The Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR), the utility regulator in Luxembourg has launched a public consultation on its proposed price caps for fibre unbundling services which telecom operators use to deliver broadband to homes and businesses. Frontier Economics supported the ILR by updating the cost model it previously developed.

The model is a 'bottom up' fibre network model which calculates the cost for an efficient operator to build a nationwide fibre network across Luxembourg connecting all premises.

Our work focused on:

• Defining the characteristics of a modelled efficient operator in Luxembourg, ensuring the model reflects realistic and efficient deployment choices.
• Developing a bottom-up Python model of the access network to estimate the required network infrastructure based on using Luxembourg’s public database of premises and the road network, least-cost routing algorithms, and engineering rules.
• Estimating the costs of the regulated services, drawing on the results of the network model and a range of additional economic parameters.
• Supporting the authority in interpreting model outputs to ensure the resulting cost estimates are robust, transparent, and fit for regulatory purposes.
   
  Frontier regularly advises regulators and operators across Europe and beyond on network cost modelling, pricing, and access policy for broadband networks.