Regulation (EU) 2024/1309 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2024 on measures to reduce the cost of deploying gigabit electronic communications networks, amending Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 and repealing Directive 2014/61/EU (Gigabit Infrastructure Act) (Text with EEA relevance)

Article 1

Subject matter and scope

Article 2

Definitions

For the purposes of this Regulation, the definitions set out in Directive (EU) 2018/1972 apply, in particular the definitions of ‘electronic communications network’, ‘very high capacity network’, ‘public electronic communications network’, ‘network termination point’, ‘associated facilities’, ‘end-user’, ‘security of networks and services’, ‘access’, and ‘operator’.

The following definitions also apply:

(1) ‘network operator’ means: (a) an operator as defined in Article 2, point (29), of Directive (EU) 2018/1972; (b) an undertaking providing a physical infrastructure intended to provide: (i) a service of production, transport or distribution of: — gas, — electricity, including public lighting, — heating, — water, including disposal or treatment of wastewater and sewage, and drainage systems; (ii) transport services, including railways, roads including urban roads, tunnels, ports and airports;

(2) ‘body governed by public law’ means a body that has all of the following characteristics: (a) it is established for the specific purpose of meeting needs in the general interest, not having an industrial or commercial character; (b) it has legal personality; (c) it is financed, in full or for the most part, by state, regional or local authorities or by other bodies governed by public law or is subject to management supervision by those authorities or bodies; or has an administrative, managerial or supervisory board, more than half of whose members are appointed by state, regional or local authorities or by other bodies governed by public law;

(3) ‘public sector body’ means a state, regional or local authority, a body governed by public law or an association formed by one or more such authorities or one or more such bodies governed by public law;

(4) ‘physical infrastructure’ means: (a) any element of a network that is intended to host other elements of a network without becoming an active element of the network itself, such as pipes, masts, ducts, inspection chambers, manholes, cabinets, antenna installations, towers and poles, as well as buildings including their rooftops and parts of their facades or entries to buildings, and any other asset, including street furniture such as light poles, street signs, traffic lights, billboards and toll frames, as well as bus and tramway stops and metro and railway stations; (b) where not part of a network and owned or controlled by public sector bodies: buildings including their rooftops and parts of their facades or entries to buildings, and any other asset, including street furniture such as light poles, street signs, traffic lights, billboards and toll frames, as well as bus and tramway stops and metro and railway stations. Cables, including dark fibre, as well as elements of networks used for the provision of water intended for human consumption as defined in Article 2, point (1), of Directive (EU) 2020/2184 of the European Parliament and of the Council (¹) are not physical infrastructure within the meaning of this Regulation;

(5) ‘civil works’ means every outcome of building or civil engineering works taken as a whole that is sufficient in itself to fulfil an economic or technical function and entails one or more elements of a physical infrastructure;

(6) ‘in-building physical infrastructure’ means physical infrastructure or installations at the end user’s location, including elements under joint ownership, intended to host wired and/or wireless access networks, where such access networks are capable of delivering electronic communications services and connecting the building access point with the network termination point;

(7) ‘in-building fibre wiring’ means optical fibre cables at the end user’s location, including elements under joint ownership, intended to deliver electronic communications services and connecting the building access point with the network termination point;

(8) ‘fibre-ready in-building physical infrastructure’ means in-building physical infrastructure intended to host optical fibre elements;

(9) ‘major renovation works’ means civil works at the end user’s location that encompass structural modifications of the entire in-building physical infrastructure or a significant part thereof and that require, in accordance with national law, a building permit;

(10) ‘permit’ means an explicit or implicit decision or set of decisions taken simultaneously or successively by one or more competent authorities that are required under national law for an undertaking to carry out building or civil works necessary for the deployment of elements of VHCNs;

(11) ‘access point’ means a physical point, located inside or outside the building, accessible to undertakings that provide or that are authorised to provide public electronic communications networks, where connection to the fibre-ready in-building physical infrastructure is made available;

(12) ‘rights of way’ means rights referred to in Article 43(1) of Directive (EU) 2018/1972, granted to an operator to install facilities on, over or under public or private property to deploy VHCNs and associated facilities.

Article 3

Access to existing physical infrastructure

Operators and legal persons referred to in the first subparagraph of this paragraph shall inform the national regulatory authority of the conclusion of agreements reached in accordance with the first subparagraph, including the agreed price.

Member States may provide guidance on the terms and conditions, including the price, in order to facilitate the conclusion of such agreements.

Member States may provide that owners of private commercial buildings which are not owned or controlled by a network operator are to meet, upon the written request of an operator, reasonable requests for access to those buildings, including their rooftops, with a view to installing elements of VHCNs or associated facilities under fair and reasonable terms and conditions, and at a price reflecting market conditions. Prior to such a request from the access seeker all of the following conditions shall be met:

(a) the building is located in a rural or remote area as defined by Member States;

(b) there is no VHCN of the same type — fixed or mobile — as that the access seeker intends to deploy available in the area for which the request for access is made, and there is no plan to deploy such a network according to the information collected via the single information point available at the date of the request,

(c) there is no physical infrastructure in the area for which the request for access is made that is owned or controlled by network operators or public sector bodies and is technically suitable to host elements of VHCNs.

Member States may determine a list of categories of commercial buildings that may be exempt from the obligation to meet such an access request, for reasons of public security, defence, safety and health. That list and the criteria to be applied to identify those categories shall be published via a single information point.

When determining fair and reasonable terms and conditions, including prices, for granting access, and in order to avoid excessive prices, network operators and public sector bodies owning or controlling physical infrastructure shall, where relevant, take into account at least the following:

(a) existing contracts and commercial terms and conditions agreed between operators seeking access and network operators or public sector bodies granting access to physical infrastructure;

(b) the need to ensure that the access provider has a fair opportunity to recover the costs it incurs in order to provide access to its physical infrastructure, taking into account specific national conditions, business models, and any tariff structures put in place to provide a fair opportunity for cost recovery; in the case of electronic communications networks, any remedies imposed by a national regulatory authority are also to be taken into account;

(c) any additional maintenance and adaptation costs resulting from providing access to the relevant physical infrastructure;

(d) the impact of the requested access on the access provider’s business plan, including investments in the physical infrastructure to which the access has been requested;

(e) in the specific case of access to physical infrastructure of operators, any relevant guidance pursuant to paragraph 13, and in particular: (i) the economic viability of those investments based on their risk profile; (ii) the need for a fair return on investment and for any time schedule for such return on investment; (iii) any impact of access on downstream competition and consequently on prices and return on investment; (iv) any depreciation of the network assets at the time of the access request; (v) any business case underpinning the investment at the time it was made, in particular investment in the physical infrastructure used for the provision of connectivity; and (vi) any possibility previously offered to the access seeker to co-invest in the deployment of the physical infrastructure, notably pursuant to Article 76 of Directive (EU) 2018/1972, or to co-deploy alongside it;

(f) when considering the operators’ need for a fair return on investment which reflects the relevant market conditions, their different business models, in particular in the case of undertakings that primarily provide associated facilities and offer physical access to more than one undertaking that provides, or that is authorised to provide, public electronic communications networks.

Network operators and public sector bodies owning or controlling physical infrastructure may refuse access to specific physical infrastructure on the basis of one or more of the following grounds:

(a) the physical infrastructure to which access has been requested is not technically suitable to host any of the elements of VHCN referred to in paragraph 1;

(b) there is a lack of availability of space to host the elements of VHCNs or associated facilities referred to in paragraph 1, including after taking into account the future need for space of the access provider that is sufficiently demonstrated, such as by referring to publicly available investments plans or to a consistently applied percentage for the capacity reserved for future needs, compared to the entire capacity of the physical infrastructure;

(c) the existence of justified reasons regarding safety, national security and public health;

(d) the existence of duly justified reasons regarding the integrity and security of any network, in particular national critical infrastructure;

(e) the existence of a duly justified risk of serious interferences of the planned electronic communications services with the provision of other services over the same physical infrastructure;

(f) the availability of viable alternative means of passive wholesale physical access to electronic communications networks, suitable for the provision of VHCNs, and offered under fair and reasonable terms and conditions, that are provided by the same network operator or, in the specific case of rural or remote areas where a network is operated on a wholesale-only basis and owned or controlled by public sector bodies, that are provided by the operator of such network.

Member States may provide that the network operators and public sector bodies owning or controlling physical infrastructure may refuse access to specific physical infrastructure where there are viable alternative means of non-discriminatory open wholesale active access to VHCNs that are provided by the same network operator or by the same public body, provided that both of the following conditions are met:

(a) such alternative means of wholesale access is offered under fair and reasonable terms and conditions, including price;

(b) the deployment project of the requesting operator addresses the same coverage area and there is no other fibre network connecting end-user premises serving the coverage area.

This paragraph shall apply only to those Member States where such or an equivalent refusal possibility is applied on 11 May 2024, in accordance with national law complying with Union law.

Article 4

Transparency on physical infrastructure

In order to be able to request access to physical infrastructure in accordance with Article 3, an operator shall have the right to access, upon request, the following minimum information on existing physical infrastructure, in electronic format via a single information point:

(a) georeferenced location and route;

(b) type and current use of the infrastructure;

(c) a contact point.

Such minimum information shall be accessible, under proportionate, non-discriminatory and transparent terms and in any event no later than 10 working days after the date of submission of the request for access to information. In duly justified cases that deadline may be extended once by five working days. Operators requesting access shall be informed of any extension of the deadline via a single information point.

Any operator requesting access to information pursuant to this Article shall specify the geographical area in which it envisages deploying elements of VHCNs or associated facilities.

Access to the minimum information may be limited or refused provided that it is necessary to ensure the security of certain buildings owned or controlled by public sector bodies, the security of the networks and their integrity, national security, the security of national critical infrastructure, public health or safety, or for reasons of confidentiality or operating and business secrets.

Paragraphs 1, 3 and 5 shall not apply where:

(a) physical infrastructure is not technically suitable for the deployment of VHCNs or associated facilities’;

(b) the obligation to provide information about certain existing types of physical infrastructure pursuant to paragraph 1, first subparagraph, would be disproportionate, on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis conducted by Member States and a consultation with stakeholders; or

(c) physical infrastructure is not subject to access obligations in accordance with Article 3(10).

The justification, criteria and conditions for applying any such exceptions shall be published via a single information point and notified to the Commission.

Article 5

Coordination of civil works

Requests to coordinate civil works shall be met, provided that all of the following conditions are met:

(a) the coordination of civil works will not entail any unrecoverable additional costs, including those caused by additional delays, for the network operator or public sector body owning or controlling physical infrastructure that initially envisaged the civil works in question, without prejudice to the possibility of the parties concerned agreeing on apportioning the costs;

(b) the network operator or public sector body owning or controlling physical infrastructure initially envisaging the civil works remains in control over the coordination of the works;

(c) the request is submitted as soon as possible and, when a permit is necessary for the civil works, at least one month before the submission of the final project to the permit-granting authorities.

A request to coordinate civil works made by an undertaking that provides, or that is authorised to provide, public electronic communications networks to an undertaking that provides or is authorised to provide public electronic communications networks may be deemed to be unreasonable where both of the following conditions are met:

(a) the request concerns an area which has been subject to either of the following: (i) a forecast of the reach of broadband networks, including VHCNs pursuant to Article 22(1) of Directive (EU) 2018/1972; (ii) an invitation to declare the intention to deploy VHCNs pursuant to Article 22(3) of Directive (EU) 2018/1972; (iii) a public consultation in applying Union State aid rules;

(b) the requesting undertaking failed to express its intention to deploy VHCNs in the area referred to in point (a) in any of the most recent procedures among those listed in that point covering the period during which the request for coordination is made.

If a request to coordinate is considered unreasonable on the basis of the first subparagraph, the undertaking providing, or authorised to provide, public electronic communications networks that refused the coordination of civil works shall deploy physical infrastructure with sufficient capacity to accommodate possible future reasonable needs for third-party access.

Member States may decide that public sector bodies owning or controlling physical infrastructure and network operators shall not apply paragraphs 2 and 4 to types of civil works that relate to national critical infrastructure or for reasons of national security identified by Member States pursuant to first subparagraph of this paragraph.

Public sector bodies owning or controlling physical infrastructure and network operators may decide not to apply paragraphs 2 and 4 to types of works that are identified by Member States as limited in scope pursuant to the first subparagraph of this paragraph.

By 12 November 2025, after consulting stakeholders, the national dispute settlement bodies and other competent Union bodies or agencies in the relevant sectors, as appropriate, and after taking into account well-established principles and the specific situations of each Member State, BEREC shall, in close cooperation with the Commission, provide guidelines on the application of this Article, in particular concerning:

(a) apportioning the costs associated with the coordination of civil works as referred to in paragraph 1;

(b) the criteria that the dispute settlement bodies should follow when settling disputes falling within the scope of this Article; and

(c) the criteria for ensuring sufficient capacity to accommodate foreseeable future reasonable needs if coordination of civil works is refused pursuant to paragraph 4.

Article 6

Transparency on planned civil works

In order to enable the negotiation of agreements on coordination of civil works referred to in Article 5, any network operator and public sector bodies owning or controlling physical infrastructure shall make available in electronic format via a single information point the following minimum information:

(a) the georeferenced location and the type of works;

(b) the elements of physical infrastructure involved;

(c) the estimated date for starting the works and their duration;

(d) the estimated date for submitting the final project to the competent authorities for granting permits, where applicable;

(e) a contact point.