EC demands that BT share its infrastructure with its rivals

A new ruling from the European Commission has stated that the new high-speed broadband infrastructure built by BT should be shared with its rivals in the same way that the telecoms giant does with its current legacy network.

In the times before the internet a set of regulatory obligations was put in place but with huge amounts of investment put into the deployment of high-speed fibre optic based broadband networks many telecoms providers hoped that they would not be required to adhere to these obligations for much longer. These hopes, however, were crushed recently when Brussels said that the current rules for sharing BT’s copper wire infrastructure would also apply to access of its new fibre network through “physical unbundling” which should go to users’ homes.

The current copper based lines that run from the telephone exchanges to users’ homes are owned by BT but rival network providers like TalkTalk or Plusnet are able to offer their broadband services by taking over these lines thanks to the unbundling arrangements that are in place.

The decision by the UK telecommunications regulator, Ofcom to allow a more “virtual” type of unbundling to be offered temporarily by BT over its fibre channel network has been approved in part by the European Telecoms commissioner, Neelie Kroes.

Ms Kroes advised “Physical unbundling should be imposed as soon as possible,” although she went on to stress that this arrangement was only considered to be acceptable as long as it is merely a transitive measure.

Depending on the future development of the telecommunications industry as a whole the proposal could be subject to a market review prior to the current proposal by Ofcom to allow BT to use “virtual” unbundling for the next four years.

Source – Ft