Gigabit Infrastructure Act: EU compromise no help for fibre roll-out in Germany

Brussels/Bonn, 6 February 2024 Today, negotiations on the Gigabit Infrastructure Act (GIA) have reached a compromise between European Commission, Parliament, and Council. Dr Stephan Albers, Managing Director of the German Broadband Association (BREKO), comments on the agreement as follows:

"After months of negotiations, the Gigabit Infrastructure Act unfortunately ends up as a lukewarm compromise that fails to significantly facilitate the mobile and fibre network roll-out in Europe. An additional rule that would have jeopardised fibre investments was only removed at the last minute. However, hardly any of the positive approaches of previous drafts made it into the final version.

Interventions by the German government and several members of the European Parliament have at least ensured that the GIA does not contain any regulations that would further exacerbate the acute problem of the strategic duplication of fibre networks. The fact that companies who build fibre networks can refuse to share their passive infrastructure with competitors, provided they offer virtual network access on fair terms, sends an important signal to the market: fibre networks continue to be a future-proof investment! This means that the EU target of providing all households in Europe with gigabit-capable broadband by 2030 remains achievable in principle.

However, this possibility of offering alternative network access might be very restrictive because the owner of a passive infrastructure must offer virtual network access himself. This could make the exception not applicable for many companies that have split passive infrastructure and active network operation into two separate legal entities. There is an urgent need for clarification that this restriction must obviously not apply to individual companies within a group.

Perhaps the greatest potential of the GIA was wasted in the area of permit-granting procedures: The ‘tacit approval’ principle, whereby permit applications to build fibre and mobile networks are automatically deemed approved if the competent authority does not respond within four months, will be introduced across the EU. However, this deadline is even less strict than the current German regulation of three months. It is therefore completely ineffective, at least in Germany.

Unfortunately, the EU is not sending any strong signals to support the fibre roll-out. Therefore, it is all the more important that German federal, state, and municipal authorities now take the right steps to facilitate the fibre roll-out."

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