ARCEP grants a portion of Bouygues Telecom's requests concerning the France Telecom infrastructure-sharing solution.

Paris, 30 November 2010

ARCEP is making public its decision concerning the dispute it was called on to settle in response to a complaint that Bouygues Telecom filed against France Telecom on 23 July 2010.

Subject of the complaint

Bouygues Telecom appealed to the Authority regarding several provisions contained in France Telecom's infrastructure-sharing offer for accessing optical fibre-to-home (FTTH) lines in high density areas, considering them to constitute barriers to entry and preventing Bouygues from co-investing in those buildings that had been equipped by France Telecom.

ARCEP decision

The Authority has allowed some of the requests submitted by Bouygues Telecom and has dismissed others.

In particular, ARCEP has allowed Bouygues Telecom's request to have permanent access to an FTTH line access solution that allows it to enjoy lasting rights of use on the deployed infrastructure, and to be able to amortise the resulting investments under reasonable conditions, in exchange for a proportionate rate of return given the risk involved.

The Authority also considers it fair to plan on having the commercial operator who recruits the customer assume at least 90% of the relevant cost of installing the branching unit on the floor.
This decision will help to lower the barriers to entry in the France Telecom infrastructure-sharing offer, while maintaining incentives to invest and infrastructure-based competition in high density areas in France.

France Telecom now has three months to amend its infrastructure-sharing offer for FTTH optical fibre lines inside of buildings, in accordance with the ARCEP decision.