Summary

  • PTS opened consultation on a new fixed-network cost model on 9 September, with comments due on 7 October. It explicitly excludes decisions on price regulation itself and which products would fall under it.
  • The released R package models only local physical access and uses fictional inputs for an operator with three catchment areas. Its outputs illustrate calculations, not actual network costs or wholesale charges.

A precise output can still be an illustration

The first distinction to make in Sweden's new fibre-cost consultation is between a calculated result and evidence about an operator. PTS has published a usable example of a modelling process. It has not published a bill that an access seeker should expect to pay.

The authority's 9 September announcement presents the proposed fixed-network model as a way to calculate cost-oriented access prices and help assess fair and reasonable prices, primarily in local fibre access. It seeks written comments by 7 October. That gives network owners and wholesale customers a chance to examine the tool before the final model is published.

The consultation description is unusually explicit about the evidence boundary. The R package represents a fictional operator with three catchment areas. Its network quantities, investment and cost parameters are fictional too. Results generated from those inputs demonstrate the structure, calculation flow and presentation of outputs. They are not data about a real operator or fibre-access network.

This matters commercially because a model can produce a convincing-looking number without establishing the conditions of a particular network. The public example is useful for understanding how inputs become outputs. It cannot, by itself, validate a supplier's charge, a buyer's claimed saving or a change in a household's broadband bill.

The package is narrower than the design ambition

The released package covers local physical access only; it does not contain calculations for other services. That should not be confused with the wider architecture described in the model reference document's opening sections. Those sections discuss local physical and virtual fibre access to single-family homes, co-location and associated facilities, with backhaul potentially required.

The reference document describes a bottom-up, long-run incremental-cost approach developed with WIK-Consult GmbH. It is intended to scale across geographic markets and adapt to potential future obligation decisions. The broader design is therefore context for development, not proof that every contemplated calculation is already available in the public package.

Nor does publishing the package settle how it will be used. PTS says the consultation does not concern price regulation as such or the products it might cover. Individual application is to be explained in separate decisions, with transparency and predictability. Comments on how the modelling principles have been implemented are part of this exercise; a new regulated tariff is not its announced output.

Replacing the national copper reference point

PTS says its previous model is based on a national copper-network market and is not suitable for potential future price regulation. The reference document describes a changed environment with multiple network owners. A scalable fibre tool can provide a common basis for comparing and examining costs without pretending that all owners operate one national network.

That is the market significance before any price outcome is known. The tool can support supervision and possible intervention, but no price cut, margin change or new access obligation follows merely from the consultation announcement. Actual inputs, final revisions and the terms of specific application remain necessary evidence.

PTS also provides a model guide and a 21 September guidance meeting, with expressions of interest due on 17 September. These help participants inspect the published package. They do not convert illustrative results into approved commercial charges. This report relies on the announcement, consultation scope and the reference document's opening sections; it does not claim an audit of the complete model or an execution of its code.