Not only American companies (like Microsoft) are on the radar screen of the EU regulators when it comes to open markets or to fight monopolies, but also European. As was expected, today Vivane Reding announced that Deutsche Telekom has to open its high-speed data network immediately to others and cannot - as supported by the German government - enjoy a grace period during which they can use the network on their own. With falling margins in Germany and a (relatively) weak position in the US with T-Mobile USA, D-Telekom is getting into an unpleasant situation, it seems.

The EU commission is targetting the new fiber optic network (VDSL) and requests from the German regulator "Bundesnetzagentur" a quick enforcement without any delays. Reasoning is - apart from fair competition - also the fact that Germany was falling behind in broadband penetration (from being average in the EU-15 to now only average in the EU-25). Another point that was brought up is that D-Telekom has a 60% market share compared with average 50% in the other EU countries. Finally, they argue that alternative technologies, other than DSL, are still negligible in Germany. D-Telekom disagrees of course, saying that the German market has one of the strongest growth rates in the EU. Not sure though what that has to do with the fact that mostly D-Telekom is profiting from it...