The European Commission published a ruling advancing its case against a German law that could grant Deutsche Telekom a “regulatory holiday” in spite of its dominant position in the broadband market. Specifically, the European Commission is objecting to a German telecom law that just entered into force that effectively exempts Deutsche Telekom’s new VDSL network from competition, as had been requested by the German incumbent operator. DT is still partly owned by the German State.
With this ruling, the EC has given Germany one month to reply. The EC describes its action as the last step before referring the case to the European Court of Justice.
http://www.europa.eu
- At the CeBIT show in March 2007, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Com division announced its plans to accelerate its VDSL rollout for supporting IPTV. The aim is to cover more than 17 million households by the end of 2007. As the next step in the expansion of its VDSL access network, Deutsche Telekom will provide its customers in the following cities with the new high-speed technology: Bochum, Bonn, Bremen, Darmstadt, Dortmund, Dresden, Duisburg, Essen, Karlsruhe, Ludwigshafen, Mainz, Mannheim, Wiesbaden and Wuppertal. This will bring the number of VDSL connected cities in Germany to 26.