Fixed broadband and superfast broadband markets: Arcep publishes its guidelines to encourage all market players to invest in fibre

Paris, 9 January 2017

Stimulate competition, accelerate subscribers' migration

Three public consultations* held in recent months have enabled Arcep to fine tune and deepen its understanding of the current state of the fixed market, and what it needs going forward. In keeping with the conclusions of its strategic review, today Arcep is publishing a summary document that details its main findings. The purpose of these guidelines is to give market players clarity, with a view to the forthcoming launch of consultations on market analyses that will establish the regulatory framework up to 2020.

In this document, Arcep sketches out its views on the market, and identifies the regulatory challenges for the coming years. Its aim is to adapt regulation to the key objectives that have been identified: step up investments across the whole of France, and establish a targeted action plan for the business services market.

Encourage investment in superfast broadband, and enable French businesses' digital transition

Arcep notes and welcomes the investment effort that Orange has made. This momentum must now spread to all market players. Through its actions, Arcep will work to prevent any obstructive behaviour from Orange, whether with respect to other operators wanting to invest in FttH networks, or to upgrading broadband networks to superfast and ultrafast systems.

For the business market, Arcep will propose a set of regulatory measures to expand the range of "enhanced quality" products available to businesses on FttH networks, to lay the groundwork for new players specialising in infrastructures dedicated to businesses, and to prevent any potential obstacles to healthy competition.

Next step: publish draft fixed market analysis decisions for public consultation

Based on these guidelines, one month from now Arcep will publish three draft market analysis decisions for consultation: on wholesale local access provided at a fixed location ("market 3a"), wholesale central access provided at a fixed location for mass-market products ("market 3b") and wholesale high-quality access provided at a fixed location ("market 4"). These drafts will then be submitted to the Competition Authority for an opinion, along with the responses received from stakeholders as part of the public consultation.

After having taken all of this feedback into account, the revised draft decisions will be submitted to a second public consultation, then notified to the European Commission.

The final decisions will be adopted in the second half of 2017.

(*) Public consultations on the current status and future outlook of the fixed market, on the development of the "business" market and on copper pair pricing.