Deutsche Telekom to share fibre with Vodafone
German monopoly rules in Christmas rewrite
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Deutsche Telekom (DT), Germany's incumbent telco, has agreed to cooperate with at least one rival on next generation broadband investment, following political pressure from Brussels.
The European Commission has argued for years that DT's plan not to allow competitors wholesale access to new internet infrastructure - a potential monopoly which was backed by the German government - violated European anti-trust rules. The Commission is suing the German administration at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg over the row.
Yesterday, DT said it would work with Vodafone on rollout of VDSL (which, the Financial Times informs us, "can support download speeds of up to 50MB" [sic]) to pilot towns.
Vodafone will lay fibre to street side cabinets in Heilbronn, and DT will do the same in Würzburg. They will both then allow the other wholesale access.
The move towards allowing competitors to use its infrastructure represents something of a climbdown for DT, although it has extracted significant investment from Vodafone in return.
DT said it would be open to working with other rivals too, but did not provide any details. The Vodafone partnership will begin in 2009.
In the UK there is no prospect of regulators allowing BT exclusive access to fibre it lays in the coming years. Our incumbent is however in the process of lobbying for greater control than it has over the current infrastructure, which was opened up to local loop unbundling with the formation of Openreach in 2002. ®
COMMENTS
Crazy
I just don't get it. Surely, infrastructure is key for the government, public and country as a whole. Post, data, water, electric etc... IMHO shouldn't they all be operated by a non-profit organisation, funded by the government, with an independent board to oversee them all?
Engineers should be looking after the cabling, DSLAM's, water pipes etc. Then ISP's, water companies,'leccy co's bid to the consumer allowing us choice? Universal access to the infrastructure with the providers of the data/water/electricity then pump their content over it....
Am I the only one that thinks this is a sensible way of doing things?
Not really news
The 50 MB lines are not the stuff that Telekom is really trying to keep to itself.
Fair is Fair..
Well it makes sense, since both DT and Vodaphone are laying down fibre and the costs are basically split down the middle. Now for that to work here....
BT, Orange, Tiscali, Thus, etc would need to do similar or pay a fair percentage of the overall costs of laying the fibre in stages of course I mean if it costs say £10 million with BT looking at the %age share of the various other ISP's and dividing it up with say Orange 25% would equate to £ 2.5 million, not saying they don't have that but that's one BIG hit, as it's rolled out pay the same % everyone is kept happy as we get faster speeds, within limits and more downloadable per month, since that would only be fair..
Maybe even get Virgin in on it or since they've already invested in fibre maybe not, can't exactly see them "sharing" fibre lines somehow, would be nice if everyone could play "nice", but I just know someones "going to throw the toys out the pram"..
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