EUROPEAN COMMISSION Brussels, 11.08.2010 C(2010)5696 PUBLIC VERSION WORKING LANGUAGE This document is made available for information purposes only. Subject: State aid N 407/2009 – Spain Optical fibre Catalonia (Xarxa Oberta) Sir, I. SUMMARY (1) I am pleased to be able to inform you that the European Commission has assessed the measure "Optical fibre Catalonia (Xarxa Oberta)" (hereafter: "the measure") and decided not to raise objections because the measure is compatible with the internal market, pursuant to Article 107(3)(c) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)1. II. PROCEDURE (2) Following pre-notification discussions, by letter dated 08/07/2009, pursuant to Article 108 (3) of the TFEU, the Spanish authorities notified to the Commission a measure for supporting the deployment of an optical fibre network covering 281 municipalities in Catalonia. 1 With effect from 1 December 2009, Articles 87 and 88 of the EC Treaty have become Articles 107 and 108, respectively, of the TFEU. The two sets of provisions are, in substance, identical. For the purposes of this Decision, references to Articles 107 and 108 of the TFEU should be understood as references to Articles 87 and 88, respectively, of the EC Treaty where appropriate. Excmo. Sr. Don Miguel Ángel MORATINOS Ministro de Asuntos Exteriores Plaza de la Provincia 1 E-28012 MADRID Commission européenne, B-1049 Bruxelles – Belgique Europese Commissie, B-1049 Brussel – België Teléfono: 00-32-(0)2-299.11.11. (3) The Commission requested additional information on the measure by letters registered on 09/09/2009, 15/02/2010 and 7/05/2010. The Spanish authorities provided the requested information on the measure by letters registered on 08/10/2010, 15/12/2009, 25/02/2010, 10/03/2010, 12/05/2010 and 02/07/2010. Several meetings, conference calls and email exchanges took place over the course of the notification process. The Spanish authorities proposed a substantial modification of the project on 18 May 2010, formally submitted on 2 July 2010. (4) By letter dated 23/03/2010 the Spanish National Regulatory Authority (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones, hereafter "CMT"), submitted to the Commission market data regarding the availability in the areas targeted by the measure (i.e. in the Catalonia region) of access networks, ULL based broadband operators, backhaul and dark fibre infrastructure. The Commission transmitted the CMT report to the Spanish authorities and they provided their comments on the report by email of 8 April 2010. (5) On 22/12/2009 and on 05/05/2010 Telefónica, the Spanish incumbent telecommunication operator, submitted to the Commission its observations on the project. These were transmitted for comments to the Spanish authorities, whose reply was sent to the Commission on 13/05/2010. III. CONTEXT III.1. The Catalonia region (6) Catalonia is an autonomous region of Spain located in the North East of the country. It exercises its self-government, in accordance with the Spanish constitution, with the main institutional body being the Generalitat de Catalunya. The region has a population of over 7 million inhabitants and its territory is divided up into 946 municipalities grouped in 41 supra-municipal counties (called comarca). Besides the central regional government, all counties and municipalities have their own competences and services. (7) The Generalitat is well aware of the importance of information society services and considers that information and communication technologies (ICT) that shape the knowledge society are one of the forces that will enable the growth of modern economy and contribute to the economic and social development. For these reasons, the Generalitat set as one of the priority objectives in its 2007-2010 Government Plan the consolidation of a dynamic economy in a sustainable environment via the rollout of, inter alia, electronic communications networks. (8) To fulfil their objectives and foster the roll-out of high speed broadband networks, the regional authorities have undertaken a number of initiatives, such as coordination and rationalisation of civil engineering works2, resolutions to promote the extension of electronic communication networks in Catalonia3 and setting as 2 Public Works Act 3/2007 of 4 July 2007. 3 MEITel agreement of 10 June 2008. their objective that all local authorities, businesses and citizens in Catalonia should have the possibility to obtain broadband access at competitive conditions. III.2. The rationale for public intervention (9) According to the Spanish authorities, the development of broadband in Catalonia faces two key problems: (1) the first is the lack of infrastructure to deliver the services required by the public authorities and by citizens; and (2) the second is linked to the lack of adequate competition reflected in high prices or inadequate services. Shortage of infrastructures from commercial operators to offer broadband services (10) As regards the first concern, similarly to other regions in the European Union, also in the case of Catalonia, advanced broadband services and the infrastructures required to support them are available for citizens and businesses in more densely populated areas, whereas broadband infrastructure is inadequate or outright lacking in other areas which are not commercially attractive for electronic communication operators. This leaves citizens and businesses in such areas without the possibility of adequate broadband access and services. (11) The Spanish authorities submitted that, based on the information published by the National Regulatory Authority in 20084, only 0.7% of all accesses installed are made on optical fibre in Catalonia and most of these are in Barcelona5. The Spanish authorities stress that no commercial operator is planning to deploy NGA networks in the near future of 3 years – on the contrary, all of them have reduced significantly their investment budgets due to the economic and financial crisis started at the end of 20086. According to the report of CMT, telecom investments fell for the second year in a row in 2009, by 17.3 percent, compared to a 10.6 percent drop in 20087. Lack of adequate competition reflected in high prices or inadequate services. (12) As regards the second concern, according to the Spanish authorities, there is a lack of competition as regards of wholesale and retail bandwidth services in many areas of Catalonia. They assert that the broadband share in Catalonia held by the 4 Source: CMT – “2008 Report on the penetration of telecommunications services and infrastructure by province and autonomous community” (link to Spanish document) http://www.cmt.es/cmt_ptl_ext/SelectOption.do?nav=publi_estudios&detalles=0900271980083c1f&p agina=1. 5 According to the Spanish authorities, limited NGA investments are currently taking place in Spain: a few VDSL2 and FTTH pilot projects of Telefónica in Madrid and Barcelona. 6 For instance, according to publicly available information, Telefónica slowed down its plan to deploy fibre optics networks in 12 major cities of Spain (including Barcelona from Catalonia) within the framework of "Futura network" project; ONO has started experimenting in Valladolid with cable network providing 100 Mbps but in 2009 significantly cut back its investment budget, Vodafone communicates that in most cases it did not find commercially viable to deploy fibre networks on its own, etc. 7 CMT: Informe Annual 2009. 3 incumbent operator (Telefónica) is 62.2%, without taking into account the indirect share attributable to it due to line rental to other operators8. (13) As regards pricing, the Spanish authorities assert that in Spain, the price of the best medium-speed broadband offering (from 2 to 10 Mbps, a range that covers 72.4% of market lines) is 44.3% higher than the average price of the best offerings in the European Union, taking into account the figures of all the reference operators9. For example, according to the Spanish authorities, in up to 898 of all municipalities of Catalonia, having less than 40.000 inhabitants or not located in Barcelona's Metropolitan area, the prices that end-users such as the Generalitat have to pay for advanced broadband connectivity are very high or that high-capacity services – i.e. next generation services of at least 100 Mbit/s – are not available at all. Moreover, even in the 48 remaining municipalities (with more than 40.000 inhabitants or located in Barcelona's metropolitan area) services of up to 1 Gbit/s are provided only on request, their viability is not guaranteed and the prices charged are very high and fluctuating. Existing networks are not sufficient to satisfy the continuously growing needs of public administration, citizens and business users in the area in question (14) According to the analysis presented by the Spanish authorities, the inadequacy of existing broadband connections will prove to be a serious bottleneck for providing citizens and companies in the region with many new advanced services and can seriously hamper their activity. (15) Thanks to progress and technological development, the Spanish authorities argue that advances in the health care field, will soon make it possible for the public authorities to introduce services such as shared clinical histories (which include heavy high-definition images), remote medical imaging (for exchange of radiological diagnostic examinations), telemedicine and remote assistance. E- learning is also expected to grow very fast, thanks to services such as virtual training, remote laboratories, digital remote libraries and virtual meeting points. Additionally, substantial improvements in the justice, security and e-Government fields10 will be generated by services such as remote interrogations, centralised data services (including multimedia) and remote surveillance. The rationale for rolling out a new network (16) As a consequence of the above described situation, the Regional government of Catalonia has pointed out that for the public administration to live up to the growing 8 Report published by the National Regulatory Authority entitled “Penetration of Final Services and Telecommunications Infrastructure.