On 30 June 2008, the Federal Network Agency announced two decisions on charges in the telecommunications sector. Both approvals concern wholesale products which Deutsche Telekom AG (DT AG) offers to its competitors due to regulatory obligations.
As of 1 July 2008, the fees which competitors have to pay once to DT AG in the case of leasing the subscriber line (local loop), the so-called "last mile", for its connection or return, were newly approved.
While DT AG's application had envisaged fee increases of in some cases well over 50 percent, the approval includes minor reductions (between 0.2 percent and 4.1 percent) for most tariff items. For the takeover of the local loop without work at the end customer, DT AG can in future charge a fee of 35.70 euros. For the most frequent variant (new connection of the copper twin wire high bit rate with work at the cable branch and at the end customer), the new tariff amounts to 62.37 euros.
Also approved as of 1 July 2008 were the provision and termination fees as well as the monthly fees for shared access to the local loop, so-called "line sharing". With line sharing, the local loop is divided into a lower and a higher frequency range according to frequency bands. This means that the lower frequency range can continue to be used by DT AG for voice transmission and the higher frequency range can be used by a competitor for data transmission (typically for fast internet access based on DSL technology). For granting access to the high bit-rate part of the local loop, a monthly provision price of 1.78 euros has been approved. The charge for the most frequent provision variant, the new connection without work at the cable branch and without work at the end customer, is now 58.98 euros.
Both decisions took into account the effects of the collective agreements reached last year between DT AG and the services trade union ver.di on organisational changes and, in particular, increases in weekly working hours.
All charges have been approved by the end of June 2010.
Source: Press release of the Federal Network Agency of 30.06.2008, Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and Railway Press Office, Tulpenfeld 4,53113 Bonn, http://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/enid/2.html
Goldberg Attorneys at Law, Wuppertal-Solingen 2008
Attorney at Law Michael Ullrich, LL.M.(Information Law)
m.ullrich@goldberg.de
