Ethnic minority groups continue to lead the way on digital device take-up and use
Ethnic minority groups are at the forefront of digital communications in the UK, with high levels of mobile phone, internet and multichannel television take-up. But, despite this, many people from ethnic minority groups lack confidence finding content online and are concerned about content delivered on digital communications, new research from Ofcom reveals.
Ofcom’s media literacy audit of UK adults from ethnic minority groups draws on quantitative research from the four largest ethnic minority groups in the UK : Indians, Pakistanis, Black Caribbeans and Black Africans. The audit provides a rich picture of the different elements of media literacy across television, radio, the internet and mobile phones amongst ethnic minority groups.
More information:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/news/2008/09/nr_20080915
Report available here:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/ml_emg08/
September 16, 2008
Viviane Reding - Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media - speaking at the ECTA Annual Conference, Brussels, 25 June 2008.
Main Messages of Commissioner Reding’s speech:
- The technological and economic developments paving the way for high-speed broadband networks have the potential to increase competition to the benefit of consumers. But they can also lead to new bottlenecks and re-monopolisation of end user markets.
- A key element in my vision for Next Generation Access regulation is to ensure that all parties, entrants or incumbents have sufficient incentives to move in these markets.
- Regulatory restraint as a carte blanche for incumbents to re-monopolise markets where the buds of competition are flourishing is not a policy option if we want competitive markets.
- It is very important that the conditions to invest exist and regulatory certainty is one of those conditions. Today, the regulatory landscape in Europe is unfortunately heavily fragmented in this respect.
- Regulatory guidance by the Commission is therefore required and appropriate in order to foster investments and maintain competition between infrastructure networks and service providers in the broadband area.
- In the forthcoming Commission Recommendation on Next Generation Access, the Commission intends to ensure consistency of regulatory approaches by establishing three principles of NGA regulation for the next 5 years:
- First of all, access regulation which has been imposed in the past on dominant network operators will be continued, extended and if necessary reinforced also in case of a switch by the dominant player to a next generation network. Technological change should not, in itself, lead to a change of the regulatory rules in place.
- Secondly, we want to encourage investment into next generation access networks by a stable and predictable regulatory environment. We are stilI discussing the final details of this in the Commission, but I believe that the best way for encouraging long-term investment is to establish a priori a number of principles that national regulators should take into account when regulating access prices with regard to next generation access networks. In my personal view, these should include a risk premium of around 15 %.
- Thirdly, we must manage the transition from the system of measures applicable to SMP operators [= operators with significant market power] to tomorrow’s next generation access measures. We have to recognise that the “ladder of investment” that has brought us to unbundled local loops will in the future have to adapt to the different end-to-end network architecture. Alternative operators will increasingly be given an incentive to roll out their own infrastructure closer to the customer. Or, where this is not feasible, will have to go back to bitstream remedies. In order to manage this transition in a predictable fashion for both SMP operators and alternative network operators, regulators must impose transparency obligations on SMP operators so that they cannot use these ‘informational asymmetries’ to thwart or delay alternative infrastructure investments or to destroy the competitive potential of alternative players.
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Full speech: (more…)
June 30, 2008
The UK could reap significant social and economic value from the wide-spread deployment of next generation broadband, according to a new report that studies how to weigh up the costs and benefits, from the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), the government’s leading advisory group on broadband and digital convergence.
By looking at the potential private value (value accruing to commercial investors and consumers) and the wider economic and social value, the BSG has found that the long-term benefits to the UK associated with the wide-scale deployment could outweigh the cost of deployment, which could be as much as £16bn (to reach 80 per cent of UK homes).
Official site:
http://www.broadbanduk.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_view/gid,1009/Itemid,63/
[Local copy]
June 27, 2008
i2010 is the EU policy framework for the information society and media. It promotes the positive contribution that information and communication technologies (ICT) can make to the economy, society and personal quality of life.
The i2010 strategy has three aims:
- to create a Single European Information Space, which promotes an open and competitive internal market for information society and media services,
- to strengthen innovation and investment in ICT research,
- to support inclusion, better public services and quality of life through the use of ICT.
Full strategy [PDF]
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2005:0229:FIN:EN:PDF
March 7, 2008
Rich Spragg
andygoodwin
