Euro-vision
The European Commission has urged EU member states to bring in operational broadband plans for ultra high speed networks and has laid out a plan for finding investment.
The Commission seeks to encourage private and public investment in the new faster networks that form part of the commitments in the Digital Agenda for Europe, which promises every European access to basic broadband by 2013.
The Agenda also vowed to provide all Europeans with a super-speedy connection by 2020 of above 30Mbps, with over half of households set to receive over 100Mbps.
The Commission believes bringing high speed web access to all parts of Europe will need heavy investment (some €180bn to €270bn) but will boost infrastructure competition.
It has asked member states to make sure they have "fully operational plans for ultra-high speed networks with concrete implementing measures to achieve their targets," and has urged regional and local authorities to promote investment by reducing costs.
The Commission has also laid out guidelines of how national telecoms regulators should regulate third-party competitive access to ultra-fast fibre networks. It aims to strike a balance between "the need to encourage investment and the need to safeguard competition."
The new Next Generation Access (NGA) Recommendation also tells regulators how they should crack down on ineffective competition.
"When competition is not effective, regulators can impose ex ante regulatory measures on dominant firms to address this market failure following a thorough market review," it said.
The Commission has noted that while deployment of fibre networks has only just started, a number of regulators have got confused about some regulatory measures that the Commission has decided to clear up to avoid market distortions as a result of inconsistent regulation between member states, which in turn could lead to uncertainty for companies investing in next generation access networks.
The NGA Recommendation is designed to give national regulators the tools to support new entrants to the NGA market plus infrastructure-based investment from established market players. It "aims to facilitate market entry and competition by alternative operators, allowing them to climb the 'ladder of investment' and gradually to deploy their own network infrastructure," the Commission added.
The NGA Recommendation warned: "There will be no ‘regulatory holidays' for dominant firms, price regulation for access to fibre networks will fully reflect investment risk, and will enable investing companies to make attractive profits."
Significantly, the Commission also announced plans in tandem with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to bring forward broadband funding. The EIB already lends about €2bn each year to broadband projects to companies such as Finnish operator DNA and France's operator IIiad.
The EIB is expected to start a trend and encourage other banks to offer funds for broadband that could underpin gross investment up to 15 times that of the EIB's contribution.
The Commission also said it aims to stimulate the roll-out of broadband "through better use of the EU's structural and rural development funds" and speed up the deployment of wireless technologies that offer broadband faster (and cheaper) than the Agenda's minimum target of 30Mbps.
