We strongly support all measures aimed at facilitating and incentivising the deployment of full-fibre networks by reducing their costs and administrative burden linked to network roll-out (e.g. permit granting etc), or by facilitating synergies in deployments.
A cost-modelling study by the FTTH Council Europe from 2017 assumes that 25% of the trenching cost (labour civil) can be replaced by reusing ducts to deploy infrastructure. This highlights the importance of sharing the infrastructure when possible and we believe that improving access and sharing the cost by more coordination between the different sectors (for example under the Broadband Cost reduction Directive- BCRD) will have a material impact on the cost and speed of deployment.
Both the BCRD and the EECC provide for measures to lower entry barriers by granting access to passive infrastructures. It is of extreme importance that these two texts are fully consistent with each other and don’t leave the door open to any regulatory uncertainty as the incentive to invest is undoubtedly the most important criteria which determines network investments.