Summary

  • The European Commission opened a Phase II investigation on 29 October into PTS’s draft fibre-access rules for single-dwelling homes; its objections centre on the 5,000-connection threshold and the remedies attached to it.
  • PTS’s proposal covers 63 network owners. The Commission has not decided how many networks, if any, should face regulation, and PTS cannot adopt its draft measures during the review.

Brussels does not object to the map, then questions the ruler

The European Commission does not object to the most important map in Sweden’s new fibre-access proposal: each local network can be treated as its own geographic market. The fight now concerns the ruler placed across that map. On 29 October, the Commission opened an in-depth Phase II investigation into PTS’s plan and challenged the logic of a 5,000-connection cutoff.

The sequence is unusually clear. PTS sent its proposal to Brussels on 30 September. It covers 63 network owners and 63 draft decisions for fibre networks serving single-family houses. PTS says owners with more than 5,000 such connections should have significant market power (SMP) and face wholesale-access duties. Owners below 5,000 would not be regulated because PTS considers that disproportionate. In the separate multi-dwelling market, PTS sees no need for advance regulation. The Commission separately encouraged PTS to make greater use of existing EU rules where building-owner charges block operators’ access to in-building wiring.

The proposed duties would require an SMP operator to provide access to its network and related facilities on transparent, non-discriminatory terms and at fair, reasonable prices. The number therefore separates owners whose wholesale terms could be regulated from owners left outside advance rules.

The European Commission’s objections land on both sides of the threshold. It questions whether assigning SMP status automatically to every owner above 5,000 reflects actual conditions in each market. It also doubts that PTS has adequately justified excluding every market below 5,000. A size test that is too blunt at the top and too generous at the bottom can produce a tidy chart while skipping the case-by-case work that market-power rules require.

Then there is the remedy package. The Commission says PTS proposes the same remedies for different types of operators even though local conditions may vary. Access obligations that fit one network structure can misfire on another; the public summary does not describe an operator-by-operator remedy design.

The geographic choice matters because Sweden does not have one national fibre system. In its account of the 2019 case, the Commission says it blocked a national-market approach because networks were separate. It now accepts PTS’s use of each local fibre network as a distinct market. The present dispute is about what PTS does after drawing those local boundaries: how it identifies market power, where it stops looking, and whether the same duties fit different networks.

This is still a draft. The Commission says it has not concluded how many networks, if any, should be regulated. PTS cannot adopt the proposed measures during Phase II. The Commission has two months for competition-law aspects and three months for its serious doubts about remedy proportionality; it will take BEREC’s opinion into account. At the end, it may lift its reservations or veto under Article 32 of the European Electronic Communications Code. It may also issue a Recommendation on remedies.

The practical question is now narrower than the headline number: can PTS show why 5,000 connections sorts local markets into different regulatory outcomes? Until that answer is tested, the 63 draft decisions remain proposals, and the smaller markets remain outside the proposed assessment.

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