European developments February 2017

Euractiv reported that the European Commission is to urge EU member states and the private sector to get more involved in the development of 5G, suggesting that European industries need to move faster in testing and deploying 5G capabilities. This was borne out by a speech by European Commission Vice-President Ansip at the Mobile World Congress (more on 5G developments here).

The European Commission and the European Parliament announced that an informal agreement had been reached on new rules allowing Europeans to travel and enjoy online content services across borders. This is the first agreement related to the modernisation on EU copyright rules as proposed by the Commission in the Digital Single Market strategy. In future consumers will be able to access their online content services when they travel in the EU the same way they access them at home. The new rules now need to be formally approved by the European Parliament Legal Affairs Committee, Parliament as a whole and the Council.

The Fibre to the Home (FTTH) Council Europe published its latest rankings for FTTH and fibre to the building (FTTB) subscribers in Europe. While subscribers increased by 23% across Europe over the first nine months of 2016 to 44.3 million, the UK does not currently feature in the rankings. The announcement did note that the UK government has now allocated a fund specifically dedicated to FTTH deployment; an FTTH Council Europe market forecast predicted that the UK will reach FTTH maturity (defined as 20% household FTTH penetration) after 2022, along with Germany and Italy (see this previous post for more on this).

The FTTH Council Europe also published the first results of its updated study on the cost of deploying FTTH throughout Europe: the outstanding costs of full fibre coverage in the EU are €156 billion, based on 100% of homes passed and 50% connected, accounting for existing fibre coverage and connections. The Council also suggested that the re-use of existing infrastructure and effective implementation of the Cost Reduction Directive could lead to savings of 12% bringing the cost down to €137 billion. This reduction could be achieved by reusing existing infrastructure, more co-ordination and sharing of civil works and the re-use of in-building infrastructure. The Council ventured that “fibre requires considerable investment but is doable throughout Europe”.

Also this month the European Commission published a call for proposals under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) to stimulate and support the deployment of European Digital Service Infrastructures (DSIs). Up to €27.5 million will be made available to support proposals in the areas of e-Identification and e-Signature, electronic exchange of social security information (EESSI), business registers interconnection system (BRIS) and the European e-Justice Portal.

Finally this month the European Commission set out its support for Safer Internet Day 2017 on 7th February.