Europe could have 20 million more broadband subscribers if every ...
Europe could have 20 million more broadband subscribers if every country’s market were as competitive as Sweden’s, said U.K. Strategy & Policy Consultants Network. In a paper on EU broadband competition and market growth, the firm’s analysts tied rates…
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of change in broadband use to market concentration. In 21 of 25 EU member nations, there’s a “clear 41% correlation between the level of broadband take-up and competition between access modes, identified as incumbents’ own ISP, resellers of incumbent’s bitstream, LLU, cable and other modes,” the report said. For every 1% drop in market concentration broadband uptake rises 1.66% hike, analysts said. If all EU states studied had the Swedes’ competitive intensity, 20 million subscribers would be added. Analysts urged policy-makers to spur competition by: (1) Removing barriers to market entry by, for instance, mandating wholesale DSL and promoting LLU. (2) Encouraging efficient entry of new infrastructure to cut domination by cable and DSL. (3) Lowering barriers keeping consumers from switching to alternate suppliers. (4) Scrutinizing markets for static market shares that could signal collusion between competitors. The report confirms European Competitive Telecom Assn. (ECTA) findings that broadband adoption rises when markets open up, ECTA said. Procompetitive policies some EU countries enforce are “directly responsible” for higher broadband takeup among consumers and small-to-midsized businesses, ECTA Managing Dir. Steen Clausen said. But another analyst finds fault with the EU strategy for increasing broadband competition. Forrester Research analyst Lars Godell accused Information Society & Media Comr. Viviane Reding of “barking up the wrong tree” by focusing on competition complaints between service providers in already regulated markets to the exclusion of considering how to generate benefits for end-users, Telecoms.com reported. Godell cited recent EC criticism of Telefonica for alleged margin squeezing and antitrust activities in the broadband market -- and of efforts by Deutsche Telekom to secure a regulatory holiday while it builds a new fiber network -- as examples of a mistaken Commission focus on negligible issues. “This appears a classic case of regulators being blinded by looking after producer, not consumer, interests,” Godell is quoted as saying.