New EU4Digital broadband report: Eastern Partnership connectivity and digital improvement
Date: 26/09/23
EU4Digital Facility has published a report on EU best practices in promoting competitive broadband. The report analyses case studies from five EU Member States, sharing experiences that Eastern partner countries may apply when monitoring broadband market developments and implementing broadband policies. This work will enable EU4Digital and Eastern partner countries to realise digital connectivity targets that support key European Union policy regarding connectivity.
The ‘EU best practice report: promoting competitive broadband’ was developed in the EU4Digital Telecom Rules stream of activities. The analysis draws on experiences of broadband facilitation policies and best practices from Germany, France, Lithuania, Romania and Portugal. The report shows that, while the analysed EU Member States facilitate broadband developments based on uniform EU policy targets, their broadband facilitation policies differ based on each national situation.
Developing the report has been part of a wider effort to understand the state of play in the Eastern partner countries in terms of the availability of fixed and mobile broadband internet access services. Gaining this understanding has been a priority in the current, second phase of EU4Digital Facility. For instance, what proportion of the population has access to high-speed internet? In order to assess internet connectivity on a regular basis, EU4Digital has established a harmonised approach to monitoring indicators of internet access services in the Eastern partner countries in line with ‘DESI’ – the Digital Economy and Society Index, which was designed to monitor connectivity throughout the EU.
Understanding the existing situation is one of the essential first steps towards better connectivity in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) region.
Towards better connectivity
Connectivity has been a key area of policy for bringing the European Union and Eastern partner countries closer together since the 2017 Eastern Partnership Summit. As set forth three years later in the Joint Communication for Eastern Partnership policy beyond 2020, investing in digital infrastructure is one of the key modes of physical connectivity that underpin economic development and the achievement of digital transformation in the Eastern Partnership. To realise digital connectivity targets, EU4Digital Facility has been cooperating closely with the Eastern partner countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – since 2019. Together, EU4Digital and the Eastern partner countries promote and facilitate affordable access to high-speed, secure and sustainable digital highways for citizens and businesses, in particular in remote or less densely populated areas.
To achieve better digital connectivity, it is essential to ensure that electronic communications markets offer competitive services to all citizens and businesses. For this purpose, EU4Digital will build on the new report by supporting Eastern partner countries’ National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) in performing market analysis of electronic communications markets related to broadband. Based on the findings, NRAs may identify competitive shortcomings and introduce appropriate regulative measures to address any issues. Such issues may include insufficient competition, limited choice of providers or services, high prices and low availability of networks.
We use cookies on this site to improve your website experience, to enhance site navigation and analyse site usage. By clicking “Accept all cookies” you consent to our use of cookies.
You can find out more about which cookies we are using or adjust your cookie settings in the Cookies policy.
Functionality Cookies
Functionality cookies, which are essential to the functioning of the website. These cookies also which help us measure the website’s performance and improve your experience, as well as remembering any settings you might have selected.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
Advertising/targeting cookies
Advertising/targeting cookies, which we use to track user activity and sessions so that we can deliver a more personalized service, and (in the case of advertising cookies) which are set by the third parties with whom we execute advertising campaigns and allow us to provide advertisements relevant to you. These are optional cookies and users can choose to opt out at any moment.