoing emergency and discontinuance of service if the default is more than three months.

Another striking point that comes under Chapter VII of Title II with the heading "Right to effective care by the operator. It requires the operator to admit the phone through a toll free number for filing any complaint and to "communicate the reference number of complaints, requests or transactions" so that the user has recorded such acts incidence involving contractual, all through a specialized service department or customer service. In this regard, and if telephone contact has been, "t he operator is required to inform consumers of their right to request a document attesting to the presentation and content of the claim, incident or management through any medium that allows such accreditation," ie mainly a postal or email. We must remember that most of these calls are recorded by the operators after warning the user, so it should not be a big problem fulfilling this obligation and the subsequent verification of the content.

In that same decree provides for certain obligations for users, such as complying with the economic consideration by that contract with the operator when he has received the benefit, responsible for proper configuration of equipment and appliances, the "maintenance of elements of the network beyond the termination point of the network and the subscriber agrees to the use of authorized equipment and appliances "which conformity has been assessed according to current regulations on conformity assessment of telecommunications equipment.

However, not foreseen in the legal text itself a system of penalties for operators who fail to comply with its provisions, nor in the Directive and therefore will be to the provisions of Title VIII of Law 32/2003, of 3 November General of Telecommunications (LGT) on inspection and punishment, or as applicable to Title VII of the Law 34/2002 of 11 July, of Services of the Information Society and Electronic Commerce (LSSI ) among other standards, leaving it to the competent organs of the Autonomous consumption along with the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Information Society competition for mediation or resolution of disputes, with the deadline for resolution and notice of six months. The responsibility to contact the agency lies with the customer care center operator who has received the complaint and the procedure, scope and requirements will be subject to regulation by a Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade.

No doubt it is a rule that after its entry into force, require a constant monitoring for proper compliance to prove their worth to a priori expectations offers very poor. However, without the willingness of operators to comply with current legislation, the government will encounter a major obstacle on the way to enforce rules like this and other defense-related users and consumers in the complex area of regulation there is a great tangle of laws. T he total cost in terms of compensation, penalties and social impact of the breach is less than they would have to pay if they decide to comply with these provisions, as expected the current user-operator relationship is intact, at least in the short term and as long as current conditions.