Commission follows up on Internet access for Europeans
Increased efforts to ensure the opening up of Internet access across the European Union were announced by the European Commission at the beginning of August. The first action taken has been to send questionnaires to companies providing high speed Internet access quizzing them over the implementation of legislation that was designed to reduce the dominance of the incumbent operators. This will lead to a review that will take place by the end of the year by the Commission, which, on the basis of the replies, will decide whether any further action will be required. Opening up more varied, cheaper and better quality access to the Internet forms one of the central areas of the Commission's eEurope programme. The legislation that the Commission produced last year was designed to 'unbundle the local loop' which is intended to allow non-incumbent telecommunications operators to offer their services without having to build their own separate infrastructure.