Summary

  • BEREC’s draft report compares how 22 national regulators shape wholesale access to publicly funded fibre. The common EU principle is clear; national approval, pricing and monitoring arrangements are not uniform.
  • A separate Commission proposal to revise the GBER would retain fair and non-discriminatory access while moving or dropping some detailed regulatory criteria. Both documents remain proposals, so the next test is what regulators publish and who can check it.

One principle, several control paths

Public money can extend fibre into places where commercial deployment is not expected to pay for itself. The governance question begins after the subsidy is awarded: what must the funded network offer to other providers, who defines the terms, and when can a regulator intervene?

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has put those questions into a public consultation. Its Board of Regulators adopted draft report BoR (26) 139 on 1–2 October. The report draws on responses from 22 national regulatory authorities (NRAs) about access to state-aid-funded fibre-to-the-premises networks. Comments are due by 13 November. The report is a comparative exercise, not a new rule or a finding that any country has breached one. BEREC’s consultation notice sets out the status and scope.

The shared starting point is wholesale access on fair and non-discriminatory terms. That obligation matters because a publicly supported network may later serve retail customers as well as the provider that received the aid. A usable wholesale offer can let another internet provider reach those customers without building a parallel local network. But a principle does not specify every product, price, review step or remedy. The draft maps how those choices are assigned nationally.

When review happens changes what it can catch

The clearest comparison is the review of reference offers: the published terms on which another provider can buy wholesale access. BEREC reports that seven NRAs examine offers before a funded network begins operating, four intervene after operations start, and nine responses describe other arrangements. Those alternatives include oversight by a grant authority, tender conditions, existing regulated offers or broader monitoring. “Other” should not be read as “no oversight”; it means the NRA’s role is not the same direct approval process.

Timing affects the evidence available to an entrant. A pre-launch offer gives a prospective wholesaler a chance to assess products and prices before the network opens. Later review can use operating experience, but a market participant may have less certainty about terms at the point it decides whether to enter. The report does not measure resulting retail prices or prove that one timing model produces better competition. It shows where the decision sits and when it can be challenged.

The underlying methods vary too. The report lists regulated prices, comparisons with more competitive areas, cost-oriented calculations, economic replicability tests and combinations. Reference offers also differ in product coverage and publication timing. A network may expose active services such as bitstream or virtual access, passive inputs such as ducts and poles, or several layers. In the countries that supplied usage data, active products generally drew more commercial interest than passive infrastructure.

BEREC cautions that these observations are incomplete and depend on network design, prices, local market structure and the aid scheme.

That distinction matters for evaluating an access obligation. The existence of a published offer is not the same as evidence that it is commercially usable; a low take-up figure is not, by itself, evidence that the offer failed. Monitoring needs both the terms on paper and information about whether providers request or use them.

A second draft could change the paperwork

The European Commission’s separate GBER revision would preserve a requirement for fair and non-discriminatory wholesale access to subsidised networks. Its draft explanatory memorandum also proposes shifting detailed methods for mapping eligible areas and conducting public consultations from regulation text into guidance, while retaining the underlying principles.

BEREC’s report highlights another proposed change: detailed price criteria now set out in the GBER would move out of the Regulation, and the draft would no longer expressly require consultation of NRAs on wholesale products, pricing and related disputes. This is BEREC’s comparison of the Commission’s draft; it does not mean that every access safeguard disappears. The 2023 Broadband State Aid Guidelines remain a separate part of the framework, and the GBER proposal has not been adopted. The Commission’s consultation page and explanatory memorandum describe the proposal.

The accountability test is practical

The governance issue is not whether Europe should use one price formula everywhere. Fibre projects, market conditions and network architecture differ. The sharper test is whether each scheme makes its chain of responsibility legible: who sets access conditions, whether the NRA gives advice or approval, which authority checks the beneficiary’s offer, and who monitors changes after the network starts operating.

For an entrant, uncertainty about a wholesale price or product can change the decision to serve a locality. For a funding authority, weak reporting can make it harder to tell whether public investment opened a market or only financed coverage. For a regulator, a mandate to advise without access to current offers or usage data can limit what later oversight can establish. These are possible mechanisms, not outcomes measured by the BEREC questionnaire.

The useful response to variation is therefore comparable documentation, not a claim that every country must reproduce the same institutional chart. A reference offer that is published before service begins, a clear record of who reviewed it, and a way to follow price revisions make it easier to distinguish design choices from performance. Where another authority rather than the NRA carries the task, that division should be visible too.

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