New Investment Models for Broadband in Denmark and Sweden

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse whether the developmental policy model applied for fibre roll-out in Sweden can be used as inspiration for the Danish telecom policy. This is done through a comparison of the two very different policy approaches applied in Denmark and Sweden. A case study on public intervention in the rural Swedish municipality of Almhult is included to illustrate the Swedish model.

Comparative analysis of Fiber-to-the-Home market liberalization in the EU: The case of Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands

“…One can therefore say that the regulation of competition has played a significant role in the development of the FTTH market in the EU. Such competition can be found the case of Denmark and many other EU member states (Falch et al, 2016).…”

“…However, public intervention was frowned upon. But, in January 2016, the government of Denmark did set up a Broadband fund of 300 million DKK for the course of 4 years to promote rural broadband coverage (Falch et al, 2016). One is yet to see what influence this initiative will have on the development of FTTH in rural areas in Denmark.…”

“…As a result, the first entrants into the FTTH market in Denmark were utility (electricity) companies. The advantage the electricity companies had was the possibility of delivering FTTH using their powerline infrastructure (Falch et al, 2016). One of the first market entrants in 2002 was an electricity company called NVE (Pedersen, Riaz, 2009).…”

“…Dong energy only leased its active layer capacity to other market players to provide their Broadband Services. Dong had massive passive layer infrastructure providing coverage to the capital region of Denmark (Falch et al, 2016). By 2009, the activity of the actors under the guidance of the overarching OPP (competitive market) increased.…”

“…This is a digital agenda for attaining Universal Access of Next Generation Access (NGA) of at least 30 MBs by 2020. These NGA technologies include FTTH, cable networks (DOCSIS 3.x), Very-high-bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL) among others (see Marcus et al, 2009;Falch et al, 2016). Though these NGAs can be used to achieve the EU 2020 agenda, FTTH is the technology that has the capacity to deliver greater bandwidth and data rates -compared to the others.…”