New builds and renovations: fibre has been mandatory since 12 February 2026

12 February 2026 was over five months ago. Since that day, anyone filing an application for a building permit for a new building, or for a major renovation, carries one more obligation — and it does not come from national law, but straight from the European Gigabit Infrastructure Regulation. No transposition to wait for, no circular: in many projects crossing a technical office today, that line is missing.

The text: Article 10 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1309

Regulation (EU) 2024/1309 of 29 April 2024, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 8 May 2024, repeals Directive 2014/61/EU and applies from 12 November 2025 (Article 19(2)). Paragraph 3 lists the derogations — Articles 5(6) and 11(6) from 11 May 2024, Article 17 from 15 May 2024, further provisions from 12 May 2026 — and the date that matters here: Article 10(1), (2) and (3) apply from 12 February 2026.

Paragraph 1 is the building provision: “All newly constructed buildings and buildings undergoing major renovation works, including elements under joint ownership, for which applications for building permits have been submitted after 12 February 2026, shall be equipped with a fibre-ready in-building physical infrastructure and in-building fibre wiring, including connections up to the physical point where the end user connects to the public network.” Paragraph 2 adds multi-dwelling buildings: on the same conditions, they “shall be equipped with an access point”.

In the Article 2 definitions, “fibre-ready in-building physical infrastructure” is infrastructure intended to host optical fibre elements (point 8): conduits, spaces, routes. “In-building fibre wiring” is instead the cables between the building access point and the network termination point (point 7). Two cumulative obligations: the duct alone is not enough.

Who is bound, and from when

What triggers the obligation is the date the application is submitted, not the date works start: a project filed on 11 February 2026 stays outside, one filed on the 13th is inside even if the site opens in 2028. “Major renovation works” has its own definition in Article 2, point 9: works “that encompass structural modifications of the entire in-building physical infrastructure or a significant part thereof and that require […] a building permit”. Redoing the façade does not count; redoing the services under a building permit does. Paragraph 3 imposed the same equipment by 12 February 2026 on major renovations as defined in Directive 2010/31/EU, unless that “disproportionately increase[s] the costs” or is not technically feasible.

The exemptions exist, but the designer does not grant them

Paragraph 7 excludes “certain categories of buildings, where compliance […] is disproportionate, in terms of costs for individual or joint owners based on objective elements”; paragraph 8 does the same for monuments, historic buildings, military buildings and buildings used for national security purposes, either exempt or subject to the obligation “with proper technical adaptations”. The Member State identifies those categories and publishes them via a single information point: until that happens, a derogation written into a technical report is not a derogation.

Paragraph 6 provides for a “fibre-ready” label, but “on a voluntary basis” and only “where Member States have chosen to introduce such a label”. Paragraph 4 required them to adopt the implementing technical specifications by 12 November 2025, and paragraph 5 to set up compliance procedures that “could include on-site inspection”.

In Italy the obligation is not new

A similar rule already existed: Article 135-bis of Presidential Decree 380/2001 has required since 1 July 2015, for new buildings and for works subject to a building permit under Article 10(1)(c), “adequate installation spaces and high-speed optical fibre communication systems up to the network termination points”, plus an access point. Paragraph 2-bis makes the “ultra-broadband ready building” label mandatory for applications filed after 1 January 2022: it is issued by a technician qualified under Ministerial Decree 37/2008, following CEI Guides 306-2, 306-22 and 64-100/1, 2 and 3, with notification to the national infrastructure register within ninety days.

And here is the open point. Directive 2014/61/EU is repealed with effect from 11 May 2024 (Article 18(1)); its Article 8(1) to (4) — the provision Article 135-bis implements — remained in force only until 12 February 2026, while Articles 4, 6 and 7 remain in force until 12 May 2026 (Article 18(2)). On Normattiva, Legislative Decree 33/2016 is unchanged since 24 February 2023 and Article 135-bis stands in the text in force since 28 April 2024: no Italian act appears to reconcile them with the Regulation. We are not going to reconstruct what still applies: that is a question for whoever issues the building title. What is certain is that the Regulation applies anyway, because it needs no transposition.

Penalties and access

The Regulation sets no penalties of its own: Article 15 leaves them to Member States, which must make them “appropriate, effective, proportionate and dissuasive”. On access, the deadlines exist. Article 11 gives every public network provider the right to install its network at its own cost up to the access point, and to use existing in-building infrastructure where duplication is technically impossible or economically inefficient, on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (paragraphs 1 to 3); if no agreement is reached within one month, the national dispute settlement body decides (Article 13) within a further month. In Italy, AGCOM bases its competence over these disputes on Legislative Decree 33/2016. For network permits, Article 7(5) sets four months and Article 8(1) tacit approval.

What to specify so it is not just an empty duct

Two line items, not one: fibre-ready infrastructure and fibre wiring, each with its own price line. If the fibre is “included in the building works”, nobody installs it.
Declared termination: how many fibres per dwelling and how far — to the network termination point inside the unit, not to the meter cupboard.
Fibre suited to risers: tight bends and shallow boxes need the right class between G.652 and G.657, written out in full.
Reaction to fire of the cables under the CPR, with the full class code: in a building, a product requirement, not an adjective.
An access point with spare room: Article 11 gives operators a right of access, and a full riser cupboard becomes a dispute.

The point.

12 February 2026 made no noise, and it is the kind of deadline discovered after the fact: at testing, at occupancy, or when the first operator asks to come in and finds neither an access point nor a fibre to terminate. Fixing it later means chasing walls in a finished building. In the specifications we write or review, infrastructure and in-building wiring stay two separate line items, with declared termination and test evidence link by link.

Do you have a project filed after 12 February 2026, or a specification to review? Talk to an engineer: deciding now what has to be inside the wall costs far less than putting it there afterwards.