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

for new lines that's also true?

[HTD]

I thought the former telco monopolys in europe had to open their old networks for the new telcos to even enable some form of competition. I didn't know that new investments after the opening by the now "private" company fall under the same rule. It's no wonder why there's almost no fiber optics rolled out in the EU, because nobody is willing to pay for infrastructure that must be opened to the competition...

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

[Anonymous Coward]

And in this case, the German government made an agreement with the company to give them exclusive access to the network they built. And now that they've built a good portion of it, the EC comes in and says Germany didn't have the right to make that agreement. Would the company still have made that big of an investment if they knew they'd have to share the network with others? It's hard to say, but it seems a fair bit less likely.

watch out.. my libertarian is acting up today...

[Churla]

If the company paid for rights to the land it's cable goes through. And if the company paid the cost of deploying the fiber and none of it is government funded/subsidized then the company should be able to do as they damn well please with it.

If you say "develop and deploy this state of the art network which will increase the countries infrastructure and help along network access in the country, but we're going to make you let your competitors use it too" then I would say that's a good incentive to respond with "well then the government should build and maintain it".