Digital Agenda: Vice-President Kroes hosts CEO Roundtable on investment in broadband networks to sustain internet growth

MEMO/11/135

Brussels, 3 March 2011

Digital Agenda: Vice-President Kroes hosts CEO Roundtable on investment in broadband networks to sustain internet growth

How best to ensure the very high levels of private sector investment necessary for the deployment of next generation broadband networks to sustain internet growth and so meet Europe's Digital Agenda targets. At a high-level meeting of CEOs and senior board-level company representatives in Brussels on March 3, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes asked industry to come forward with concrete proposals on how to address the broadband investment challenge. The meeting asked an interdisciplinary group led by Ben Verwaayen of Alcatel-Lucent, René Obermann of Deutsche Telekom and Jean-Bernard Lévy of Vivendi, to engage with all stakeholders to develop a holistic approach, with a view to confirming such proposals at a CEO Summit in Brussels on 13th July.

Discussion at the CEO Roundtable focussed on the following themes:

• assessing the current state of play on next generation networks deployment and devising the most effective additional means to foster and accelerate such deployment

• assessing the sustainability of the current internet ecosystems and any alternative business models.

The Digital Agenda for Europe (see IP/10/581, MEMO/10/199 and MEMO/10/200). aims to ensure very fast internet access that will enable citizens to shop, create, learn, socialise and interact online and is also essential for the economy to grow. The Agenda sets specific targets of:

• basic broadband coverage for all EU citizens and businesses by 2013

• internet coverage of 30 Mbps or above for all Europeans by 2020 with half European households subscribing to connections of 100 Mbps or higher.

Digital Agenda website:

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/index_en.htm

Broadband package of measures to facilitate the roll-out and take-up of fast and ultra-fast broadband: see IP/10/1142, MEMO/10/426 and MEMO/10/427.

Neelie Kroes' website:

http://ec.europa.eu/commission_2010-2014/kroes/index_en.htm

Follow Neelie Kroes on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/neeliekroeseu

Participants CEO Roundtable 3 March

# participated via videolink

* senior level representative