Henk Kamp, the Dutch minister of Economic Affairs, is looking to open up the Ziggo cable network to third parties.
The minister plans to send a letter to the European Commission explaining why he wants to introduce ‘controlled access’ on the Ziggo network. At the moment, only the network of incumbent KPN is open to competitors such as Vodafone and Tele 2.
The Dutch parliament and the government have been calling for some time for the opening up of the Ziggo network, but that turned out not to be possible under the existing European regulations.
After the merger of Ziggo and UPC Nederland, the cabler’s footprint is almost nationwide and the government now sees no reason why the network cannot be opened up to competitors, although admittedly certain technical difficulties must be overcome.
The Dutch government sees network access as essential to the internet economy and a situation with only two national operators is not sufficiently competitive.
At the moment, only Belgium has an Open Cable regulation.
