Personal Comments
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While the report is certainly useful and constitutes an important step
toward the shaping of a european policy for networking, here are some
critical remarks on the document:
- the document is ambiguous on the issue of deregulation:
it mentions several times the fact that tariffs are too high and should be
reduced, therefore assuming regulated tariffs, while pushing somewhere else
for liberalisation of the market. A sentence like
"adjustment of tariffs is required by a competitive environment" is strange:
if the environment is competitive, tariffs will adjust accordingly, if
tariffs are not appropriate, then the environment is not competitive.
- the document has a strong bias toward industry, forgetting that
networking will have significant impact on culture. See the recent vote
against the concentration media in various countries by
the Commission on Culture of the EU.
- the recommendation that the funding be left to the private sector
is also questionable, but no argumentation on the issue
is presented nor it is considered subject of debate.
While this is clearly the position of the US administation, where
networking technology is quite further advanced than in Europe,
it is questioniable whether this is the apppropriate solution for Europe,
where technology has still to achieve a critical level of diffusion and
availability.
- pushing ISDN technology is questionable. ISDN would have made sense
10 years ago: many experts in the field consider ISDN "too little, too late".
On the other hand the following proposals are commendable:
- establishment of European Authority: currently several countries
have no regulation authority and sometimes they delegate regulation
to the monopolist PTT, which is a clear nonsense.
- in a more recent report, Bangemann has suggested that liberalisation
in the telecom sector could be done immediately, rather than according
to the lengthy gradual approach so far decided by the EU.
This will have positive effects both on the consumers and the providers,
as the experience in US and UK has demonstrated.
Next: Conclusion
Up: The Bangemann Reports
Previous: Financing
Giuseppe Attardi
Mon Mar 6 19:24:03 MET 1995