European Telecommunications

Abstract

The telecommunications industry provides what is the classic example of the dilemma facing European industries in an era after liberalisation. Today we stand at the dawn of the ‘information age’. For some time now it has been predicted that information will be all powerful in determining the competitiveness of modern industrial economies. At the heart of this new information age are telecommunication services. Telecommunication networks provide the arteries along which information — the lifeblood of the information age — can flow. The speed of technological change is denoted by the pulse of information along these information highways, or Infobahns as they have become known in Eurospeak.