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Commission requires German telco watchdog to submit detailed plans for virtual unbundling.
The European Commission this week gave conditional approval to the German telco watchdog’s plan to allow Deutsche Telekom to roll out vectoring.
The decision paves the way for the incumbent to offer up to 100-Mbps broadband via its fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) network.
"As a result of our intervention, the German regulator has drawn a better balance between network upgrade and high quality access for competitors," said digital economy and society commissioner Günther Oettinger, in a statement on Tuesday.
Bundesnetzagentur (BNetzA) revealed in April that it planned to allow Deutsche Telekom to deploy vectoring, provided it offered a virtual unbundled local access (VULA) product enabling alternative operators to roll out competing services on the upgraded network.
However, the European Commission launched an in-depth investigation into the plan on the grounds that BNetzA’s proposal placed onerous requirements on altnets, which risked dissuading them from taking up the VULA product.
For instance, virtual access to Deutsche Telekom’s street cabinets was restricted to one alternative supplier per cabinet. Furthermore, any altnet present at a local exchange that wanted VULA at a street cabinet would have to roll out their own fibre to connect the two.
Under the revised plan, the limit on the number of altnets per cabinet has been scrapped, and altnets at local exchanges that want to use VULA at street cabinets have been granted dark fibre access, and duct and pole access at reduced prices.
BNetzA must also submit plans for how it intends to allow rivals to access Deutsche Telekom’s broadband gateways as an alternative to VULA. BNetzA’s orginal submission ruled out gateway access, claiming that technical restrictions meant it did not represent a functional equivalent to physical unbundling.
The watchdog must file its plan by the autumn.
"The additional safeguards BNetzA now proposes protect sustainable competition and create incentives to invest in future-oriented networks for the gigabit society. However, further improvements must be made and we will remain vigilant to ensure that they are made," Oettinger said.
