Public consultation on the draft BEREC Report on access conditions to State aid funded networks
Deadline to submit contributions: 13 November 2026
During the 68th BEREC ordinary meetings (1-2 October 2026), the Board of Regulators adopted the draft BEREC Report on access conditions to State aid funded networks [BoR (26) 139] for public consultation.
Background
Privately funded broadband networks have reached substantial coverage in commercially viable areas in many EU Member States. However, public funds need to be put at use to cover the remainder of the territory, households and/or population in market failure areas, since the economic drivers for private deployment are lacking in difficult-to-reach, remote areas.
State aid has significantly supported the deployment of Fibre-To-The-Premise (FTTP) networks in recent years, particularly through the Recovery and Resilience Facility, extending very high-capacity networks in areas that would otherwise have been underserved or not served at all.
State aid funded networks must be established in accordance with the Guidelines on State aid for broadband networks and General Block Exemption Regulation respectively, and National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) have to be consulted on the wholesale access products, conditions for wholesale access and pricing aspects, for the establishment of fair and non-discriminatory terms.
Aim
Against this background, BEREC developed an overview of NRAs’ approaches to evaluating the regulated wholesale access services to State aided networks from an economic and technical perspective. BEREC’s work aims to enhance experience sharing, improve NRAs’ future interventions, and, to the extent possible, harmonise practices on the design of wholesale access obligations attached to publicly funded networks.
BEREC’s report focuses on access to fibre networks in an FTTP topology, covering both active and passive services. The dedicated questionnaire primarily sought information on access products, pricing methodologies, implementation practices and monitoring mechanisms.
Main conclusions
The main conclusions of the draft report show that:
- The European regulatory framework establishes clear principles requiring subsidised broadband infrastructures to provide wholesale access under fair and non-discriminatory conditions.
- The practical implementation of these principles varies considerably across Member States.
- NRAs play an important role primarily in the determination of targeted areas, the assessment of wholesale access conditions and prices, as well as in dispute resolution.
- The degree and timing of NRAs’ involvement differ significantly across national frameworks.
- Countries rely on regulated prices, featuring benchmarking against competitive areas, dedicated cost-oriented methodologies, economic replicability tests, or combinations thereof. When prices are set with reference to ex-ante regulated conditions, pricing constraints are generally not removed abruptly after market deregulation. Countries tend to adopt transitional mechanisms to preserve stability and prevent market disruption.
- Different approaches exist concerning the publication, review and monitoring of the Reference Offers.
- Active access services generally appear to attract greater commercial interest, whereas passive infrastructure inputs (such as duct and pole access) experience minimal or low take-up in most countries that reported usage data.
- The effectiveness of state aid measures depends on market structure, network architecture and the granularity of the areas targeted by public interventions.
- Systematic monitoring of outcomes and the publication of evaluation reports and studies contributes to increasing transparency and improving the understanding of the effectiveness of State aid interventions, and to the future efficiency of the mechanism.
Submit your contributions
Interested stakeholders are kindly requested to submit their contributions via EU survey by 13 November 2026.
After you submit your contribution, an acknowledgement of successful submission will be displayed in the web browser together with the option to download or print it. If this acknowledgement is not displayed, the submission of the contribution was not successful, and you should resubmit.
Contributions should be sent preferably in English, and, in order to facilitate processing of the responses, the comments provided should clearly refer to certain sections/subsections/paragraphs of the document.
In accordance with the BEREC policy on public consultations, BEREC will publish all contributions and a summary of the contributions, respecting confidentiality requests. In that regard, any request for reduction of the text on confidentiality grounds should clearly indicate which information is considered confidential and be accompanied by a non-confidential version.
We strongly encourage all stakeholders to submit their contributions as early as possible. It will be difficult for BEREC to take into account contributions received after the above-mentioned deadline.