Fibre-Optic Network as an Object of Law: Access, Licensing, Cost Allocation and Resilience in the EU Gigabit Strategy

Abstract

Optical fibre cable is normally considered an engineering artefact, but almost any obstacle to rolling out the cable is a matter of law rather than technology. No existing study, however, reconstructs that framework function by function to show which legal technique carries each obligation and where each technique fails. This paper explores how European law creates the optical fibre network as a subject of law and whether it can provide economically feasible and ecologically sustainable connectivity. The study employs doctrinal, comparative and interpretive analysis of the body of EU instruments for regulating fibre-optic rollout, including, primarily, Regulation (EU) 2024/1309 (Gigabit Infrastructure Act), Directive (EU) 2018/1972 establishing the European Electronic Communications Code, state aid guidelines for broadband networks of 2023 and the resilience frameworks of Directives (EU) 2022/2555 and 2022/2557, taking account of the case law of the Court of Justice and the implementation of the legal instruments in Greece and Cyprus. The study identifies nine regulatory functions and reconstructs them in law: access to physical infrastructure, civil works coordination, permitting, in-building infrastructure, competition and market remedies, resilience, public funding, environmental consent, and copper transition. The study finds that regulation is shifting from telecommunications market regulation to property, administrative and planning law and security law; the critical constraint on roll-out is the time and inconsistency of multi-authority permitting, not the availability of funds; and sustainability emerges rhetorically but not as a substantive duty. The study suggests consolidating the permitting procedure, creating published reference cost models, reengineering conditionality and requiring route diversity for peripheral states. These proposals are aligned explicitly with Sustainable Development Goal 9 on resilient infrastructure, Goal 16 on effective and accountable institutions, and Goal 12 on responsible consumption and production.