On October 24, 2018, the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure issued an instruction to the project sponsor regarding so-called “in-house co-laying”. In it, the BMVI comments on the question of the conditions under which companies that carry out an expansion as part of federal funding are entitled to use the funded construction work to lay additional pipes, including unswitched optical fibres, for their own expansion in neighboring areas that have not been expanded with funding (so-called “own co-laying”).
The Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure assumes that both companies that carry out the expansion as part of a grant and third-party telecommunications companies are generally authorized to use funded construction work for the installation of their own telecommunications infrastructure for expansion in non-funded areas. However, the BMVI’s instructions and conditions must be observed, which can be found in the corresponding information letter (PDF) from the project sponsor to the grant recipients and telecommunications companies.