Next generation network environments in Europe — The significance of the EU as a policy actor

The relatively new topic of Next Generation Networks (NGN) is one which is ascending rapidly communications policy agendas in Europe and beyond. How these networks might be created and, beyond that, how they might function in a sustained and broadly useful manner, and the implications of this, are issues which crystallise a raft of often complex policy concerns that have emerged, for at least a decade, in historically distant though increasingly connected quarters of electronic network communications. This article breaks new ground in the analysis of the emerging role of the EU by exploring EU NGN policy from a convergence infrastructural and content perspective. Whilst at this stage, despite new ‘policy packaging’, the EU's NGN policy activity is resonant of past telecommunications and audiovisual policies, the article contends that there are key areas where the EU can exercise considerable policy leverage through utilising a combination of formal legal and soft governance capacities. This has a greater chance of materialising how the more transnational NGN networks and services become.