The Commission said 50 percent of European teenagers give out personal information on the web, which can remain online forever and be seen by anybody.

At last year’s Safer Internet Day, 20 companies signed the Safer Social Networking Principles, including YouTube and Facebook, but a report from the Commission says more measures need to be put in place to protect children’s privacy online.

"If we want children to think before they post, social networking companies should post the right information using the right language. Last year the European Commission urged companies to act, and I am glad that many have heeded this call," said EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding.

"However I expect all companies to do more. Minors’ profiles need to be set to private by default and questions or abuse reports have to receive quick and appropriate responses. The internet is now vital to our children, and it is the responsibility of all to make it safe."

Highlights from the report include:

• Only a third of social networking sites responded to user reports asking for help
• 40% of social networking sites assessed make minors’ personal information visible only by their friends by default
• Only 11 out of 22 make it impossible for the private profiles of minors to be found through search engines

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The EU says the funding will go towards research on Long Term Evolution (LTE) Advanced technology, that will offer mobile Internet speeds up to a hundred times faster than current 3G networks. The funding will be released on January 1, 2010.

"With LTE technologies, Europe’s research ‘know-how’ will continue to set the tone for the development of mobile services and devices around the globe, just as we did in the past decades with the GSM standard," said Viviane Reding, the EU’s Commissioner for Telecoms and Media.

Viviane Reding
European Commission

"LTE technologies will turn mobile phones into powerful mobile computers. Millions of new users will get ultra high-speed Internet access on their portable devices, wherever they are. This will create tremendous opportunities and plenty of space for growing the digital economy."

LTE is currently being trailed by mobile operators in Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. and is set to be commercially available in Sweden and Norway in the first half of 2010.

LTE uses radio spectrum more efficiently, enabling mobile networks to benefit from the "digital dividend" and use the frequencies freed by the switchover from analogue to digital TV.

Mobile operators and manufacturers including Orange, TeliSonera, T-Mobile, AT&T, NTT-DoCoMO, Verizon, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks have already committed to using the LTE standard.

Half of households and more than 80 percent of businesses now have a broadband connection.

The most active Internet users are those between the ages of 16 to 24 with 73 percent of them regularly using advanced services to create and share online content, twice the EU population average (35%).

Viviane Reding
European Commission

The majority (66%) of all Europeans under 24 use the Internet every day, compared to the EU average of 43 percent. They also have more advanced Internet skill than the rest of the population.

"Europe’s digital economy has tremendous potential to generate huge revenues across all sectors, but to turn this advantage into sustainable growth and new jobs, governments must show leadership by adopting coordinated policies that dismantle existing barriers to new services," said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

"We should seize the opportunity of a new generation of Europeans who will soon be calling the shots in the European market place. These young people are intensive Internet users and are also highly demanding consumers. To release the economic potential of these ‘digital natives’, we must make access to digital content an easy and fair game."

The report found younger Internet users were reluctant to pay to download or view content online like videos or music (33% say they are not willing to pay anything at all, which is twice the EU average).

Despite progress, a third of EU citizens have never used the Internet. Only 7 percent have shopped online in another member state.

"Pro-active policy making across the EU must ensure that everyone has a high-speed internet connection and that there is an online single market, where people can easily use online services across borders," the report concluded.

Viviane Reding

"The GSM standard has been a success story for Europe, where it was born. By updating the GSM Directive, the EU has paved the way for a new generation of services and technologies where Europe can be a world leader," said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding. "I would like to thank the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers for making this possible by swiftly agreeing to the reform of this very important piece of telecoms legislation."

"This reform will remove constraints on operators so that they can deploy new technologies in the GSM bands to develop high-speed mobile broadband services. This should give a welcome boost to Europe’s wireless economy and help trigger the take-off of a Digital Europe."

The new rules make it easier to adapt spectrum allocation in the 900 MHz frequency to allow next generation high-speed technologies to be deployed.

Consumers’ existing mobile devices will continue to work with out problems, but they can also use new technologies to access high-speed broadband services.

The European Commission says the move will have a positive economic effect while reducing network costs resulting from the use of lower frequency bands. The Commission says the new plan will save mobile operators $2.2 billion.

Reding explained in a video message posted online, "[T]he US government is the only body exercising some oversight over ICANN.  I believe that the US, so far, [has] done this in a reasonable manner.  However, I also believe that the Clinton administration’s decision to progressively privatize the internet’s domain name and addressing system is the right one.  In the long run, it is not defendable that the government department of only one country has oversight of an internet function which is used by hundreds of millions of people in countries all over the world."

Reding believes ICANN should be privatized, then, with a special emphasis on financial transparency.  She would also like to see ICANN’s decisions made subject to full judicial reviews (performed by international tribunals) upon affected parties’ request.  And last but not at all least, she envisions a "G12 for Internet Governance" meeting twice a year and making recommendations to ICANN.

Since Reding emphasizes that she’s generally happy with ICANN’s performance, it’s hard to speculate on how these changes might affect things going forward.

Still, it sounds like the EU is ready to put a little pressure on President Obama to help move the revision process along.

"High-speed Internet is the passport to the Information Society and an essential condition for economic growth. This is why it is this Commission’s policy to make broadband Internet for all Europeans happen by 2010", said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding.

"A lot has been achieved over the past four years, and new tools, such as Satellite Broadband, are well on track. It is also good news that the 8 best EU countries far outperform the US in broadband take up. But take up requires access, and is not there in parts of the EU. We need to combine all efforts to make sure that all citizens can get connected soon."

The European Commission released a report today on the state of broadband in Europe. From 2003-2007 broadband use in the EU tripled to 36 percent of households. However, 7 percent of the EU’s population are still not connected (30% in rural areas).

There are major gaps in the EU: 100 percent of the population is covered in Denmark, Luxembourg and Belgium, but more than 60 percent in Romania (75% rural areas) do not have broadband access.

Even in economies that are doing well such as Italy and Germany, 18 percent and 12 percent respectively of the rural population is not covered.

So far, the EU has contributed to broadband growth by giving telecoms rules for more competition and investment. Europe had close to 100 million broadband lines in January 2008 and a growth rate of 20 percent, with 52,000 new lines connected daily in 2007.

The EU also implemented a new system for mobile satellite services, which can offer broadband across the EU.

Since the current Commissioner took office, the level of mobile subscriptions has grown from 85 percent to 112 percent.

"These figures are an important vote of confidence of mobile consumers in the health of Europe’s mobile sector", said Reding. "They show that at present, there is no need to impose universal service obligations on mobile operators – even though at least some of their lobbyists try to make us believe the contrary these days."
 

Reding’s proposal is now being distributed to all other EU Commissioners before they formally implement it in early October. The EU’s 27 member states and the European Parliament must also approve the measure.

Around 2.5 billion texts are sent every year by roaming customers in the EU and cost about 10 times more than domestic texts.

Roaming texts account for 97 percent of pure revenue for operators, Reding said in July. A roaming text costs about 29 euro cents to send.

The proposal extends by three years to 2013 restrictions, which are currently in place on roaming voice calls. The voice roaming law has been a popular policy in the EU.

Reding also plans on introducing changes to billing. Instead of charging by the second she wants to charge by the 31st second of a call to prohibit operators charging by the minute for a call that lasts just a few seconds.

The billing changes will likely face resistance as a number of EU states have laws that require billing by the second from the first second.

Reding is also proposing a wholesale cap of 1 euro per MB to surf online using a mobile phone or laptop. The current price is about 3 -4 euros.
 

"Disparate termination rates across the EU and large gaps between fixed and mobile termination rates are serious barriers to achieving a Single European Telecoms market that benefits competition and consumers. The consumer pays the price for these gaps between national regulatory policies," said Viviane Reding, EU Telecoms Commissioner.

"Call termination markets in the EU need a regulatory plumber. Over the next 3 years, I expect greater consistency and coordination to bring the costs for mobile phone calls down by around 70 per cent from the current level," said Reding.

The EU says termination fees range from 2 euro cents per minute in Cyprus to 18 euro cents in Bulgaria. The amount carriers charge for switching callers between networks are on average, nine times higher than those on traditional landline networks. The commission said these charges were partially the reason mobile calls were more expensive than landline calls in the EU.

Mobile phone carriers argue that standardizing termination fees across the E.U. would lead to customers paying more for mobile service and that the industry already has plans to reduce termination fees.

"In the short term, businesses and public authorities might be tempted to try to squeeze their needs into the strait jacket of the old system, but this would mean Europe is badly placed to take advantage of the latest internet technology, and could face a crisis when the old system runs out of addresses," said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

"IPv6 provides more addresses in cyberspace than there are grains of sand on the world’s beaches, " said Reding.

IPv4 provides 4.3 billion addresses, with about 700 million or 16 percent available for new connections. The new Internet protocol, IPv6, will make an almost unlimited amount of IP-addresses available along with supporting new applications.

The Commissions wants the most important Web sites in Europe to take the lead on the initiative and hopes to receive commitments from at least 100 top European Web site operators, including broadcasters or online news services, before the end of 2008.
 

In 2007, the Internet attracted close to 40 million new regular users in the EU (now 250 million in total). More than 96 percent of European schools are now connected to the Internet, two thirds of which have broadband.

In the healthcare field, 57 percent of doctors send or receive patient’s information online and 46 percent of them receive results from labs electronically.

Viviane Reding -
EU Commissioner
(Photo Credit: European Commission)

The majority (77%) of EU businesses had a broadband connection in 2007, up from 62 percent in 2005, and 77 percent use the Internet for banking an increase of 7 percent in 2005.

Overall, about 40 percent of EU citizens do not use the Internet at all. This ranges from 69 percent in Romania to 13 percent in Denmark and the Netherlands.

"It is especially good news that 77% of EU businesses, 67% of schools and 48% of doctors are now benefiting from fast broadband connections," said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media

"However, some parts of the EU are still lagging behind and are not fully connected. All EU countries must therefore work harder to close the gaps, to enhance cross-border communication services as well as services that also reach rural and remote regions."