Anyone speak Danish? Danish Comp Auth on FTTx

The research covers the Danish electricy utilities' existing or planned fibernet activities. It shows that the electricy utilities have only been able to establish fibernet to a limited extent and that investments to-date have nearly exclusively been applied to the main transmission network, what in telecomms terms is usually called the backbone.

The utilities plan to start a larger roll-out of fibernet to individual houses (the access network). By the end of this research in August 2005, the plans include access to 957,000 households, which is more than a third of all households in Denmark. The planned investment in fibernet is expected to reach about 9.5 billion DKR (about €1 billion? not sure I got this right...).

It's reasonable to wonder why it is the electricity providers, not telcos, that are planning such an ambitious fibernet roll-out of communications services to households. The electricy companies have expressed an interest in investing in fibrenet for a number of years. Since the 1st Jan 2005 they have also been able to raise finance or debt without any restrictions on how this money is used, and this has enabled them to invest in fibrenet. The electricity companies also expect to achieve savings due to synergies in the maintenance of the two networks. Finally, it's possible that some co-op electricity companies will roll out fibre instead of paying a dividend to the members.

The resarch has not found any evidence that the planned budgets for the roll-out are not based on sound business plans. The buisness plans include services like telephony, internet and TV and they can be delivered in a cost-effective manner that would be competitive with cable or copper.

It should be stressed that these budgets are based on estimates which may not turn out to be correct in reality. It's beyond the scope of this research to question the underlying assumptions. [...]

We can conclude in summary that the information which was provided to us from the electricity companies do not give reason to criticise the companies for their fibrenet plans. The research also shows that there are no anti-competitive aspects to this.

So basically fk all for a third of the country?

Incidentally, the ESB also made a network from fibre for what could generally considered to be close to nothing. But it isn;t quite on the level it is in denmark as I understand it.