EU Commission opens investigation into German plan for broadband vectoring

The Cush

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/european-commission-opens-depth-investigation-german-regulators-plan-allow-deutsche-telekom

European Commission opens an in-depth investigation into German regulator's plan to allow Deutsche Telekom to upgrade its network

Vectoring technology can upgrade copper networks to bring higher broadband speeds. It is used as an intermediary upgrade technology instead of the deployment of optical fibre networks However, the technology currently only works when it is applied to an entire bundle of copper cables. At the current state of technological development, this prevents the physical "unbundling" of individual subscriber lines by alternative operators. Instead of physical unbundling, alternative operators would be offered two alternative, active or "virtual" access products, both of which give rise to concerns as currently proposed.

The Commission recognises that BNetzA's proposal would lead to broadband speed gains in parts of Germany (of the 6 million households affected, approximately 1.4 million would receive speeds above 50 Mbit/s for the first time). However, the proposal is likely to have a considerably restricting effect on alternative operators who buy access from DT to compete in serving end users. In the view of the Commission, the alternative access solutions offered by BNetzA are not yet sufficient to ensure an appropriate safeguarding of competition, including competition to invest, both now and in the future.

BNetzA's draft plan makes it highly likely that only DT could install the vectoring technology which would serve more than 90% of the 6 million households in question. The main alternative method through which competitors could gain access to the last mile of the subscriber line (a Layer-2 Bitstream product at around 900 Broadband Network Gateways in Germany) is in BNetzA's own view not (yet) a functional equivalent to physical unbundling due to technical restrictions in the product design. This would deny DTs' competitors the degree of control needed to differentiate their retail offers and enhance consumer choice. The other option (a higher-specification virtual unbundling product at affected street cabinets) would place physical and economic limitations on access by alternative operators which are likely to weaken competitive pressure in the short term.

In the light of the above the Commission has decided to open an in-depth investigation into BNetzA's draft measure. The investigation will assess whether solutions can be found, which are better suited to safeguard competition and future investment while still allowing for speed-enhancing network upgrades.

The Commission now has three months to discuss the case with BNetzA, in close cooperation with the body of European regulators (BEREC), in order to remove any elements giving rise to serious doubts as to compliance with EU law. The Commission may, at the end of the investigation period, either lift its reservations or issue an Article 7a Recommendation, which will require BNetzA to amend or withdraw its draft measure.

ED E

Interesting. Nice to see the initial 3 month timeline, if this were to go on for an extended period results would only emerge as they became obsolete.

How important is the ULL?
The unbundled local loop is the most important wholesale product. Telekom currently has around 9.5 million leased ULLs. In addition, the ULL is included in a large number of other wholesale products.

In 2013, there were roughly 37.11 million landline phone connections, a slight decrease compared to the previous year, at 37.48 million connections.

So roughly 20% LLU, not an insignificant figure. Can't easily spot figures for here but I'd intuit they're a lot lower with only about 1 in 9 exchanges offering it at most.

bk

I don't have numbers, but I strongly suspect there is far less LLU in Ireland then in the UK or Germany.

I believe only BT Ireland and Digiweb/Smart have LLU here and only in a relatively small number of exchanges at that.

By comparison in the UK there are over a dozen LLU providers, including big hitters like TalkTalk, Sky, Vodafone and even Virgin Media (outside of cable areas) with millions of LLU customers.

That is why I think it was relatively easy for Eir to do vectoring compared to the UK/Germany, less people effected. In particular I suspect BT Ireland was told by it's parent BT UK not to make too much of a fuss. It would look bad if BT Ireland objected to vectoring in Ireland when BT is trying to push it in the UK!

And I have to say, I think we are lucky that we have gotten away with vectoring here. I don't think there is much future for LLU when you have FTTC/VDSL. Exchange based LLU only gets you "upto" 24Mb/s, I can't see many people staying on LLU when they can get up to 70Mb/s VDSL.

Technically VDSL LLU is possible, but in reality there seems to be zero interest in it from the OLO's. It involves them putting their own FTTC cab next to each Eir cab and running fibre to it. Very expensive to do, much more expensive then exchange based LLU.

It would have been a real pity to hold back the higher speeds of vectorised VDSL just so the OLO's could sweat their ADSL LLU assets when they had no plans of doing FTTC/VDSL of their own.

In the long term a form of virtual LLU maybe possible over FTTH using separate wavelenghts for each LLU company.

In reality the only way to truly compete at the network level is to actually completely build your own network, either FTTH (see SIRO) or cable (see Virgin). I don't think LLU is really worth it for the trade off of network complexity and lower speeds for customers.