Europe says goodbye to "universal services" in telecommunications - and what comes next?

Abstract

This essay looks at the European communications infrastructure, against the background of the gradual erosion of the public interest-based universal service which has been taking place for several years in the area of telephony. The causes and progress of this erosion and of the national and European policies are presented in three stages: the social state compromise from the post war period until the 1970s, the opposition of two visions (service-based competition versus facility-based competition) in the 1980s and the economic predominance of facility-based competition in the 1990s. Finally, when considering the possible political structure of a politically controlled and public interest-oriented communications infrastructure for the "information society", it is argued that, owing to the already advanced liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation, this is already virtually impossible and has very little political support.RésuméCet article analyse l'infrastructure européenne des communications dans un contexte de dégradation progressive des services publics universels qui a lieu depuis plusieurs années dans le domaine de la téléphonie. Les causes et les progrès de cette dégradation et des politiques nationales et européennes sont examinés sous trois volets: l'engagement social au niveau national & a g r a v e ; partir de la période de l'après-guerre jusqu'aux années soixante-dix, l'opposition des deux idéologies (concurrence basée sur les services contre la concurrence basée sur les équipements) dans les années quatre-vingts et la prédominance économique de la concurrence basée sur les équipements des années quatre-vingt-dix. Finalement, lorsque l'on analyse l'eventuelle 1 This essay is based on the results of a project carried out with the support of the German Research Association (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) entitled "Institutionalisation of trans-national technology strategies -European research and technology policy in the information and communication technology industry", in which I am being assisted by Boy Lüthje,

Germany after the Millennium: Discourses and strategies of restructuring: redefining the role of the state

“…Following several initiatives of the European Union (one of them, the Bangemann report, is discussed below) the Conservative German Government introduced the fully liberalised network competition in January 1998. The previously valid concept of the provision of public service telecommunications maintained by the State was replaced by a rather weak legal universal service obligations (Esser 1997).…”