Brussels, 29 January 2026 – Today, the European Local Fibre Alliance (ELFA), the European voice of local
fibre operators, convened a policy event in Brussels with representatives from the European Commission
and regulatory bodies to exchange views on the draft Digital Networks Act (DNA) and the future of the
European telecommunications sector. At the event, ELFA called for rules that strengthen competition,
resilience and sustainable investment in Europe’s digital infrastructures.

Setting the stage for the exchange, the Alliance, representing roughly 900 European fibre network
operators, welcomed the European Commission’s draft Digital Networks Act as an important step
forward.

ELFA underlined that Europe’s digital infrastructure policy should prioritise long-term, sustainable
competition by supporting a diverse ecosystem of actors – including publicly owned, regional and locally

anchored fibre networks – rather than attempting to engineer cross-border consolidation in fixed
infrastructure markets. A diverse ecosystem of independent fibre operators helps to avoid over
dependence on a limited number of national incumbents, thus improving resilience, redundancy, and
connectivity.

Contrary to the current draft, ELFA called for the DNA to be adopted as a directive, not a regulation, to
preserve flexibility for national implementation in a highly diverse market landscape and to avoid
destabilising well-functioning national models.

On wholesale access regulation, ELFA commended the Commission for its proposal to maintain the
existing ex-ante approach and underlined that the current market situation in several Member Stated,
still dominated by the significant market power of the incumbents, does not yet allow for a general shift
towards ex-post regulation in those countries. ELFA emphasised that such transition must be handled
with precaution to avoid re-monopolisation risks and to preserve the competitive conditions needed for
efficient fibre deployment.

Regarding the transition from legacy copper networks to future-proof fibre networks, ELFA supported
the fact that the draft DNA aims to set a clear, rule-based and non-discriminatory framework.
ELFA also welcomed the Commission’s push for an accelerated migration to fibre, while urging that the

DNA prevents distortions of competition and avoids transferring significant market power from legacy
copper to fibre networks.

On spectrum policy, ELFA highlighted the strategic role of next-generation Wi-Fi for end-user
performance in fibre-based connectivity and asked the EU to reserve spectrum within the upper 6 GHz
band for license-exempt Wi-Fi, rather than sharing it with 5G/6G.

ELFA also welcomed the EU’s ambition for a sustainable digital transition and called for the EU
Taxonomy to explicitly recognise fibre network deployment as a sustainable investment – paired with
streamlined compliance requirements in line with the digital omnibus objective of reducing bureaucratic
reporting burdens.ELFA called for a competitive, open and transparent wholesale environment for both fixed and mobile
networks and for stronger safeguards against anti-competitive practices such as strategic overbuild.