Europe reportedly targeting 100 mbps broadband for every household

The European Commission is working on an overhaul of the continent’s telecoms rules, which will include a target for every household to have 100 megabits per second broadband within a decade, according to an FT report.

The FT got hold of an early copy of a plan the EC intends to publish in September, which will set a bunch of arbitrary targets designed to encourage private investment in fixed-line infrastructure. Apparently 100 mbps is just the start, with 1 gbps the target for schools and businesses. The carrot of public money will be dangled, but that could be a relatively insignificant proportion of the overall investment needed.

A total of €155 billion will need to be found for this herculean infrastructure push, according to the leaked document, a sum that will probably require more than a few lofty aspirations and some token subsidy to extract from margin-starved telcos.

A possible indication of how serious the EC is about stimulating telecoms investment will be the culmination of the EC’s investigation into Deutsche Telekom’s plans to upgrade its copper network.

DT’s plans were approved by the German domestic regulator, but the EC wanted another look. The potential issue is that the vectoring technology used to increase the performance of the copper cables will leave insufficient capacity for other German telcos who lease it from DT. A decision is expected later this week.