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The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief introduction to the telecommunication reform process in Europe, its status, and upcoming policy issues. Furthermore, it also aims to provide an overview of the papers in this special issue.

The paper provides an introduction to the telecom reform process based on previous research and the papers in this issue of info.

The introduction argues that the European telecommunication reform process with the telecommunications green paper of 1987 as an important point of departure has been a success in many ways. It has, for example, facilitated the development of mobile, of the internet and its many applications, and considerably lowered prices. However, there are important areas where a single European market has not developed. Moreover, new challenges are rising in terms of upcoming reconfigurations of the whole information communications technology (ICT) area requiring new policy and regulatory answers.

The paper provides a brief introduction to the European telecommunication reform process, its achievements, present challenges, and the policy responses of the European Union. In addition, an overview of the papers of this issue of info is provided.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that telecommunications liberalization in Europe has taken the European telecommunications and internet sectors a breathtaking leap forward. To counter the leveling off of growth and facing the smartphone revolution, new structural changes are now required.

The paper assesses in a concise manner the effect of telecommunications liberalization in Europe based on the 1987 green paper. It demonstrates the enormous dynamics created in the mobile and fixed network sectors and the key role of liberalization to make Europe internet‐ready during the 1990s. The paper then proceeds to the analysis of the leveling off of growth during the last few years and discusses required changes to restart dynamics.

The green paper of 1987 successfully defined a framework within which political and legal action in both regulatory and competition fields could develop, leading to full liberalization of telecommunications in the European Union by 1998. The subsequent decade saw an enormous expansion of both mobile and fixed services, which only abated by the end of the decade. Liberalization and coordination of licensing of mobile systems were the basis for the entry of the internet in Europe and the explosive growth of GSM mobile services. The paper finds that the deployment of broadband internet and fourth generation mobile now needs further change to relaunch dynamics. It welcomes the goals of the digital agenda for Europe in the context of the 2020 objectives of the European Union, but argues that deeper structural changes are needed to achieve these goals.

Liberalization of European telecommunications was guided by a strategic framework set out in the 1987 telecommunications green paper and developed subsequently further. Comprehensive frameworks of this nature will be needed if Europe wants to gain a leading role in the future smart phone and broadband internet markets.

Aims to introduce the special issue “What's wrong with competition policy in new media?” which is based on a series of seminars given in January‐March 2005 at Oxford University's Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy.

Discusses the papers included in this special issue.

Reveals that when it comes to the framework for commercial broadcasting, the position of publicly funded broadcasters, and various forms of state aid, some posit a future of deregulation in which communications are eventually treated as markets like any other, while others argue that many of the public policy objectives in the sector will require permanent sector specific regulation, and even that the competition framework currently being implemented should be subordinated to citizen not consumer interests

The lessons from the contributors are applicable to overall European policy.

To demonstrate that the media sector is moving towards a new organization of the sector. Inevitably a larger role will fall to competition law and competition law considerations.

The paper identifies major trends and demonstrates evolving competition principles in the European Union (EU) media sector by discussing selected recent EU case decisions.

Recent cases in the application of EU competition rules in the European media sector evolve around three central themes, all of them essential for moving the sector forward into the transition towards the new media world: unbundling of content and platform, in order to open the market for newcomers; allowing for restructuring, subject to sufficient market opening; and fair competition between public and private broadcasting, in order to prevent the strangling effects that public subsidies can have, while safeguarding public value in the sector.

The application of EU competition rules – merger control, antitrust, state aid control – is a major strand of EU policies in addressing the transition and digital switchover in the European media sector. Any valid research and policy making in the sector will have to take this into account and the paper draws attention to this.

Examines abuse potential with regard to digital pay‐TV services and permitted competition which is allowed, and these are referred to as bottleneck facilities (technology). Looks at technical analysis ad bottleneck control in addition to self‐regulation and industry standard settings, and further discusses public policy concern. Concludes that it may be cautionable to pursue narrower objectives in the communications industry – especially where other declarations of public policy are feasible.

The US Supreme Court has stated, “The content of the Internet is a diverse as human thought.” It may also be surmised that the Internet is nothing more than a new medium and that the application of competition law to the Internet may be as broad as all of competition law itself. The diversity of the Internet constitutes a guide to finding thoughtful competition law solutions to e‐commerce phenomena under EU law in (i) merger control, (ii) horizontal and vertical restraints analysis under Article 81 EC (exclusive distribution, selective distribution, music licensing), (iii) abuse of dominant position under Article 82 EC.

The third industrial revolution, fueled by the combined powers of information technology, is changing not only the way we work but also our perceptions, definitions and insights into the world. Society will emerge from the third industrial revolution as a global village. Technology and information providers will empower people to find, retrieve, share and use data in ways that enrich their lives.

The prediction of a context, especially of a user’s location, is a fundamental task in the field of pervasive computing. Such predictions open up a new and rich field of proactive adaptation for context-aware applications. This study/paper aims to propose a methodology that predicts a user’s location on the basis of a user’s mobility history.

Contextual information is used to find the points of interest that a user visits frequently and to determine the sequence of these visits with the aid of spatial clustering, temporal segmentation and speed filtering.

The proposed method was tested with a real data set using several supervised classification algorithms, which yielded very interesting results.

The method uses contextual information (current position, day of the week, time and speed) that can be acquired easily and accurately with the help of common sensors such as GPS.