”First of all, new services, innovations and information flows must grow, flourish and create economic growth without being dependent on technological speeds and capacities of the past.
Secondly, Europe needs to raise its game and ambitions if we are going to reap the benefits of the new digital revolution.
Thirdly, Europe must talk less about megabytes and more about gigabytes.”
Gunnar Hökmark – Opening speech at the Fiber-to-the-Home conference, London
20 February 2013
Checked against delivery
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am very glad to be here today to present my views on why Europe needs a real
push for the deployment of ultrafast broadband. I have three messages to deliver
here today.
First of all, new services, innovations and information flows must grow, flourish and
create economic growth without being dependent on technological speeds and
capacities of the past.
Secondly, Europe needs to raise its game and ambitions if we are going to reap the
benefits of the new digital revolution.
Thirdly, Europe must talk less about megabytes and more about gigabytes.
It took us 30 years from Thomas Alva Edison’s invention of the electric bulb until we
started to turn the lights downwards. The mindset of the candle light still kept us
captured in the same way as cars and trains for a long time looked like horse
carriages. Most new products or inventions use the design and logic of the past
simply because our perceptions about the future are based on our experiences from
the past.
Our minds and understanding about the future have been shaped by the last 30
years. That’s why we underestimate the pace and magnitude of change and
overvalue the structures of the past
We still talk about emerging economies although they already have emerged. In
Sweden we still talk about the Swedish car industry although it is mainly Chinese.
We still talk about the US as the number one economy although European Union
thanks to enlargements and the internal market is de facto the world’s biggest
economy. We still take it for granted that we are leading prosperity and welfare
levels although the current crisis suggests that we are leading the global crisis.
The emergence of telecoms follows the same pattern regarding the 30 years delay.
We still talk about distributing and coordinating frequencies every 4th year in the
framework of the International Teleunion, although the market is changing so much
faster. Our logic and understanding about the future in telecoms sometimes still
seems to be based in a time when an International call was more exciting than
Christmas.
If we look at the development over the last 30 years we have seen a new rapid
emergence of telecoms connecting the world in a pace that no one could have
believed, with capacities that no one would have dared to plan for and with services