The technical impact of the unbundling process and regulatory action

The process, referred to as unbundling, of allowing alternative operators to use the copper twisted wire pairs installed and owned by the local or national monopoly telephone operator is currently underway in many parts of the world. Not entirely without reason, most see this as a purely economical and legal matter, but it also has a surprisingly large impact on the engineering of broadband communication systems. This applies to the standardization and design phase as well as to the deployment phase. We survey the background of unbundling, and the goals and thinking of a regulator, and elaborate on the technical impact of unbundling. Examples are taken from VDSL standardization and the regulatory situation in various European countries.