The Federal Competition Commission Weko believes that the fiber optic proceedings against Swisscom can be completed this year. The Weko process is quite advanced, said Weko director Patrik Ducrey on Wednesday at the request of the AWP news agency.
After delivery by ComCo, Swisscom can discuss this in detail. “We usually give it a month to do that,” Ducrey said. If Swisscom asks for an extension of the deadline, it could also take two months or a little longer. “It is possible that the process can be completed this year.”
Until now, the process was not expected to be completed until next year.
Weko halted Swisscom’s expansion
The process has been going on for years: in December 2020, the competition authority stopped Swisscom’s fiber expansion as a precaution. Because the cartel watchdogs consider Swisscom’s modified network architecture with only one feed line from the telephone exchange to the street manhole to be anti-competitive. Weko insists on an expansion with a supply line for every household.
This is the only way for Swisscom’s competitors to offer customers their own internet offering that differs from Swisscom’s and, for example, offers faster surfing speeds than the “Blue Giant”. In addition, each household has a direct connection to the telephone exchange and does not have to share the supply line with the neighbours.
However, this construction is more expensive than just 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, despite the veto of the competition authorities, stuck to it for a long time. However, the market leader’s objections to ComCo’s precautions failed all the way to the federal Supreme Court.
Swisscom conceded
Last October, Swisscom reversed its fiber optic dispute with the Federal Competition Commission (Comco). Because the pressure of hundreds of thousands of blocked connections that are not allowed to be used has become too great. The group is again laying direct lines from the telephone exchange to the households.
At the end of March 2023, a total of about 500,000 fiber optic connections, which have only one power line for several households, were blocked. That is 9 percent of all households. Swisscom now wants to rebuild some of these blocked connections.
In total, 43 percent of households in Switzerland are connected to ultra-fast data lines. According to Swisscom, 100 percent would be 5.45 million connections.
In order to allow the entire population and the economy to benefit as much as possible from digitalisation, the Federal Council announced on 28 June that the aim should be to achieve one gigabit per second for as much of the country as possible. This enables fast internet for multiple users and multiple devices.
This should prevent a digital divide between urban and rural areas, it said. That is why the Federal Council wants to support peripheral regions and structurally weak areas with a funding program limited by the state.
The focus of the strategy is on expanding the fiber optic network to the apartments. Promoting other technologies such as mobile communication is also conceivable.
(dsc/sda/awp)
Source: Watson
I’m Ella Sammie, author specializing in the Technology sector. I have been writing for 24 Instatnt News since 2020, and am passionate about staying up to date with the latest developments in this ever-changing industry.
