Brussels, 12/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - On 8 July, the Commission is organising a public hearing on unbundling the local loop which, in the form either of totally unbundled access or shared access, was imposed by an EU regulation of December 2000 before being extended to the whole of the EEA. Commissioner Monti will open the meeting and DG competition will present the results of the second chapter of its enquiry into the local loop launched in July 2000. The public hearing will follow the publication of a EEA-wide study prepared by Squire, Sanders & Dempsey which rests on documents gathered by the Commission and the EFTA Surveillance Authority in the framework of their parallel sectoral enquiries, currently being held on the subject. The public hearing will examine the report's conclusions taking account of developments in the market since the date of the study (September 2001). The difficulties facing the new arrivals wanting to rent copper lines from operators in place to deploy their own services destined for end-users will be analysed on the basis of the report's conclusions and observations then received by the Commission. You may recall that the unbumdling of the local loop aims to promote competition in the provision of wide band services, and that the Commission recently addressed a letter of complaint to Wanadoo and Deutsche Telekom, said to have abused a dominant position in the sector. Parties wanting to participate must reply before 15 June to the address: comp-local-loop@cec.eu.int).