From:            P.H. Stoter, general manager of Meteo Services N.V.

Date:             March 15, 2002

Subject:         The Belgian public weather sector in relation to the commercial sector; a summary 

Introduction

In Belgium, three national weather organisations are present:

·         the National Weather Service KMI with a commercial branch

·         the defence department (MeteoWing) with specific commercial activities

·         an aviation section Belgocontrol with plans to start commercial activities

Since Meteo Services is also active in France, we have included some information on: Meteo France, French National Weather Service

National Weather Service KMI

KMI although small when compared to other NWS’s is a strong competitor on the Belgian weather market. According to ECOMET (ref. ps/0308, dated 18-03-1998), an NMS with a commercial activity of less than 1.000.000 EURO is not required to have a separated accounting system for governmental and commercial activities as long as they prove that their price calculations exclude cross-subsidy.

According to ECOMET, the commercial activities of KMI are less that the threshold value. This threshold value is not mentioned in the comfort letter of DG4. Our question how one can prove exclusion of cross subsidy without an accounting system was not answered satisfactory. ECOMET only answered that they receive annual reports from ECOMET members on this subject. “In this way the ECOMET Secretariat exercises supervision” (ref ps/0809, dated 09/08/2001).

Examples of –in our opinion- dubious situations:

A.                  KMI shows the European radar composite on national television. Meteo Services asked for a quotation for this product. Unfortunately, we never received a price since KMI was not able to include the national cost elements of other countries. We did receive an offer for the Belgian radar only at 250000 Euro + 2% of our turnover. (the European composite includes about 40 individual radars).

Turning this back to the KMI situation and assuming that the European radar is more expensive than the National radar, this would imply that at least 25% of the KMI commercial turnover (less than € 1.000.000) was spent on the radar images. In general data costs for a commercial weather company are in the range of 10 to 15% (for all weather data, including observations, satellite and model data)

Based on this information, we made an inquiry with ECOMET and they claimed that KMI was only displaying the images as a test (for almost a year at that time). Until today, the images are still shown on Belgium TV and ECOMET has not taken any action to our knowledge. The TV-station confirmed that they are not paying separately for broadcasting the images.

B. On 21-May-2001, Meteo Services asked for a quotation for access to the climatic database of KMI (historical observation). Despite several calls, we have not received a quotation yet. The argument of KMI is that the different databases have to be connected and that until that time it is not possible to make a quotation.

In the annual report of KMI (issued 2001, covering 2000) we read on page 36, the commercial activities section: “Requests for historical observations: The services to users have played an important role in setting out a coherent policy for the delivery of data files to different user-groups. These data …… are indeed an important card for KMI. The maintenance implies a quick access to the data at acceptable conditions on one hand and the public availability on the other hand”.  (translation and underlining by author).

Our question is: how can KMI account for delivery of data to commercial users but not making the data available to the private weather sector? And how does KMI account for the costs of these data to its commercial activities when the prices are not known?

Following questions from Meteo Services why we receive no quotation, ECOMET replied that they could not assess the necessary time for a reaction from KMI. It has been almost a year now…

In both cases, ECOMET has not proven to be supportive to the commercial sector. And although this is probably not the goal of ECOMET, we believe that it was the initial intention of DG4 with the comfort letter to support competition in our market.

MeteoWing

The MeteoWing (part of ministry of defence) is heavily involved in weather forecasting for winter road maintenance in Belgium. It appears to be a matter of national safety and even the National Weather Service is not allowed to be involved in this.

Since Meteo Services was not yet able to convince the national authorities that we can offer a better product (as objectively shown in test cases), we focussed on providing winter road forecasting services to local communities who had no information except via TV and radio.

Only one year later, MeteoWing started a weather service for ALL local communities. Of course this information was without costs and publicly available on the Internet. It can be seen at http://www.mil.be/meteo/city.asp?

This will reduce our market opportunities and probably destroy our carefully build up client base.

Belgocontrol

Belgocontrol is not yet active on the commercial market, but the head of the operations section announced that they are making plans to set-up commercial activities. Initial for small-aviation purposes, later possibly on other areas as well.

Meteo France

Meteo Services is also active in France. About 6 months ago, we asked a quotation for the French national composite radar via ECOMET agent KNMI. This product is available on French television and on various internet pages.

In an official reply to KNMI, Meteo France denied that the national radar is a commercial product (although it used to be) instead they now offer two international products which are of course much more expensive. The national composite is still available on third party websites and TV!

Despite concessions of ECOMET to look into this (e-mail October 2001) we still have not had a reply either formally or informally (March 2002).

All that time, Meteo Services has been denied a position to offer the French radar to its customers. This means that our company cannot service clients who require radar images in their ”weather-package”.

This summary gives a brief perspective of the situation in the commercial weather sector in Belgium and France. We feel that there is no level playing field and that private initiatives are still operating in a difficult and unequal situation. We cannot imagine that the practice of national institutes as we encounter them comply with the intentions of the comfort letter of DG IV. Therefore it would be wise to re-evaluate this letter or increase supervision to the ECOMET and NWS practices.