MALTA Law and Practice Contributed by: Andrew J Zammit, James Bartolo and Nicholas Scerri, GVZH Advocates
the NIIS Directive, with an emphasis on ensuring system availability and resilience. 7.2 Service Agreements and Interconnection Agreements Telecommunications service providers in Malta operate in a highly competitive market. Compa - nies seeking to purchase retail telecommunica - tions services therefore stand to be in a relatively strong bargaining position which allows them to shop around and/or be able to negotiate pricing and services. In the retail space, the main elements to be included within service agreements are the fol - lowing. • Term of the agreement – retail customers should seek to negotiate short term agree - ments that would enable them to renegoti - ate on price, service levels and technology refresh. • Pricing – prices should be fixed. If that is unsuccessful, methodology for price modifi - cations should be specified. • SLAs – negotiating appropriate SLAs that are fit for purpose and will enable the individual customer’s needs is paramount. In particular, resolution time and service credits or pre- liquidated damages should accurately reflect the severity of the breach. • Scalability and volume discounts – if a customer increases the scope and scale of the services being purchased, the customer should be able to benefit from better tariffs. • Termination clauses – ensure that your contract clearly sets out one’s right to termi - nate the agreement where the service that is provided (or not as the case may be) does not meet the promised service or performance levels.
• Auto-renewal clauses – customers should seek to avoid such clauses as they serve to lock them in. • Force majeure – customers should ensure that this clause does not include any unrea - sonable excuse for the service provider to not provide the contracted services. When negotiating interconnection or access agreements, the party seeking interconnec - tion or access should in the first instance verify whether the other interconnection/access pro - vider is regulated, in which case it is likely that the MCA has imposed access and transparency obligations on that undertaking. In the event that such obligations exist, then the likelihood is that the interconnection/access provider is under an obligation to publish a reference interconnec - tion/access offer which, amongst other things, would typically include non-discriminatory and cost-based tariffs. 8. Trust Services and Digital Entities 8.1 Trust Services and Electronic Signatures/Digital Identity Schemes The eIDAS Regulation (Regulation (EC) 910/2014) (the “eIDAS Regulation”) permits citizens, enter - prises and public authorities to use electronic identification and trust services to access online services or handle electronic transactions. Through openness, security, technical neutral - ity, co-operation and interoperability, the eIDAS Regulation seeks to promote the efficient flow of trade throughout the EU. To uphold these ideals, the eIDAS Regulation ensures that individuals and organisations can access public services offered online in other EU nations using their own national electronic identification schemes (eIDs) and establishes a European internal mar -
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