France Establishes Fiber Rules

ARCEP, the French electronic communication regulatory authority, has defined the main points necessary to guarantee an extensive, open and competitive fiber rollout:

• the deployment of additional fibers at the request of another operator and financed by the latter;
• the location of the shared access point on public land;
• the presence of a single operator for a building, providing all services from the shared access point to subscribers' plugs.

The competitive broadband carrier, Free, supports this approach and is calling for all operators come together and formalise an agreement to bring optic fiber to French households as quickly as possible.

France is leading the way in Europe to define a new regulatory regime for fiber that includes each operator laying its own fiber using shared ducts. It will be interesting to see if this approach spreads to Asia or North America.