The European Broadband Competence Offices Network Support Facility
In this year’s BCO Network Activity Report, Jan Dröge, Lead of the BCO Network Support Facility, reflects on the highlights of the past year, considers the year ahead, and looks to the future of the BCO Network.
As we come to the end of our 2024-2025 programme, we look back on a year of committed engagement from the BCOs in leading discussions and exchanging their knowledge and experiences on the shared challenges and how to overcome them. BCO Ireland, in particular, hosted the Network for an excellent two-day workshop in Dublin, and BCOs France, Portugal, Germany and the Czech Republic shared valuable in-country initiatives in our online training sessions, held throughout the year and forming the backbone of our knowledge exchange and capacity building activities.
Responding to the needs of BCOs with coastal territories, we explored the intricacies of submarine cable infrastructure and EU support for its deployment. From this, the theme of security and resilience extended to 5G and satellite connectivity, the latter being particularly important for BCOs with mountainous territories. The topics of 5G and satellite connectivity lead us to quality of service, on which the Commission requested two important studies for the development of a measurement methodology to monitor the reality of services to end users. This in turn connected with the challenges of connecting the ‘last 1%’ and how involvement of rural stakeholders in policy preparation as well as in broadband projects themselves can improve outcomes. The Commission White Paper on Europe’s digital infrastructure needs also prompted forward-looking explorations on collaborative connected computing systems, known as the 3C network model.
These are only some of the many highlights from a busy and rewarding year, showcased in this annual report.
This brochure was developed as part of the European Broadband Competence Offices (BCO) Network’s work to raise awareness of EU support for high-speed broadband deployment and share good practices in broadband projects. Discover more interviews in the BCO Network YouTube playlist and more broadband good practices, news and resources in the BCO Network Library.