The European Competitive Telecoms Association has given a cautious welcome to proposals from the European Parliament to amend the EU Telecoms Framework. That’s to be expected, given the Parliament’s indications it will allow wholesale access to new optical access facilities.

 

At the same time, and also predictably, competitors will fight over the size, terms and conditions of their access to optical access facilities.

 

The dominant firms will have too much power under the proposed revisions to the EU legislation, ECTA argues. That’s no surprise: ECTA and other competitive communications companies always say that.

 

One of the key areas in which ECTA has been seeking support is for local loop unbundling rules to apply to fiber as well as the existing copper network.

 

“Unless the price and the access conditions to the local loop are reasonable then the change is ineffectual and incumbents will have a return to the monopoly they are looking for,” says Innocenzo Genna, chairman of ECTA.

 

Dominant operators have argued that regulation must be liberalized, and rates of return adjusted, to allow them to invest in expensive and risky next-generation fiber access networks

 

ECTA opposes the notion of “risk sharing,” whereby the uncertainty associated with payback from optical fiber access is reflected in higher charges for access by competitors to infrastructure paid for by the incumbents.