During the latest plenary meeting, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) adopted Guidelines on Very High Capacity Networks (VHCN) and launched its Work Programme 2021 for public consultation. The draft Work Programme focuses on three high-level priorities: (i) promoting full connectivity; (ii) supporting sustainable and open digital markets; and (iii) empowering end-users.

BEREC says that a key policy objective for 2021 is to ensure that VHCN and 5G services are available. Accordingly, BEREC will continue to promote the roll-out of fibre and 5G. Through cooperation with other institutions, BEREC also says it will contribute to ensuring that future network technologies meet their connectivity targets and are in line with the European values of security, protection of end-users and the environment. The document is open for public consultation until 5 November 2020.

BEREC also adopted Guidelines for VHCN. The document aims to assist national regulatory authorities on the criteria a network has to fulfil to be considered a VHCN in terms of the down and uplink bandwidth, resilience, error-related parameters, latency and variation. BEREC says the Guidelines provide the basis for achieving the important objective of the European Electronic Communications Code to promote connectivity, access to, and take-up of, VHCN.

With the European Electronic Communications Code coming into force at the end of 2020, BEREC has also published its response to the EC targeted consultation on the update of existing recommendations in the field of access regulation. BEREC agrees with the need to update and align access recommendations with the Code, but points out that the Code prevails. Where the Code provides flexibility to NRAs to choose the appropriate set of remedies, this flexibility should not be narrowed down by a future access recommendation. Also, a future access recommendation should take into account BEREC Guidelines and other guidance to avoid there being several layers of soft law. To read BEREC’s press release in full and for links to the Work Programme consultation, Guidelines and access regulation consultation response, click here.