The end of reception problems? The dramatic step by the Ministry of Communications

The Ministry of Communications is publishing today (Monday) a new hearing to update the criteria for imposing financial sanctions. The comprehensive update is intended to simplify, streamline, and improve administrative enforcement procedures, shorten the duration of handling violations, and reduce the possibility for companies to profit from non-compliance with license conditions. The move is expected to increase certainty and transparency vis-à-vis the supervised entities, alongside sharpening deterrence mechanisms and safeguarding the public interest.

According to the updated criteria, the amount of the sanction will henceforth be determined by a simpler procedure that will focus on weighting two key indicators. The first indicator examines the intensity of the harm to the protected values underlying the regulation according to the type of violation, including the public good, consumer protection, competition in the communications market, and the continuity and quality of services provided to the citizen. The second indicator examines the actual scope of the violation, taking into account the duration of the violation, the proportion of subscribers exposed to the harm, and the extent of the direct or indirect damage caused by it.

As part of the policy of the Minister of Communications, Dr. Shlomo Karhi, to expand the deployment of advanced communications infrastructure, a precise formula was set in the update that will allow for the rapid execution of enforcement procedures in appropriate cases against companies that fail reception tests on roads. This step constitutes a complementary link to a series of measures led by the Ministry of Communications in the cellular field, including making thousands of public properties accessible for the establishment of cellular sites, among other things along central roads and railway tracks, the ongoing execution of test drives based on the ministry's new engineering methodology, and the publication at the beginning of the month for comments on the tightening being considered regarding the coverage obligations imposed on the companies.

The new sanction calculation formula on roads weighs the length of the road where the deviation was detected and the rate of deviation from the minimum required reception quality. A violating company will be allowed to correct the violation within 4 months, and if it fails to do so, a sanction will be imposed on it.

Alongside this, the ministry offers companies a new mechanism of an agreed decision that will allow them to reach a quick and agreed settlement, including a reduction of up to one-third in the amount of the financial sanction, conditional on the company's waiver of lengthy clarification procedures — with the aim of shortening bureaucratic procedures and bringing about savings in expensive enforcement resources, clarification, and administrative discussion in appropriate cases.

The main additional changes in the criteria include increased protection for vulnerable populations such as senior citizens, residents of the periphery, or people with disabilities through the possibility of imposing sanctions in higher amounts in cases of harm to them. In order to prevent a situation where the violation is profitable, the calculation of the economic benefit that accrued to the violator will also include expected future income from the violation and not just income already generated in the past. In addition, a minimum threshold for a sanction for non-transfer of information has been set, so that prevention, delay, or provision of partial information to the ministry will be classified as a serious or very serious violation, out of an understanding that harm to the regulator's ability to supervise and regulate indirectly harms the public as a whole and the ability to protect it.