United Kingdom Journals

John Angel and Ian Walden, Telecommunications Law Handbook, Blackstone Press London 1997, 987 pp, ISBN 1 85431595 1 Hb £75.

Reviewed by Cosmo Graham

Professor of Law
University of Hull
<C.Graham@law.hull.ac.uk>

Copyright © 1997 Cosmo Graham.
First Published in Web Journal of Current Legal Issues in association with Blackstone Press Ltd.

Telecommunications law is a relatively new phenomenon in the United Kingdom, dating from, at the earliest, the privatisation of BT through the Telecommunications Act 1984. So new was this branch of law that the Current Law version of the 1984 Act had no annotations! Since then interest in the area has grown, although it still remains a very minority specialism in the academic world. The authors of this handbook run one of the few courses in the country concerned with telecommunications law and the handbook presumably grows out of their materials pack.
The Handbook contains United Kingdom, European Community and some international material, all presented without annotation. Included in the United Kingdom material is a copy of the Telecommunications Act 1984, the Interception of Communications Act 1985 and the Outer Space Act 1986. There are also copies of the BT licence, the BT Interconnect agreement and various other generic licences. The EC material contains the relevant Directives, Decisions and other material on terminal equipment, telecommunications services, open network provision, satellites, competition, licensing and data protection. The international material includes bits from the Uruguay Round of GATT and extracts from the American Communications Act 1934 and Telecommunications Act 1996.

This is an invaluable collection of materials which should be purchased by anyone with a serious interest in telecommunications law. One of the problems in studying the area is the disparate range of materials and their constant amendment. It is exceptionally helpful to have the main texts available in one volume. In particular, it is almost worth the price of the volume to have a reasonably up to date copy of BT's licence, all one hundred and seventy odd pages of it, as this is the main regulatory instrument in the United Kingdom. Combine this with the other generic licences, an amended Telecommunications Act and the great mass of EC material and the book represents very good value.

Having said this I do have some quibbles but they are only minor ones. I am surprised that there is no space for Oftel's guidelines on how it will interpret and operate the Fair Trading Condition in BT's licence. Admittedly, these are on the World Wide Web (at http://www.oftel.gov.uk/publicat.htm) but they would have been a useful addition. By contrast, I am not entirely sure why certain parts of the Fair Trading Act 1973 and Competition Act 1980 were selected. The parts selected seem more general competition provisions than specifically telecommunications related and the space could have been usefully saved. Finally, this field is subject to rapid change and the book will need a second edition fairly soon. In the meantime, the authors invite readers to visit a Web site which supports their Telecommunications Law course, although without giving an address! This reader, on a cursory inspection, was unable to find the promised site.

These are minor points of criticism. To re-iterate, this is an invaluable reference book for anyone seriously interested in telecommunications law.