The case was prompted by Brussels' push for the so-called 'digital switchover', which will replace analogue broadcasting with much more efficient digital transmission.

As a consequence of the transition, frequencies will be freed up for allocation to new operators and new services. The business opportunities are very promising and competition to acquire new frequencies and channels is fierce in most European countries.

There appears to be no end in sight to an ongoing anti-piracy row in the European Parliament about how to stop illegal downloading, echoing a similar debate that derailed the EU's Telecoms rules last year (EurActiv 25/11/09).

In a Brussels meeting dedicated to enhancing the EU's digital economy, the telecoms ministers said time was running out to catch up with the USA's booming digital economy.

Neelie Kroes has been using her staggeringly high popularity in Dutch opinion polls to help push her liberal VVD party to electoral victory, even though her own election as the country's prime minister remains unlikely, according to observers in the Dutch capital.

The Dutch Labour/Christian Democrat coalition government collapsed in February after the Labour Party refused to back a proposal to extend the deployment of troops in Afghanistan.

"As a result of high mobile termination rates and for reasons of business strategy, [Bulgarian] consumers keep more than one mobile subscription in parallel," reads a Commission paper dated 25 May, entitled '15th Progress Report on the Single European Electronic Communications Market'.

Bulgaria, the poorest EU member, is still the country with the highest mobile termination charges in the EU, at more that twice the EU average. Mobile termination rates are the charges that telecoms operators impose on each other for using their networks. 

Die spanische EU-Ratspräsidentschaft wird einen Entwurf vorlegen, durch den Garantien eingeführt werden, die die Ausgaben von Endnutzern von elektronischen Kommunikationsdiensten beschränken oder kontrollieren, wie es für Roaming-Dienste bereits der Fall ist (siehe Background).

Ein Dokument, das EurActiv vorliegt, listet unter möglichen Maßnahmen die Einführung eines „Minimalgrads von einzeln aufgeführten Abrechnungen“ auf, was eine regelmäßige Aktualisierung von Ausgabenkonten bedeutet.

A letter issued by the Article 29 Working Party, a group of EU privacy regulators, warned the three companies that their "methods of making users' search data anonymous" were out of step with the EU's rules on data protection.

The regulators sent copies of these letters to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and to Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission responsible for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship.

"The limited progress towards a true single market is disappointing," Neelie Kroes, the commissioner in charge of the EU's flagship 'Digital Agenda' portfolio, said in a statement yesterday (25 May).

Retail mobile prices in some member states differ by up to 20 cents per minute (while calls in Latvia cost four cents, they are 24 cents in Malta), according to statistics from the EU's annual Single European Electronic Communications Market report.

Die Auszeichnung ermöglicht der EU Exekutive, das Scheinwerferlicht auf einen bestimmten Aspekt der Innovation zu richten. Dabei werden jedes Jahr unterschiedliche Prioritäten hervorgehoben.

2010 lag der Fokus auf einer Reihe von Themen, wie der Integration von Migranten in urbanen Bereichen und Breitbandabdeckung in weniger entwickelten Regionen.

Die Gewinner

German prosecutors were the first to raise the alarm after its audit of Google's Street View application revealed Google's data centres had collected payload data – emails, video, audio and VoIP information - being sent over the network by users.

Prosecutors in Hamburg are currently investigating how Google collected the data and whether it breached German data protection rules.

A spokesperson said the inquiry would likely take two weeks.