Response from the Danish Government to the public consultation on

an EU Initiative to Reduce the Cost of Rolling out High Speed Com-

munication Infrastructure in Europe

The Danish Government generally supports all initiatives and effortswhere the aim is to advance the rollout of high-speed broadband infra-structure. The Danish Government acknowledges that high-speed broad-band is a key element to stimulate growth and create further job opportu-nities.It is the Danish view that sharing of infrastructure should be encouragedas it can give several advantages such as direct savings and those savingscould lead to a further rollout.Enhanced transparency and coordination of civil engineering works is al-ready used in the Danish telecommunication industry. This seems to addto additional rollout and lower costs.The members of the Telecommunications Industry Association in Den-mark cooperate with a joint cable laying database in regard to under-ground cables. The database is made up of the email addresses of the dif-ferent parties. When a member wishes to lay cables at a specific rangeand wishes to invite other parties to participate, this member uploads amap showing the details on the database, so all the members receive it byemail. Those who wish to join the cable laying simply reply to the mailand then enter into negotiations on the details in the joint cable laying.The issue of handling requests to roll-out networks is in Denmark han-dled by local authorities. These may use coordination meetings and con-tact lists to coordinate in a transparent way and on equal terms. The inter-est of implementing more efficient and in transparent ways is in coopera-tion between the local municipalities who wishes to relieve their citizensfrom too much civil engineering together with the relevant infrastructureproviders. As each Member State may have different levels of authorityfor granting access to shared infrastructure future legislation should re-flect these differences. This is also true regarding the availability of pas-sive infrastructure in the Member States.Denmark notes that not all existing infrastructure is easy to share, e.g.there is a safety issue regarding railway infrastructure, HVDC (high volt-age power supply) and gas supply lines may restrict the access to infra-structure sharing.The Danish broadband strategy is market based and imposing obligationsto ensure “Ready for NGA access” buildings could lead to inefficient

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Response from the Danish Government to the public consultation on

an EU Initiative to Reduce the Cost of Rolling out High Speed Com-

munication Infrastructure in Europe