Orange and Vodafone have urged Spanish telecoms regulator CMT to convince Telefonica to enter into negotiations over granting them access to its infrastructure, which they need to roll out fast broadband. Telefonica had been unwilling to negotiate, Reuters reports, citing an unnamed Vodafone source.
Back in March, Vodafone and Orange agreed to partner on rolling out fibre broadband services in Spain. The cooperation targets covering 6 million homes and businesses in 50 major cities by September 2017. However, the two operators need agreement from Telefonica to access connections into individual homes, Reuters reports.
Orange and Vodafone have failed to reach an agreement with Telefonica in informal talks, and their chief executives in Spain said in March Telefonica had been closed to network sharing deals for reasons that were not clear to them.
"We have asked the regulator to make Telefonica enter into immediate negotiations to reach an agreement before 1 June on reciprocal access to vertical fibre cables," the two companies said in a statement.
According to a Telefonica spokesman, the company was still willing to reach an agreement and would send a new proposal in the coming days.
