I have in the recent past been very critical of some of Vivane Reding's positions on European regulation. Last week in Brussels she delivered an excellent speech on NGAs and regulation and took positions that make me a little more hopeful for once that the rocky road to FTTH will lead to a sensible situation in the end. I won't go through the whole thing, first of all because it's short and well worth reading (you can find the full text here) ans also because Fibre Ring member Tim Poulus has beaten me to the finish and already posted a thoughtful and incisive analysis about it.
Let me just say this: ultimately, what worries me is how haphazardly built FTTH models will coexist. The two extremes are elegant in their own way but have major issues:
- a separated access network (potentially co-financed by the state) has the advantage of being open and potentially ubiquitous (and I suspect this is the way that Mrs. Reding is hoping things go), but where does that leave the commercial operators and/or local governments who are already deploying - following widely diverging models I should add. How will a service provider ensure homogeneous and ubiquitous service over such a patchwork of networks?
- a fully commercial "vertical" model is also elegant and simple, but it is inherently closed (or at best semi-open) and discriminatory, since service providers will not invest to cover areas where there is no money to be made.
I appreciate the positions outlined in this speech, especially the fact that Viviane Reding raises attention to the fact that the underlying technology will have deep impact on how open the models end up ultimately. I'm wondering though how long it's going to take to be translated into policy, and how history will be dealt with, especially here in France...
