Launch of the comments round for electronic voting on the final draft BEREC Opinion in the Art 7a Phase II case NL/2015/1727

On 31 March 2015, the Commission registered a notification from the Dutch national regulatory authority, Autoriteit Consument & Markt (“ACM”), concerning the full analysis of the wholesale local access market provided at a fixed location in the Netherlands.

The draft measure defines a wholesale market for access to the copper network at MDF and SDF, VULA and FttH access at the ODF. ACM finds the relevant market to be national in scope. The draft measure proposes to designate KPN as the only operator having significant market power in the relevant wholesale market and proposes the imposition of a range of regulatory remedies on KPN including access remedies, obligations of transparency and non-discrimination and price controls.

On 30 April 2015, the Commission sent a serious doubts letter opening a phase II investigation pursuant to Article 7 of Directive 2002/21/EC as amended by Directive 2009/140/EC (“the Framework Directive”). The Commission’s doubts concern the definition of the relevant wholesale market and, in particular, the exclusion of the cable network of UPC/Ziggo from the definition of the relevant wholesale market. In light of the view taken by the Commission as to the definition of the relevant wholesale market, it also expresses serious doubts that ACM’s assessment of significant market power complies with Article 16(1) and 16(2) of the Framework Directive.

The current document is part of the internal BEREC decision making process and therefore is not available to the public.