INTUG

Over 250 million Europeans are now regular Internet users, 80 per cent of them have broadband connections and 60 per cent of public services in the EU are fully available online. Two thirds of schools and half of doctors make use of fast Internet connections, thanks to strong broadband growth in Europe.

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Contradicting earlier studies, conventional wisdom and politicians’ rhetoric, researchers from the French business school INSEAD say that the Internet infrastructure of the United States is one of the world’s best and getting better: the country ranked fourth in the world behind just three European nations: Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. Some Internet industry veterans are skeptical.Read more on the New York Times website.

Also noteworthy: ’768 kb/s still isn’t enough’

Source: New York Times

European telecoms market research company IDATE published a study about functional separation involving a review of the existing examples in the UK and Australia and the (several) projects under consideration in New Zealand, Italy and Sweden. The paper also assesses the initial impact on the functional separation case in the UK – which has been operational for 2 years – and includes a comparison with the lessons learned from older examples of functional and structural separation in other network industries.

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Source: IDATE

Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden are world leaders in broadband deployment with penetration rates over 30 per cent by the end of 2007, according to the European Commission’s 13th Progress Report on the Single Telecoms Market, issued today.

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The Swedish government has approved legislation giving the national regulator PTS the power to impose functional separation on dominant network operators, Telecompaper reports.

The bill, entitled “Functional separation for better broadband competition”, is intended to improve competition in the broadband market.Read more…

Read the original press release press release (in Swedish).

Source: Telecompaper, PTS