| NOTAS: | The presentation ;Next Generation Access roll-out in Germany - Regulatory implications” deals with recent developments of access network roll-out strategies bringing fibre closer to the end-user premises in Germany and the regulatory challenges resulting from these developments. As is known the German incumbent operator Deutsche Telekom (DTAG) started to roll-out its VDSL network in 12 major cities of Germany replacing the copper feeder cable with fibre and installing the DSLAM with VDSL technology at the street cabinet thus increasing the bandwidth to up to 50 Mbit/s. The economic feasibility of the VDSL roll-out is analyzed and different cost scenarios are compared. The VDSL roll-out of DTAG has implications for the “Unbundlers” present at the MDF. In Germany unbundling of the local loop was already introduced in 1998 (by law) as there is very little competition from cable (late divesture of the CATV network by DTAG and complicate market structure). Since then a continuous increase of unbundled local loops could be observed. Today ar. 52 so-called City-carriers use approximately 5mio unbundled loops to offer voice and broadband services to the consumers. Thus infrastructure competition in Germany is so far nearly exclusively based on access to the unbundled local loop and a shift of the access point further down to the street cabinet could cause considerable problems of stranded investment. Therefore the impact of fibre roll-out on market definition (market 11 and market 12), market analysis and subsequently on the remedies imposed as well as on the general regulatory approach needs to be analyzed and carefully evaluated in light of the objectives of Art. 8 FD. The study (cover note to the national consultation of market 11) deals with these questions and tries to provide some preliminary viewpoints from the perspective of the German regulator. Finally, it will be analyzed how the ladder of investment will look like in an NGA environment. |
