atene KOM organized the ‘’Governmental Day’’ workshop on 16 February as part of the FTTH Conference 2016 in Luxembourg, for the second year in a row. Our workshop targets European regional and local authorities with the aim of building capacities to enhance the pace of Broadband development in European regions.
In the first block Anna Krzyzanowska, Head of Broadband Unit and Dr. Robert Henkel, Senoir Policy Officer at DG Connect, European Commission, focused on political measures of broadband development and the essential funding programmes as well as Broadband Europe as the most important online-platform with regard to the development of broadband in Europe. Furthermore, the importance of superfast internet for the vitality, security and future development of European cities was emphasized by Mr. Filip Meuris, Head of department at Intercommunale Leiedal, Belgium. In a panel discussion the winners of the first European Broadband Award exchanged their experiences with the workshop participants. Representatives from RAIN 2 (Lithuania), CAI Harderwijk open network (Netherlands), guifi.net (Spain) and Stokab (Sweden) introduced innovative, regionally adapted concepts for the deployment of broadband.
The second part focused on cost reduction measures in practice. The basis for the discussion was EU Commission´s Cost reduction Directive, which had to be transposed to national laws until 1. January 2016. The aim is to achieve significant cost reductions within broadband deployment by the reallocation on national level as well as technical solutions and synergies in using existing infrastructures. Mr. Luis Manica (ANACOM), Mr Christof Pauselius (FRIATEC AG), Mr. Harry Aichele (FAST Opticum AG) and Mr. Heiko Hummel (energiedata 4.0 GmbH) held four short presentations on the implementation of broadband cost reduction measures. Afterwards, the workshop participants discussed the main bottlenecks and challenges of reducing these costs in two working groups.
Tim Brauckmüller, managing partner of atene KOM, closed the Governmental Day with a speech about the decisive roles of local and regional decision-makers in the process of broadband development and highlighted the importance of networking opportunities.
During the main programme of the FTTH Conference Mr. Brauckmüller held a presentation on “Broadband in Europe – Status quo, strategies and challenges in practice”, where he introduced the status quo of FTTH in Europe and highlighted its progresses and improvement potentials.
The atene KOM-Team