BoR (11) 06b BEREC report NGA Country Cases - IRG

BoR (11) 06b
� Telekom Deutschland GmbH is also required to provide virtual co-location by
establishing a separate cabinet (connected via a patch cable) in those cases where
access to the existing street cabinet is not possible.
� Co-location shall be provided for within 6 months.
� Provision shall take place on a first come first serve basis. This “rule of priority”
satisfies the principles of equal opportunities, reasonableness and timeliness. It is
considered superior – in particular for practical reasons – compared to other means of
allocating opportunities for co-location, such as assignment by lottery or in separate
tranches.
� However, BNetzA reasoned that scarcity of duct access at a given location is rather
unlikely. Given the economies of scale, a profitable exploitation of a specific street
cabinet is considered only possible for a limited number of operators (in practice one
may assume that for most cabinets there will be not more than two competitors
requesting access). Also, an amount of co-location requests surpassing the space
available will probably be a rare occurrence due to the fact that most operators will not
provide services on a nation-wide but rather on a regional scale. For these reasons
BNetzA assumed that in most instances Telekom Deutschland GmbH will be able to
meet the demand for co-location at a specific location.
� In order to better understand the rationale of this it may be helpful to briefly illustrate
the properties of other conceivable mechanisms to assign co-location options:
o Assignment by lottery: Applying a lottery presupposes to determine in advance
the degree of scarcity. One may either apply a short or a long time frame for
such a lottery. A short time frame would require all interested parties to identify
their demand within that short period. In practice this would not allow a serious
identification of demand. Also, operators who express their demand after this
time frame would de facto be excluded from access to the cabinet. On the other
hand, a long time frame would unduly delay the practical implementation of the
access obligation.
o Assignment in separate tranches: Such a timely graduated procedure would
require BNetzA to have an appropriate and feasible measure for: a) the question
how to form such order allotments and b) how to determine the sequence for
processing them. In particular, a) would additionally require BNetzA to reliably
assess Telekom Deutschland GmbH‟s resources to process the requests. All
these requirements are not met in practice.
� In order to prevent hoarding of co-location space, an operator‟s order will forfeit unless
it installs its infrastructure within six months after the provision of co-location.
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