Comment Neelie (Kroes)

I attended workshop 7 (Digital Single Market) and it became abundantly clear just how much our future depends on every citizen having a fit for purpose broadband connection. Speaking to other advisors later from other workshops I think that whatever subject you care to work on you are right, they all need good connectivity, and connectivity for all, at an affordable price. The only way to ensure this happens is to encourage altnets, let them build the fibre networks of the future, let voip make you single telecoms market? Who cares who does the techie bits or how they do it, the internet is the single market. What is happening is that a few incumbents in the EU are rationing it... they have a scarcity model on old copper technology, whereas there should be an abundance on fibre infrastructure. The countries without landlines will roar ahead with fibre instead of leeching obsolete assets. We are gonna be left behind... time to wake up the sleeping bureaucrats and get some support out to the altnets. Stopping digital dinosaurs in councils handing public money over to patch up copper networks as is the case in the UK would help too...