European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations

German seal.

The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT, acronym of its name in French Conférence européenne des administrations des postes et des télécommunications) is an international organization that brings together the entities responsible in the public administration of each European country for the policies and regulation of communications, both postal and telecommunications.

It was founded on June 26, 1959. At that time, communications were provided under a monopoly regime, almost always by a public entity that operated both postal and telecommunication services. They were the PTTs, Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Administrations (Poste, Télégraphe, Téléphone). The CEPT brought together these entities, which through it generated the rules that standardized the commercial, operational, regulatory and technical aspects of their activity. It aspired to unify the European position before the world organizations of reference, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU, ITU in English) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU).

With the liberalization of telecommunications, these CEPT activities largely lost their meaning. The separation of posts and telecommunications took it away from both the PTT and CEPT acronyms, and the privatization of operators and the opening of markets to free competition took it away from cooperation in commercial, operational or even technical aspects, since the new operators began to be potential competitors in their markets.

In 1988, CEPT transferred all standardization tasks to ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute). They stopped being carried out in a club of state operators, and passed to a standardization body more similar to that of other productive sectors.

And in 1992, the new European postal and telecommunications operators, already separated from each other, many of the telecommunications privatized, and open markets to competition, created their own harmonization forums: Post Europe for the mail, and ETNO (European Public Telecommunications Network Operators' Association, European Association of Operators of Public Telecommunications Networks) for telecommunications.

The CEPT then radically changed its objectives and its composition. It ceased to be a club of operators to become a forum for regulatory bodies and telecommunications policy. It currently brings together those who in each country set the legal standards, market regulation and communication policies. In September 1995, a plenary meeting defined the new objectives, which aim to harmonize at a European level the activities of those who standardize and regulate the market, just as they previously aspired to do with those who operated the networks and services.

The CEPT currently has 45 member countries, after incorporating those from the former socialist orbit around 1995.