{"id":548867,"date":"2006-05-20T09:39:06","date_gmt":"2006-05-20T09:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/548867-eu-too-slow-with-high-speed-tech.html"},"modified":"2006-05-20T09:39:06","modified_gmt":"2006-05-20T09:39:06","slug":"eu-too-slow-with-high-speed-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/548867-eu-too-slow-with-high-speed-tech.html","title":{"rendered":"EU too slow with high-speed tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission urged European Union (EU) countries to be more ambitious in harnessing technologies such as increasingly ubiquitous broadband Internet, new telecoms breakthroughs and digital broadcasting to drive growth. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Europe’s policies for the digital economy have made some progress, but I do not think that this is good enough," said EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding, presenting a report on a revised EU growth initiative. <\/font><\/p>\n

"It is worrying that in ICT (information and communication technologies) research, Europe continues to lag behind its competitors, investing about half as much as the US," she added. <\/font><\/p>\n

Under a so-called i-2010 strategy agreed last year, all 25 EU states pledged to identify research and innovation policies as a key priority in national economic reform programmes. <\/font><\/p>\n

"But…the national reform programmes fail to give a new impetus to information society policies or to cover drivers of growth such as the convergence of digital networks, content and devices," said the commission. <\/font><\/p>\n

Reding lamented that information and communications technologies are today contributing less to European productivity growth than they did 10 years ago. <\/font><\/p>\n

"I call on EU leaders to develop a stronger sense of urgency in their national reform programmes and also not to shy away from cross-border competition in the telecom sector. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Only through stronger investment in ICT research and effective cross-border competition will we ensure that the great potential of ICT is used to lift our competitive performance across the economy," she added. <\/font><\/p>\n

Economic growth in the EU improved in 2005 and is forecast to be around two percent in 2006. <\/font><\/p>\n

But this is still well below the annual GDP growth of 2.7 percent in the US in 2000-2005. <\/font><\/p>\n

Inet-Bridge<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

European governments have been slammed for failing to fully exploit new high-speed communications technologies to drive economic growth, lamenting that Europe remains way behind the United States. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}