In the latter Bundesland ish is the operator of the broadband cable network.

KDG operates the former broadband cable network of Deutsche Telekom AG in all of Germany except in Bundesländer Hessen, Baden-Wuerttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia.

It is therefore important that an appropriate broadband communication infrastructure is available across the Union at an accessible cost.

Clearly the use and development of products and content-based services can only work if the appropriate infrastructure is available and capable of supporting broadband services.

In its broad economic policy guidelines, the Commission recommended that "Member States should:.ensure effective competition in local telecommunication networks (the 'local loop') in order to speed up the development of the European broadband network".

As well as continuing development of the integrated broadband network and stepping up the research effort on optical communications and synchronous/asynchronous switching systems, this new programme will concentrate on the following priority areas: a. Research and development on broadband communications; b. Intelligence in broadband networks, flexible communications resource management; c. mobile and personal communications; d. image and data communications; e. integrated services technologies; f. information security technologies; g. advanced communications experiments; h. verification tools (research and development area common ...[+++]to all other priority areas).