Broadband : towards a national plan for Scotland

The development of national broadband plans has been used by many countries to join up different areas of governmental and regulatory activities and to set ambitious targets for ubiquitous access to and use of the latest fixed and wireless networks and services. For Scotland this requires working within EU and UK legislative frameworks, which have also provided the bulk of the finance for interventions. It also requires an understanding of the significant weaknesses of urban broadband adoption compared to other UK and EU nations and of its e-commerce supply and demand. While resources are being targeted at rural and remote areas, more are needed to close the social digital divide, which is unavoidable if the stated ambition of being world class is to be achieved

Priorities for the Finnish Presidency, July-December 2006. CEPS Working Document, No. 248, 12 July 2006

[From the Introduction]. "Thinking ahead for Europe’ is our motto. In this reader we have collected our thoughts and recent writings on what should be done in the near future to get Europe moving again. We offer these ideas to the Finnish Presidency of the EU as food for thought at the start of its six-month term. These views are based on the research experience of our multinational staff, who have the privilege of working in complete independence

"Re-engineering Cyprus" : information technologies and transformation processes in the Republic of Cyprus

By most Western Europeans Cyprus is probably perceived as a tourist resort rather than a technologically highly developed country. Interested German visitors are informed by the travel brochure published by the Republic of Cyprus' tourist office that "in the villages old customs and traditions still exist" (Zypern. 9000 Jahre Geschichte und Kultur 1997, 11). Pictures of places of antiquity, churches, monasteries, fortresses, archaic villages and of people engaged in agricultural work and crafts convey the image of a traditional Mediterranean society. However, the Republic of Cyprus is a rapidly modernising country. It has developed recently "from a poor agrarian into a high-income service economy" (Christodoulou 1995, 11) and "radical transformation processes" are observed (cf. ibid., 18). The forthcoming accession to the European Union additionally accelerates the pace of these transformation processes. Due to its position on the extreme rim of Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean region at the crossroads of three continents, the island is perceived both as marginal (cf. Pace 1999) and as a link between Europe and the Asian and African continents (cf. Kasoulides 1999). Cyprus is conceptualised for the future as a centre and intersection: as regional hub of the modern capital market, as communications and trade centre in the Eastern Mediterranean, as "telecommunications hub for the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region", as "international services centre". The Republic of Cyprus has a highly developed telecommunications infrastructure, which is the basic prerequisite for the conversion into such a centre and is one of the most important factors for the economic competitiveness of Cyprus. The global nature of communication platforms today, especially the Internet, is regarded as the key to the integration of Cyprus into the world economy. By implementing information technologies and promoting necessary expertise, economic progress and modernisation of the country as well as its global competitiveness is assumed to be guaranteed. Investments in the information technology infrastructure are regarded as essential for the development of Cyprus, fostering the implementation of the information society. This aim and the necessary implementation measures feature increasingly on the agendas of scientific and economic conferences and symposia in Cyprus