TECHNOLOGY A spectre is haunting European telecommunications companies: the prospect of being forcibly reorganized by governments through ‘functional separations’.
Brussels and several countries want the national telecom incumbents to separate their infrastructure network from the service riding on it, which would be open to competitors on equal terms. BT in the UK was an early example, and the idea has caught on. The basic concept would be like requiring railroad companies to separate their tracks from their train service, to permit rival transportation companies to use these tracks at a low and non-discriminatory rate, and to lease to rivals selected parts of the track infrastructure.
