REVIEW OF THE BROADBAND COST REDUCTION DIRECTIVE

Publication date:February 17, 2021

The Directive requires member states inter alia to:

  • ensure that all new buildings and buildings undergoing major renovation are equipped with broadband infrastructure and an access point (Article 8)
  • ensure that every public communications network provider has the right to access any existing in-building infrastructure with a view to deploying broadband (Article 9)

EPF considered this at the time of the original Proposal for a Directive in 2013 and concluded that it was fine as it was. A couple of members raised problems about the need for exemptions for some buildings, about whether the owner or the operator gets to decide antenna placement, about transferring major renovation costs to tenants or about operators paying owners rent for the space they use, but all agreed that these were entirely national problems and that the Directive had very properly left all that to the member states and allowed for exemptions to the broadband installation requirement (Art. 8(4)).

So EPF did not intervene in the legislative process and the relevant parts of the final Directive remained basically the same.

Now it's under review and a consultant employed by the Commission sent EPF a questionnaire with, in particular, this:

Article 8 (In-building physical infrastructure) 'Problem Drivers'


S125 Are new buildings or renovations being completed without adequate FTTH* in-house cabling being pre-installed?

FTTH (fiber-to-the-home): Fiber reaches the boundary of the living space, such as a box on the outside wall of a home. Passive optical networks and point-to-point Ethernet are architectures that are capable of delivering triple-play services over FTTH networks directly from an operator's central office.[3][4] Typically providing between 1 and 10 Gbit/s (Wikipedia)

S127 Should the BCRD be updated to require new and renovated buildings to be "FTTH-ready" (rather than high-speed-ready)?

S133 Would an FTTH-ready label make houses more attractive to potential buyers or tenants?


Article 9 (Access to in-building physical infrastructure)

Access to in-building physical infrastructure Operational Effectiveness (Quantitative)

S139 Have any of your requests for access to in-building physical infrastructure been refused, or have you refused any requests?

S139A What reasons were given for refusal?

Article 9 Potential revisions Impact efficiency

GRID 9 To what extent would the benefits of introducing the following measures exceed the costs?

  • More detailed specification of the conditions of access to in-building physical infrastructure
  • Limiting the exemption from physical infrastructure access currently provided for in cases where access is provided to a high-speed electronic communications network&nbsp*;

* Non-breaking space: a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. (Wikipedia)

See epf21-08 of 17.02.2021