Draft BEREC Report on Competition amongst multiple operators of NGA-networks in the same geographical region

BEREC’s 2022 Work Programme (III.1.7) includes within section ‘Strategic priority 1: Promoting full connectivity’ the BEREC Report on competition amongst multiple operators of NGA networks in the same geographical region. Regional operators of VHCN / NGA networks play an increasingly important role on the broadband market in many countries and they may use different business strategies, e.g. to differentiate (or not) prices across their networks. BEREC already published a Common Position on geographical aspects of market analysis (for both market definition and remedies) in 2014 and a report on the application of this Common Position in 2018. The report submitted here is built on these previous BEREC activities and focuses on the competition amongst multiple operators of NGA networks in the same geographical area and the outcome of this competition, namely retail prices and product diversification.

The report is based on data collected from NRAs of 31 European countries in April 2022 and the objectives are: (i) to examine the extent to which multiple NGA networks are present in the same geographical area and the resulting impact on retail prices and retail product characteristics and (ii) to analyse the impact this had on the market for wholesale local access provided at a fixed location, considering both cases where market definition and/or remedies have been geographically differentiated and where this is not the case. The conclusions of these examinations are as follows.