Summary

  • BEREC adopted draft report BoR (26) 139 on 1 October 2026. The public consultation runs from 7 October to 13 November 2026.
  • A required wholesale product does not prove that access was ordered, delivered or used. Reported usage data are limited, so conclusions must reflect the available evidence.

From an Access Obligation to a Usable Wholesale Product

A publicly funded fibre network can satisfy a formal access requirement without making every required wholesale product equally straightforward to buy, deploy or verify in practice. The distinction is not semantic. A product may exist in a funding decision or reference offer, yet its practical value to another provider depends on the terms attached to it, the price calculation, the ordering process, the technical conditions for delivery and the evidence available to regulators about actual use.

BEREC’s draft Report BoR (26) 139, adopted on 1 October 2026, examines these issues across state-aid-supported fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) and fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) networks. Its consultation, opened on 7 October and scheduled to close on 13 November, offers a basis for examining the relationship between prescribed access and operational access. The findings remain those of a draft report under consultation, not a final determination that any particular national arrangement has succeeded or failed.

BEREC consultation Start with the product, not the promise The draft’s survey shows that access requirements cover several different layers of the network. Among 22 national regulatory authorities (NRAs) reporting required products, ducts and bitstream were each reported by 18; dark fibre by 14; virtual unbundled local access (VULA) and colocation by 13 each; poles by 12; physical unbundling by 11; and backhaul by 10. These counts describe reported requirements, not the number of products actually purchased, the number of providers using them or the quality of delivery. The categories also serve different operational purposes.

Duct and pole access can let a wholesale customer use existing civil infrastructure to deploy or extend its own fibre, subject to available capacity, physical conditions and the applicable terms. Dark fibre offers an unlit fibre strand that the customer can equip and operate within the limits of the arrangement. Physical unbundling gives access to a physical network element, while VULA provides a virtual wholesale alternative intended to reproduce specified aspects of local access.

Bitstream offers a more active service, with the network operator providing transmission functionality that the wholesale customer can use to serve its own customers. Colocation and backhaul can be necessary complements where equipment must be housed or traffic carried beyond the access point. These are not interchangeable products. A requirement to offer ducts does not itself establish that the relevant route is accessible, that spare capacity exists or that the wholesale customer can economically construct a service over it.

Equally, the availability of bitstream does not establish that its technical parameters, service scope or commercial conditions suit every retail or wholesale business model. The operational question is whether the specified product fits a plausible deployment and can be ordered and delivered under known conditions. Price logic must be identifiable The 2023 European Commission Guidelines on State aid for broadband networks require fair and non-discriminatory wholesale access, transparency over access terms and prices, and consultation with the relevant NRA.

The General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) also forms part of the applicable framework. The Guidelines describe approaches to pricing that can include benchmarks from competitive areas, applicable regulated prices, and cost-oriented or sectoral methodologies. The correct approach depends on the circumstances and the applicable requirements; the existence of several permitted methods does not mean that they produce identical prices.

2023 Guidelines BEREC reports overlapping pricing-method cases: 38 involving significant-market-power (SMP) regulated prices, 29 dedicated non-SMP cost-oriented cases, 29 competitive-area benchmark cases and eight cases involving the Economic Replicability Test (ERT). Because the categories overlap, these figures should not be added together as if they represented mutually exclusive countries or schemes. They also do not reveal, on their own, whether a particular price is attractive to a wholesale buyer. Three examples illustrate why the regulatory context matters.

In Poland, SMP prices remain fixed to January 2028 despite deregulation in January 2026. Ireland uses former Eircom regulated bitstream prices as a benchmark. Norway is developing an approach. These examples represent different ways of dealing with the relationship between regulated pricing experience and state-aid-supported infrastructure; they are not a comparative performance league. For operators and buyers, the practical test is whether the methodology is disclosed, the relevant inputs can be identified, and the resulting terms can be assessed against the product being offered.

A price may be formally published yet remain difficult to evaluate if the associated service definition, connection charges, recurring fees or other applicable conditions are unclear. Conversely, a transparent method does not by itself establish that a given wholesale product will suit every buyer. Ordering and delivery complete the chain A usable wholesale offer must translate a written entitlement into a repeatable transaction.

The prospective customer needs to understand eligibility, the locations and network elements covered, the information required for an order, the technical prerequisites, the steps between acceptance and activation, and the process for handling disputes or delays. These are operational tests of the offer, not claims that BEREC has found a particular defect. Active and passive products require different evidence. For bitstream or VULA, a buyer may need service specifications, provisioning arrangements and information about the functions delivered at the network interface.

For ducts, poles or dark fibre, physical availability, route information, access procedures and the responsibilities for installation and maintenance can be more central. The same monitoring template will not necessarily capture both forms of access adequately. Institutional roles also differ. The public authority designing or administering aid must establish and enforce the relevant conditions of support. The network operator supplies the wholesale product and implements its terms.

The NRA can contribute regulatory expertise, including consultation and, where its powers and the applicable arrangements provide for it, scrutiny of reference offers or prices. BEREC’s role here is to develop a European regulatory perspective through its report and consultation; its draft does not replace national implementation or case-specific assessment. BEREC reports that nine NRAs evaluate reference offers, while 13 operate in an advisory role without formal approval. On market consultation, 14 countries reported conducting it, seven reported not doing so and one did not respond. These figures describe reported institutional practices.

They should not be read as proof that advisory oversight is ineffective or that formal approval guarantees a workable offer. The substance of the review, its timing and the authority’s ability to resolve problems are also relevant. Monitoring must distinguish availability from use Only nine of the 22 NRAs reporting product requirements supplied some usage data, and five reported dedicated monitoring. The report cautions that data may be incomplete, specific to certain services or held elsewhere.

Consequently, the absence of a figure in a regulator’s dataset cannot automatically be interpreted as the absence of transactions, and a reported transaction count cannot alone establish that all relevant access conditions are working well. In jurisdictions providing usage information, active products attracted more commercial interest. Reported use of ducts and poles was low or absent in most reporting countries, with France an exception, while half of bitstream respondents reported low take-up. These observations warrant attention to differences between product types, but do not establish why usage varies.

Network age, topology, geography, the maturity of local infrastructure and the completeness of available records can all affect interpretation. Low reported take-up is not proof of absent demand, failed policy or harm to consumers. A useful monitoring framework therefore needs to separate at least four states: a product is required; its terms and price are published; a provider can order and receive it; and actual transactions or use can be evidenced. Data should identify what is measured, which services and locations it covers, the observation period and any material gaps.

Where usage records sit with an operator or another institution, the regulator needs a credible way to obtain and interpret them rather than treating missing data as a conclusive result. The Commission’s proposed GBER revision is not yet law. Its review page indicates planned adoption by the end of 2026 and application from 1 January 2027. Until the proposal is adopted and applicable, it should not be treated as a replacement for the current framework. Commission GBER review The central operational standard is straightforward: formal access is the starting condition, not the final evidence.

Assessment should follow the whole chain from a defined product and transparent price to workable ordering, delivery and monitoring. That approach makes it possible to distinguish a written obligation from demonstrated use without turning incomplete observations into unsupported conclusions about demand or policy performance. Sources

Sources

  1. BEREC consultation notice
  2. BEREC draft report, BoR (26) 139
  3. 2023 Broadband State Aid Guidelines
  4. European Commission GBER review
  5. Current General Block Exemption Regulation