Announcement: Legislation Guidelines for the Greek FTTH Project
Earlier this week, during the 2nd FTTx Telecom Strategies Conference, Dr. Leonidas Kanellos, president of the ministry’s committtee for the Greek FTTH project, presented the draft guidelines of the legislation which is prepared and ready to be put on open consultation in the coming days. I have not much to comment about although I see some room for improvement in these guidelines. Have a look and we will talk about it soon:
- The project is considered to be a public utility with significant value for the country and it will be addressed as such (i.e. similarly to the electrification of the country in the 1950s and natural gas provisioning in the 1990s and 2000s.). For that reason, the works will be carried by a “company of special scope” called “Efodia” (in Greek that means Supplies).
- A set of simplified procedures for the installation of the fiber infastructure to public and private property will be put in place. Public property is considered to be all municipal, governmental and utility buildings, roads and highways owned by the state and roads and highways under private management (PPP). The infrastructure will be allowed to be installed via underground, on the ground and aerial routings.
- Efodia will not be obliged to pay rights-of-way, rights-of-access or yearly fees, in a similar context that was applied for natural gas company, DEPA.
- Synergies / colocation with public utiltities (railways, the natural gas grid , water and sewage networks, electronic communications infrastructures) will be required and enforced.
- User connections with the infrastructure will not be established directly via Efodia. When a users wants to connect with the network he/she will have to do it via an access provider.
- Ownership. Efodia has to be independent from telcos to ensure fair competition. No direct involvement of access or service operators will be allowed in Efodia.
- To promote user connections with the network, optical cabling in new buildings will be a prerequisite for to get a license permit for all new constructions. Also, when a customer (inside a multi-dwelling building) wishes to connect to the FTTH network, access to the building will be granted without prior consent of the building onwers (building onwership in Greece is fragmented to each appartment’s individual owner).
The project’s time schedule is as follows:
- An open consultation for the legislation text is going to be issued in the following days.
- Legislation is planned to be voted in the parliament in September 2009
- The plan is being prepared to be filed for aproval by EC. Project approval is expected by the end of September 2009
- For the fall and winter of 2009 the approval by the board of ministers and the hiring of consultants for designing the RFP is planned.
- RfP is planned to be issued by the beginning of 2010
Share your thoughts, experience and opinion. Join the discussion on the public-broadband debating group.
