Italy’s regulator AGCOM has trimmed hikes to unbundling fees planned for 2011 and 2012 following intervention by the European Commission.
The authority now plans to increase wholesale unbundling rates to €9.02 per month in 2011 and to €9.28 per month in 2012, down from its original goal of raising the figures to €9.14 and €9.48 respectively.
Unbundling fees currently stand at €8.70 per month.
The EC asked AGCOM to review its plans after FastWeb and Vodafone complained the increases would restrict competition and impact investment in broadband, WSJ.com reports.
AGCOM president Corrado Calabro said the revised figures are now below the European average, and make Italy the first country in the region to “introduce a strict set of quality assessment,” rules.
Those rules cover network access waste, the progress of copper upgrade and network renewal programs, and the number of failures requiring technical intervention.