Telecoms regulators should focus on the services received by end users rather than the technologies used to deliver those services, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges said this week.
There are no authorities instructing the car industry what type of vehicle to build, but in the telecoms space "they tell me I’m using bad technology or good technology," Hoettges said on the sidelines of the World Communication Awards in London on Tuesday evening.
He was referring to Deutsche Telekom’s decision to use techniques like vectoring and G.fast to extend the capabilities of its copper access network.
Regulators see fibre as "good technology" and G.fast as "bad technology," he explained. But "no customer cares about technology. Nobody," he said.
"The telecom regulators made a big mistake," when it comes to their approach to regulating consumer services, Hoettges said. They should categorise things like broadband services as a consumer product, rather than as an access product, he suggested.
Deutsche Telekom received the provisional approval of German regulator the Bundesnetzagentur for its vectored VDSL rollout plan last week. It will be required to provide a Virtual Unbundled Local Access (VULA) product to competitors.
Hoettges believes the fu ture of fixed-line networks "is going to be hybrid," that is, a combination of fibre and copper extension technologies.
Not everyone agrees though.
Hannes Ametsreiter, chief executive of Vodafone Germany, last month threw his weight behind fibre, warning in a Handelsblatt editorial that Germany’s global competitiveness is at risk if it continues to invest in copper networks.
"A country that prefers to extract the last remnants of capacity out of copper networks rather than investing in a future-safe fibre optic infrastructure is jeopardising its international competitiveness as a business and industry location," he warned.
Vodafone itself is offering broadband services in Germany based on fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) and VDSL.
But Ametsreiter appears to be looking further ahead, noting that emerging high-bandwidth applications – Google’s driverless cars, for example – will require fibre and ultimately 5G mobile access to support them.
Hoettges seems to agree on that point. When it comes to 5G, "the backbone’s always fibre," he said.
Hoettges collected the coveted CEO of the Year award at the World Communication Awards, having come out on top of a poll of Total Telecom readers that attracted 19,000 votes.
"He has a forward-thinking attitude and is overseeing investment in fixed and mobile infrastructure, developing a base for the company’s future," one of his supporters commented.
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