Commission consults on access to broadband

euractiv.com | InfoSociety | Published: Thursday 14 July 2005 | : Monday 18 July 2005


In Short:

Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding has opened a public consultation on bringing highspeed internet to those areas of the EU where it is not yet available.

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Brief News:

In particular, the Commission wants to know from citizens and businesses whether they see a need for more administrative measures to boost the growth of broadband in remote, poor or sparsely populated areas, and what sort of measures these would be. A second set of questions deals with the Commission's plans to set up a website on which regional and local authorities could, on a voluntary basis, publish their efforts for more widespread broadband deployment.

Over the last year, broadband has grown by 70%, to 40 million lines in the EU. But while 90% of the people living in towns and cities of the EU-15 could gain access to high-speed internet, the technology was only available to 62% of those living in the countryside. For the ten countries that joined the EU on 1 May 2004, reliable figures are not yet available. Most of them are believed to have even more of a "broadband gap", as the Commission labelled the problem, hinting at the "digital divide" separating developing from industrial countries.

Links


Official Documents


Commission (DG Information Society): Public Consultation on the Digital Divide (closes on 16 September 2005)

Commission (DG Information Society): Digital Divide Report (15 July 2005)

Commission (Rapid): High-speed internet connections growing fast, say Commission figures (1 June 2005) [FR] [DE]

Commission (Rapid): High-speed internet access: Commission opens policy debate on closing the broadband gap (15 July 2005) [FR] [DE]


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World Summit becomes focus for telecom ministers (28 June 2005)

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