For the past ten years, telecommunications providers in the UK and Europe have lagged behind the USA in the race to deliver high bandwidth networks to their business, and domestic, customers. Despite the advanced, high-speed services available in the US, they have been seriously disadvantaged by the lack of a country-wide, common telecommunications network, primarily because of the plethora of state-based providers using their own proprietary standards and protocols.

In Europe, where telecommunications networks are better harmonised (primarily following aggressive, cross-country competition and rapid acquisition of the smaller network providers), the top-five network providers have invested € Billions in G3 licences and new, high speed, pan-European spines and routers as the foundation for future growth.

This massive investment, prior to availability and implementation of the full G3 networks has led to high debts and low revenues in the telecommunications and media enterprises: some have failed, and been wound up or acquired. The strong companies are getting stronger but with an increasing risk of monopoly, an issue that the European telecommunications regulators are trying to avoid by maintaining a balance across the competition and through pricing mechanisms.

"The next few years will be a time of discovery and innovation for both consumers and suppliers" - David Edmonds, Director General of Telecommunications.