Stories from Abroad

In August 2012, the Irish government published a National Broadband Plan (NBP) which set a target of a minimum 30 Mbps download speed for all households in the country. The expected overall cost of the original plan was €350 million, with the government stating that it would contribute half of this amount along with the private sector. By 2020, these ambitious targets had not been met. After a protracted and controversial procurement process, the cost of government subsidy for the NBP had escalated to between €2.2bn and €2.9bn and the plan will not be completed until at least 2026.

China approved a sweeping privacy law that will curb data collection by technology companies but is unlikely to limit the state’s widespread use of surveillance.

Google and Facebook announced their participation in a new subsea cable system for 2024 set to improve internet connectivity across the Asia-Pacific region. Dubbed Apricot, the infrastructure project will link Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Guam, the Philippines, and Indonesia and help serve growing demand for broadband access and 5G wireless connectivity.

Several satellite firms, including Elon Musk's SpaceX, Amazon's Project Kuiper and Bharti Airtel and the British Government's OneWeb, have made a beeline for the Indian market. A key reason is that 50 percent of India's vast population of around 1.3. billion is yet to be connected, mainly because of the high cost of setting up a network in rural areas with low returns spread over a long time.

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.