16 Rev2b NGA Opinion Supplementary doc - IRG

ERG (07) 16rev2b NGA Opinion Supplementary Doc 43 / 69
Figure 2.8-2: Operator (LLU) coverage (in % of active loops) according with the number of MDF.
Moreover, the majority of MDF are located in small buildings, remote units or even street
cabinets. In these cases, the only form of co-location will be, probably, in an exterior space,
which will cause increased costs to the operators. At this moment, it is not possible to affirm
that they would recoup these costs, in case that they decide to advance for a broader covering.
On the other hand, it might not be interesting for the operators to be co-located in
nodes/MDF with reduced potential capacity (in the order of the tens of loops), being more
efficient to use the bitstream offer (with 100% of national coverage for ADSL 22 ) to offer its
services. It should me noted, however, that the bitstream offer "only" allows broadband access,
not being specifically suited to offer triple-play services at a wide scale 23 .
This problem could be aggravated in the case of PTC, intending to introduce advanced xDSL
technologies (e.g. VDSL2) across the territory, install or upgrade hundreds or even thousand
street (or building) cabinets, i.e., dislocating the first aggregation node closer to the final user.
In these conditions, it does not seem economically efficient that the operators have conditions
to offer similar coverage, i.e., be co-located in all the access points/cabinets.
Nevertheless, in the short term, and having into account the forecasts for the short term evolution
of the MDF/PA, that the future strategy for the evolution/migration of the network is not
yet clear and its concretion will never be immediate, in the short and medium term, it is not
foreseen that the access network architecture can be substantially modified, potentially affecting
the competitive conditions on the access to the network by the LLU operators.
2.9 Romania
NGN migration
As in most of the EU countries, the traditional TDM networks in Romania are gradually migrating
towards IP-based Next Generation Networks (NGN). Although it is not clear today
how the NGN networks will look like in detail, the strategies already employed by the incum-
22 PTC is currently upgrading its xDSL offers with ADSL2+, aiming approaching national coverage in the short
term.
23 Although an ATM aggregation offer is available, with QoS guaranties.