In contrast to active wholesale products, passive access to unbundled fibre loops offers wholesale customers the opportunity to develop their own products with individual characteristics. Experience from Switzerland and France, where passive access is of much greater relevance than active wholesale products, shows that this leads to a greater variety of products and significantly lower price premiums for products with high and very high bandwidths. This has contributed to high take-up rates on FTTH networks in both countries and a high demand for gigabit products.
In addition to the level of access fees, the number and design of the collocation points is essential for the success of the unbundling model. The decisive factor is that a sufficient number of subscribers can be reached at each collocation point so that the connection of the locations and the installation of the wholesale customer's own active equipment can be amortised.
In order to take account of the requirements of the different operator types and business models on the supply and demand side, various billing models should be offered for passive access that take account of the investment risk of the expanding companies.
Revenue sharing models represent an option for pricing that can ensure that wholesale providers benefit from possible increases in revenue per subscriber even if bandwidth-dependent pricing is waived.
Taken together, unbundled access to the fibre-optic local loop offers the opportunity to create a market model that is characterised by a wide range of offerings with efficient use of investment funds and offers the potential to significantly accelerate the path towards a gigabit society in Germany.
