June 24, 2019

This Common Position describes criteria that can be taken into account by National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) in assessing mobile infrastructure sharing agreements.

It is intended to provide NRAs, stakeholders and interested parties with information relating to the treatment of such agreements in Europe.

The document provides background information relating to the consideration of infrastructure sharing agreements, including information on relevant legal frameworks and on the potential benefits and drawbacks of such agreements.

The Common Position consists of:

• common definitions of different infrastructure sharing types: passive sharing, co-location, site sharing, mast sharing, active sharing, RAN sharing, MORAN sharing, MOCN sharing, frequency (or spectrum) pooling, national/local roaming, core network sharing and backhaul sharing;
• common important objectives that NRAs should consider when assessing infrastructure sharing agreements: effective competition, better connectivity and efficient use of spectrum; and
• common factors that NRAs should consider when assessing infrastructure sharing agreements: competitive market forces evolution, the feasible level of competition, type of sharing, shared information between the sharing parties and its impact on their ability to compete, reversibility and contractual implementation.

The document states that consideration of these factors, their relative importance to one another, and the relevance of potentially significant other factors not listed are likely to be highly context specific. Therefore, assessing such agreements will require evidence-based analysis on a case-by-case basis.

Finally, the document provides a description of potential treatment of specific infrastructure sharing types. To access the Common Position document, click here.