The Digital Agenda for Europe sets out clear goals for providing high speed broadband to all its residents, but leaves the implementation of this plan to the individual Member States. Because of large economic, cultural and political differences, the roads to realizing these ambitious goals are...

Although it is clear that the evolution of fixed access networks requires the installation of Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) to all households, the business case for deploying such networks is very uncertain. It requires significant upfront investment, while not being assured of sufficient timely...

Although the phenomenon of the internet only emerged about 25 years ago, it is hard to imagine life without it. More and more people use the available connectivity for both professional and private life, and the number of services grows continuously. This increasing demand for capacity and speed...

Net neutrality is defined as the concept in which Internet service providers are obliged to treat all data streams equally, independent of which application, service, device, sender or receiver is involved. They are as such forbidden to block, throttle or alter data traffic over their networks....

Bridging the broadband digital divide between urban and rural areas in Europe is one of the main targets stated in the Digital Agenda for Europe. Though many solutions are proposed in literature, satellite communication has been identified as the only possible solution for rural areas, due to...

Utility providers, such as energy companies and railway operators, have been long emphasised as driving competition and facilitating investment in broadband markets. Nevertheless, their involvement and contribution to broadband development has varied significantly over time. In the late 1990s,...