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Abstract: Recognizing that high-speed broadband connectivity emerges as a key element for growth, city authorities engage in fiber access deployments to empower their local communities in the digital economy. Currently, a growing number of municipal fiber projects are underway or planned while the international community and the telecommunications industry are yet undecided about the role and type of municipal intervention. This paper takes a holistic view of municipal broadband in Europe, aiming to understand the factors that determine municipal strategies in fixed Next-Generation Access (NGA) networks and the implications of municipal broadband to regulation and markets. The data suggests that the determining factors are (a) the engagement of public utilities; (b) the involvement of the private sector in joint infrastructure projects; (c) the local demand for retail and wholesale services; and (d) the institutional and regulatory framework at the European and national scale. The findings of the study indicate that (a) municipal initiatives are highly dependent on national factors, thus the resulting interventions fare strong resemblance within a single country, while they can be substantially different across national contexts; (b) current EU provisions for public involvement in broadband development stimulate municipal plans for large scale arrangements; and (c) national regulatory frameworks, that primarily address vertical integrated incumbents and nationwide markets, may need adjustments to handle emerging access monopolies of regional and city broadband infrastructures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Remote access laboratories (RALs) were first developed in 1994 in Australia and Switzerland. The main purposes of developing them are to enable students to do their experiments at their own pace, time and locations and to enable students and teaching staff to get access to facilities beyond their institutions. Currently, most of the experiments carried out through RALs in Australia are heavily biased towards electrical, electronic and computer engineering disciplines. However, the experiments carried out through RALs in Europe had more variety, in addition to the traditional electrical, electronic and computer engineering disciplines, there were experiments in mechanical and mechatronic disciplines. It was found that RALs are now being developed aggressively in Australia and Europe and it can be argued that RALs will develop further and faster in the future with improving Internet technology. The rising costs of real experimental equipment will also speed up their development because by making the equipment remotely accessible, the cost can be shared by more universities or institutions and this will improve their cost-effectiveness. Their development would be particularly rapid in large countries with small populations such as Australia, Canada and Russia, because of the scale of economy. Reusability of software, interoperability in software implementation, computer supported collaborative learning and convergence with learning management systems are the required development of future RALs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: How to regulate wholesale access on next generation access (NGA) networks is probably the most pressing issue faced by European telecoms regulars today. The lack of actual competitive restraint from cable operators precludes the replication of US-like regulatory forbearance, as it might lead to the (re-) monopolization of broadband markets by telecoms incumbents, thus spoiling the celebrated achievements over the last decade, whereby competing operators have penetrated the market thanks to widespread access regulation over the DSL platform. However, as NGA networks are largely yet to be deployed, the threat of similar measures being extended is keeping incumbents from undertaking investments into NGA. This is particularly so given the perceived uncertainty about consumers’ willingness to pay for next-generation Internet access services, which raises deep reservations about the viability of the business case for NGA. Such a stalemate is exacerbated by the difficulty of envisaging practical solutions to reach a “new regulatory contract”, where conflicting interests are effectively balanced out for the benefit of the society overall. This article represents an attempt to address this vacuum. A “division of labour” between regulators and the market is proposed, in order to reflect distinctive capabilities in an incentive-compatible way. In particular, while regulators would be responsible for setting wholesale access terms, the market would be left to price the risk in NGA deployment through the functioning of a commodity option market. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]