Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Deutsche Telekom exempted from sharing fiber?

FAZ.net reports that politicians seem inclined to surrender to Deutsche Telekom's US-style extortian.

On September 1 Deutsche Telekom planned a fiber push, extending fiber from the central offices to the street cabinets. Late October the company added that it would only do so if it were exempted from sharing this FTTN network. Else it threatened to invest the money abroad.

So now politicians, negotiating a new cabinet, seem willing to grant Deutsche Telekom what it wants, at least for a limited time, in order to entice it to make the investment.

The problem is that installing DSLAMs in central offices is one thing, but adding the equipment at street cabinets is physically simply impossible. It would therefore be a big set-back for companies such as United Internet, HanseNet, Versatel, Freenet.de, etc. They would be limited to providing ADSL2+ services, whereas DT could move on to VDSL.

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