Paris, 6 November 2009
On 5 October 2009, ARCEP notified the European Commission of its draft decision and recommendation on the terms for deploying and accessing optical fibre, ultra-fast broadband electronic communications lines.
ARCEP is pleased to report that today the European Commission issued a favourable opinion on the Authority’s planned measures, noting that they are geared to encouraging infrastructure-based competition and implementing the appropriate framework that will prevent a new bottleneck from forming at the indoor cabling level.
In its remarks, the European Commission suggested that ARCEP eventually consider imposing other, asymmetrical regulatory measures should the currently proposed mechanisms not suffice to ensure effective competition in the short term.
The Commission also suggests that if persistent disagreement were to occur between operators over pricing, the Authority should plan either to make specific recommendations on the matter, or to request that operators submit their pricing offers to ARCEP before publishing them.
ARCEP will take the utmost account of the various comments made by the European Commission.
The Authority will be submitting its amended draft decision and recommendation to the Commission Consultative des Communications Electroniques (CCCE) for its opinion in the near future. Lastly, once the decision has been adopted, ARCEP will submit it to the Minister responsible for electronic communications for approval, prior to its publication and entry into application before the end of the year.
