— Posted by Guido Acchioni, DG INFSO, Policy officer, Workshop organiser at Digital Agenda Assembly

The Digital Agenda for Europe has set up ambitious targets on the deployment and use of high speed broadband infrastructure and services. It is obvious that these are ambitious objectives which will require a substantial amount of investment and efforts both from private and public domains.

The Commission’s estimate indicates that between € 38bn and € 58bn would be needed to achieve the 30 Mbps coverage for all by 2020 and between € 181bn and € 268bn to provide sufficient coverage so that 50% of households are on 100 Mbps services. The size of the investment represents a real challenge. This is because the benefits for society as a whole appear to be much greater than the private incentives to invest in faster networks.  Read the full entry

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— Posted by Robert Madelin, DG INFSO Director-General

I had a good discussion at the IIC Telecommunications & Media Forum, yesterday, the 13th of April. I was sharing with the participants my views of the Digital Single Market, one of the founding pillars of the Digital Agenda for Europe. My main points were that this is the key to European competitiveness especially during this historical economic downturn. Even in these times, the digital economy is growing faster than any other sector, and this should be the space where business innovators should find the ideal ground to develop their ideas and to create new wealth.

When Europeans think of the obstacles to the Digital Single Market they often think of the most obvious frustrations suffered by themselves as consumers, when they are denied to purchase goods in another Member States because their credit card is not accepted, or when they try to watch IP-TV abroad. Video on Demand (VOD) on the internet is simply not available in certain Member States and the offer is restricted in most of the others. Because of the lack of a Single Market in digital music, certain providers just decide not to offer their services in certain countries and thus de-facto to discriminate consumers because of their country of residence. This is something I and my colleagues are confronted to daily, through citizens messages and complaints. Read the full entry

Number of views: 2673