World Telecommunication Day 1999 |
Western Europe has long been seen as lagging behind the United States in the race to Internet connectivity, but the Old World is catching up fast and, in some cases, even bypassing its trans-Atlantic rival.
Speaking of Europe's-high tech catch-up game, Michael Dertouzos, director of MIT's laboratory of computer sciences, recently told the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur that ''it wouldn't be the first time that the United States got a head start and that Europe caught up and added technical improvements. This has already happened with color television standards and with mobile phones - Global Standard for Mobile works better than our own systems. Americans are excited about innovations, while the European step back and seem aloof. They tell themselves: 'More American nonsense.' But if it's an invention that satisfies a universal need, everyone will end up acting in the same way. That's what's happening with the Web.''
Europeans are no slouches in the realm of high technology and were years ahead of the United States in many areas, such as the development of high-speed trains and the widespread use of smart banking cards. In fact, France was the first country in the world to have an on-line information service, the Minitel, over 15 years ago, long before the use of the Web became widespread. Although much slower and more limited than the Net, the Minitel still has some 15 million users and is simple and cheap to use. In another example of high-tech fireworks, France Telecom amazed techies at last year's Optical Fiber Communication Conference in San Diego when it announced that it had reached a record data transmission speed of 1 terabit a second over a 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) length of optical fiber using a solitron pulse.
France's Lyonnaise Cable was a pioneer in providing Internet access to residences via the coaxial cable that provides television signals, at a fixed cost and with unlimited access and no phone bills. Unfortunately, users soon found that the promised high-speed transmissions weren't always so speedy and that at peak TV-viewing hours they sometimes couldn't even get on-line. The company promises that these problems will soon be solved.
In the United States, companies such as AT&T, America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft are investing heavily in the potentially lucrative high-speed broadband market and battling in the courts over open access issues. Currently, only about 1 million U.S. users are accessing the Web with broadband technology, and technical problems with installation, service, speed and outages have not been solved there either.
By the end of 1999, nearly 60 percent of the world's on-line population will live outside the United States, according to International Data Corp. (IDC), which predicts that e-commerce spending in Western Europe will increase from $5.6 billion in 1998 to $430 billion by 2003 (of a projected total of $1 trillion). Internationally, there are currently 180 million Internet users, including 100 million in the United States and 45 million in Europe. By 2003, IDC predicts that of the 500 million Internet users, more will be Europeans than Americans.
Says Anna Giraldo, an IDC senior analyst: ''In Western Europe, the Internet is quickly moving from a technophile phenomenon to a tool for the entire population. The increased interest in the Internet, along with the adoption of the euro, will help drive ecommerce sales.''
Many cite red tape and lack of funding for innovative start-up high-tech companies as factors affecting Europe's ability to compete. Experts speaking at the IDC European IT Forum in Paris in September, including MIT economics and management professor Lester Thurow, insisted on the necessity of increased risk-taking in Europe. Speaking at the same conference, fellow MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director of MIT's Media Lab, made similar points about Europeans' fear of risk and the scarcity of funding for start-ups.
High prices charged by Internet service providers have been another reason cited for lower rates of Internet connection in Europe, but that is starting to change as telecommunications competition heats up, prices come down and a variety of providers begin to offer free Internet access. According to the Telecommunications Regulation Authority, the French telecommunications watchdog, after rate reductions in August, France now offers the fourth-lowest (of 14 European countries) cost for 20 hours of monthly Net connection, after Italy, Portugal and Ireland, bringing it up from second to last on the list (last place is now held by Austria).
Another reason for the time lag is that technologies and services developed in the United States are U.S.-centric and must often be adapted - or new versions created - for European languages and cultures. European companies are now developing their own local versions of popular U.S. bookselling and auction sites, for example.
Says Ms. Giraldo: ''A successful global strategy will involve thinking locally in each of the individual markets. Internet users, especially in Western Europe, will be more trusting of national Web sites than international ones.'' The giant German publishing house Bertelsmann has its pan-European BOL sites, for example; Belgian Proxis is attacking the French market with reduced prices on best-sellers and is overtaking BOL in the Netherlands. France has Alapage, www.alibabook and chapitre.com.
Occasionally, the Europeans even beat the Americans at their own game. The European release of the video game, Outcast, created by the Belgian company Appeal, had U.S. gamesters panting to get their hands on it. But the original product was in French and, for once, the English speakers had to wait while the product was ''localized'' for the U.S. market.
Heidi Ellison