Federal Network Agency: Stricter rules for Telekom in business market

The Federal Network Agency has presented a new approach to regulation in the wholesale market for business customers in a position paper. The reason for this is the realization that the previous measures have proven insufficient to establish sustainable competition. The market analysis from July 2024 and a follow-up survey from June 2025 confirm that Deutsche Telekom is further expanding its considerable market power and has been able to regain market share from alternative providers. The Magenta group has particularly gained ground in the previously unregulated area of high-quality transmission paths with over 155 MBit/s.

According to their analysis, the responsible decision chamber is therefore considering a series of new and expanded obligations for Telekom. In the future, the dominant player will have to offer access to wholesale products without bandwidth limitations, i.e., also for capacities of 1 GBit/s and more, to meet actual market demand. Furthermore, the regulator intends to explicitly mention the company's network expansion obligation in the operative part of the decision.

Furthermore, the chamber is considering access to civil structures (keyword: empty conduits) and to unlit fiber optic cable (dark fiber) for competitors to develop their own high-quality access products. It considers this necessary because competitors currently act almost exclusively as resellers of Telekom's active, technically predetermined products. This hinders innovation. The only exception to the dark fiber access claim will be fiber optic cables for connecting mobile base stations of the three alternative network operators.

Competitors want more than cosmetic changes

Another point: Telekom is to provide competitors and its own group companies with access products under the same conditions and using the same systems and procedures as within its own organization and its subsidiaries. This is considered the safest way to counteract discrimination. The intended equal treatment is to be checked using clearly defined indicators. An obligation for Telekom to present its individually contracted end-customer contracts and to disclose the pricing of bundled products is also being considered. A further transparency obligation is to make information about the actual availability and location of empty conduits and unlit fiber optic cable accessible via the central information point of the federal government.

Furthermore, the authority is considering subjecting the fees for granting access to the market-relevant access products to a prior approval requirement based on the cost of efficient service provision. However, for access to dark fiber, it considers a purely subsequent fee control to be sufficient for reasons of proportionality.

Market participants have until January 9, 2026, to comment on the proposals. Frederic Ufer, Managing Director of the competitor association VATM, welcomed the "clear words" of the Federal Network Agency regarding the initial situation in the business customer market: "Cosmetic changes to the regulatory framework are therefore not enough." Significantly more effective competition instruments are needed in the fiber optic era, "so that the often-invoked diversity of providers and strong product innovations actually materialize." Access to unlit fiber optic cable in particular would allow competitors to develop completely new, competitive offers for end customers.

(vbr)