Fiber-to-the-home is spreading in Switzerland, a country that has many multi-tenant residential buildings. The incumbent telco Swisscom has solved legal problems that confront many service providers when it comes to the internal wiring in a multi-tenant building: Who pays for the installation? Who owns the rights to use the cables? Can other service providers use the same cables?
It has reached an agreement with the Swiss Homeowners’ Association and the Zurich Real Estate Association to develop a sample contract that’ll let it run fiber optic cables all the way to households inside multi-tenant buildings.
Swisscom will finance the cabling inside the buildings and therefore gets the right to customers’ homes. It had previously paid only for installing the cable to the outside of a multi-tenant building. It and the two real estate associations will draft a sample contract for landlords and homeowners to use.
Swisscom CEO Carsten Schloter said the deal gives consumers "simple access to fiber-optic-based offers." Homeowners who have already paid for fiber installations will be reimbursed.
At the recommendation of its government regulator, Swisscom agreed to run four fiber cables to each apartment and allow competitors to use them. Customers will benefit from increased competition between broadband providers. |
