At last, the scope of duct access will be expanded to facilitate fibre deployment, in a country where copper still dominates
Wholesale broadband access markets are being reviewed separately: The German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) is seeking stakeholders’ views on the next regulation of wholesale local access services. The new review will replace decisions taken at different moments in time between 2015 and 2017, and only relates to Market 3a of the EC’s 2014 Recommendation on relevant markets. While the EC recommended regulators analyse Markets 3a and 3b simultaneously, BNetzA has systematically departed from this indication and reviewed these markets separately over the years, sometimes even issuing separate decisions for SMP and for the relevant remedies. A review of Market 3b is currently underway, independent of Market 3a.
Light touch regulation for fibre: BNetzA aims to regulate this market in a way that stimulates fibre deployment. DT will be required to provide access to its fibre network through VULA in a non-discriminatory way, according to the Equivalence of Inputs (EoI) principle. However, prices will not be regulated ex-ante, and BNetzA will only intervene if it finds evidence that the market is not functioning properly. This is a departure from the current approach, where BNetzA carries out an ex-ante margin-squeeze test on DT’s wholesale prices.
A new approach to duct access: On the other hand, the regulator will expand the scope of passive infrastructure access to facilitate deployments from alternative operators. According to our Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Tracker, Germany has had one of the most restrictive approaches to PIA, which currently can only be used as an ancillary service to wholesale products of DT or any other operator deploying vectoring.
A hands-off approach to copper retirement: The new review will retain most of the existing regulation on DT’s copper network. However, there will be new requirements associated with DT’s copper retirement, even though the operator has not yet set a timetable for this to take place. DT will have to notify any migration from copper to fibre “in good time” and present migration plans. BNetzA is not giving DT any guidelines as to whether and when copper retirement should take place, perhaps recognising that copper retirement is still some way away. It remains to be seen if the rules will need to be defined in more detail at a later stage. The consultation is open until 15 November.
Source: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2021/20211011_TKRegulierung.html
