Firms, owning existing telecommunications infrastructure have understood that these can be helpful for other purposes than the initial proprietary use they have been built for, and that this additional capacity could generate extra revenue. Such firms have appeared as an alternative answer to end-users’ and operators’ growing need for more infrastructure flexibility and capacity. Their respective strategies have been very dependent on the markets targeted, the level of implication involved and the technologies and services required for marketing purposes.

In order to draw up a European panorama on these developments as well as to clarify concepts and definitions on a complex topic, analysis are conducted on alternative networks in each Member State. Through an inventory of the major public utilities networks (but also large scale private sector networks) which have a potential for use in IS applications, and an analysis of the utilities organisations strategies as well as a description of on-going experiments or planned projects, these reports offer an overview of the alternative networks environment, of the managing organisations and of the IS services and applications provided by these new entrants.

Reports and synoptic tables (as of January 1999) have been prepared under the responsibility of the ESIS team of contractors.

Executive summaries by EU Member State
January 1st, 1999

In order to access the summaries, please click on the country:

Synoptic tables by Member State
January 1rst, 1999