Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-265"
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"en.20000517.12.3-265"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, twenty years have passed since the philosopher and essayist, Alvin Toffler, identified the new information technologies as the third of humanity’s great revolutions.
Nevertheless, in Europe, we once again failed to take much notice of our thinkers and, in the meantime, over the last decade, the United States has increased its GDP and income per capita to above European Union levels, where, in the last year, these indicators represented barely 75% of US levels. While half of the world’s internet users are American and 44% of US homes have direct access to the networks, in Europe that proportion is barely 15%.
We are now rapidly turning to the information society, information technology, the Internet, the Galileo network for monitoring and intercommunication by satellite, the liberalisation and convergence of telecommunications and technological advances in general.
For all these reasons I would like to call for the prompt transposition in all Member States of all the directives relating to radio-broadcasting and voice telephony, the interconnection and maintenance of digitisation, general authorisations and licences, leased lines, open networks, mobile telephones and data protection.
In this regard, we should condemn the fact that the national regulatory authorities of certain countries – such as Spain, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom – are not playing their part to the full, which has led to complaints from new companies, who have found that the telecommunications monopolies that already exist are placing obstacles in their way and delaying the consolidation of free competition to the detriment of users.
Furthermore, we ask that, as soon as possible, flat rates be established for access to the Internet, to the network of networks, and we even argue that they should be free, since they should be offered, like health and education, as an essential public service to the citizens."@en1
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