Weko is making good progress: fiberglass process could be completed this year

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Once submitted by ComCo, Swisscom can comment extensively on it. “We usually give him a month to do that,” Ducrey said. If Swisscom requests an extension, this may take two months or a little longer. “It is possible that the process will be completed this year,” said the Weko director.

Until now, the process was not expected to be completed until next year.

The process has been going on for years: In December 2020, competition authorities halted Swisscom’s fiber optic expansion with precautionary measures. Because the cartel watchdogs find the network architecture that Swisscom has replaced with a single supply line from the telephone exchange to the street manhole, uncompetitive. Weko insists on expansion with one supply line for each household.

This is the only way Swisscom’s competitors can offer their customers their own Internet offerings different from Swisscom’s and offer higher surfing speeds than “Blue Giant” for example. In addition, each household has a direct line to the telephone exchange and does not have to share the supply line with the neighbors.

However, this construction is more expensive than simply laying a supply line from the telephone exchange to the street shaft in front of the houses. Swisscom opted for the cheaper option for cost reasons and maintained this option for a long time despite the veto from the competition authorities. However, the objections of the industry leader to the measures taken by ComCo remained inconclusive until the Federal Supreme Court.

Last October, Swisscom took a U-turn in its fiber optic dispute with the Federal Competition Commission (Comco). Because the pressure of hundreds of thousands of blocked connections that were not allowed to operate was enormous. The group again establishes direct lines from the telephone exchange to the houses.

At the end of March 2023, a total of about 500,000 fiber optic connections were blocked, with only one feed line for several households. That’s 9 percent of all households. Swisscom now wants to re-establish some of these blocked connections. In total, 43 percent of households in Switzerland are connected to ultra-fast data lines. 100 percent will be 5.45 million connections, according to Swisscom.

(SDA)

Source :Blick