Three things engaged my attention yesterday.  The most important was the informal gathering of the working group on Broadband within the EUROCITIES Knowledge Society Forum -TeleCities, to which I had been invited.  Meeting in Brussels it was one of, if not the only, euro-gathering where the heat of the room temperature outstripped the heat of the discussion!  Indeed, it was a remarkably common-minded gathering of officials from towns and cities across the EU who were united in their desire to see their citizens benefit from an open public local access network or in some cases, were already deriving the benefits of such an OPLAN.

The focus of the meeting was the European Commission’s Review of the Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications and the input to the consultation on this which the TeleCities group and its constituent members would in due course be making.  The aim of such a submission being to persuade the Commission of the immense potential benefit to EU citizens of an open access strategy and the ‘unforeseeable’ social and economic benefit which such an approach might yield.

The meeting had the benefit of a senior EU official attending for part of the time, to outline the process and principles behind this major review.  Two things struck me about this.  Firstly, the very ‘framework’ itself is crafted and drafted and embedded in the old paradigm - heavily influenced by listening to powerful vested interests and incumbents.   The EU Commission constantly stresses that it is big on listening.   Any institution with such big ears – needs to find big voices to fill them.  And the telecoms and cable TV sector sure have big voices!  Secondly, the framework explicitly states that it will pursue an ‘evolutionary rather than revolutionary’ approach – despite also claiming that it is ‘technology neutral’.   If that isn’t a case of trying to make omelettes without cracking eggs – I don’t know what is!...