Officials from the EU have been looking at measures that would make it possible for all citizens in the EU to have access to broadband.

Broadband is a service that many household in the UK and across the rest of Europe have taken for granted over recent years, but many fail to realise – or forget – that there is a large proportion of households that do not or cannot get access to broadband services in the UK and in some other major European destinations.

According to one recent report officials from the European Commission are looking to make broadband services available to all in the same way that telecom companies are required to make at least basic telephone services available to all citizens in the EU. Measures are currently being debated by the EU that could see service providers having to make the service available to all citizens in the EU.

The EU is apparently currently looking at the Universal Service Obligation, or USO, to see whether it should be amended to incorporate the need to provide broadband access to all EU citizens in the same way that basic telephone services must be provided to households throughout Europe. Whilst broadband use is thought to have increased by thirty sic percent in Europe between 2003 and 2007, EU officials were conscious of huge gaps in coverage.

EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding stated: “High-speed internet is the passport to the Information Society and an essential condition for economic growth. This is why it is this Commission’s policy to make broadband internet for all Europeans happen by 2010.”

It is thought that further news on the development of mandatory broadband access for all will be made available in 2009, and that the regulations that come from this would come into force the following year, in 2010.