Public Policy Blog

On 11 January 2012, European Commission adopted the 2012 Communication on e-commerce and other online services that aim to double the retails online sales and the weight of Internet sector in European GDP. The Communication identifies 5 priorities and is accompanied by a 16 goals action plan. As I already wrote in my post on Cloud [...]

We have identified three priority areas that regulators and policymakers will need to pay particular attention to during these months ahead. To be effective, any policy must allow sufficient flexibility at a national level, as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach will be unlikely to succeed.

Many are the predictions those days in the Net concerning our sector and its perspectives for 2012, from how the telecom sector will evolve, to which services and technological trends will be the winners for next year, or how social networks will be positioned, what will be the IT “super themes” for 2012, etc…
This is a difficult and somersault exercise in a very dynamic and evolving sector such as the ICT & Telecom one. However, it is sure that some trends could be already detected.

Concerning the ICT public policy area, we could see the following issues as relevant as they are present in several international and public institutions agendas for 2012. Here are some of them:

On december 12th the new issue of “Regulatory and Economic Policy in Telecommunications”, the Regulatory Journal of Telefónica, was presented in District Telefónica, and as usual a workshop was held where contributors had a chance to present their articles and debate, this time around the theme “Reviewing the Economic Foundations of Regulation in ICT markets”.

Throughout the debate it became clear that Regulators, confronted with a growing concern that the current European regulatory model might be hindering private investment and innovation in broadband coverage and applications, must adapt their strategy to a new environment, and device incentive schemes that are not easily compatible with their overarching goal, which arguably remains preserving a very large number of alternatives for end users.

Last week, EU Commissioner and Vice-President Neelie Kroes held in Brussels the final roundtable meeting with 35 top representatives of the ICT industry to see how to foster high-speed broadband roll-out in Europe and how to achieve the ambitious European Broadband objectives for 2020.

Last week we attended the first Digital Agenda Assembly, where a whole range of topics were discussed, and as part of our contribution to the debate, I wanted to look at the issue of a Digital Single Market for Europe. There is clearly great potential in a Single Market for digital content for Europe – [...]

After having launched almost a year ago the Digital Agenda for Europe , one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy and a roadmap for the increased usage of ICT services in Europe, the European Commission is organising the first Digital Agenda Assembly for the next 16-17 of June in Brussels.

That´s the proposal made by our CEO, César Alierta, during the lunch shared yesterday by the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, with relevant business representatives in Madrid.

Use of the Internet to help shoppers should be a widespread practice – so why aren’t more consumers going online?