Company: LBTYK
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001570585-25-000021
Chunk: 41

Company: Liberty Global Ltd.
Filing Date: 2025-02-18
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 41
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 future.

NRAs may, in some cases, impose access obligations on service providers, regardless of whether they have SMP. Under the Code and the E.U. Broadband Cost Reduction Directive, service providers may be required to give access to parts of their passive network infrastructure upon reasonable request if there are significant economic or physical replicability barriers. Requirements to provide access to active infrastructure also exist, but only if a number of additional requirements are met. The  Gigabit Infrastructure Act has now been adopted, and when fully in force, will repeal the E.U. Broadband Cost Reduction Directive. The U.K. has a similar system in place.

Net Neutrality, Roaming and Call Termination

The E.U. has a union-wide net neutrality regime (the E.U. Net Neutrality Regime). The regulation allows for specialized services that are optimized for specific content and subjects service providers like Liberty Global’s operating companies to reasonable traffic management requirements. The U.K. transposed net neutrality into its national law following Brexit. The U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom) has confirmed a more lenient interpretation of some aspects of net neutrality and indicated that there may be a case for the U.K. Parliament to make substantive revision to the law.

The E.U. Net Neutrality Regime also prohibits retail roaming tariffs and sets wholesale roaming price caps. The E.U. introduced caps on wholesale rates for intra-E.U. calls to bring these in line with applicable wholesale roaming caps. In relation to the U.K., E.U. operators are now free to raise wholesale charges for U.K. operators (and vice-versa) but may choose not to.

Call termination tariffs for SMP providers are set by NRAs, but for the E.U., the Code includes a system of single maximum, E.U.-wide voice termination rates for fixed and mobile. During 2025, all E.U. service providers will be subject to maximum fixed and mobile voice termination rates of €0.07 and €0.20 per minute, respectively. In the U.K., an SMP provider must provide termination on fair and reasonable terms, conditions and charges, which must be no higher than BT’s regulated charges unless certain conditions are met. In each country in which we operate, we have been found to have SMP for call termination.

The Gigabit Infrastructure Act will abolish surcharges for intra-E.U. communications, such as SMS, fixed and mobile calls generated from the domestic country to another E.U. country. As of January 1, 2029