Simpson (Chapter 5) provides an analysis of the evolution of the
telecommunications framework in the EU in an industry that he argues is the most
Europeanized and developed of all the sectors covered by this edited volume.
Although Simpson acknowledges a degree of success in policy initiatives in this
area, he also concludes with a key point made in all of the following chapters:
that EU policy is incomplete and faced with a series of challenges in future years
to provide an adequate framework for the legal and regulatory environment in a
highly dynamic and increasingly complex industry. These challenges are no more
so in the area of convergence as outlined in Chapter 6 by Ariño and Llorens in their
analysis of the questions posed for EU regulation in regulating and establishing a
legal framework in an increasingly converged multi-media experience. The speed
of convergence and the revolutionary changes to the communications industry
identified in the Bangemann Report into the so-called global information society
in the 1990s (EC 1994) may not have matched its authors’ expectations, but it
is nevertheless, a powerful force for change in the sector as data compression
technologies and more flexible consumption patterns emerge from traditional
models of one to many communications.