Petra de Sutter, Belgian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Enterprises, Public Administration, Posts and Telecommunications: "In Europe, the deployment of fiber and 5G could be much easier with less bureaucracy. We are addressing this administrative burden through the so-called Gigabit Infrastructure Act. We have already reached a preliminary agreement with the European Parliament. This would allow European citizens to browse faster using fiber or 5G."
Mathieu Michel, Belgian Secretary of State for Digitalization, Administrative Simplification, Privacy Protection, and Construction Regulation: "With the conclusion of the tripartite dialogue, Belgium demonstrates its firm commitment to fast and optimal internet access for all. By unifying the network across the country, we are building bridges toward a broader European ecosystem, demonstrating our interest in harmonization at the European level. This initiative will not only promote fast connectivity for our citizens but also economies of scale for the operators and companies involved."
Main objectives of the new legislation
The new law aims to reduce the unnecessarily high costs of deploying electronic communications infrastructure, caused in part by the permitting procedures required before networks are deployed or upgraded. These procedures remain complex, sometimes lengthy, and vary from Member State to Member State.
The regulation also aims to accelerate network deployment, provide legal certainty and transparency for all economic actors involved, and provide for more efficient planning and deployment processes for public electronic communications network operators.
This minimal harmonisation law also addresses the deployment of and access to internal physical infrastructure. It is expected to facilitate cross-border applications and enable stakeholders—electronic communications operators, equipment manufacturers, and civil engineering firms—to achieve greater economies of scale.
The amendments of the co-legislators
The provisional agreement maintains the general direction of the Commission's proposal. However, the co-legislators modified parts of the proposal, mainly with regard to the following aspects:
A mandatory conciliation mechanism between public sector bodies and telecommunications operators was introduced as an intermediate step to facilitate the permitting process.
An exception for a transition period was included for smaller municipalities, along with specific provisions to promote connectivity in rural and remote areas.
The factors used to calculate fair and reasonable access conditions were clarified.
A specific provision was introduced to address the presence of intermediaries between landowners and infrastructure operators.
Specific provisions were agreed upon regarding a voluntary "fiber-ready" label for buildings.
Several exceptions for critical national infrastructure were included in the text.
Finally, given that the current retail price of regulated communications within the EU will expire on May 14, 2024, the interim agreement provides for the continued protection of consumers, especially vulnerable users, by extending the price limits, which are currently €0.19 per minute for calls and €0.06 per SMS message.
The provisional agreement generally guarantees that member states will have broad autonomy to issue stricter and more detailed rules on several important elements of this new regulation. The new law will apply 18 months after its entry into force, and some specific provisions will be implemented at a later stage.
Next steps
Following the provisional agreement, technical work by experts from both institutions will continue with a view to presenting a compromise text to the co-legislators for their approval. The Belgian Presidency of the Council intends to present the text to the representatives of the Member States (Coreper) for their approval as soon as possible. After its approval, the draft legislative act will undergo a legal and linguistic review before being formally adopted by both institutions, published in the Official Journal of the EU, and entering into force 20 days after publication.
Background information
The Broadband Cost Reduction Directive (BCRD, 2014/61/EU), currently in force, aimed to facilitate the deployment of high-speed electronic communications networks by reducing deployment costs through a set of harmonized measures. The digital targets on which the BCRD was based have either been met or become obsolete since 2014. For example, although the proportion of European households with access to a 30 Mbps internet network has increased from 58.1% in 2013 to 90.1% in 2021, this speed is no longer future-proof, given the growing need for businesses and citizens to access networks with much greater capacity.
In addition to the advances in digital technologies since 2014, other factors have also necessitated the review by the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic (BCRD). The low returns on capital and high investment costs prevalent in the telecommunications industry have begun to derail progress toward achieving the 2030 digital targets set out in the Digital Decade policy program. The Commission estimates that the investment gap between the current level and what would be needed to achieve these connectivity targets is around €65 billion per year.
On 23 February 2023, the Commission presented a proposal on measures to reduce the cost of deploying gigabit electronic communications networks and to repeal Directive 2014/61/EU (Gigabit Infrastructure Act). On 3 June 2023, the Telecommunication Council took note of a progress report and on 5 December 2023 reached a general guideline on this matter.
