The rebates, which consist in granting a lump sum discount to the ...

In the preamble of the Recommendation the Commission specifies that:“Mandating access to civil engineering will only be effective as a remedy if the SMP operatorprovides access under the same conditions to its own downstream arm and to third-party accessseekers. NRAs should build on their experience in developing procedures and tools for local loopunbundling (LLU) to put in place the necessary business processes concerning ordering andoperational access to civil engineering facilities. In principle mandating the publication by the SMPoperator of an adequate reference offer specifying the conditions and procedures of access to thecivil engineering infrastructure, including the access prices, within a short time-frame isproportionate to the objective of encouraging efficient investment and infrastructure competition.”Furthermore it considers “Cost-oriented prices are a useful indicator for efficient investmentdecisions by potential access seekers. Where regulated prices do not accurately reflect theunderlying cost of the civil engineering infrastructure of the SMP operator, they will distortinvestment signals. If regulated prices for access to ducts are not cost-oriented, but are set at ahigher level, efficient fibre investments will be replaced by other wholesale access possibilities” 84 .The Commission considers essential for the investment of the alternative operator the extension ofthe current regulatory framework to the NGA: “Alternative operators, some of whom have alreadydeployed their own networks to connect to the unbundled copper loop of the SMP operator, need tobe provided with appropriate access products in order to continue to compete in an NGA context.For FTTH these may consist of access to civil engineering infrastructure, to the terminatingsegment, to the unbundled fibre loop or of wholesale broadband access as the case may be. OnMarket 4, it is thus important that in principle the whole range of different physical accessproducts, including backhaul, is available as remedies. Where remedies in this market lead toeffective competition in the corresponding downstream market, other remedies could eventually bephased out”. For the Commission “Obligations imposed under Article 16 of Directive 2002/21/ECare based on the nature of the problem identified, without regard to the technology or the84 European Commission, Draft Recommendation on regulated access to Next Generation Access Networks (NGA), 12June 200989