Spanish operators Orange and Vodafone have joined forces to reject the proposal to require Telefonica to provide wholesale access to its fibre network in cities with a population under 100,000, some 40 percent of the population. According to recent press reports, Spain's communications regulator CNMC is set to tone down the sweeping changes to the fixed broadband market it initially proposed at the end of last year and is considering allowing Telefonica to keep its fibre monopoly in Spain’s 62 largest cities. “I recently read that the criteria to deregulate areas could reach 40 percent of the population (compared to 16 percent in the March proposal)," said Orange Spain CEO Jean-Marc Vignolles at the XXIX telecommunications and digital economy meeting held in Santander. “Such a figure is totally unacceptable at this time, in view of the current deployment of alternative operators, and will negatively impact the level of competition in large areas with the corresponding effects on customers," he said, according to El Economista.
The operator, like Vodafone, wants to maintain the basic characteristics of the CNMC’s initial proposal to require Telefonica to provide wholesale access to its fibre network in all of Spain apart from nine cities at a regulated price, while updating the coverage to take into account the extensive fibre deployments made in recent months. "The threshold doesn’t have to be set at 'X' thousands of people, but should take into account where there’s coverage," said Vodafone CEO Antonio Coimbra at the same meeting.
Telefonica’s fibre network reached around 12.5 million households at the end of June, followed by Vodafone, whose network reached 8.6 million homes following its purchase of Ono, while Orange’s increased to 5 million after its merger with Jazztel.
