As a country that regularly tops the rankings for network speed and availability, it’s unsurprising that South Korea is pushing for a speedy deployment of 5G technology. In a recent meeting between the Minister for Science and ICT and the country’s main telcos, the government urged industry to collaborate closely to accelerate the adoption of 5G. The minister called for MNOs to be proactive in sharing their infrastructure in order to facilitate investment; and, crucially, asked fixed operators to help 5G development by opening up their passive infrastructure such as ducts and poles.
Duct and pole access is becoming increasingly desirable for MNOs
As the demand for data soars, and operators strive to improve the performance and speed of mobile networks, the importance of reliable backhaul is increasing. This issue has already been a lively debate in Europe for some time now, with regulators sensitive to the importance of MNOs’ ability to access fibre infrastructure.
In March 2017, during the Digital Regulation Forum in London, one of the vice-chairs of BEREC noted that “5G is more about fibre than it is about spectrum”. Which means that regulators will have to identify the right approach to ensure MNOs’ ability to access fixed networks. The EC’s proposal on a new Electronic Communications Code includes provisions for easier access to passive infrastructure; however, explicit provisions for MNOs to use these resources are not included.
BEREC’s recent report on the convergence between fixed and mobile networks recognises that MNOs are gradually switching from legacy (i.e. copper) products to higher capacity fibre-based backhaul links, and notes that MNOs tend to consider the current availability of regulated offers as insufficient.
In Europe, the EC’s recommendations do not currently support the use of passive infrastructure for mobile backhaul
At present, the European regulatory framework for passive access has significant gaps related to PIA’s use for mobile backhaul purposes. The explanatory note to the EC’s latest Recommendation on relevant markets shows that the Commission did not see the need to identify a market for passive access to backhaul infrastructure (including mobile backhaul), as no generalised market failure was identified; it does instead consider duct and pole access (DPA) mainly as an ancillary remedy to Market 3a, thereby limiting it mainly to the scope of fixed wholesale access.
At the same time, individual NRAs have also not identified a specific national market for mobile backhaul, which has meant that MNOs’ ability to make use of regulated offers is relatively limited. However, in several cases, mobile backhaul has been included in the leased lines market (Market 4). This has allowed MNOs to use incumbents’ regulated services.
On the whole, the use of DPA for mobile uses remains limited despite some regulators permitting it
Not only have regulators refrained from defining a market for backhaul (much to the disappointment of several MNOs); they have also tended to limit the scope of DPA to fixed access purposes. However, there has been some degree of variety in the approach taken by national regulators.
In the UK, Ofcom has so far explicitly limited the scope of BT’s DPA offer to fixed broadband; however, it is now considering to open it up to mobile use, as emerged during the 2017 consultation on the Wholesale Local Access Market Review. In Spain, the regulator has ruled that fixed use of Telefonica’s DPA offer takes priority, though mobile access is still possible; in Portugal, DPA is regulated both in a symmetrical way (by law) and in an asymmetrical way (through ANACOM’s obligation on MEO) and is available to MNOs. In France, ARCEP has recognised that Orange’s current backhaul offer is insufficient for MNOs’ increasing need for capacity, although this has not resulted in a widened scope of the DPA offer. Instead, French MNOs can now request passive access to Orange’s fibre loops.
