Europa
This is the speech made by Commissioner Giancarlo Innocenzi Botti (Broadband Commission, United Nations) yesterday during the presentation of the Report The State of Broadband 2012
Distinguished Colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,
The aim of the Report on the state of the Broadband is how to sustain the deployment of broadband networks and services and how to facilitate countries for future competitiveness in the growing digital economy. It is a comprehensive Report that provides information, underlines still pending problems, offers possible solutions.
During the last twenty years we have seen an extraordinary shift from the basic telecommunications service to a connected world with more than 6 billion mobile subscribers and almost 2,5 billion people using Internet.
Services such as Voice-over-IP (VoIP), social networking, instant messaging, video and the rise of ‘apps’ have deeply changed the way customers use their mobile and fixed connections.
This unexpected result has been possible thanks to huge investments in infrastructure and services, creating millions of new jobs. Now the task is to bridge the digital divide.
All these tremendous changes involve Telcos, regulators, software companies, users and the focal points are:
- Big numbers and diversity of end users;
- Increase of applications more and more complex;
- Use of a variety of technologies;
- Number and type of devices;
- More and more complex business relationships:
As an impact of such changes, data traffic is growing today at an unprecedented pace and by 2015, global Internet traffic is expected to grow four times, mostly driven by the rapid increase in the usage of social networking sites and of the top applications.
As we know, the digital economy is based on Internet and speed and traffic are crucial for the future Internet. On the other hand, the bandwidth intense use of video applications is stressing the networks capacity.
All this implies a lot of strain on the Telcos networks and the crucial point is now the search for a sustainable model of Internet. But also the need for Telcos to adapt and rebalance their tariff structure between voice and data services.
For this reason focus is on the huge disproportion amongst revenues as well as on the shift of value towards players who are not contributing to network investment.
We need to ensure the future of the economic model for Internet, allowing all the players to meet the challenges of the future and all the consumers to be able to enjoy the benefits of Internet.
In Europe for the fourth year the revenue of Telco operators is declining, a real paradox taking into consideration that the traffic is continuously and significantly increasing. A situation that can jeopardize the long term investment capacity of the sector and hence its capability to meet the challenging EU Digital Agenda objectives to provide all citizens with fast and ultra-fast Internet.
I think that the telecom sector throughout the world faces similar challenges.
The aim of our debate must be, in my opinion, how to contribute to achieving a more sustainable model for Internet allowing all the ICT industry segments to grow, compete, innovate and invest.
Thank you for your attention.