Press Release: Commission consults on how to put Europe into the lead of the transition to Web 3.0

Europe could take the lead in the next generation of the Internet. The European Commission outlined the main steps that Europe has to take to respond to the next wave of the Information Revolution that will intensify in the coming years due to trends such as social networking, the decisive shift to on-line business services, nomadic services based on GPS and mobile TV and the growth of smart tags. The report showed that Europe is well placed to exploit these trends because of its policies to support open and pro-competitive telecom networks as well as privacy and security. A public consultation was launched on 29 September, 2008, by the Commission on the policy and private sector responses to these opportunities. The Commission report also unveiled a new Broadband Performance Index (BPI) that compares national performance on key measures such as broadband speed, price, competition and coverage. Sweden and the Netherlands top this European broadband league, which complements the more traditional broadband penetration index used so far by telecoms regulators.