12 April 2018
Business connectivity markets - statement on dark fibre
Ofcom has today published a statement on dark fibre access in business connectivity markets.
In November, following a judgment by the Competition Appeal Tribunal, we consulted on proposals to introduce a restricted dark fibre remedy for leased line services at and below 1Gbit/s until March 2019.
In response, companies that are most likely to purchase dark fibre (e.g. TalkTalk, Three, Vodafone) made it clear that a service at higher bandwidths would be significantly more useful to them. Some telecoms providers told us they would only use a dark fibre product that was restricted to lower bandwidths in very low volumes, because they were likely to need to upgrade to higher bandwidths within the next few years.
We have therefore decided not to introduce the restricted dark fibre remedy for the period up to March 2019, but instead to consider the potential for a dark fibre remedy as part of our further market review. We continue to believe dark fibre can play an important role in promoting competition in leased lines - supporting better broadband and mobile services.
Please see the Ofcom website for further details: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-3/dark-fibre
ENDS
This information is provided by RNS
