Deutsche Telekom line-sharing price cuts too late for QSC

摘要

A Deutsche Telekom commitment to the European Commission to reduce the price of shared access to its local loop has come nearly four years too late for QSC, the alternative operator that originally complained of a margin squeeze on shared-access pricing. As Deutsche Telekom agrees measures to placate the Commission and avoid formal proceedings, QSC now believes that the business market holds the most promise, and is scaling back plans to focus on the residential mass market. Shared access, or line sharing, is a form of local-loop unbundling (LLU) in which the incumbent provides voice telephony over the low-frequency portion of a line while another operator provides DSL services over the high-frequency part. This avoids operators having to pay for infrastructure they do not use.