14 March, 2023

ETNO response on Key performance indicators for the Digital Decade policy programme 2030

ETNO welcomes the opportunity to provide its comments to the Draft European Commission Implementing Act on the Key performance indicators for the Digital Decade Policy Programme 2030 (DDPP). The telecom industry is engaged in fulfilling the 2025 Gigabit and 2030 Digital Compass objectives.

The European Union’s Digital Targets are crucial and necessary to achieve a successful digital transformation and the governance system of the EC establishing the ‘Path to the Digital Decade’ and its enhanced monitoring system will be a step towards supporting the achievement of the EU Digital target.

However, ETNO would like to remind that a healthy telecom market is a prerequisite for the needed investments to meet the ambitious Digital Decade targets. This is especially true, as current evidence suggests that European fixed Gigabit coverage is expected to reach 90% in 2030, and will therefore risk falling short of the EU Digital target on ‘gigabit for everyone’1.

The targets are set for the benefit of the whole society and thus the key policy goal of EU and each member state should be to mitigate the large investment gap to support the industry meeting the targets.

As stated in the BCG report commissioned by ETNO2, and the report on “Shaping Policies to Support Investments in Very High Capacity Networks"3, the investment required to meet the connectivity targets are substantial. It has been estimated that an additional €150bn of investment is needed for full 5G rollout, while another €150bn is required to upgrade existing fixed infrastructure and roll out FTTH to gigabit speeds in Europe. The European Commission’s report “Shaping Europe’s Digital future”4 from 2020, i.e. before Covid 19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, indicates that for digital infrastructure and networks alone, the EU has an investment gap of €65bn per year.

Please find below amendment proposals from ETNO.

For questions and clarifications regarding this feedback, please contact Maarit Palovirta (palovirta@etno.eu) Senior Director Regulatory Affairs and Xhoana Shehu (shehu@etno.eu) Policy Manager at ETNO.