{"id":12455,"date":"2016-09-08T07:27:27","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T06:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=12455"},"modified":"2016-09-08T10:17:20","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T09:17:20","slug":"__trashed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2016\/09\/__trashed.html","title":{"rendered":"EU Moots Softer Fibre Optic Broadband Regulation to Boost Roll-out"},"content":{"rendered":"

A leaked document has revealed that the European Commission could be about to relax its regulation of the telecoms market (this would also affect the United Kingdom) in order to encourage the roll-out of faster broadband into rural areas, which might allow the use of state aid for closed networks.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The United Kingdom will remain a member of the EU for at least a couple more years’ and even after Brexit we could potentially still find ourselves being attached to some of the same rules, thus any decision that the EU makes is currently still very relevant.<\/p>\n

At present the UK is already expected to make fixed line based “superfast broadband<\/em>” (24-30Mbps+) networks available to around 97% of premises by 2019, but tackling the final 3% would be incredibly expensive and so far the only solution being proposed is a 10Mbps Universal Service Obligation<\/strong> (USO); this might even be at least partly met via inferior Satellite<\/a> connectivity.<\/p>\n

However we already know from another leak that the EU is expected to imminently propose a series of new targets, which will aim to ensure that “all European households<\/em>” can get a minimum Internet download speed of 100Mbps<\/strong> (Megabits per second) by 2025<\/strong>, with businesses and the public sector being told to expect 1Gbps+<\/strong> (here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Suffice to say that delivering on the above could be difficult (not to mention colossally expensive), unless the EU can make rolling out into challenging areas more attractive. One way to do that would be to relax the current open access<\/strong> requirement, which means that any network taking advantage of state aid must ensure that other ISPs can buy access via wholesale.<\/p>\n

Instead the leaked document, which has been seen by Reuters<\/a>, appears to indicate that there could be a greater acceptance of closed networks<\/strong>. This is important because quite a few operators feel as if the huge risk and cost of deploying into remote rural areas is not rewarding enough if they’re then forced to do open access (i.e. allow rivals to piggyback). But that’s not the only change being considered.<\/p>\n

The Other Proposed Changes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

* The EU could generally relax broadband infrastructure regulation and put more of the power back into the hands of national regulators to police, such as Ofcom<\/a> in the UK. National regulators would need to keep a tight hold and have the power to sanction operators that deviate from their declared intentions (i.e. don’t play fair) without justification.<\/p>\n

* Operators could be encouraged to co-invest in shared Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH<\/a>\/P) roll-outs in return for lighter access rules \/ regulation.<\/p>\n

* Operators that build a network and adopt a “wholesale-only<\/em>” model, whereby they do not themselves sell a broadband service to consumers, would also benefit from lighter rules \/ regulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The seemingly radical changes to existing regulation aren’t actually all that surprising because the EU’s new Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, G\u00fcnther Oettinger<\/strong>, first hinted at just such an adjustment when he took office at the end of 2014 (here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

At the time Oettinger said, “It is similar to what we are already doing in the energy sector: in some limited cases, for new pipelines, companies can be exempted from the requirement to provide competitors with access to pipelines. This is only given if they can convince the EU Commission that without that exemption the investment would not have been made<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Even the UK’s recently agreed state aid deal with the EU (National Broadband Scheme for the UK<\/a><\/strong>), which will last until 2020, appears to have some allowance for so-called “reduced access<\/em>” bids if no open access networks come forward, although the details are sketchy (here<\/a>) and the approach has not yet been approved (still subject to an in-depth cost-benefits analysis by the end of 2016).<\/p>\n

The challenge in all of this will be to find the right balance and to avoid fostering the establishment of mini local monopolies (not unlike KCOM<\/a> in Hull), although many would argue that a local monopoly on next generation broadband access (you’d probably still have a choice between that or a slow BT<\/a> copper line) might be preferable to the alternative of a restrictive 10Mbps USO or Satellite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As ever the devil will be in the detail and we haven’t see that yet. Furthermore the proposals would still have to be approved by both the European Parliament<\/a> and EU member states, which could result in further changes before we have a final policy to diagnose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A leaked document has revealed that the European Commission could be about to relax its regulation of the telecoms market (this would also affect the United Kingdom) in order to encourage the roll-out of faster broadband into rural areas, which might allow the use of state aid for closed networks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[471,37,85,38],"class_list":["post-12455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uk_isp_news","tag-bduk","tag-digital-agenda","tag-europe","tag-politics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"yoast_head":"\nEU Moots Softer Fibre Optic Broadband Regulation to Boost Roll-out - ISPreview UK<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A leaked document has revealed that the European Commission could be about to relax its regulation of the telecoms market (this would also affect the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2016\/09\/__trashed.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"EU Moots Softer Fibre Optic Broadband Regulation to Boost Roll-out - 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