EU Wants German Telekom Fiber Open to All

High Fibre writes "The European Commission has informed Germany that a new law protecting Deutsche Telekom's fiber optic network is illegal. Deutsche Telekom is in the process of rolling out a new fiber network that will serve the 50 largest German cities by the end of 2007 and convinced the German parliament to pass a law that would keep the competition from being able to lease its lines. The EC says that's a no-go: 'The EC believes that the German law would make it more difficult for competitors to enter the German market. More importantly, it runs contrary to an EC-endorsed recommendation that Deutsche Telekom be forced to open up its network — including the new fiber deployment — to competitors.'"

Comments

I never know how to feel about things like this

[realmolo]

On the one hand, if you paid to build the network, it *is* yours, and you should get exclusive access to it. Why should your competitors get a "free ride"?

On the other hand, you don't really want a bunch of fiber running everywhere, when there's PLENTY already in the ground. Building "duplicate" networks is a waste of resources, and the construction is disruptive.

Honestly, at this point, I think that "the government" should be building the networks with tax money, and letting the various providers lease it for a reasonable price. Bandwidth/communications has really become the backbone of the modern economy in a lot of ways. It should be treated almost like the highway system. The only downside is the bureaucracy that will rise up around it all. But I think that, overall, it would be a better situation.

Re:I never know how to feel about things like this

[pubjames]

On the one hand, if you paid to build the network, it *is* yours, and you should get exclusive access to it.

Although that sounds common sense, in actual fact the fibre network will travel almost entirely over public property (under pavements, roads etc), and so we the people (through our government) can put whatever conditions we want on it.

Re:I never know how to feel about things like this

[UbuntuDupe]

That's fine, as long as the public's representative negotiates those conditions *before* the network is built, keeping in mind that unjustifiably burdensome conditions may mean it's never build.

However, why does the builder of the network have to be the same one sending data through it? Wouldn't it be better if one non-ISP company built it, and then leased to all users at prevailing prices? Then you don't have to worry about it being stacked in favor of one ISP's customers. (Disclaimer: I'm a newb on understanding telecom networks.)

The bad car analogies, they do nothing!

[spun]

You drive your car over public streets, you've got to let the government (i.e. the people) tell you how you can use your car.

There, fixed that for ya'.

Regulation is never the right answer.

[mark3748]

So Deutsche Telekom pays to build a large fiber network, and they own that network. They decide they don't want anyone else using it, that's their business. It is a private network built by a private company, and the government has no right to tell them what they can and cannot do with it. Of course that's just a dream, especially since this is happening in Europe, but even in the US you're likely to have the same issues, and it's sad. It will more than likely end up being a good business decision to lease access to the network to other companies, however I see absolutely no reason to force them to do so. I just wish that private property and liberty still meant something, somewhere in the world.

Re:Regulation is never the right answer.

[guruevi]

It's not that it's THEIR network, such things get hugely funded by local, regional and federal governments. It also runs in public property (the streets) and thus could cost a lot of civilians (driving eg) some money going around traffic while they are working on it.

Next to that, the law doesn't state that they have to give it away for free, in a 'free business' (or liberal?) market, DT would start charging huge amounts of money for using their network, disproportionate to the actual cost, to keep newcomers out the market. That and DT used to be (and might still be partially) state-owned like in a lot of European countries (Belgium has Belgacom for example)