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

Germany...

[Savage-Rabbit]

It sounds like Germany has tried to regulate instead of solve the situation, and when the regulators are bought out (as with this 'let us build our own exclusive network' deal) the entire mechanism is pointless and the consumers don't benefit. <rant>
The thing about Germany is that at the moment it's a country that is in dire need of radical economic and regulatory reform but as a leading politician from one of it's neighboring countries observed: "Economic reform is something the Germans seem to have a deep rooted primal fear of." Just take a look at the last elections in Germany, Social Democrats and Christian democrats in a coalition government. Either one on their own I can live with but a coalition is like putting a pack of hyenas in a pen with a pride of lions and expecting to have a quitet day at the Zoo. The Christ Democrats probably would have won the election, (If only because people thought that there was no way they could possibly f*ck things up any worse than Schröder did). Then Angela Merkel started talking about economic reform and deregulating the job market and the Social Democrats breathed a collective sigh of relief as their poll ratings went up again. Of course Stoiber's comments about the East Germans didn't help either, talk about putting your foot in your mouth! Basically Angela Merkel was right though, economic reform is something Germany desperately needs and the longer it is postponed the worse the transition will be.
</rant>