It seems the European Union sees broadband monopolies differently than the U.S. FCC does:

EU spokesman Martin Selmayr told reporters that a letter “of formal notice” was sent to Berlin after it ignored repeated warnings not to adopt legislation that could grant Deutsche Telekom a de-facto monopoly on a new broadband network.

The German parliament on Friday passed the telecommunications law, exempting Deutsche Telekom’s high-speed network from regulation and demands to open up its network to competitors, at least for now.

EU Sues Germany Over Broadband Limits, Associated Press 02.26.07, 8:34 AM ET

Seems like the EU realizes monopoly is bad for competition.

It seems the German government bought the same line as the FCC:

The former German state-owned telephone company plans to roll out a high-speed optical fiber network that will transmit data up to 20 times faster than current offerings.

The plan is to provide Germany’s 50 largest cities with high-speed broadband lines by 2007. Berlin had agreed with Deutsche Telekom’s argument that it could only make a decent profit on the network if it was exempt from any requirement to offer its lines to rivals.

But the EU isn’t buying it:

She said the German law is “an attempt to stifle competition in a crucial sector of the economy, and in violation of the EU telecom rules in place since 2002.”

It should be interesting to see how this case plays out. The German government has 15 days to answer the EU legal notice.

-jsq