Governing Telecommunications And The New Information Society In Europe

'. . . offers a fresh look at efforts to manage telecommunications and the emerging "information society" in Europe.ë _ Communication Booknotes Quarterly European countries have recently been involved in an extremely broad set of regulator

An outstanding line-up of contributors explore the regulation of the internet from an interdisciplinary perspective. In-depth coverage of this controversial area such as international political economy, law, politics, economics, sociology and internet regulation. Regulating the Global Information Society covers the differences between both US and UK approaches to regulation and establishes where policy is being made that will influence the future direction of the global information society, from commercial, democratic and middle-ground perspectives.

This text offers an examination of a range of technological issues at stake in the European Union. It discerns social trends but finds there is considerable room to use the technologies as a force for social change.

This book offers a good study of the development of telecommunications policy by the EU. . . Great value to those interested in understanding both European telecommunications policy and more generally in how policy-making operates in the EU. Mark Thatcher, West European Politics . . . the book provides an interesting perspective on the evolution of nature of telecommunications policy-making within the EU. As a consequence, the book should be of interest to telecommunications and politics/government researchers alike, Jason Whalley, Communications Booknotes Quarterly This well-written book deals with the emergence and shaping of telecommunications policy in Europe, with a particular focus on the time period of 1987 1998. . . This book fills an important gap reviewing the initial formative years of European telecommunications policy development and liberalization in detail. The book captures the complicated and interdependent policy formation process in Europe in a credible and thoughtful way, without falling into the trap of admiring critical personalities and key actors. . . The author has written an important and useful book, which invites the research community to further explore the evolution of European telecommunications policy. Erik Bohlin, Communications & Strategies Examining the emergence of a European Union telecommunications policy, Joseph Goodman explains how and why the policy developed as it did and why certain reforms in the sector were easier to achieve than others. He provides a history of the key actors in the policy-making process from the first attempts by the national postal, telegraph, and telecommunication administrations to coordinate their telecommunications policies in the 1950s, to the implementation of a comprehensive EU telecommunications regulatory structure in 1998 and the development of a new regulatory structure in 2003. The analytical framework employed by the author draws upon new institutionalism and actor-based approaches, providing an opportunity to evaluate the utility of a synthetic approach for examining and explaining EU policy-making. The focus of his analysis is on the European Commission s two-pronged strategy of liberalisation and harmonisation, which began in the late 1980s and culminated in an important milestone on January 1st 1998, when the EU Member States fully opened their telecommunications markets to competition. He concludes that a synthetic approach, which enables the researcher to apply a number of approaches to multiple settings and various levels of analysis, is useful even necessary in understanding and explaining the many dimensions of EU policy-making. This authoritative study will be of interest to all those in the telecommunications industry including attorneys, consultants, and lobbyists who would like to know how the EU s policy developed. It will appeal, more generally, to political scientists and scholars of European history and politics.

Examines the implication for networking and information technology within the European framework, in terms of education, healthcare, business and administration. The text looks at the role of government at European, national and regional levels in managing the information technology revolution.

The developments in information and communications technologies (ICT) have had significant effects on many aspects of modern society. This publication adopts a holistic approach to discuss diverse and opposing current opinions on the role of ICT in the fields of employment, economic growth, the media, education, science and technology, law and culture, as well as in new areas such as e-voting and e-governance.

This title was first published in 2000. This text examines the politics of the digital age, looking at topics including new industrial policies, the implications of the Internet and global governance of innovation.

This book is a systematic comparative study of WTO and EU law relevant for universal service provision, and a timely contribution to the ongoing scholarly and policy debates about the concept and scope of universal service. Universal service is one of the most significant regulatory issues worldwide and it is likely to remain so. The central question dealt with by the author is how the technologically intensive sector of telecommunications services can be regulated in a socially fair way in the light of liberalisation and the immense importance of ICTs in the Information Society. The author investigates whether the legal frameworks of WTO and EU can meet the challenges of the rapid and dramatic technological and social change and formulates relevant policy recommendations. The book is of interest to both scholars and practitioners in several disciplines, such as EU and WTO law, telecommunications law and regulation, political science regarding market regulation and governance as well as European integration and WTO. Olga Batura is affiliated to the Leuphana Law School, University of Lüneburg, Germany, and to the European Humanities University in Vilnius, Lithania.