The false dichotomy of competition vs. investment

I spent last week in Europe, in between Stockholm, Brussels and Paris and most of the topics I discussed, heard or addressed in public were in one way or another about policy. One thing that struck me is how the

The Right to be Forgotten

For the last few days I’ve been musing about the recent “right to be forgotten” that has been imposed on Google (and, presumably other search engines, although I haven’t looked at Bing and others in any detail on this issue).

Municipal Broadband Event in Brussels

Benoît Felten will be speaking next week on Thursday February 7th (14.00-18.00) at an event organised in Brussels by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKL) entitled Local and regional authorities: Key players for broadband rollout.

Benoît

A bit of good news on the ETNO/ITU take-over attempt front…

European Parliament Stairs (cc) photogreuhphies

This just in: the European Parliament posted a resolution with a large majority against ITU’s attempt at regulatory control of the internet. Here are the salient articles:

5. [The European Parliament] believes that the ITU,

Forget incentives to incumbents and eliminate hurdles to all others!

In a speech yesterday, EU commissioner for information society Neelie Kroes announced some new proposals to boost investment in Next-Generation Networks. The plan in a nutshell stands in three bullet points:

force a reduction in copper wholesale prices to diminish

Neelie Kroes Tweets!

It may sound anecdotal, and in a certain way it is, but I find it interesting (and somewhat encouraging) that Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission in charge of the Digital Agenda for Europe is tweeting. I have

Policy Failure ?

I've been musing about policy a lot these last few weeks.

I sense a shift in the way European institutions in particular are looking at the issue of policy and FTTH deployment incentives.

In North America, there's a clear trope

THD92 is good to go

THD92 is a massive local government fiber project in the suburbs close to Paris. I wrote in depth about it back in 2007 when it was announced, but not much happened since then. The pending ruling by the EC didn't

The Incentive Paradox aka European NGA State Aid Guidelines

At the end of last week, the European Commission finally released its new rulings on state aid for broadband. The full document is called Community Guidelines for the application of State aid rules in relation to rapid deployment of broadband