EU urges Greece to cut costs to boost high-speed internet

The European Commission has asked Greece and another 18 member-states on Thursday to implement cost reduction rules that will help the countries develop more broadband networks.

The infringement notice published on Thursday concerns Greece, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and the United Kingdom.

These rules seek to increase the sharing and re-use of existing physical infrastructure across various sectors (energy, transport, etc.) and should cut by up to 30 percent the cost of rolling out high-speed internet.

Cost reduction rules support the strategic connectivity objectives that the European Commission has recently proposed: by 2025, all main socio-economic drivers, such as schools, universities, research centers, transport hubs, all providers of public services such as hospitals and administrations, and enterprises relying on digital technologies, should have access to extremely high – gigabit – connectivity (allowing users to download/upload 1 gigabit of data per second).

Also all European households, rural or urban, should have access to connectivity offering a download speed of at least 100 Mbps, which can be upgraded to Gbps, and all urban areas as well as major roads and railways should have uninterrupted 5G coverage, the fifth generation of wireless communication systems. As an interim target, 5G should be commercially available in at least one major city in each EU Member State by 2020.

The Commission said this is the final warning for these member-states and who now have two months to notify the Union of measures taken to bring national legislation into line with EU law.

“Otherwise, the Commission may decide, in accordance with EU infringement rules, to refer them to the Court of Justice of the EU and to propose financial sanctions,” it said.