Under the (Swiss) Federal Council’s gigabit strategy, a CHF730 million (US$832 million) temporary funding programme will drive forward the expansion of broadband via fibre optic and wireless infrastructure.
The funding programme is to be limited to a period of seven to ten years.
The Federal Council’s gigabit strategy includes a programme, under the government's Broadband Promotion Act, to help Switzerland catch up with other countries in the expansion of fibre-optic networks.
|
The draft law aims to promote the nationwide expansion of fixed networks with download speeds of at least one gigabit per second.
The programme will provide kick-start funding in areas where it is not in the market players’ interest to invest in network expansion with a capacity of 1 Gbit/s, such as sparsely populated areas.
Market players, however, will still be primarily responsible for expanding the network without any additional financial support, according to the Federal Council.
"The financial support will go towards expanding fibre-optic networks or wireless infrastructure – the latter in particular where the cost of expanding the fibre-optic network is very high," the Federal Council says in its announcement.
The funding programme comes with conditions for service providers, which the Swiss government says will protect competition in the market.
"In order to ensure effective competition, the operators of the subsidised infrastructure must grant access to other providers, i.e. several providers may offer their services via the same infrastructure," the Federal Council says.
