Advanced Television

Europe needs a true single digital market

May 21, 2010

The European Commission's plan to accelerate the EU's single digital market will need to address commercial challenges to roll out ultra high speed broadband across Europe more quickly and facilitate consumer access to legal content in order to have concrete positive effects on the European economy, according to Europe's broadband cable industry.

“We are actually delivering ultra high speed broadband networks today and see a quickly expanding reach among our 72 million customers across Europe. We want to reach more citizens and the EU wants us to, as well,” said Cable Europe President, Manuel Kohnstamm. “We share these strategic goals with the Commission, and we’ll keep up the pace for Europe's digitisation. Our continued network investments keep pushing the competition.”

With Europe's ICT sector responsible for five per cent of EU GDP, the Commission recognises that information and communications technologies have driven half of the growth in productivity among the European Union’s member states in the last 15 years and that nearly a quarter of Europeans are reported to have a 'fixed' broadband subscription. The EU has set a goal for all its citizens to have access to high-speed Internet service of 30 Mbps or higher by the next decade.

“Our industry is executing on the 2020 goals for high speed Internet service already today. While only eighteen per cent of European broadband subscribers have service above 10Mbps, we would naturally like to bring more customers on to our high speed networks that serve as world class gateways to premium content,” added Cable Europe's Managing Director, Caroline Van Weede.

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