EU seeks to spur fast
broadband roll-out with telecoms reform
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[September 07, 2016]
By Julia Fioretti
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union
aims to spur the roll-out of fast broadband across the 28-nation
bloc by relaxing rules that force telecom companies to open up their
networks to competitors.
Under planned reforms of the sector, national telecoms regulators
will be required to take into account existing commercial agreements
between operators when deciding whether to force them to allow
competitors access to their networks, according to a document seen
by Reuters.
Fostering investment in new fiber-optic networks, to meet rising
demand for data services, is a major plank of the European
Commission's reform of its 15-year-old telecoms laws.
National regulators will also have to weigh up the range of retail
choices available to users to ensure that regulation is not more of
a burden than necessary on operators' decisions to invest, the
document says.
The costs of running optic fiber - which can deliver speeds of up to
1 gigabit per second - into households are high. Telecoms operators
such as Orange, Deutsche Telekom and Telecom Italia have long
complained that the current rules forcing them to open up their
networks to competitors at regulated prices do not allow them get a
decent return on investment.
According to the Commission's figures, 68 percent of homes in the EU
have access to broadband with speeds of at least 30 megabits per
second. Malta, Belgium and the Netherlands have the highest coverage
while Italy, France and Greece have the lowest.
National regulators will be required to monitor the network
investment decisions of operators and will have the power to
sanction them if they deviate from their declared intentions without
justification, the document says.
The aim is to protect operators who lay fast broadband networks
first in areas where there is little financial incentive, such as
rural areas, and where the arrival of a second operator would
undermine the first's business case.
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The Commission, the EU's executive body, will also seek to encourage operators
to co-invest in shared rollouts of fiber-to-the-home by offering them lighter
access rules in return.
Operators who adopt a "wholesale-only" model, whereby they sell access to their
networks to other firms and do not offer consumers their own retail broadband
packages, will benefit from lighter rules.
MINIMUM SPECTRUM LICENSE DURATION
In a bid to coordinate how national governments allocate blocks of airwaves to
mobile operators such as Vodafone, EE and Telefonica, the telecoms reform will
allow the Commission to set a minimum spectrum license duration of 25 years,
according to the document.
National authorities are loath to relinquish control over how they auction
wireless spectrum, which they consider a national resource, and license
durations vary across Europe, making it harder for companies to operate on a
larger scale. Spectrum auctions can fetch billions of euros.
Once unveiled, the proposals will need to be approved by the European Parliament
and national governments, meaning they are likely to undergo changes.
(Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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