ABSTRACT
The development of the EU’s various Information Society (IS) initiatives after 1994 led to attempts to apply many of the approaches used during telecoms liberalisation to the wider communications sector, and meant that broadcastingand in particular digital broadcasting-began to be viewed as far more central to Commission concerns. This change in approach was consolidated after 1996 as increased awareness of the Internet fuelled interest in the regulatory implications of convergence within the European Commission and in wider international fora such as the OECD. Convergence was seized on by some policy makers as justifying the liberalisation of the entire communications sector, and the replacement of national broadcasting regulation with a new light-touch converged regulatory framework operating at the EU or international level. This chapter focuses on the origins and key elements of the convergence debate within the EU, and the extent to which convergence removed existing obstacles to the EU playing a greater part in the regulation of the broadcasting sector, while the subsequent chapter proposes a regulatory framework for the converging communications sector.
