A new survey from the European ommission
has found that the spread of broadband computer connections in leading
Member States has outstripped countries such as the USA and Australia.
However, the worst-performing countries have fallen back while, even in
the leaders, rural areas are far less likely to be covered. Greece is
bottom of the heap with only 20% access, 10% in the islands and
countryside; although Germany can boast a coverage rate of 94%, this
falls to 58% in rural areas. The Commission is proud that its
liberalisation policies have led to 19 million new broadband lines
being installed in 2007 but unions point to the growth of private
providers, with the forced opening of national networks, engendering
‘cherry-picking’ in big cities, where there are too many operators,
together with neglect of sparsely populated regions. This has led to
worse working conditions as the established companies compete on price
and redundancies when new operators collapse
Overall 250 million EU citizens regularly use the internet with
80% of these having access to broadband; although 40% of the population
never use the net, in Romania the figure is 69% compared with only 13%
in top dog Denmark. In terms of broadband penetration (no. of lines
divided by the population) Bulgaria sits at the bottom of the league on
7.6% while Denmark is again leading followed by the Netherlands,
Finland, Sweden and the UK. The Commission proposes to further
liberalise the sector by, for instance, separating the companies
building the network from those supplying the broadband service. This
is opposed by both the large companies and UNI Telecom, the worldwide
union confederation.
Runaway boom in Eastern
Europe leads to price rises
‘Victims of their own success’ seems to be the appropriate
cliché for the newish members of the EU in Eastern Europe. After
leading the growth table for the past few years the economies in
countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania seem to be rapidly
overheating, causing inflation problems for their citizens. In 2006
Latvia’s GDP grew by 11.9% and Estonia’s by 11.4%, the fastest in the
Community, but similar figures soon followed for price increases. Not
only does this lead to hardship as ‘Latvian bread is more expensive
than German bread’, in the words of one shopper, but it makes it less
likely that these countries will qualify for the Euro which might
reduce their problems.
