Stories from Abroad

Millions of people in rural England will get access to the fastest broadband speeds on the market as part of a £5 billion plan to level up internet access across the UK. The government’s Project Gigabit fund to upgrade digital infrastructure in hard-to-reach areas will accelerate the country’s recovery from COVID-19, fire up high-growth sectors such as tech and the creative industries, put an end to families battling for bandwidth, and bring the speed and reliability people need to start and run businesses.

The European Commission aims to use its new authority to review Facebook’s proposed takeover of Kustomer, a startup specializing in customer-service platforms and chatbots.

5G is considered a key technology for society, but its implementation is surrounded by controversy. Beyond its technical aspects, 5G has become a question of security and national interest for many EU Member States as well as an international policy issue. Technological autonomy and digital sovereignty are increasingly recognized as strategic priorities on a global scale, yet the EU's position is unique for two reasons. On one hand, the EU has unintentionally become part of the playing field in the US-China dispute over technology companies and 5G.

Multimillion-euro fines can force Big Tech companies to change their behaviour despite their deep pockets, according to French Competition Authority President Isabelle de Silva. She does not believe sanctions could be played down as merely “the cost of doing business,” breaking away from the consensus in the European Union, where competition officials have struggled for years to contain the market power of Big Tech despite levying billions of euros of penalties. Since June 2021, her office has hit Google with €720 million in fines in two separate cases.

BAI Communications' £1 billion project to enable fiber broadband for Tube passengers and aboveground London businesses signals the coming of age of alternative networks, or "alt-nets," who are spending huge amounts of money to compete in the increasingly crowded UK market. About 50 such companies, backed by funds promising billions of pounds, have burst onto the scene in recent years pledging to take the fight to Openreach, the networking division of incumbent BT, as well as Virgin Media’s cable network. Ranging from those targeting customers in underserved rural areas to others seeking to

Although digitisation offers numerous opportunities for rural areas, they still lag behind cities in terms of access and adoption of Internet-based services. This divide is the result of multiple market failures in both the demand and supply of broadband access, which have been addressed through public, private and community-led initiatives. Based on interviews and ethnographic analysis, this paper explores how community networks and public-private partnerships have contributed to promoting the delivery and adoption of superfast broadband across the rural UK.

The demand for faster broadband access is a key driver of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) adoption and fixed broadband competition, and therefore of co-investment. This paper assesses the effects on FTTH adoption and competition of FTTH co-investment. Co-investment had indeed been endorsed in the European Electronic Communication Code as a relevant option for conciliating investment and competition.

The wave of spontaneous protests that rocked Cuba on July 11 was propelled by social media and the proliferation of mobile internet, which Cubans have only had for the past three years. The government responded by leaving the island virtually incommunicado for two days. To contain the spread of mass demonstrations, authorities cut internet service, along with the fixed phone lines of some activists in the island.

The Internet has proliferated unevenly across the world, resulting in a global digital divide. In the past decade, concerns related to technology ‘haves’ and ‘haves not’ have grown in prominence in the countries of South Asia (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal) that are witnessing an increased digital divide. This study specifically looks at the case of Pakistan, and how the country's digital inequalities are increasing in terms of the public's access and their use of the Internet and information and communication technology (ICT) devices.

With broadband affordability especially high on the agenda following the pandemic, it could seem that Europe has all the answers. Yet Europe has its own struggles with digital divide, and it hasn't cracked the affordability problem across the board.