Telecommunications Act
(TCA)

¹ The aim of this Act is to en­sure that a range of cost-ef­fect­ive, high qual­ity, and na­tion­ally and in­ter­na­tion­ally com­pet­it­ive tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices is avail­able to private in­di­vidu­als and the busi­ness com­munity.

² It shall in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

en­sure that a re­li­able uni­ver­sal ser­vice is provided, at af­ford­able prices, for all sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion in all parts of the coun­try;

b.

en­sure that tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions traffic is free from in­ter­fer­ence and re­spects per­son­al and in­cor­por­eal prop­erty rights;

c.

al­low ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion in the pro­vi­sion of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices;

d.⁴

pro­tect users of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices from un­fair ad­vert­ising and from ab­use as­so­ci­ated with value-ad­ded ser­vices;

e.⁵

pro­tect chil­dren and minors from the risks that arise from us­ing tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices.

This Act shall reg­u­late the trans­mis­sion of in­form­a­tion by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques, in­clud­ing the trans­mis­sion of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices, provided the Fed­er­al Act of 24 March 2006⁷ on Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion (RTVA) does not pre­scribe oth­er­wise.

In this Act:

a.

in­form­a­tion means signs, sig­nals, char­ac­ters, im­ages, sounds and any oth­er form of rep­res­ent­a­tion ad­dressed to hu­man or oth­er liv­ing be­ings or to ma­chines;

b.

tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vicemeans trans­mis­sion of in­form­a­tion for third parties by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques;

c.

trans­mis­sion by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques means send­ing or re­ceiv­ing of in­form­a­tion, by lines or ra­dio, by means of elec­tric­al, mag­net­ic or op­tic­al sig­nals or oth­er elec­tro­mag­net­ic sig­nals;

c^bis.⁸

pub­lic tele­phony ser­vice means a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice for the trans­mis­sion of speech in real time by means of one or more ad­dress­ing re­sources provided for this pur­pose in a na­tion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al num­ber­ing plan;

c^ter.⁹

value-ad­ded ser­vice means a ser­vice provided by means of a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice and charged to the cus­tom­ers by their tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider in ad­di­tion to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices;

d.

tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions means ap­par­at­us, lines or equip­ment in­ten­ded for the trans­mis­sion of in­form­a­tion by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques or used for that pur­pose;

d^bis. and d^ter.¹⁰

...

e.¹¹

in­ter­con­nec­tion means es­tab­lish­ment of ac­cess by the con­nec­tion of the in­stall­a­tions and ser­vices of two tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders, en­abling them to op­er­ate to­geth­er lo­gic­ally and in ac­cord­ance with tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques and al­low­ing ac­cess to the ser­vices of third parties;

e^bis.¹²

leased lines means pro­vi­sion of trans­par­ent trans­mis­sion ca­pa­cit­ies via point-to-point con­nec­tions;

e^ter.¹³

cable ducts means un­der­ground pipes in which lines for trans­mis­sion of in­form­a­tion by tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques are con­veyed, in­clud­ing the ac­cess shafts;

f.¹⁴

ad­dress­ing re­source means a se­quence of di­gits, let­ters, signs or oth­er in­form­a­tion that en­able the per­sons tak­ing part in a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions op­er­a­tion, as well as the com­puter pro­cesses, ma­chines, ap­par­at­us or tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions in­volved, to be iden­ti­fied;

g.¹⁵

dir­ect­ory data means in­form­a­tion that iden­ti­fies or des­ig­nates a cus­tom­er in re­la­tion to an in­di­vidu­ally as­signed ad­dress­ing ele­ment and which is used in or­der to pub­lish a dir­ect­ory or is re­quired for the pro­vi­sion of a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice;

h.¹⁶

ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vice means se­quence of pro­grammes as defined in Art­icle 2 RTVA¹⁷.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall sub­mit a re­port to the Fed­er­al As­sembly every three years on:

a.

the de­vel­op­ment of in­vest­ments made throughout Switzer­land;

b.

the de­vel­op­ment of the uni­ver­sal pro­vi­sion of ser­vices;

c.

the qual­ity and the prices of the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices on of­fer;

d.

the de­vel­op­ment of net­work com­pet­i­tion;

e.

the costs and grant­ing of ac­cess to the loc­al loop, ir­re­spect­ive of the tech­no­logy un­der­ly­ing these con­nec­tions.

² If re­quired, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall sub­mit pro­pos­als to the Fed­er­al As­sembly for pro­mot­ing ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion.

¹ The Fed­er­al Of­fice of Com­mu­nic­a­tions (OF­COM) shall re­gister tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders that use any of the fol­low­ing re­sources in­ten­ded for provid­ing tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices:

a.

ra­dio fre­quen­cies whose use re­quires a li­cence;

b.

ad­dress­ing re­sources that are man­aged at na­tion­al level.

² Re­gistered pro­viders may al­low oth­er tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders to use re­sources un­der para­graph 1 only if these oth­er pro­viders have re­gistered be­fore­hand.

³ OF­COM shall main­tain and pub­lish a list of re­gistered pro­viders and the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices that they of­fer.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tails of re­gis­tra­tion.

The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may, sub­ject to any in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions to the con­trary, pro­hib­it tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders or­gan­ised un­der for­eign law from us­ing ra­dio fre­quen­cies or ad­dress­ing re­sources un­der Art­icle 4 para­graph 1 un­less re­cip­roc­al rights are gran­ted.

Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders with a re­gistered of­fice or per­man­ent set­tle­ment in Switzer­land must:

a.

com­ply with the em­ploy­ment reg­u­la­tions and guar­an­tee the con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment cus­tom­ary in the in­dustry;

b.

of­fer an ap­pro­pri­ate num­ber of vo­ca­tion­al edu­ca­tion and train­ing places for ap­pren­tices.

Pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices must block the ac­cess to tele­phone and in­ter­net ser­vices for per­sons who have es­tab­lished a cus­tom­er re­la­tion­ship that is not based on a sub­scrip­tion where these per­sons on es­tab­lish­ing the cus­tom­er re­la­tion­ship:

a.

have used the iden­tity of a per­son who does not ex­ist or who has not pre­vi­ously con­sen­ted to es­tab­lish­ing the cus­tom­er re­la­tion­ship; or

b.

has failed to provide a doc­u­ment that meets the re­quire­ments im­posed by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil un­der Art­icle 23 para­graph 1 of the Fed­er­al Act of 18 March 2016²³ on the Sur­veil­lance of Postal and Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions Traffic.

¹ Pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices that have a dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion in the mar­ket must provide ac­cess to oth­er pro­viders in a trans­par­ent and non-dis­crim­in­at­ory man­ner at cost-ori­ented prices in the fol­low­ing forms to their fa­cil­it­ies and ser­vices:²⁶

a.²⁷

fully un­bundled ac­cess to the loc­al loop in or­der to use the en­tire fre­quency spec­trum of the twis­ted pair metal­lic line;

b. and c.²⁸

...

d.

in­ter­con­nec­tion;

e.

leased lines;

f.

ac­cess to cable ducts, provided these have suf­fi­cient ca­pa­city.

² They shall dis­close the con­di­tions and prices for their in­di­vidu­al ac­cess ser­vices sep­ar­ately.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the de­tails.

⁴ Pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices shall provide OF­COM²⁹ with a copy of their ac­cess agree­ment. Un­less there is some over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terest not to do so, OF­COM shall al­low agree­ments to be con­sul­ted.

⁵ There is no ob­lig­a­tion to guar­an­tee ac­cess in re­la­tion to the broad­cast­ing of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices.

¹ If pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices do not agree with­in three months on the ac­cess con­di­tions, the Fed­er­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Com­mis­sion (Com­Com) shall de­cide at the re­quest of one party and based on the pro­pos­al made by OF­COM.³¹ It shall take par­tic­u­lar ac­count of the con­di­tions which pro­mote ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion, as well as the ef­fects of its de­cision on com­pet­ing com­pan­ies. It may ac­cord in­ter­im leg­al pro­tec­tion.

² If the ques­tion of dom­in­ance in the mar­ket must be as­sessed, OF­COM shall con­sult the Com­pet­i­tion Com­mis­sion. The lat­ter may pub­lish its po­s­i­tion.

³ Com­Com³² shall de­cide with­in sev­en months of re­ceipt of the re­quest.

⁴ It shall reg­u­late the type and form of ac­count­ing and fin­an­cial in­form­a­tion which dom­in­ant pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices must sub­mit in the pro­ced­ure in ac­cord­ance with para. 1.

Dis­putes arising from agree­ments and de­cisions re­gard­ing ac­cess shall be judged by the civil courts.

¹ Dom­in­ant pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices may bundle their ser­vices, provided they also of­fer the ser­vices in­cluded in the bundle in­di­vidu­ally.

² Ser­vices need not be offered in­di­vidu­ally if they can only be offered in the bundle for tech­nic­al, eco­nom­ic, qual­ity or se­cur­ity reas­ons.

³ If a pro­vider of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices bundles its own ser­vices with ser­vices of a third party un­der­tak­ing which this pro­vider con­trols or is con­trolled by, para­graphs 1 and 2 ap­ply.

¹ The tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders must guar­an­tee that their prices are trans­par­ent to their cus­tom­ers.

²They shall in­form the pub­lic con­cern­ing the qual­ity of the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices that they provide.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the in­form­a­tion that the pro­viders must pub­lish.

⁴ OF­COM may in­form the pub­lic about the vari­ous tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices offered by the pro­viders.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue reg­u­la­tions on in­ter­na­tion­al roam­ing in or­der to avoid un­reas­on­ably high end cus­tom­er tar­iffs, and may take meas­ures to en­cour­age com­pet­i­tion. It may in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

is­sue reg­u­la­tions on billing pro­ced­ures;

b.

re­quire mo­bile tele­phony pro­viders to al­low their cus­tom­ers to use the roam­ing ser­vices of third-party pro­viders when abroad;

c.

fix price lim­its based on in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments;

d.

re­quire mo­bile tele­phony pro­viders to of­fer bundled ser­vices in­clud­ing roam­ing ser­vices as well as op­tions that al­low the use of roam­ing ser­vices at fixed prices or re­duced stand­ard prices.

² OF­COM shall con­duct mar­ket mon­it­or­ing pro­ced­ures and ana­lyse tech­nic­al and price-re­lated de­vel­op­ments. In do­ing so, it shall rely in par­tic­u­lar on the in­form­a­tion ob­tained from pro­viders un­der Art­icle 59 para­graph 1 and shall work with the Price Su­per­visor.

To pre­vent ab­uses, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late value-ad­ded ser­vices by tak­ing the fol­low­ing meas­ures in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

fix­ing price lim­its;

b.

is­su­ing reg­u­la­tions on the re­cog­nis­ab­il­ity of value-ad­ded ser­vices;

c.

fix­ing the amounts above which a charge may only be made with the ex­press con­sent of the users;

d.

sub­ject to com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions, re­quir­ing that pro­viders of value-ad­ded ser­vices have their re­gistered of­fice or a per­man­ent set­tle­ment in Switzer­land.

If a cus­tom­er dis­putes an in­voice from their tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider for ser­vices oth­er than tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices, the pro­vider is not per­mit­ted for this reas­on to block ac­cess to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices nor to ter­min­ate the con­tract be­fore the dis­pute is settled.

¹ OF­COM shall es­tab­lish a dis­pute res­ol­u­tion ser­vice or shall en­trust this to third parties. In the event of dis­putes between cus­tom­ers and pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices or value-ad­ded ser­vices, either party may in­voke the ser­vice.

² The party in­vok­ing the dis­pute res­ol­u­tion ser­vice shall pay a hand­ling fee. The pro­vider of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices or value-ad­ded ser­vices shall bear the costs of the pro­ced­ure minus the hand­ling fee.

³ The parties are not bound by the dis­pute res­ol­u­tion de­cision.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the de­tails.

¹ Cus­tom­ers of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices shall have the op­tion of hav­ing their de­tails re­cor­ded in the pub­lic dir­ect­or­ies. They may with­in the lim­its set un­der para­graph 2 de­cide which dir­ect­ory data per­tain­ing to them may be pub­lished.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may spe­cify which data a dir­ect­ory entry must in­clude as a min­im­um. It may reg­u­late the de­tails of pub­lic­a­tion and the use of the data.

¹ The pro­viders of in­ter­net ac­cess shall trans­mit in­form­a­tion without mak­ing any tech­nic­al or com­mer­cial dis­tinc­tion between senders, re­cip­i­ents, con­tent, ser­vices, ser­vice classes, pro­to­cols, ap­plic­a­tions, pro­grammes or ter­min­als.

² They may trans­mit in­form­a­tion by dif­fer­ent meth­ods if this is re­quired in or­der to:

a.

com­ply with a stat­utory re­quire­ment or court de­cision;

b.

guar­an­tee the in­teg­rity or se­cur­ity of the net­work, the ser­vices provided on this net­work or the ter­min­als con­nec­ted to it;

c.

com­ply with an ex­press re­quest from the cus­tom­er; or

d.

over­come tem­por­ary and ex­cep­tion­al net­work con­ges­tion; in do­ing so, equi­val­ent forms of data traffic shall be treated equally.

³ In ad­di­tion to in­ter­net ac­cess, they may of­fer oth­er ser­vices via the same con­nec­tion which must be op­tim­ised for spe­cif­ic con­tent, ap­plic­a­tions or ser­vices in or­der to meet the qual­ity re­quire­ments of cus­tom­ers. These oth­er ser­vices must not be us­able or offered as a sub­sti­tute for in­ter­net ac­cess ser­vices, and they must not de­grade the qual­ity of in­ter­net ac­cess ser­vices.

⁴ If they handle in­form­a­tion in a dif­fer­ent tech­nic­al or eco­nom­ic man­ner dur­ing trans­mis­sion, they must in­form their cus­tom­ers and the pub­lic of this.

¹ Un­less there is an over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terest in not do­ing so, OF­COM shall on re­quest provide the name and ad­dress of the pro­vider of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices or value-ad­ded ser­vices, and in­form­a­tion on the ser­vices provided by it and any ad­min­is­trat­ive or crim­in­al pro­sec­u­tions and pen­al­ties.

² It may pub­lish this in­form­a­tion and make it ac­cess­ible on­line if there is a pub­lic in­terest.

³ Only in the case of over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terest may it provide in­form­a­tion on on­go­ing ad­min­is­trat­ive or crim­in­al pro­sec­u­tions, pub­lish that in­form­a­tion or make it ac­cess­ible on­line.

¹ The Com­mis­sion and the Fed­er­al Of­fice may pro­cess per­son­al data, in­clud­ing data con­cern­ing ad­min­is­trat­ive or crim­in­al pro­sec­u­tions and sanc­tions, provided that this is in­dis­pens­able for the ful­fil­ment of their tasks un­der the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions le­gis­la­tion.⁴⁴ They may use an in­form­a­tion sys­tem for this pur­pose.

² They shall take the tech­nic­al and or­gan­isa­tion­al meas­ures ne­ces­sary for data pro­tec­tion and se­cur­ity dur­ing pro­cessing, and in par­tic­u­lar dur­ing trans­mis­sion.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue com­ple­ment­ary pro­vi­sions, namely con­cern­ing the or­gan­isa­tion and op­er­a­tion of the in­form­a­tion sys­tem, the cat­egor­ies of the data to be pro­cessed, ac­cess and pro­cessing au­thor­isa­tions, the term of con­ser­va­tion as well as the archiv­ing and de­struc­tion of data.

¹ Com­Com and OF­COM shall provide to oth­er Swiss au­thor­it­ies data which these au­thor­it­ies need in or­der to ful­fil their leg­al du­ties. This data also in­cludes sens­it­ive data ob­tained in ad­min­is­trat­ive or ad­min­is­trat­ive crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings.⁴⁶ The data shall be made ac­cess­ible in­di­vidu­ally, in lists or on elec­tron­ic me­dia.

² Sub­ject to in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments to the con­trary, the Com­mis­sion and the Fed­er­al Of­fice may only trans­fer data to for­eign sur­veil­lance au­thor­it­ies in the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions sec­tor, in­clud­ing sens­it­ive per­son­al data ob­tained in ad­min­is­trat­ive or ad­min­is­trat­ive crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings, if these au­thor­it­ies:⁴⁷

a.

use such data ex­clus­ively to con­duct sur­veil­lance of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders or for pur­poses of mar­ket sur­veil­lance;

b.

are bound by of­fi­cial or pro­fes­sion­al secrecy; and

c.

for­ward this data to com­pet­ent au­thor­it­ies and bod­ies which are en­trus­ted with sur­veil­lance tasks in the pub­lic in­terest only with the pri­or con­sent of Com­Com or OF­COM or on the basis of a gen­er­al au­thor­isa­tion in a treaty.

³ Com­Com and OF­COM shall not for­ward data to for­eign pro­sec­ut­ing au­thor­it­ies if leg­al as­sist­ance is ex­cluded in crim­in­al mat­ters. Com­Com or OF­COM shall de­cide in agree­ment with the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Justice.

⁴ Swiss au­thor­it­ies shall for­ward to the Com­mis­sion and the Fed­er­al Of­fice without charge such data as may be im­port­ant for the en­force­ment of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions le­gis­la­tion, in­clud­ing sens­it­ive per­son­al data.⁴⁸ The data shall be made ac­cess­ible in­di­vidu­ally, in lists or on elec­tron­ic me­dia.

¹ Com­Com shall en­sure that the uni­ver­sal ser­vice is guar­an­teed for all sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion inall parts of the coun­try. To this end, it shall peri­od­ic­ally grant one or more uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­cences.

² The li­cenceshall be tied to the con­di­tion that all or spe­cif­ic ser­vices of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice (Art. 16) are provided to all sec­tors of the pop­u­la­tion with­in the area covered by the li­cence.

³ An in­vit­a­tion to tender shall be is­sued for the grant­ing of the li­cence. The pro­ced­ure shall be con­duc­ted in ac­cord­ance with the prin­ciples of ob­jectiv­ity, non-dis­crim­in­a­tion and trans­par­ency. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the de­tails. The law on pub­lic pro­cure­ment does not ap­ply.⁵¹

⁴ If it is clear in ad­vance that the in­vit­a­tion to tender can­not pro­ceed un­der con­di­tions of com­pet­i­tion, or if it does not pro­duce any suit­able can­did­ates, Com­Com may ap­point one or more pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices to guar­an­tee the uni­ver­sal ser­vice.

⁵ Li­cences are gen­er­ally lim­ited to the same term.

Any per­son wish­ing to ob­tain a uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­cence must:

a.

have the ne­ces­sary tech­nic­al ca­pa­cit­ies;

b.⁵²

fur­nish con­vin­cing proof that the ser­vice can be offered, par­tic­u­larly with re­gard to fin­ance, and the ser­vice op­er­ated for the en­tire dur­a­tion of the li­cence, and state what fin­an­cial com­pens­a­tion, in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 19, will be re­quired;

c.

un­der­take to com­ply with the ap­plic­able le­gis­la­tion, in par­tic­u­lar this Act and its im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions, and the li­cence con­di­tions;

d.⁵³

un­der­take to com­ply with em­ploy­ment le­gis­la­tion and to guar­an­tee the work­ing con­di­tions that are cus­tom­ary in the sec­tor.

¹ The uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­censee shall provide one or more of the fol­low­ing ser­vices to meet de­mand in the area covered by the li­cence, in ac­cord­ance with the state of the art:⁵⁵

a.⁵⁶

a pub­lic tele­phone ser­vice, i.e. trans­mis­sion of speech in real time by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques, in­clud­ing trans­mis­sion of data em­ploy­ing trans­fer rates com­pat­ible with the chan­nels for trans­mit­ting speech, as well as the con­nec­tion and ad­di­tion­al ser­vices;

b.

ac­cess to emer­gency call ser­vices;

c.

pub­lic pay tele­phones in suf­fi­cient num­bers;

d.⁵⁷

ac­cess to the Swiss dir­ect­or­ies of sub­scribers to the pub­lic tele­phone ser­vice; the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­quire a uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­censee to main­tain a dir­ect­ory of all cus­tom­ers of ser­vices of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice (gen­er­al dir­ect­ory);

e.⁵⁸

…⁵⁹

^1bis Ser­vices of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice must be en­sured in such a way that per­sons with dis­ab­il­it­ies are offered com­par­able terms and con­di­tions with re­spect to qual­ity, quant­ity and prices as those without dis­ab­il­it­ies. In this re­spect the uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­censee must en­sure in par­tic­u­lar that:

a.

pub­lic call boxes meet the re­quire­ments of the sens­ory im­paired and those with re­duced mo­bil­ity;

b.

a re­lay ser­vice is provided for the hear­ing im­paired;

c.

a dir­ect­ory en­quiry and op­er­at­or ser­vice is provided for the visu­ally im­paired.⁶⁰

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall fix the de­tailed rules for im­ple­ment­a­tion. It may lay down spe­cial pro­vi­sions for con­nec­tions out­side built-up areas. It may del­eg­ate its powers in this re­gard to the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of the En­vir­on­ment, Trans­port, En­ergy and Com­mu­nic­a­tions (DE­TEC).⁶¹

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall peri­od­ic­ally ad­apt the con­tent of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice in ac­cord­ance with the state of the art and so­cial and eco­nom­ic re­quire­ments.

¹ Ser­vices of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice must be of a cer­tain qual­ity throughout the coun­try. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­cide the qual­ity cri­ter­ia.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall en­deav­our to en­sure that charges do not de­pend on dis­tance. It shall peri­od­ic­ally fix up­per lim­its for the prices of the ser­vices of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice. These up­per lim­its shall ap­ply uni­formly over the whole area and shall be de­term­ined by the de­vel­op­ment of the mar­ket.

¹ If it is clear be­fore the grant­ing of the li­cence that, even with ef­fi­cient man­age­ment, it will not be pos­sible to cov­er the costs of pro­vi­sion of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice in a giv­en area, the li­censee shall be en­titled to fin­an­cial com­pens­a­tion.

² Any li­censee in re­ceipt of fin­an­cial com­pens­a­tion must present all the in­form­a­tion re­quired for cost eval­u­ation and cost con­trol, in par­tic­u­lar the ac­count­ing and fin­ance in­form­a­tion, to OF­COM each year.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil reg­u­lates the de­tails.

¹ The li­cence may only be wholly or partly trans­ferred to a third party with Com­Com’s ap­prov­al.

² Art­icle 24e ap­plies to the amend­ment of the li­cence.

Un­less there is some over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terest not to do so, OF­COM shall pub­lish the name and ad­dress of the li­censee, the sub­ject of the li­cence and the rights and ob­lig­a­tions de­riv­ing from the li­cence.

¹ The tele­phone ser­vice pro­viders must of­fer a ser­vice that en­ables users to con­tact the ap­pro­pri­ate emer­gency call centre in the event of danger to life and limb, health or prop­erty (emer­gency call ser­vice).

² They must guar­an­tee rout­ing and loc­a­tion iden­ti­fic­a­tion for emer­gency calls. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may, after weigh­ing-up the in­terests of pub­lic and the pro­viders and tak­ing ac­count of tech­nic­al de­vel­op­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al har­mon­isa­tion, spe­cify ex­cep­tions and per­mit the use of the po­s­i­tion­ing func­tions of ter­min­als even without the ex­press con­sent of the user.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the ob­lig­a­tion provide the emer­gency ser­vice to oth­er tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices that are pub­licly ac­cess­ible and widely used.

¹ The tele­phone ser­vice pro­viders shall col­lect and up­date the dir­ect­ory data of their cus­tom­ers. In do­ing so, the fol­low­ing ap­plies:

a.

The tele­phone ser­vice pro­viders are not re­quired to check the ac­cur­acy of the data.

b.

They must en­sure that the data cor­res­ponds to the in­form­a­tion provided by the cus­tom­ers.

c.

They may re­fuse to in­clude in­form­a­tion in the dir­ect­ory data that is ob­vi­ously in­cor­rect or that serves an un­law­ful pur­pose; they may re­move such in­form­a­tion from the dir­ect­ory data.

² They shall al­low oth­er pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices or of ser­vices which are based on dir­ect­ory data to ac­cess the min­im­um con­tent of the dir­ect­ory data per­tain­ing to their cus­tom­ers; they shall make the data elec­tron­ic­ally ac­cess­ible to them.

³ They shall grant ac­cess to the data in a trans­par­ent and non-dis­crim­in­at­ory man­ner at prices based on the costs of provid­ing the dir­ect­ory data. In do­ing so, they shall take ac­count of in­ter­na­tion­al tech­nic­al stand­ards. In the event of any dis­pute, Art­icles 11a and 11b ap­ply by ana­logy.

⁴ The pro­viders of ser­vices based on the dir­ect­ory data must safe­guard the in­teg­rity of the data. They may only modi­fy the data with the con­sent of the tele­phone ser­vice pro­vider re­spons­ible for col­lect­ing the data. They must modi­fy or de­lete the data ac­cord­ing to the changes sent by the tele­phone ser­vice pro­viders. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue reg­u­la­tions on the pro­cessing of dir­ect­ory data.

⁵ The tele­phone ser­vice pro­viders may del­eg­ate the ful­fil­ment of their ob­lig­a­tions to third parties.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the ap­plic­a­tion of the pro­vi­sions of this Art­icle to oth­er tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices that are pub­licly ac­cess­ible and widely used.

¹ Tele­phone ser­vice pro­viders must en­sure that all users can com­mu­nic­ate with each oth­er (in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity).⁷⁰

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­tend the ob­lig­a­tion un­der para­graph 1 to oth­er tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices that are pub­licly ac­cess­ible and widely used.⁷¹ It may pre­scribe in­ter­faces for ac­cess to the ser­vice in ac­cord­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards. OF­COM shall is­sue the re­quired tech­nic­al and ad­min­is­trat­ive reg­u­la­tions.

³ Pro­viders re­quired to guar­an­tee in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity must also of­fer in­ter­con­nec­tion even if they are not dom­in­ant in the mar­ket. Art­icles 11a para­graphs 1 and 3 and 11b ap­ply by ana­logy to dis­putes re­gard­ing the con­di­tions for in­ter­con­nec­tion.⁷² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may im­pose fur­ther ob­lig­a­tions on pro­viders who are ob­liged to provide in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity.

¹ The ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions fre­quency spec­trum may be freely used sub­ject to com­pli­ance with the reg­u­la­tions on use.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may provide that the use of cer­tain fre­quen­cies is only per­mit­ted:

a.

with a li­cence from OF­COM or, in the cases un­der Art­icle 22a, Com­Com;

b.

after giv­ing no­tice to OF­COM;

c.

with a pro­fi­ciency cer­ti­fic­ate.

³ It shall im­pose re­stric­tions un­der para­graph 2 solely:

a.

to avoid ra­dio in­ter­fer­ence;

b.

to guar­an­tee the tech­nic­al qual­ity of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices and oth­er ra­dio ap­plic­a­tions;

c.

to guar­an­tee ef­fi­cient use of the ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions fre­quency spec­trum; or

d.

in cases in which oth­er le­gis­la­tion or in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies provide that the fre­quency spec­trum may only be used with the ap­prov­al of the re­spons­ible au­thor­ity.

⁴ In the case of fre­quency bands the al­loc­a­tion of which is the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the armed forces or civil de­fence in ac­cord­ance with the na­tion­al fre­quency al­loc­a­tion plan, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall not im­pose any re­stric­tions in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2.

⁵ It shall spe­cify the reg­u­la­tions on use and the re­quire­ments for grant­ing pro­fi­ciency cer­ti­fic­ates.

¹ Com­Com shall is­sue the li­cences for us­ing the ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions fre­quency spec­trum re­quired to provide tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices.

² If it is an­ti­cip­ated that there will be a short­age of fre­quen­cies, it shall nor­mally con­duct a pub­lic ten­der­ing pro­cess.

³ It may del­eg­ate to OF­COM the power to grant ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences for which no short­age of fre­quen­cies un­der para­graph 2 ex­ists or is an­ti­cip­ated in spe­cif­ic cases or in gen­er­al for en­tire fre­quency bands.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the prin­ciples for grant­ing ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences that are wholly or partly in­ten­ded for the broad­cast­ing of ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices.

¹ Any per­son wish­ing to ob­tain a ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cence must:

a.⁷⁶

have the ne­ces­sary tech­nic­al ca­pa­cit­ies and, in­so­far as re­quired for us­ing the rel­ev­ant fre­quen­cies (Art. 22 para. 2 let. c), hold the rel­ev­ant pro­fi­ciency cer­ti­fic­ate;

b.⁷⁷

un­der­take to com­ply with the ap­plic­able le­gis­la­tion, in par­tic­u­lar this Act, the RTVA⁷⁸, their im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions, and the li­cence con­di­tions.

² Sub­ject to any in­ter­na­tion­al ob­lig­a­tions to the con­trary, the li­cens­ing au­thor­ity may re­fuse to grant a li­cence to un­der­tak­ings in­cor­por­ated un­der for­eign law un­less re­cip­roc­al rights are gran­ted.

³ A li­cence shall be gran­ted only if, hav­ing re­gard to the na­tion­al fre­quency al­loc­a­tion plan, enough fre­quen­cies are avail­able.

⁴ The grant­ing of a ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cence must not elim­in­ate or con­sti­tute a ser­i­ous obstacle to ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion un­less an ex­cep­tion can be jus­ti­fied on grounds of eco­nom­ic ef­fi­ciency. Where the is­sue of the elim­in­a­tion or ser­i­ous re­stric­tion of ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion must be as­sessed, the li­cens­ing au­thor­ity shall con­sult the Com­pet­i­tion Com­mis­sion.⁷⁹

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the pro­ced­ure for grant­ing ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences. It shall be con­duc­ted in ac­cord­ance with the prin­ciples of ob­jectiv­ity, non-dis­crim­in­a­tion and trans­par­ency. All in­form­a­tion provided by ap­plic­ants shall be treated as con­fid­en­tial.

² The pub­lic law on pub­lic pro­cure­ment does not ap­ply.

³ For the first-in­stance pro­ced­ure con­cern­ing the pub­lic ten­der­ing pro­cess and for the ap­peals pro­ced­ure, in par­tic­u­lar with re­gard to eval­u­ation of the sub­mis­sions and in or­der to guar­an­tee com­mer­cial secrecy, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may de­vi­ate from the fol­low­ing pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Act of 20 Decem­ber 1968⁸¹ on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Pro­ced­ure (APA):

a.

de­term­in­a­tion of the cir­cum­stances (Art. 12 APA);

b.

co-op­er­a­tion of the parties (Art. 13 APA);

c.

in­spec­tion of doc­u­ments (Art. 26-28 APA);

d.

right to a hear­ing (Art. 30 and 31 APA);

e.

no­ti­fic­a­tion and jus­ti­fic­a­tion of de­cisions (Art. 34 and 35 APA).

⁴ In the pro­ced­ure con­cern­ing the pub­lic ten­der­ing pro­cess, in­ter­im de­cisions are not in them­selves con­test­able by means of ap­peal.

If no li­cens­ing reg­u­la­tions ex­ist for spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances re­quir­ing a li­cence, the li­cens­ing au­thor­ity shall define these on a case-by-case basis.

The li­cence is gran­ted for a spe­cif­ic peri­od of time. The li­cens­ing au­thor­ity shall de­term­ine the term ac­cord­ing to the type and im­port­ance of the li­cence.

¹ Li­cences are wholly or partly trans­fer­able.

² Trans­fers are only per­mit­ted with pri­or con­sent of the li­cens­ing au­thor­ity. Con­sent may only be re­fused if:

a.

the li­cence re­quire­ments un­der Art­icle 23 are not com­plied with; or

b.

the ef­fi­cient use of fre­quen­cies free from in­ter­fer­ence is not guar­an­teed.

³ The li­cens­ing au­thor­ity may per­mit ex­cep­tions from the re­quire­ment of con­sent for in­di­vidu­al fre­quency bands if it is an­ti­cip­ated that the ef­fi­cient use of fre­quen­cies free from in­ter­fer­ence will be guar­an­teed and if ef­fect­ive com­pet­i­tion is neither elim­in­ated nor ser­i­ously re­stric­ted. Ad­vance no­tice must be giv­en to the li­cens­ing au­thor­ity of trans­fers that do not re­quire con­sent.

⁴ If the li­cence has been gran­ted by Com­Com, para­graph 2 ap­plies by ana­logy to the eco­nom­ic trans­fer of the li­cence. An eco­nom­ic trans­fer oc­curs when a com­pany has taken over con­trol of the li­censee in ac­cord­ance with the law on car­tels.

⁵ Where hold­ers of li­cences gran­ted by Com­Com make joint use of com­pon­ents of ra­dio com­mu­nic­a­tions net­works, they must give ad­vance no­tice of this to Com­Com. The joint use of fre­quen­cies re­quires con­sent un­der para­graph 2.

¹ The li­cens­ing au­thor­ity may amend or re­voke the li­cence due to changes in ac­tu­al or leg­al con­di­tions if the amend­ment or re­voc­a­tion is ne­ces­sary to guar­an­tee im­port­ant pub­lic in­terests.

² The li­censee shall be ap­pro­pri­ately com­pensated if the trans­ferred rights are re­voked or sub­stan­tially re­duced.

¹ Provided there are no over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terests, OF­COM shall provide the name and ad­dress of the li­censee, and in­form­a­tion on the sub­ject of the li­cence, the rights and ob­lig­a­tions at­tached to the li­cence, the fre­quency as­sign­ments and the trans­mit­ter loc­a­tions.⁸⁸

² It may pub­lish this in­form­a­tion and make it ac­cess­ible on­line if there is a pub­lic in­terest.

¹ OF­COM shall man­age the fre­quency spec­trum and the Swiss util­isa­tion rights and or­bit­al po­s­i­tions of satel­lites in ac­cord­ance with the rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments. It shall take ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures to en­sure that these re­sources are used ef­fi­ciently and without in­ter­fer­ence and to provide equit­able ac­cess to them on the basis of the na­tion­al fre­quency al­loc­a­tion plan.

^1bis It shall is­sue the na­tion­al fre­quency al­loc­a­tion plan. In do­ing so, it shall take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­count of the fre­quency re­quire­ments for armed forces and civil pro­tec­tion op­er­a­tions; it shall work with the re­spons­ible armed forces of­fice.⁸⁹

² The na­tion­al fre­quency al­loc­a­tion plan is sub­ject to ap­prov­al by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.⁹⁰

³ In the event of a mo­bil­isa­tion of troops, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may al­loc­ate the armed forces ad­di­tion­al free or already li­censed fre­quen­cies for the dur­a­tion of op­er­a­tions.⁹¹

¹ OF­COM shall mon­it­or the fre­quency spec­trum for plan­ning and sur­veil­lance pur­poses.

² It shall carry out these checks alone or in co-op­er­a­tion with oth­er au­thor­it­ies. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall fix the de­tailed rules for such co-op­er­a­tion.

³ OF­COM may in­ter­cept or re­cord ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions traffic if this is ne­ces­sary to en­sure that tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions and broad­cast­ing are free from in­ter­fer­ence and if oth­er meas­ures have proved in­ef­fect­ive or en­tail un­reas­on­able ex­pendit­ure.

⁴ Any data that is re­cor­ded may be used only to de­term­ine the cause of the in­ter­fer­ence or identi­fy the per­son or per­sons re­spons­ible for it.

⁵ If there is reas­on to sus­pect that an of­fence has been com­mit­ted that is pun­ish­able un­der this Act, any re­cord­ings that may con­sti­tute evid­ence shall be passed to the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity. Any oth­er re­cord­ing must be des­troyed im­me­di­ately.

Art­icles 13a and 13b con­cern­ing pro­cessing of data and ad­min­is­trat­ive as­sist­ance shall ap­ply.

¹ OF­COM shall man­age the ad­dress­ing re­sources that must be man­aged at na­tion­al level. It shall en­sure that suf­fi­cient ad­dress­ing re­sources are avail­able; in do­ing so it shall take ac­count of tech­nic­al de­vel­op­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al har­mon­isa­tion.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify which ad­dress­ing re­sources OF­COM must man­age.

³ It may pre­scribe a man­dat­ory al­tern­at­ive dis­pute res­ol­u­tion pro­ced­ure between the hold­ers of ad­dress­ing re­sources and third parties. It shall reg­u­late the pro­ced­ure, its con­sequences and its ef­fects on the pro­ced­ure un­der civil law, par­tic­u­larly the sus­pen­sion of the peri­od of lim­it­a­tion and the bur­den of proof. The right of hold­ers of ad­dress­ing re­sources and third parties to bring civil ac­tions is re­served.

⁴ No one has the right to a spe­cif­ic ad­dress­ing re­source. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may per­mit ex­cep­tions.

⁵ Pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices shall en­sure num­ber port­ab­il­ity.

⁶ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall is­sue reg­u­la­tions on the man­age­ment of ad­dress­ing re­sources, and in par­tic­u­lar on:

a.

their al­loc­a­tion, use, block­ing, trans­fer and with­draw­al;

b.

the is­su­ing of num­ber­ing plans;

c.

the del­eg­a­tion of man­age­ment to third parties, the ter­min­a­tion of the del­eg­ated activ­ity and the su­per­vi­sion of the same;

d.

sub-al­loc­a­tion;

e.

num­ber port­ab­il­ity.

¹ OF­COM may in spe­cial cases del­eg­ate the man­age­ment of cer­tain ad­dress­ing re­sources to third parties.

² It shall se­lect the third parties based on a tender or in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure. If there is good cause, it shall ap­point them dir­ectly.

³ If the tender or in­vit­a­tion pro­ced­ure does not res­ult in any suit­able ap­plic­a­tions or if the del­eg­ated parties can no longer ful­fil their ob­lig­a­tions, OF­COM may re­quire third parties to carry out the task. These third parties may charge prices for their activ­it­ies that cov­er the rel­ev­ant costs and al­low an ap­pro­pri­ate profit to be made.

⁴ Art­icle 24 ap­plies by ana­logy to the se­lec­tion pro­cess.

This Act ap­plies to the fol­low­ing in­ter­net do­mains:

a.

the coun­try-spe­cif­ic do­main «.ch» and, in­so­far as the man­age­ment of the do­main is the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the Con­fed­er­a­tion, all oth­er in­ter­net do­mains that des­ig­nate Switzer­land al­pha­nu­mer­ic­ally, in­clud­ing trans­pos­i­tions in oth­er al­pha­bets or graph­ic­al sys­tems;

b.

gen­er­ic do­mains, if Swiss pub­lic cor­por­a­tions are re­spons­ible for their man­age­ment;

c.

gen­er­ic do­mains, if per­sons res­id­ent or with re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land are re­spons­ible for their man­age­ment;

d.

gen­er­ic do­mains which, be­cause of their name, are of par­tic­u­lar polit­ic­al, cul­tur­al, geo­graph­ic­al or re­li­gious sig­ni­fic­ance for Switzer­land.

¹ OF­COM shall man­age in­ter­net do­mains if the Con­fed­er­a­tion is re­spons­ible for their man­age­ment.

² It may provide com­mer­cial ser­vices to third parties provided this is ne­ces­sary for man­aging do­main names and the re­quire­ments of Art­icle 41a para­graphs 2 and 3 of the Fin­an­cial Budget Act of 7 Oc­to­ber 2005⁹⁷ are met.

The man­age­ment of in­ter­net do­mains and their sub­or­din­ate do­main names is gov­erned by the fol­low­ing prin­ciples:

a.

The se­cur­ity and avail­ab­il­ity of the in­fra­struc­ture and the ser­vices re­quired for the do­main name sys­tem to func­tion are guar­an­teed.

b.

The in­ter­net do­mains are man­aged in a trans­par­ent and non-dis­crim­in­at­ory man­ner if they are the re­spons­ib­il­ity of pub­lic cor­por­a­tions.

c.

The pro­pri­et­ors of and ap­plic­ants for do­main names are pro­tec­ted from the mis­use of their per­son­al data.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the mod­al­it­ies for man­aging in­ter­net do­mains and their sub­or­din­ate do­main names; in do­ing so, it shall take ac­count of the rules ap­plied in­ter­na­tion­ally. It may in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

lay down the con­di­tions for the al­loc­a­tion, use, block­ing, trans­fer and with­draw­al of do­main names that are sub­or­din­ate to the do­mains that are the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the Con­fed­er­a­tion;

b.

reg­u­late the pro­cessing of per­son­al data in con­nec­tion with do­mains that fall with­in the scope of this Act, in­clud­ing the pro­vi­sion of a pub­licly ac­cess­ible data­base that guar­an­tees every­one ac­cess to in­form­a­tion about the pro­pri­et­ors of do­main names;

c.

provide for meas­ures that pre­vent the un­law­ful use of do­main names or the use of do­main names that is con­trary to pub­lic or­der, and reg­u­late co­oper­a­tion with spe­cial­ised private or pub­lic bod­ies in this sec­tor;

d.

de­term­ine the in­sti­tu­tion­al, func­tion­al and op­er­a­tion­al or­gan­isa­tion of the do­mains that are the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the Con­fed­er­a­tion;

e.

reg­u­late the man­age­ment of do­mains for which pub­lic cor­por­a­tions oth­er than the Con­fed­er­a­tion or private in­di­vidu­als res­id­ent in Switzer­land are re­spons­ible;

f.

is­sue pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to gen­er­ic do­mains of par­tic­u­lar polit­ic­al, cul­tur­al, geo­graph­ic­al or re­li­gious sig­ni­fic­ance, provided this is ne­ces­sary in or­der to safe­guard Switzer­land’s in­terests.

Any hold­er of ad­dress­ing re­sources shall be re­quired to provide the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity with the in­form­a­tion it needs to man­age the ad­dress­ing re­sources that have been as­signed.

Modi­fic­a­tion by the au­thor­it­ies of num­ber­ing plans or reg­u­la­tions for the man­age­ment of ad­dress­ing re­sources shall not con­sti­tute grounds for any claim for com­pens­a­tion.

Art­icles 13a and 13b on data pro­cessing and ad­min­is­trat­ive as­sist­ance ap­ply.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ad­opt tech­nic­al reg­u­la­tions on the im­port, of­fer­ing, mak­ing avail­able on the mar­ket and put­ting in­to ser­vice of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions, in par­tic­u­lar in re­spect of ba­sic tech­nic­al re­quire­ments with re­gard to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, eval­u­ation of con­form­ity, cer­ti­fic­a­tion of con­form­ity, de­clar­a­tion of con­form­ity, mark­ings, re­gis­tra­tion and the ob­lig­a­tion to provide proof (Art. 3 of the Fed­er­al Act of 6 Oc­to­ber 1995¹⁰⁴ on Tech­nic­al Bar­ri­ers to Trade).¹⁰⁵

² If the Fed­er­al Coun­cil has laid down ba­sic tech­nic­al re­quire­ments with re­gard to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions with­in the mean­ing of para­graph 1, OF­COM shall gen­er­ally, in or­der to con­cret­ise them:¹⁰⁶

a.

des­ig­nate tech­nic­al stand­ards, com­pli­ance with which shall be deemed to con­sti­tute ful­fil­ment of the ba­sic re­quire­ments; or

b.¹⁰⁷

de­clare tech­nic­al stand­ards, European Uni­on leg­al in­stru­ments or oth­er rules bind­ing.

³ In im­ple­ment­ing para­graph 2, OF­COM shall take the rel­ev­ant in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ards in­to ac­count; any derog­a­tions shall re­quire the con­sent of the State Sec­ret­ari­at for Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs.

^3bis OF­COM may draw up and pub­lish tech­nic­al stand­ards.¹⁰⁸

⁴ If the Fed­er­al Coun­cil has not ad­op­ted any ba­sic tech­nic­al re­quire­ments with re­gard to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions with­in the mean­ing of para­graph 1, or if OF­COM has not con­cret­ised them in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2, the per­son of­fer­ing, mak­ing avail­able on the mar­ket¹⁰⁹ or put­ting in­to ser­vice a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tion must en­sure that it com­plies with the re­cog­nised rules of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions en­gin­eer­ing. These shall be deemed to in­clude, first and fore­most, any in­ter­na­tion­ally har­mon­ised tech­nic­al stand­ards. In the ab­sence of such stand­ards, the tech­nic­al spe­cific­a­tions of OF­COM or, in the ab­sence of such spe­cific­a­tions, the na­tion­al stand­ards shall ap­ply.

⁵ If it is ne­ces­sary for tech­nic­al tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions se­cur­ity reas­ons, OF­COM may rule that cer­tain tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions may be en­trus­ted only to spe­cially qual­i­fied per­sons. It may reg­u­late the de­tailed rules of such en­trust­ing.

A tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tion may only be in­stalled and op­er­ated if it com­plied with the reg­u­la­tions in force when it was first made avail­able on the mar­ket, in­stalled or put in­to ser­vice and if it has been kept in that state. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may define ex­cep­tions.¹¹⁰

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the im­port, of­fer­ing, mak­ing avail­able on the mar­ket, put­ting in­to ser­vice, in­stall­a­tion and op­er­a­tion of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions which must be used by au­thor­it­ies in the in­terest of pub­lic safety.

¹ It is pro­hib­ited to man­u­fac­ture, im­port, of­fer, make avail­able on the mar­ket, pos­sess, put in­to ser­vice, in­stall or op­er­ate tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions and oth­er devices that are in­ten­ded to in­ter­fere with or pre­vent tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions or broad­cast­ing.

² Art­icle 32a is re­served.

¹ In or­der to check com­pli­ance with the reg­u­la­tions on the im­port, of­fer­ing, mak­ing avail­able on the mar­ket, put­ting in­to ser­vice, in­stall­a­tion and op­er­a­tion of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions, OF­COM shall have ac­cess dur­ing nor­mal work­ing hours to the premises where such in­stall­a­tions are loc­ated.¹¹³

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the right of ac­cess to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions that are sub­ject to mil­it­ary secrecy reg­u­la­tions.

³ If a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tion fails to com­ply with the reg­u­la­tions, OF­COM shall take the ne­ces­sary meas­ures. It may, in par­tic­u­lar, re­strict or pro­hib­it the in­stall­a­tion, op­er­a­tion, im­port, of­fer­ing and mak­ing avail­able on the mar­ket of such an in­stall­a­tion, or­der it to be re­stored to a state that com­plies with the reg­u­la­tions or re­turned, or con­fis­cate it without com­pens­a­tion.¹¹⁴

⁴ OF­COM may pub­lish the in­form­a­tion on meas­ures un­der para­graph 3 and make it ac­cess­ible on­line if there is a pub­lic in­terest in do­ing so.¹¹⁵

⁵ It may provide, pub­lish or make ac­cess­ible on­line in­form­a­tion on on­go­ing ad­min­is­trat­ive or crim­in­al pro­ceed­ings only if there is an over­rid­ing pub­lic or private in­terest in do­ing so.¹¹⁶

⁶ It may par­ti­cip­ate in in­ter­na­tion­al data­bases for the ex­change of in­form­a­tion between mar­ket sur­veil­lance au­thor­it­ies. It may only re­cord data in such data­bases if their trans­mis­sion to for­eign au­thor­it­ies would be per­mit­ted un­der Art­icle 13b.¹¹⁷

¹ If a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tion causes in­ter­fer­ence to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions or broad­cast­ing, OF­COM may re­quire the op­er­at­or to modi­fy it at his own ex­pense or to sus­pend op­er­a­tion of the in­stall­a­tion, even if it com­plies with the reg­u­la­tions on the im­port, of­fer­ing, mak­ing avail­able on the mar­ket, put­ting in­to ser­vice, in­stall­a­tion and op­er­a­tion ap­plic­able to it.¹¹⁸

^1bis If tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions dis­rupt or may dis­rupt the use of fre­quency spec­trums that re­quire in­creased pro­tec­tion, the Of­fice may re­strict or for­bid the of­fer­ing and mak­ing avail­able on the mar­ket of such in­stall­a­tions, even if they com­ply with the reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing their of­fer­ing and mak­ing avail­able on the mar­ket.¹¹⁹

^1ter The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the con­di­tions un­der which the fol­low­ing au­thor­it­ies may for the fol­low­ing pur­poses in­stall, put in­to ser­vice or op­er­ate a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tion which causes in­ter­fer­ence:

a.

the po­lice and the law en­force­ment au­thor­it­ies, in or­der to guar­an­tee pub­lic safety and se­cur­ity;

b.

the Fed­er­al In­tel­li­gence Ser­vice, in or­der to guar­an­tee the pro­tec­tion and se­cur­ity of its em­ploy­ees, in­form­a­tion and in­stall­a­tions.¹²⁰

^1quater If law­ful in­ter­fer­ence dis­pro­por­tion­ately dis­rupts oth­er pub­lic or third-party in­terests, para­graph 1 ap­plies.¹²¹

² In or­der to de­term­ine the source of the in­ter­fer­ence to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions or broad­cast­ing, OF­COM shall grant ac­cess to all tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions.¹²²

Art­icles 13a and 13b con­cern­ing pro­cessing of data and ad­min­is­trat­ive as­sist­ance shall ap­ply to Art­icles 31–34.

¹ Own­ers of land in pub­lic use (such as roads, foot­paths, squares, wa­ter­ways, lakes and banks and shorelines) are re­quired to al­low pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices to use that land to in­stall and op­er­ate lines and pub­lic pay tele­phones, provided those in­stall­a­tions do not in­ter­fere with the pub­lic use of the land.¹²⁴

² Pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices shall take ac­count of the pur­pose and the use to which the prop­erty in ques­tion is put and shall bear the cost of restor­ing it to its ori­gin­al state.¹²⁵ They shall be re­quired to move their lines if the own­er of the prop­erty wishes to use it for a pur­pose that is in­com­pat­ible with their pres­ence.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tails, in par­tic­u­lar the pro­viders’ duty of co-or­din­a­tion and the con­di­tions gov­ern­ing the re­lo­ca­tion of lines and pub­lic pay tele­phones.¹²⁶

⁴ The au­thor­isa­tion pro­ced­ure shall be simple and rap­id. No com­pens­a­tion oth­er than an ad­min­is­trat­ive charge to cov­er costs may be levied for the use of the land, provided that it does not in­ter­fere with its pub­lic use.

¹ Build­ing own­ers and must tol­er­ate, in­so­far as it is reas­on­able, ad­di­tion­al con­nec­tions to dwell­ings or busi­ness premises oth­er than the con­nec­tion of their choice, if a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider so re­quests and pays the costs there­of.¹²⁸

² Con­nec­tion of build­ings in ac­cord­ance with the can­ton­al de­vel­op­ment stip­u­la­tions is re­served.

³ No charge for util­isa­tion shall be levied if:

a.

the ten­ant dir­ectly for­goes use of a new con­nec­tion;

b.

the con­nec­tion con­tract is can­celled; the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider or the lessor shall al­low a reas­on­able can­cel­la­tion peri­od.¹²⁹

⁴ The tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider or the lessor may place un­der seal and veri­fy un­used con­nec­tions. No costs may be charged for seal­ing and re­mov­ing seals.¹³⁰

¹ Every tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider shall have a right of ac­cess to the build­ing entry point and of joint use of the in­stall­a­tions with­in the build­ing in­ten­ded for tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions trans­mis­sion provided this is tech­nic­ally jus­ti­fi­able and there is no oth­er good cause for re­fus­al.

² Build­ing own­ers and tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders must al­low the joint use of the in­stall­a­tions with­in the build­ing in a trans­par­ent and non-dis­crim­in­at­ory man­ner.

³ Build­ing own­ers and shall make the re­quired in­form­a­tion on the in­stall­a­tions with­in the build­ing avail­able to the pro­viders on re­quest.

⁴ Pro­viders who have fin­anced an in­stall­a­tion must be com­pensated ap­pro­pri­ately.

⁵ If re­ques­ted to do so, Com­Com shall rule on dis­putes between tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders re­lat­ing to ac­cess to the build­ing entry point or the con­di­tions for joint use. Art­icle 11bap­plies by ana­logy.

¹ If the es­tab­lish­ment of a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tion is in the pub­lic in­terest, DE­TEC¹³² may grant the right of com­puls­ory pur­chase. The pro­ced­ure shall be con­duc­ted in ac­cord­ance with the Fed­er­al Act of 20 June 1930¹³³ on Com­puls­ory Pur­chase.

² OF­COM may on ap­plic­a­tion, for reas­ons of pub­lic in­terest, in par­tic­u­lar to take ac­count of tech­nic­al prob­lems or the plan­ning needs or pro­tec­tion of the coun­tryside, na­tion­al her­it­age, the en­vir­on­ment, nature or an­im­als, re­quire pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices to ac­cord to a third party, in re­turn for ap­pro­pri­ate com­pens­a­tion, the right to make joint use of its tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions and oth­er in­stall­a­tions, such as cable ducts and trans­mit­ter loc­a­tions, if they have suf­fi­cient ca­pa­city.¹³⁴

³ Un­der the same con­di­tions, OF­COM may re­quire pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices to co-in­stall and joint use of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions and oth­er in­stall­a­tions, such as cable ducts and trans­mit­ter loc­a­tions.¹³⁵

Lines owned by tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders that are in ex­ist­ence when the Amend­ment of 22 March 2019 comes in­to force and are loc­ated in sew­ers which were con­struc­ted for the pur­pose of spa­tial plan­ning de­vel­op­ment may only be re­moved from the sew­ers for good cause. Pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices shall, where pos­sible, be offered al­tern­at­ive ducts for their lines.

¹ Lines for the trans­mis­sion of in­form­a­tion by means of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques and cable ducts shall be the prop­erty of the pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices who have in­stalled them or ac­quired them from third parties.

² Any own­er of land who wil­fully or through gross neg­li­gence dam­ages a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­vider’s line or cable duct on his prop­erty shall be li­able for the dam­age.

¹ The au­thor­it­ies may provide a sim­pli­fied li­cens­ing pro­ced­ure for simple wire and rod an­ten­nas and for an­ten­nas on light masts with a sim­il­ar ap­pear­ance to flag­poles.

² The main­ten­ance of an an­tenna or its re­place­ment with an an­tenna of a sim­il­ar size does not re­quire au­thor­isa­tion.

¹ OF­COM shall col­lect from pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices a fee, the rev­en­ue from which shall be used ex­clus­ively to fin­ance the un­covered costs of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 16 and the costs for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the fin­an­cing mech­an­ism.

² The total amount of the fees must cov­er the costs lis­ted in para­graph 1; the fee shall be fixed in pro­por­tion to the turnover of the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices provided.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ex­empt from the fee those pro­viders whose turnover from the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices provided is be­low a defined amount.

⁴ It shall reg­u­late the de­tailed rules for pro­vi­sion of the in­form­a­tion which is re­quired for the ap­por­tion­ment and mon­it­or­ing of the costs lis­ted in para­graph 1.

¹ The li­cens­ing au­thor­ity shall charge a fee for ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences. No fee shall be charged for ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences in­ten­ded for broad­cast­ing li­censed ra­dio or tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices in ac­cord­ance with the RTVA¹⁴¹.¹⁴²

² The amount of the fees shall be cal­cu­lated on the basis of:

a.

the fre­quency range al­loc­ated, the class of fre­quency and the value of the fre­quen­cies;

b.

the band­width al­loc­ated;

c.

the ter­rit­ori­al scope; and

d.

the tem­por­al scope.

³ If a fre­quency may also be used to broad­cast both li­censed ra­dio or tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices and to trans­mit oth­er ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices and in­form­a­tion, the lat­ter is sub­ject to a li­cence fee pro­por­tion­al to us­age.¹⁴³

^3bis In or­der to fa­cil­it­ate the in­tro­duc­tion of new broad­cast­ing tech­no­lo­gies in terms of Art­icle 58 RTVA, or to safe­guard the di­versity of pro­gram­ming in areas in­ad­equately covered by wire­less ter­restri­al ser­vices, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­duce the li­cence fee for broad­cast­ing ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices.¹⁴⁴

⁴ If the ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cence is gran­ted by auc­tion, the li­cence fee shall cor­res­pond to the amount of the bid, less ad­min­is­trat­ive charges for the in­vit­a­tion to tender and the grant­ing of the li­cence. The li­cens­ing au­thor­ity may fix a min­im­um bid.

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may waive pay­ment of the ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cence fee in the case of the fol­low­ing bod­ies, provided that they do not sup­ply tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices and that they make ra­tion­al use of fre­quen­cies:

a.

au­thor­it­ies and pub­lic law bod­ies and es­tab­lish­ments of the Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­tons and com­munes, provided that they use the fre­quency spec­trum ex­clus­ively for tasks for which they bear sole re­spons­ib­il­ity;

b.

pub­lic trans­port un­der­tak­ings;

c.¹⁴⁵

the in­sti­tu­tion­al be­ne­fi­ciar­ies of pref­er­en­tial rights, im­munit­ies and fa­cil­it­ies un­der Art­icle 2 para­graph 1 let­ters a, b and d–l of the Host State Act of 22 June 2007¹⁴⁶;

d.¹⁴⁷

leg­al en­tit­ies un­der private law, provided they per­form pub­lic tasks on be­half of the Con­fed­er­a­tion, can­tons or com­munes.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may use part of the pro­ceeds from li­cence fees un­der Art­icle 39 for ac­com­pa­ny­ing meas­ures such as re­search and sur­veys in con­nec­tion with ra­dio-based tech­no­lo­gies.

¹ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity shall make an ad­min­is­trat­ive charge for its de­cisions and ser­vices to cov­er its ex­penses, in par­tic­u­lar in con­nec­tion with:

a.¹⁵⁰

the sur­veil­lance of pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices;

b.¹⁵¹

the de­cisions con­cern­ing ac­cess, pro­vi­sion of dir­ect­ory data, in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity and the joint use of in­stall­a­tions;

c.

the res­ol­u­tion of dis­putes between cus­tom­ers and pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices or value-ad­ded ser­vices;

d.¹⁵²

the grant­ing, amend­ment and can­cel­la­tion of uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­cences and ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences, sur­veil­lance there­of and re­gis­tra­tion for the use of fre­quen­cies;

e.

the man­age­ment and tech­nic­al mon­it­or­ing of the fre­quency spec­trum and satel­lite or­bit­al po­s­i­tions;

f.

the man­age­ment, as­sign­ment and re­voc­a­tion of ad­dress­ing re­sources;

g.

the re­gis­tra­tion and sur­veil­lance of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions.

^1bis No ad­min­is­trat­ive fees in terms of para­graph 1 let­ters d and e shall be charged for ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences is­sued to the armed forces, civil de­fence, the Bor­der Guard, the po­lice, the fire bri­gade, emer­gency and res­cue ser­vices op­er­at­ing ex­clus­ively in the pub­lic in­terest and ci­vil­ian com­mand staffs.¹⁵³

² If an activ­ity as defined in para­graph 1 con­cerns tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices or ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences which are used in whole or in part for the broad­cast­ing of ra­dio or tele­vi­sion pro­gramme ser­vices, the au­thor­ity may take ac­count of the lim­ited fin­an­cial re­sources of the broad­caster who holds the right of ac­cess and who is dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly af­fected by the charge.

³ If re­spons­ib­il­ity for any of the activ­it­ies lis­ted in para­graph 1 has been del­eg­ated to a third party, that party may be re­quired to sub­mit the prices of its ser­vices to OF­COM for ap­prov­al, in par­tic­u­lar if no com­pet­i­tion ex­ists for these ser­vices.

⁴ DE­TEC may set up­per price lim­its, in par­tic­u­lar if the price level in a spe­cif­ic mar­ket im­plies ab­use.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tailed ar­range­ments for the col­lec­tion of fees and the fin­an­cing of the uni­ver­sal ser­vice and fix the amount of the fees for ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences and the ad­min­is­trat­ive charges.

The au­thor­ity re­spons­ible for col­lect­ing the fees may re­quire the per­son re­spons­ible for pay­ing them to provide ap­pro­pri­ate guar­an­tees.

No per­son who is or has been re­spons­ible for provid­ing a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice may dis­close to a third party in­form­a­tion re­lat­ing to sub­scribers’ com­mu­nic­a­tions or give any­one else an op­por­tun­ity to do so.

¹ The cus­tom­er may re­quire the pro­vider of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices to in­form him of the data on which in­voices are based, in par­tic­u­lar the ad­dress­ing re­sources, the times when calls were made and the pay­ment due.

² Any per­son re­quir­ing this data to trace nuis­ance calls or un­fair mass ad­vert­ising may re­quire the pro­vider of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices to in­form him of the name and ad­dress of the sub­scribers whose lines were used to make the calls in ques­tion.¹⁵⁷

¹ Pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices shall com­bat un­fair ad­vert­ising in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 3 para­graph 1 let­ters o, u und v of the Fed­er­al Act of 19 Decem­ber 1986¹⁶⁰ on Un­fair Com­pet­i­tion.¹⁶¹

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may define meas­ures that are ap­pro­pri­ate and ne­ces­sary to com­bat un­fair ad­vert­ising.

Pro­viders of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices may pro­cess data con­cern­ing loc­a­tions of cus­tom­ers only for the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices and char­ging pur­poses; they may only pro­cess it for oth­er ser­vices if they have first ob­tained the con­sent of cus­tom­ers, or in an­onymised form.

Pro­cessing of data on ex­tern­al equip­ment by means of trans­mis­sion us­ing tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­niques is per­mit­ted only:

a.

for tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices and char­ging pur­poses; or

b.

if users are in­formed about the pro­cessing and its pur­pose and are in­formed that they may re­fuse to al­low pro­cessing.

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late, in par­tic­u­lar, the iden­ti­fic­a­tion of the caller’s line, call for­ward­ing, the use of data re­lat­ing to tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions traffic and the se­cur­ity of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices with re­gard to in­ter­cep­tion and in­ter­fer­ence by un­au­thor­ised per­sons. In so do­ing, it shall take ac­count of the need to pro­tect the pri­vacy of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions users and of over­rid­ing pub­lic in­terests.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue reg­u­la­tions to pro­tect chil­dren and minors from the dangers arising from the use of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices. In par­tic­u­lar, it may re­quire pro­viders of in­ter­net ac­cess to ad­vise their cus­tom­ers on the op­tions for the pro­tec­tion of chil­dren and minors.

² In or­der that in­form­a­tion with por­no­graph­ic con­tent in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 197 para­graphs 4 and 5 of the Crim­in­al Code¹⁶⁵ may be quickly and glob­ally de­leted, OF­COM, the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Po­lice and the com­pet­ent can­ton­al bod­ies shall co­ordin­ate suit­able meas­ures. For this pur­pose, re­port­ing of­fices op­er­ated by third parties and for­eign au­thor­it­ies may be con­sul­ted and sup­por­ted. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tails.

³ Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders shall block in­form­a­tion with por­no­graph­ic con­tent in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 197 para­graphs 4 and 5 of the Crim­in­al Code that is brought to their at­ten­tion by the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Po­lice. Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders shall re­port to the Fed­er­al Of­fice of Po­lice sus­pec­ted cases of in­form­a­tion with por­no­graph­ic con­tent in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 197 para­graphs 4 and 5 of the Crim­in­al Code which they have come across by chance in the course of their activ­it­ies or which have been brought to their at­ten­tion in writ­ing by third parties.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices that tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders must provide in or­der that the armed forces, civil de­fence, Bor­der Guard, po­lice, fire bri­gade, the res­cue ser­vices and the ci­vil­ian au­thor­it­ies can ful­fil their du­ties in all cir­cum­stances.

² It may re­quire pro­viders with a view to and in spe­cial and ex­cep­tion­al situ­ations to make premises and in­stall­a­tions avail­able and to tol­er­ate ex­er­cises.

³ It shall reg­u­late the com­pens­a­tion for these ser­vices, hav­ing due re­gard to the in­terests of the pro­vider.

⁴ It may re­quire the ne­ces­sary per­son­nel to serve if a spe­cial situ­ation so re­quires.

⁵ The pro­vi­sions on re­quis­i­tion and the Gen­er­al’s powers un­der Armed Forces Act of 3 Feb­ru­ary 1995¹⁶⁷ are re­served.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may or­der the sur­veil­lance, re­stric­tion or in­ter­rup­tion of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in ex­traordin­ary cir­cum­stances or when vi­tal na­tion­al in­terests re­quire it. It shall reg­u­late the ques­tion of any in­dem­nity pay­able for car­ry­ing out these tasks, hav­ing due re­gard to the in­terests of the per­sons re­quired to per­form them.¹⁶⁸

² The meas­ures de­scribed in para­graph 1 shall not con­sti­tute grounds for any claim for dam­ages or re­im­burse­ment of fees.

¹ Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice pro­viders shall take ac­tion against the un­au­thor­ised ma­nip­u­la­tion of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions by tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions trans­mis­sions. They are en­titled to reroute or block con­nec­tions and to sup­press in­form­a­tion in or­der to pro­tect the in­stall­a­tions.

² To pro­tect against haz­ards, avoid dam­age and min­im­ise risks, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may is­sue pro­vi­sions on the se­cur­ity of in­form­a­tion and of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­fra­struc­tures and ser­vices, in par­tic­u­lar in re­la­tion to:

a.

avail­ab­il­ity;

b.

op­er­a­tion;

c.

se­cur­ing re­dund­ant in­fra­struc­tures;

d.

re­port­ing in­ter­fer­ence;

e.

tra­cing pro­cesses;

f.

rerout­ing or block­ing con­nec­tions and sup­press­ing in­form­a­tion in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1.

¹ Any per­son car­ry­ing on an activ­ity in con­nec­tion with a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice shall be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years or to a mon­et­ary pen­altyif he:¹⁷⁰

a.

fals­i­fies or sup­presses in­form­a­tion;

b.

gives any third party the op­por­tun­ity to do so.

² Any per­son who de­ceives a per­son car­ry­ing on an activ­ity in con­nec­tion with a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vice in­to falsi­fy­ing or sup­press­ing in­form­a­tion shall be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing three years or to a mon­et­ary pen­alty.¹⁷¹

Any per­son who by means of a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tion re­ceives private in­form­a­tion that is not in­ten­ded for him and who uses it or com­mu­nic­ates it to third parties without per­mis­sion shall be li­able to a cus­todi­al sen­tence not ex­ceed­ing one year or to a mon­et­ary pen­alty.¹⁷²

¹ Any per­son who:

a.¹⁷⁴

...

b.¹⁷⁵

uses the fre­quency spec­trum:

1.

without the re­quired li­cence,

2.

without the re­quired ad­vance no­tice,

3.

without hold­ing the re­quired pro­fi­ciency cer­ti­fic­ate, or

4.

in breach of the reg­u­la­tions on use or the li­cence;

c.¹⁷⁶

puts ad­dress­ing re­sources that are man­aged at na­tion­al level in­to ser­vice without be­ing en­titled to do so;

d.¹⁷⁷

im­ports, of­fers, makes avail­able on the mar­ket or puts in­to ser­vice tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions that do not com­ply with the reg­u­la­tions in force;

e.

in­stalls or op­er­ates tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions that do not com­ply with the reg­u­la­tions in force;

f.

hands over tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions to un­au­thor­ised per­sons;

g.¹⁷⁸

man­u­fac­tures, im­ports, of­fers, makes avail­able on the mar­ket, pos­sesses, puts in­to ser­vice, in­stalls or op­er­ates tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions in­stall­a­tions or oth­er devices that are in­ten­ded to in­ter­fere with or pre­vent tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions or broad­cast­ing

shall be li­able to a fine not ex­ceed­ing CHF 100,000.¹⁷⁹

² If the of­fence is com­mit­ted through neg­li­gence, the fine shall not ex­ceed CHF 50,000.

Any per­son who, in­ten­tion­ally or through neg­li­gence, in­fringes any oth­er pro­vi­sion of the tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions le­gis­la­tion, a treaty or in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment on the sub­ject, or vi­ol­ates a de­cision taken on the basis of such pro­vi­sions and no­ti­fied to him with an in­dic­a­tion of the pen­al­ties avail­able un­der this Art­icle, shall be li­able to a fine not ex­ceed­ing CHF 5000.

Art­icles 14 to 18 of the Fed­er­al Act of 22 March 1974¹⁸⁰ on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Crim­in­al Law ap­ply.

¹ Of­fences with­in the mean­ing of Art­icles 52 to 54 shall be pro­sec­uted and ad­ju­dic­ated by DE­TEC in ac­cord­ance with the pro­vi­sions of the Fed­er­al Act of 22 March 1974¹⁸¹ on Ad­min­is­trat­ive Crim­in­al Law.

² DE­TEC may del­eg­ate to OF­COM the tasks of pro­sec­u­tion and ad­ju­dic­a­tion of of­fences, as well as the en­force­ment of de­cisions.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall elect a Fed­er­al Com­mu­nic­a­tions Com­mis­sion con­sist­ing of five to sev­en mem­bers and shall ap­point the Chair­man and Vice-Chair­man. The mem­bers must be in­de­pend­ent spe­cial­ists.

² Com­Com shall not be re­quired to fol­low in­struc­tions from the Fed­er­al Coun­cil or DE­TEC when tak­ing its de­cisions. It shall be in­de­pend­ent of the ad­min­is­trat­ive au­thor­it­ies. It shall have its own sec­ret­ari­at.

³ Com­Com shall ad­opt rules re­lat­ing to its or­gan­isa­tion and man­age­ment, which must be ap­proved by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

⁴ Com­Com shall be fun­ded by ad­min­is­trat­ive charges. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tails.

¹ Com­Com shall per­form the du­ties and take the de­cisions for which it is re­spons­ible in terms of this Act and its im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions. It shall in­form the pub­lic of its activ­it­ies and pro­duce a re­port each year for the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

² For the pur­pose of im­ple­ment­ing tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions le­gis­la­tion, Com­Com may seek the as­sist­ance of OF­COM and give it in­struc­tions.

¹ OF­COM shall en­sure that in­ter­na­tion­al tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions law, this Act, its im­ple­ment­ing pro­vi­sions, and li­cences are com­plied with. It may as­sign cer­tain sur­veil­lance tasks to or­gan­isa­tions in­cor­por­ated un­der private law and co-op­er­ate with such or­gan­isa­tions.

² If OF­COM de­tects an in­fringe­ment of the law, it may:¹⁸³

a.

call on the leg­al or nat­ur­al per­son re­spons­ible for the in­fringe­ment to rem­edy the in­fringe­ment or take meas­ures to pre­vent any re­pe­ti­tion of it; the per­son re­spons­ible for the in­fringe­ment must in­form OF­COM of the meas­ures it has taken;

b.

re­quire the leg­al or nat­ur­al per­son re­spons­ible for the in­fringe­ment to sur­render to the Con­fed­er­a­tion any rev­en­ue gen­er­ated dur­ing the in­fringe­ment;

c.

make the li­cence sub­ject to con­di­tions;

d.

re­strict, sus­pend, re­voke or with­draw the li­cence or re­strict, sus­pend or totally for­bid the activ­ity of the leg­al or nat­ur­al per­son re­spons­ible for the in­fringe­ment;

e.¹⁸⁴

with­draw the pro­fi­ciency cer­ti­fic­ate from the hold­er or make it sub­ject to con­di­tions.

³ OF­COM shall with­draw the li­cence if es­sen­tial con­di­tions for grant­ing it cease to be ful­filled.

⁴ If the li­cence has been gran­ted by Com­Com, Com­Com shall take the cor­res­pond­ing meas­ures based on the pro­pos­al made by OF­COM.

⁵ The com­pet­ent au­thor­ity may take pre­cau­tion­ary meas­ures.

¹ The per­sons sub­ject to this Act shall be ob­liged to provide the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity with the in­form­a­tion re­quired to im­ple­ment and eval­u­ate this Act.¹⁸⁵

² They must provide OF­COM reg­u­larly with the ne­ces­sary in­form­a­tion to pro­duce of­fi­cial tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions stat­ist­ics.¹⁸⁶

^2bis Data col­lec­ted or sub­mit­ted for stat­ist­ic­al pur­poses may be used for oth­er pur­poses only if:

a.

a fed­er­al act ex­pli­citly al­lows this;

b.

the per­son con­cerned con­sents in writ­ing;

c.

this serves the eval­u­ation of tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions le­gis­la­tion; or

d.

this serves as a basis for ne­ces­sary reg­u­lat­ory de­cisions.¹⁸⁷

^2ter OF­COM may pub­lish mar­ket shares.¹⁸⁸

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the de­tails.

¹ If an en­ter­prise in­fringes the ap­plic­able law, the li­cence or a de­cision hav­ing force of law, it may be re­quired to pay an amount up to 10 per­cent of the amount of its av­er­age turnover in Switzer­land in the last three fin­an­cial years.

² Cases of fail­ure to com­ply shall be in­vest­ig­ated by OF­COM. It shall judge the cases which do not lie with­in the com­pet­ency of Com­Com in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 58 para­graph 4.

³ When as­sess­ing the pen­alty, the com­pet­ent au­thor­ity shall take ac­count in par­tic­u­lar of the grav­ity of the in­fringe­ment and the en­ter­prise’s fin­an­cial situ­ation.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall im­ple­ment this Act. The re­spons­ib­il­ity of Com­Com is re­served.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may del­eg­ate to OF­COM the duty of ad­opt­ing the ne­ces­sary ad­min­is­trat­ive and tech­nic­al reg­u­la­tions.

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall have au­thor­ity to con­clude in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments on mat­ters fall­ing with­in the am­bit of this Act.

² It may del­eg­ate that au­thor­ity to OF­COM in the case of in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments re­lat­ing to tech­nic­al or ad­min­is­trat­ive mat­ters.

³ Com­Com shall carry out the tasks with­in the scope of its re­spons­ib­il­it­ies at an in­ter­na­tion­al level and shall rep­res­ent Switzer­land in the re­lated in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­isa­tions.¹⁹³

⁴ OF­COM shall rep­res­ent Switzer­land’s in­terests in in­ter­na­tion­al for­ums and or­gan­isa­tions, in par­tic­u­lar in re­la­tion to in­ter­net gov­ernance.¹⁹⁴

⁵ In or­der to strengthen the rep­res­ent­a­tion of Swiss in­terests, OF­COM may on re­quest grant or­gan­isa­tions in its areas of re­spons­ib­il­ity fin­an­cial as­sist­ance that is not gran­ted un­der in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments in ac­cord­ance with para­graphs 1 and 2.¹⁹⁵

⁶ The amount of fin­an­cial as­sist­ance is de­term­ined by the im­port­ance of the or­gan­isa­tion, pro­ject or meas­ure to the rep­res­ent­a­tion of Swiss in­terests and by the oth­er fund­ing op­tions avail­able to the re­cip­i­ent. The fin­an­cial as­sist­ance may not ex­ceed 66 per cent of the total cost of the ser­vice fun­ded.¹⁹⁶

The Fed­er­al Tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions Act of 21 June 1991¹⁹⁷ is re­pealed.

¹ The ser­vices provided on the com­mence­ment of the Amend­ment of 24 March 2006 as part of a tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices li­cence are deemed to have been no­ti­fied as defined in Art­icle 4 para­graph 1. The ra­diocom­mu­nic­a­tions li­cences which are in­cluded in the res­cin­ded tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions ser­vices li­cences re­main val­id and ac­quire the terms and con­di­tions as­so­ci­ated there­with.

² The ex­ist­ing con­di­tions for the uni­ver­sal ser­vice li­cence un­der the old law shall ap­ply un­til the ex­piry of its term.

¹ This Act is sub­ject to an op­tion­al ref­er­en­dum.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall de­term­ine the com­mence­ment date.

³ …²⁰¹

Com­mence­ment date:²⁰²
Art. 56, 57, 64, 67, 68 on 20 Oc­to­ber 1997
all oth­er pro­vi­sions on 1 Janu­ary 1998