Germany’s telecom market is fairly good for consumers, but more...
Germany’s telecom market is fairly good for consumers, but more effective regulation is still needed for competition, the German competitive carriers’ association VATM said Thursday. Deutsche Telekom still dominates the fixed-line sector and, 15 years after the telecom sector was…
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fully liberalized, DT “alone will generate in this area almost the same revenues -- with a 43.7 percent share of the total sales -- as all the alternative fixed-line carriers together, with 43.9 percent,” said VATM President Gerd Eickers. DT’s broadband market retail share is around 45 percent, he said. The fact that rivals must depend on DT resale products “remains a vexing problem” because they generally have to interconnect with the incumbent’s access networks to reach their end customers, since network structures stem from the time of DT’s monopoly, VATM said. The high monthly rent for the local loop contributes heavily to DT revenue and stifles competition with cable operators that don’t have to pay for such wholesale services, it said. The association wants Germany’s local loop charges lowered to the European average, Eickers said: “We want to steer investments in the expansion of modern infrastructure rather than investing in already depreciated copper lines.” The report also found, among other things, that: (1) DT rivals are generating more than half of the investment in telecom services. (2) Revenue generated by the sector is expected to remain about the same as last year, at around 60 billion euros ($78.5 billion). (3) By year’s end, around 800,000 households will be connected via fiber networks that will reach at least to their building’s basement. (4) The total volume of broadband traffic over fixed networks increased by around 13 percent to 4.4 billion gigabytes. Outbound data traffic volume from mobile networks rose by 33 percent to 196 megabytes per user in the 2012 reporting period (without LTE). Data services will generate almost two-thirds of non-voice revenues in the mobile sector this year. LTE expansion is progressing, and soon coverage requirements in all German states will be met, including in rural, previously unserved regions, the report said. The VATM urged the Federal Network Agency to speed up the approval process for radio links needed for LTE.