A study commissioned by ECTA, the European Competitive Telecommunications Association, reveals that high fixed costs will limit the availability of super fast broadband to many European homes and rural businesses.
France has the best prospect of a fiber roll-out, with viability to 25 per cent of households. The study, conducted by WIK, also shows that the economics simply do not stack up for competitive operators to duplicate costly infrastructure on a wide scale and that access to fiber is a win-win scenario as it improves the business case for all providers, to the ultimate benefit of consumers.
The timing of the study is critical as the European Commission will shortly release its proposals for a Recommendation on the regulation of next generation networks access whilst the European Parliament just voted on the Commission’s proposals for the Review of the EU Telecoms Framework, signaling its views on the same issues.
ECTA believes the outcome will be crucial in determining the performance and position of incumbents and competitive operators in fixed telecoms across Europe.
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Meanwhile, the incumbent operators, assembled in the ETNO, say that the EC Recommendation should primarily focus on how to encourage all operators to invest in new networks. Simply extending current access rules defined for legacy copper-based networks to new high speed networks will not accelerate risky investment in the new access networks, ETNO says.
In June, ECTA warned that the business case of rolling out next generation fiber networks across Europe favors Europe’s incumbent operators.
Also interesting: ETNO published a report last week that confirms overall investment has slowed down in the EU telecoms sector.
(Source: INTUG)
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