Incumbents should therefore already have developed accounting systems and processes to extract such cost information. The introduction of ECPR for the pricing of local loop access results in a further complication of these systems and processes. For high speed bit stream access, the Working Paper does not make a pricing recommendation, saying that Community law requires no such imposition on incumbents. If the Commission wishes to pursue its recommendation of three access methods and remain technologically neutral, use of different pricing standards may prevent this objective from being achieved. Three different pricing standards are proposed for the three different local loop access methods.
Incumbents thus have a possibility of forcing technological choices.
Such choices by incumbents may seem remote at present, but the issue is raised as one of principle, because good rules should generally seek to avoid such potential asymmetry. 3.1 Collocation Price regulation of collocation space Regulation is generally applied when limited resources are concerned. Following the same principle, price control should apply when limited resources are available. This should include collocation space, which although not limited if one extends the definition to in-span collocation, is nevertheless going to be subject to some constraints during some periods of time as demand exceeds supply in incumbents' premises. Experience from the world of US telecommunications shows that it can be done in a short time frame.