Co-investment and network sharing have become common practice for over a decade in the mobile sector and are making an inroad in the deployment of fiber networks in a number of EU Member States.

While competition law had to face co-investment cases since the 2003 T-Mobile/O2 mobile network sharing cases in Germany and the UK, co-investment is now making an entry into ex-ante EU electronic communications law. Under specific conditions of transparency and openness, the deployment of very high capacity networks by co-investors would not be subject to SMP wholesale access obligations.

The purpose of this BITS seminar is:

• to understand the welfare effects as well as the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities and the risks of co-investment in the deployment of fixed and mobile telecommunications networks;
• to understand under which conditions the markets alone will lead to co-inestment and whether markets should be nudged towards such deals;
• to explore the consequences of co-investment on the possible emergence of competitive wholesale broadband markets and to assess the effect of continued wholesale access obligations on the incentives of market players to co-invest;
• to gain a better understanding of the limits to co-investment in terms of competition law.

Speakers include:

• Fatima Barros - Anacom

• Wolfgang Briglauer - ZEW Centre for European Economics

• Carlo Cambini - Politecnico di Torino

• Richard Feasey - University College of London

• Emmanuel Tricaud - COLT

• Jan Krancke - Deutsche Telekom

• Marc Lebourges - Orange

• Ben Wreschner - Vodafone

• Bo Andersson - PTS

• Rita Wezenbeek - European Commission, DG Competition

• Carlota Reyners-Fontana - European Commission, DG Connect 

More information and registration http://bits.unamur.be/next-bits-may-2017