Anyone looking for a new telephone provider has a choice in many places. Should it be Deutsche Telekom? Or one of your competitors from 1 & 1 to O2? But whatever you decide, in the end, behind many brands is often: the Telekom network. Because the former monopoly has to grant the competition access to his fixed network, which he has equipped for faster DSL Internet in recent years – with all kinds of fiber optics before the last piece of copper cable into the house. The Federal Network Agency specifies the conditions for this access. The authority wants to enable competition, especially since Telekom had once inherited its fixed network from the Bundespost.
But technology continues to evolve. Direct fiber optic cables are there to replace the old copper. The regulation should also change: If Telekom is now laying more and more fiber optics into houses and apartments, it should continue to grant competitors access – and without discrimination, under the same conditions as its own sales department. But the network agency then no longer wants to set the conditions in advance. This is what the authority is proposing in a draft for the next few years. “The Federal Network Agency reserves the right to intervene only in the event of anti-competitive abuse,” says President Jochen Homann. He speaks of a “paradigm shift”.
With this so-called “regulation light” the authority wants to give the Telekom an incentive to accelerate the fiber optic expansion in Germany. Nationwide, 1.9 million households recently used a direct fiber optic connection for surfing, reports the network agency. So there are still significantly more DSL and cable customers. But the trend towards more and more streaming, video conferencing and home networking speaks in favor of fast – and not exactly cheap – fiber optics in the long term. Companies like Telekom or Deutsche Glasfaser want to lay millions of direct fiber optic connections in this country in the coming years. The expansion costs the industry several billion euros, but in many places the state is also promoting it.
Before the network agency makes a final decision, it now gives the industry five weeks to comment. Telekom welcomes the new approach in principle. However, CEO Tim Höttges made it clear over the weekend that regulation and subsidies are not the only conditions for direct fiber optic expansion. “These include, for example, fast approval procedures and the approval of modern laying technology,” warned the manager.