Delgado, Juan; Fehrenbach, Jerome; Klotz, Robert --- "The price of access: the unbundling of the local loop in the EU" [2004] ELECD 57; in Buigues, A. Pierre; Rey, Patrick (eds), "The Economics of Antitrust and Regulation in Telecommunications" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004)

Book Title: The Economics of Antitrust and Regulation in Telecommunications

Editor(s): Buigues, A. Pierre; Rey, Patrick

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843765103

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: The price of access: the unbundling of the local loop in the EU

Author(s): Delgado, Juan; Fehrenbach, Jerome; Klotz, Robert

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

9. The price of access: the unbundling of the local
loop in the EU
Juan Delgado, Jérôme Fehrenbach and Robert Klotz*

1. INTRODUCTION
This chapter attempts to show why interest in local loop unbundling is now waning in
Europe, and why the whole process, while initially heralded as a major breakthrough, may
turn out to be nothing more than a wasteful regulatory experiment with little benefit for
competition. As the main threat to the success of local loop unbundling, we identify the
pricing policies implemented by the incumbent telecommunications operators and in some
cases facilitated or even mandated by the national regulatory authorities.
Section 2 briefly reviews the main theoretical issues behind local loop unbundling. Sec-
tion 3 describes the European policy approach, and Section 4 provides an overview of the
current situation in Europe and of the problems detected by access seekers. Section 5
analyses in more detail the access pricing policies adopted in the EU and suggests possible
causes of the slow take-up.


2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Why Unbundle the Local Loop?

The local loop is the part of a telecommunications network that links the consumer premises
to the first exchange of the telecommunications operator. It is no more than a copper pair
linking the end-user to the operators' networks.
The local loop provides access to the final customer and is unique for each end-user line;
that is, it is not shared by several customers as is the case for the rest ...