Bermuda’s telecoms regulator, the Regulatory Authority, has released its proposed 2022-23 Work Plan to solicit feedback. The Work Plan sets out the major activities that the RA intends to conduct during the upcoming fiscal year, 2022-23.

The Work Plan suggests that for the telecoms (electronic communication) space, the focus will be on monitoring existing frameworks and increasing fees across several licence categories.

Regulators providing a draft work plan are great for a few reasons:

• the work plans provide an opportunity to influence the regulator’s focus in the coming year by suggesting important matters that the regulator may have otherwise overlooked (or ignored!).
• As a licensee, it may give some indication of whether any of your licensed activities will come under scrutiny in the coming year.

From the perspective of licencees in the telecoms space, draft work plans, therefore, are a good opportunity to ensure one’s house is in order. Importantly too, it means licensees can budget for any steps it foresees being necessitated in response to upcoming activities of the regulator (for e.g., will you need to budget for an experienced professional to advocate on your behalf in respect of certain hot-button issues during consultations in the coming fiscal year? Will you need to re-engineer processes to account for regulatory changes in the pipeline?)

The Regulatory Authority will keep consultations on the draft Work Plan open until October 31, 2021. After this, any comments will be reviewed and replied to. Where, appropriate, adjustments will be made to the document before a final work plan is approved.

A copy of the released Work Plan is included below.