Wholesale Line Rental – An Austrian Regulatory Perspective
Paper to be submitted to ITS 15th Biennial Conference, Berlin 2004
Jan Weber, RTR-GmbH, 1060 Vienna/Austria, jan.weber@rtr.at
Abstract
Since 2001, alternative operators in various EC Member States have increasingly become
aware of the fact that unbundled access to incumbent´s local loops has not proven to be an
efficient means to promote local competition within the voice telephony field. The concept of
Wholesale Line Rental which has emerged since then tries to take into account the demand of
consumers in remote areas who should be given a similar opportunity like consumers in urban
areas to choose between more than one local access operator for voice telephony services.
The paper tries to give an overview on the Austrian developments since 2001 with regard to
respective operators´ initiatives and the corresponding regulatory issues concerning the legal
environment, costing issues for a potential standard wholesale offer to be submitted by the
incumbent and several technical and economical problems which might arise in the course of
WLR implementation. Finally, the paper will compare regulatory approaches and experiences
with resale/Wholesale Line Rental concepts in selected EC/EEA Member States.