An old argument is rearing its head again as network operators and their equipment providers are seeking changes to the regulation of Next Generation Networks, before they invest capital in their construction.
Both the European Commission and the ICT industry are worried by the lack of private-sector investment in the construction of high-speed networks, but the EU executive long threw out the possibility of so-called regulatory holidays for dominant operators, a spokesperson said.
"Regulation should be focused on areas where there is no competition," said a spokesperson for ETNO, the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association.
To spread out the risk more evenly, operators want less regulation in areas where there is competition, such as urban centres, and more regulation in areas where there are dominant players.
This argument has been going on for five years and has been rejected by the Commission and the European Court of Justice, said a spokesperson for Commissioner Viviane Reding, responsible for information society.
The operators' plea is far from new but its critics argue that ETNO's more flexible policy model would bypass an economic analysis of whether a region does or does not have adequate levels of competition.
No return on investment
At a summit in Visby, Sweden, on 9 November, Reding, who wants to retain her post as infosoc commissioner in the next executive, laid out a strategy for Europe's digital policy which included a recognition that Europe "urgently needed the infrastructures capable of carrying the applications and services of the future".
"I am worried if I hear that only 3% of the investment of European telecoms operators goes into fibre," the EU commissioner admitted at the summit last weekend.
Private investors are hesitant to commit the necessary capital because they are not guaranteed a return on investment under the current EU regulatory framework, the spokesperson from ETNO argued.
But according to the Commission, existing EU telecoms rules allow investors to add a reasonable return on investment if new operators get access to the incumbent network.
Levels of investment across the whole broadband sector lie at 45bn euros a year and recent figures indicate a 1% decline.
The estimated cost for rolling out high speed networks across Europe alone is 300bn euros and experts calculate that at the current rate of investment it would take more than 15 years to deploy them.
The infrastructure for next-generation access uses optical fibre rather than copper wires and would reportedly increase Internet speeds from 2.0 megabits per second to up to 100 megabits per second.
