Draft BEREC Guidelines on Very High Capacity Networks

BEREC’s 2025 Work Programme (1.1) includes within section ‘Strategic priority: Promoting full connectivity’ the update of criterion 3 of the BEREC Guidelines on very high capacity networks. BEREC published the first version of the BoR (20) 165 BEREC Guidelines on very high capacity networks in October 2020 and determined that any network which fulfils one (or more) of four criteria is a very high capacity network. According to Art. 82 of the EECC, BEREC shall update the Guidelines by 31 December 2025. At the time of the adoption of the initial guidelines, it was not yet possible to take 5G fully into account, as it had not yet reached mature deployment and significant penetration. Therefore in October 2023 BEREC updated criterion 4 (performance thresholds for wireless network) based on data collected from mobile network operators on 5G and published the second version of the BoR (23) 164 BEREC Guidelines on very high capacity networks.

The new version of the BEREC Guidelines on very high capacity networks reviews the performance thresholds values of criterion 3 originally defined in 2020. The other criteria (criteria 1,2 and 4) remain unchanged.

For the public consultation purposes, the track changes version of the updated BEREC Guidelines on very high capacity networks showing the update in comparison to the 2023 version of the document is also provided.