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The European Commission Wants to Make Superfast Internet Available by 2030

The European Commission wants to make superfast internet available to all families and companies by 2030. European Commissioner for Industry Thierry Breton presented a strategy on this on Thursday.

The existing European infrastructure is no longer sufficient to give citizens, companies and governments easy access to artificial intelligence (AI) or virtual reality, which will probably play a more significant role in the future. This requires more bandwidth with higher speeds.

Only the investments in that infrastructure for ‘Gigabit connectivity’ are expensive. The European Commission wants to lighten the price tag for governments and network operators by amending a 2014 directive on the roll-out of 5G and fibre optic networks.

The procedure would be speeded up by avoiding red tape as much as possible. For example, the Commission wants to digitize permit applications and facilitate consultation between local authorities and network operators to work together to construct the underlying infrastructure. According to Breton, weeding can be done for 70 percent of the total cost.

In addition, the Commission wants all new or heavily renovated buildings to have fibre unless there are good reasons not to do so. The Executive Board of the European Union will consult the sector on distributing the costs for the roll-out of 5G and broadband. “The burden of these investments is getting heavier,” Breton said at a press conference in Brussels on Thursday. “This is partly due to a low return on investments in the telecom sector, the increase in raw material costs and energy costs.”

According to the financial news agency Bloomberg, the EU has been considering making large streaming services such as Netflix or YouTube pay for the roll-out of telecom infrastructure. Telecom operators have been asking for this for years.

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