Cables Last May 22 was promulgated by Royal Decree 899/2009 which approves the bill of rights the user of electronic communications services whose entry into force was established on 30 August. 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 March 7, 2002 which fixed the date for coming into force on July 25, 2003, as comes almost six years of delay, whether the adoption of the 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 on its website presents a summary of these , it is appropriate to highlight a number of comments from the study of legal text.

The regulation requires operators to offer 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, it guarantees the connection to the telephone network and access to the provision of publicly available telephone service "provided that their requests are deemed reasonable." Furthermore, "The connection should offer the possibility of establishing data communications access speed to permit functional Internet." No doubt it was intended to alleviate the results indeterminate concepts that left Spain in a discreet eleventh of Broadcast Performance Index published by the European Commission on September 29, 2008, among other studies in the same line.

In relation to the termination of contracts between operator and subscriber, the user provides that prior notice must be 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 low. " Also provide some compensation for the temporary interruption of telephone service or internet, the temporary suspension of service notice when complete or partial delay in payment for more than a month, respecting the incoming and outgoing emergency and discontinuance of service if the default is more than three months.

Another striking point is included in Chapter VII of Title II, entitled " Right to effective care by the operator . " The operator is forced to admit the phone through a toll-free number for filing any claims and "to communicate the reference number of claims, complaints, requests or transactions" so that the user becomes aware of such acts involving contractual incident, all through a dedicated service department or customer. In this regard, and if telephone contact has been, "e l operator is required to inform consumers of their right to request a document attesting to the presentation and content of the claim, incidence or management through any medium that allows such accreditation," ie mainly a mailing or e-mail. 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.

The decree itself provides for certain obligations for users, such as complying with the economic consideration agreed in the contract with the operator when he has received the benefit, responsible for the correct configuration of equipment and apparatus, the "maintenance of elements of beyond the network 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, which 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 July 11, Services Information Society and Electronic Commerce (LSSI ) among other standards, leaving the bodies responsible for consumption of the Autonomous Communities with the Secretariat of State for Telecommunications and Information Society competition for mediation or resolution of disputes, with the maximum period for resolution and reporting 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 order of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade.

Without doubt it is a rule which, after its entry into force, will need constant monitoring of proper implementation so that it can demonstrate its effectiveness a priori offers very poor expectations. 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 others related to the defense of users and consumers, standards in the complex field there is such a tangle of laws. E l total cost in terms of compensation, penalties and social impact of failure is less than they would have to pay if they decide to comply with these provisions, as expected the current user-operator relationship is remain intact, at least in the short term and as long as current conditions.