Panel: Fibre economics: when is consolidation coming?

Europe is one of the most developed markets for fibre infrastructure and different countries have very different approaches to deployment. Germany has created the Open Access Alliance to avoid overbuild, whereas UK regulation has actively encouraged overbuild. There are pros and cons for businesses and consumers, but for the network operators there are serious questions: 

• How can they effectively achieve RoI in markets where competitors are digging the same route? 

• What needs to happen in terms of restructuring of altnets, rollups or refinancing to maintain competition whilst improving the long term outlook for these companies? 

• Once acquisition is achieved, how to successfully integrate assets into a larger existing footprint.