Tag: Neelie Kroes

The EU will set out reforms for a pan-European telecommunications market this year to support competition and investment in the sector, the bloc's telecoms chief, Neelie Kroes, said in a newspaper interview today (14 January).

As governments move towards the cloud, they need to be wary of the possibility for significant adverse consequences. National security might be compromised, government integrity eroded and even the safety of public officials threatened, writes Paul Rosenzweig.

The European Commission released yesterday (27 September) its EU strategy on cloud computing, which promotes off-site data storage in a bid to create new jobs and raise €160 billion per year in information technology savings.

European Union companies are steadily losing ground to foreign competitors in the strategic semiconductors market, despite calls to create a European champion. EurActiv reports from the headquarters in Taiwan of TSMC, the world’s top chip manufacturer.

The fragmented nature of the EU's digital single market is preventing many small businesses from reaping the benefits of the Internet and ICTs, write Ann Mettler and Sylwia Stępień.

High-speed Internet for all - including on mobile phones - and lower consumer prices are the main highlights of the European Commission's digital agenda, a five-year plan to ensure higher connectivity for EU citizens and business.

Despite Neelie Kroes' ambitious declarations for a new open data strategy at the regional level, authorities are still struggling to become familiar with that process and the strategy still faces fierce resistance, writes Julia Glidden from 21c Consultancy.

European institutions and governments should throw their weight behind joint procurement of computing services to encourage the use of cloud computing, says Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

A group of European privacy watchdogs has called for a stricter interpretation of rules on behavioural advertising, condemning the industry's self-regulation code as giving users a “wrong presumption” of how their online browsing habits are being tracked by advertisers using web 'cookies'.

The European commissioner in charge of Telecoms, Neelie Kroes, is about to launch a public debate on revising access prices for telecoms' copper-based fixed lines in a move aimed at favouring a gradual migration to fibre-optic super-fast communications, EurActiv has learned.

The cost of calls made abroad is about to go down by a further notch on Friday (1 July) but not by enough, warns the European Commission, which is heralding "a long lasting structural approach" to reduce high roaming costs.

A new draft regulation prepared by Digital Commissioner Neelie Kroes envisages lower caps on cross-border telephone charges and is expected to put mobile roaming prices on an equal footing with national tariffs by 2016.

The EU's telecoms chief Neelie Kroes has sent a stark warning to dominant firms to lower their phone and Internet prices. 

Consumers will soon pay less to use their mobile phones abroad as new EU price caps on roaming are due to come into force this week.

The European Commission plans to rewrite ICT industry rules to make sure dominant technologies, like devices with always-on connectivity, do not lock consumers into supporting monopolies and hamper innovation, Neelie Kroes, EU commissioner for the Digital Agenda, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

Telecoms giants suffered defeat yesterday (8 June) after the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the European Commission was right to set price caps on mobile roaming charges. 

The Brussels rumour mill reports that Commissioner Neelie Kroes is close to quitting the EU to become the new Dutch prime minister after a general election on 9 June. But political observers in The Hague say that even if Kroes wanted the job, her appointment would be "a small and technical possibility".

European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes today (19 May) unveiled her strategy to create a "virtuous and self-replicating digital economy". The five-year plan concentrates on infrastructure for high-speed Internet and fostering a borderless market for online music and film.  

If the EU does not solve the e-skills gap, fewer engineers on the market will likely keep salaries high and slow down the digital development in Europe and prevent small and medium size companies to compete in the global economy, said the head of cabinet for EU Information Society Commissioner Neelie Kroes yesterday (4 May). 

The European Union yesterday (1 March) introduced price caps in Internet roaming to protect consumers from "bill shocks" when surfing the Web abroad.