TELECOMMUNICATIONS/FROM COPPER TO FIBRE : ECTA CALLS FOR END TO 'EXCESSIVE PROFITS'.

A European Commission proposal, which aims to maintain, if not raise, the price of access to historic copper telephone networks as compensation for the cost of investment by telecoms companies in high-speed fibre networks should be accompanied by measures to ensure competitive neutrality, the European Competitive Telecoms Association (ECTA) has said. Allowing access prices for the copper network, which are above the real cost, represents a "subsidy," ECTA says. According to ECTA Director Ilsa Godlovitch, this would only be fair "if everyone was able to benefit from this subsidy and not just the leading firms".

Devised by the Commission during a consultation on methods of calculating the costs of access to the telecommunications networks, this measure could be applied in areas where operators are committed to investing in fibre networks. Where there is no such commitment, the Commission has proposed lowering access prices for the copper network.

Overall, ECTA welcomed this initiative, but has nonetheless said that leading firms should not be allowed to keep making "excessive profits". In order to stamp out this trend, ECTA has proposes the recuperation of these profits: in this case, the calculation would mean subtracting the real price' (see box) of access to the copper network from the current calculated access price. In this way, national regulatory authorities could apply "a sort of broadband tax," Godlovitch explained, and this money could then be diverted into a "fibre fund," which would be made available to all operators investing in fibre networks.

However, this scenario, which "is not very popular at the Commission," could only have a real impact if countries or alternative operators were to inves in fibre networks, Godlovitch said, and in countries where historic operators are the only investors, the money resulting from the broadband tax "would certainly fall back into the hands of the leading operators".

Therefore, ECTA has proposed a second solution, whereby an average would be calculated using...