Competitiveness

"A high-performance broadband infrastructure will become an essential economic factor in international competition." This is the opinion of almost 88% of international experts to a high or very high degree. Relative competitiveness in the triad will therefore be determined to a considerable degree by broadband Internet.

But how significant is the progress of the information society in the individual triad countries? The answer to this question gives room for some discomfort in Europe. The international experts surveyed view the information society as being by far the farthest advanced in the United States (Fig. 39). Asia occupies second place, followed by Europe as a distant No. 3.

Particularly as regards Europe's level of competitiveness as an information society, there is much room for improvement here. The international experts also offered a prognosis on the state of the information society in 2010. First the good news: all parts of the triad are expected to achieve significant progress in establishing information societies by the year 2010. All three sectors of the triad are also expected to draw closer in terms of their level of development. The assumption that Asia will bypass the United States as an Internet power is not all that surprising. But Europe will lag far behind by 2010, unless energetic steps are taken to counteract this trend.

Figure 39:		Development of information society in the triad (international experts)

"Broadband Internet is going to be one of the main engines for innovations and investment in my country in the coming years." Over 81% of the international experts agreed with this statement to a high or very high degree. Given the importance of broadband Internet to a nation's innovativeness and competitiveness, the findings from this survey of international experts were distilled into an innovations ranking covering the growth and application of broadband Internet in the individual countries (Table 2).

The first three places are solidly occupied by Asia, followed by the United States. Four Asian nations are among the top five, with not a single European nation among them. European nations rank almost without exception at the bottom of the innovations rankings. Only Sweden manages to set itself apart slightly from the homogenous lower field of Germany, Great Britain, France and Spain.

Table 2:		Innovations ranking involving broadband Internet (international experts)

These findings prove that Europe must make a much greater effort along the path towards the information society to maintain its global competitiveness. Only a consistent expansion of the broadband Internet and the targeted encouragement of information and communication technology as the key technology of the 21st century can help change this course.