Brussels, 28/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - As we pointed out yesterday, the European Commission is expected to adopt the eEUROPE 2005 action plan on Wednesday. It will submit the plan to the Seville Summit in June. For the first time, the Commission recommends that governments of EU Member States use regional aid and financial incentives in order to boost high speed Internet, in compliance with the competition rules.
Although competition is driving Internet connection costs down, broadband remains generally expensive in the EU, with less than two percent of households having fast Internet connections against 13% in the United States. Without broadband, which is 25 times faster than a standard phone line, industry cannot easily offer consumers advanced multimedia Internet services such as videos, graphics or musical files. To remedy this situation, the Commission considers above all that the Member States in cooperation with the Commission should support, where necessary, deployment of broadband in less favoured areas and possible may use structural funds and/or financial incentives in respect of Community competition regulations. The Commission, which thus aims to ensure overall territorial coverage of broadband with a view to cohesion, invites the Member States to set the example by starting investing in broadband for their own administrative infrastructures and schools, which should all have broadband connections by 2005. Finally, as part of the EU's project to create a common health card to allow EU citizens access to healthcare anywhere in the EU, the Commission considers that governments should develop connections allowing high speed data exchange between medical services such as hospitals and laboratories.