Page 106 - SAMENA Trends - February 2020
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WHOLESALE UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS
WHOLESALE NEWS
Mobile Roaming Between Congo and Gabon Working Well, Claim Regulators
The heads of Gabon’s Regulatory de Regulation des Postes et des removed, the regulators have called on
Agency for Electronic Communications Communications Electroniques, ARPCE) operators to introduce free data roaming
and Posts (l’Agence de Regulation des have announced that free mobile roaming between the two countries, as set out in
Communications Electroniques et des between the two countries, introduced on the memorandum of understanding (MoU)
Postes, ARCEP) and the Republic of 1 January 2020, is working as planned, signed in October last year.
Congo’s Regulatory Agency for Electronic reports Adiac-congo.com. With the tax
Communications and Post (L’Agence on international call termination now
EC Vetoes Swedish Fiber Market Decision
The EC has rejected a move by Sweden’s the entire country to conclude on one, high speed broadband is important for
Post and Telecom Agency (Post & national market.’ Rikard Englund, head of Sweden but also for the EU Commission
Telestyrelsen, PTS) to implement a single market regulation at the PTS, commented: and other EU countries. It is therefore
national market regulation for wholesale ‘That the regulation has the right balance positive that the issue will be carefully
local access to fiber-optic services. The between competition and investment in investigated in this context as well.’
PTS, which was the first regulator in
Europe to define a separate market for fiber
network regulation, says it will resume
its market analysis in light of the EC’s
ruling. The EC statement says: ‘Typically,
fiber networks in Sweden do not overlap
geographically; only limited numbers of
larger apartment buildings are connected
to more than one network. Prices for
wholesale access are often different across
the country, depending on the provider
and other conditions such as density.
There is no evidence of either demand or
supply substitutability between operators.
For these reasons, the Commission
considers that competitive conditions
are not sufficiently homogeneous across
Investors Buy Wholesale Fiber 49%. The two companies said that over the coming years they
would invest more than $7 billion to roll out high-speed internet
Company Deutsche Glasfaser for infrastructure in Germany. The German government has put a
Close to $3B plan in place to provide nation-wide gigabit internet infrastructure
across the country by 2025. In order to meet that goal, companies
such as Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone have ramped up their
Investment firms EQT Infrastructures and OMERS bought fiber- fiber deployments efforts in rural, underserved areas of the
to-the-home company (FTTH) Deutsche Glasfaser from another country. Last month, Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Glasfaser
investment company. According to Reuters, EQT and OMERS paid announced they would jointly use Glasfaser’s fiber-optic network,
KKR about $2.74 billion plus debt for Deutsche Glasfaser. The deal, starting with a pilot project in the city of Lüdinghausen. Deutsche
which is expected to close in the second half of this year, gives EQT Glasfaser, which was founded in 2011 by investor Reggeborgh,
a 51% stake in Deutsche Glasfaser, while OMERS has the remaining provides internet access to more than 600,000 homes and 5,000
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