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Deutsche Glasfaser Holding GmbH

DG

Die Unternehmensgruppe Deutsche Glasfaser plant, baut und betreibt hauptsächlich anbieteroffene Glasfaser-Direktanschlüsse für Privathaushalte und Unternehmen.

Lobbying Activity

Response to Digital Networks Act

11 Jul 2025

Deutsche Glasfaser welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the European Commissions Call for Evidence on the proposed Digital Networks Act. Please find our feedback attached.
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Response to How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?

28 Jun 2024

Ladies and Gentlemen, Please find attached the Deutsche Glasfaser Response to the Consultation on the Commission White Paper How to master Europes digital infrastructure needs?. Best regards Christof Sommerberg
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Response to Evaluation of State Aid rules for broadband infrastructure deployment

11 Aug 2020

Deutsche Glasfaser Unternehmensgruppe would like to thank the EU Commission for the opportunity to give a short feedback concerning the roadmap, which refers to the Evaluation of State aid rules for broadband infrastructure deployment. The focus and priority of all efforts to accelerate the expansion of fiber optic infrastructure should be based on private investments in competition between companies. The future broadband state aid guidelines must therefore be set up on the following framework principles: • The main objectives of state aid rules are to ensure that private long-term investments are not crowded out by subsidies. • Federal funds should only made available for additional investments in regions in which the fiber optic expansion is not taking place privately. • Public funding should be seen as a means of supplementing private investment expansion in order to either densify or enable private expansion. • Also public funding should be limited to what is absolutely necessary. Solely increasing subsidies will not solve most problems. This is important as not only against the background of the Covid -19 pandemic, public funds should be viewed as scarce. • Steps in terms of procedure must be implemented to separate different signals within the state aid process. Failure to announce network expansion within 3 years for a certain (sub-)set of addresses may derive either from excessive deployment costs or from lack of general construction capacity in the market. Only the former problem can and shall be dealt with by State Aid. • Funding should only be used where private fiber optic network deployment is not economically viable. Time limits are detrimental as they tend – in the near to medium future at least – to mix capacity signals with economic signals, where only the latter can justify State Aid. • State aid financed networks must be set up in such a way that all households/companies in the deployment area can potentially have symmetrical bandwidths of at least 1 Gbit/s after the subsidy measure. • A part of the available funding should be used to create incentives for greater demand for future-proof fiber optic connections right into the building. This can take the form of a so-called voucher solution. • In the end the main objective is the area-wide availability of gigabit-capable infrastructure. Therefore a meaningful interplay between private and subsidized broadband expansion should be the goal of the guidelines. The focus should be on strengthening the privately financed fiber expansion also to create longterm investment opportunities for pension funds and insurers. Specific comments : Q To what extent have the State aid .... A The previous state aid guidelines have had positive impact on accelerating and not crowding out private investments. Therefore they were effective. Nevertheless systemic challenges are visible in VHCN, as in some member states the economically viable potential for private investment in VHCN is still large and cannot be dealt with in the usual timeframe of the State aid process. Q What have been .... A One question is missing: Which part of the rules reduced the effectiveness? It is needed to bring the market evaluation procedure "MEV" (roll-out requirement within 3 years) into picture somewhere. The MEV mechanism will increasingly deliver false negative in an FTTH world (result for lack of capacity/demand and non-economic deployment costs, but only the latter can be remedied by State Aid). Q Have there been any unexpected results after implementing ..... A False negatives in the market evaluation process results (i.e. misrepresenting request for prior demand aggregation and capacity issues as "not economically viable"). Q To which extent .... A Question should include def. of "efficiency", as proponents of state ownership of infrastructure see inclusion of economically viable areas in state aid projects as path to efficiency (by defining efficiency as "declining subsidy per unit").
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