 |  "User experience rules"
Here is a resolutely modern expression that, for once, doesn't come from the French. Since, when Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page says that user experience primes above all, they are expressing one of the most fundamental truths of this early part of the 21st century: that user experience is capable of creating new kinds of reality. When the experience of a chauffer-driven car is so much better than a taxi ride, or when an open source encyclopaedia like Wikipedia is so much more accessible and well-documented than the good old Britannica, it creates new standards. Despite which States all too rarely take an experience-based approach, but typically remain rooted instead in the realm of the theoretical. So it is a major social challenge that we have before us: to rethink the user experience with the help of digital technology, to enable more efficient government action, and possibly propose new normative approaches.
Read the editorial in its entirety
Gilles Babinet, Digital Champion - European Commission, entrepreneur
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Regulation in action
Arcep keeps up the pressure on mobile rollouts in sparsely populated areas!
Because one of Arcep's top priorities us ensuring that every corner of the country is connected, in February 2016 the Authority created a scorecard on mobile rollouts in low-density areas. Updated quarterly, this scorecard provides a detailed snapshot of the series of rollout obligations that operators must meet:
- 2G and 3G rollouts in the 3,800 town centres that are part of the "Town centre - not-spot" programme " which were bereft of coverage at the time of the various censuses conducted since 2003, and to which operators must provide basic coverage (voice and mobile internet);
- 4G rollouts in sparsely populated areas, which concern more than 22,500 municipalities, or 18% of the population and 63% of France's land mass. Operators with a 4G licence (800 MHz band) are required to be covering 40% of the population in these areas by 17 January 2017.
The dashboard summarising operators' rollouts by quarter is available on the Arcep website, and all information is available in open data files.
Find out more (in French)
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On our radar
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Laure Lucchesi, Director of Etalab
The 2016 Open Government Partnership Global Summit has just come to a close in Paris. One of the key players behind this international event is Etalab, the federal government service that oversees the French State's open data and data sharing policies.
Etalab also manages the data.gouv.fr national portal on which Arcep regularly publishes its datasets as open data files.
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Arcep, telling it like it is
"The parcel market, and especially the cross-border parcel market, is as at the forefront of regulation. The European Commission has submitted draft regulation aimed at energising parcel traffic in Europe. A few figures: e-commerce represents €510 billion in Europe in 2016 (including €73 billion in France) but only 16% of this traffic today is cross-border.
To better understand this market, which represents a real growth opportunity for both the postal and e-commerce sectors, and to prepare Arcep's action plan in the follow-up to the draft regulation's adoption, the Authority created a team dedicated to this issue.
Our work is focusing on:
- co-chairing the working group devoted to cross-border parcel delivery within the European Regulator Group for Postal Services (ERGP), with the German regulator;
- roughly a dozen meetings with the sector's stakeholders, whether online shopping sites or retailers;
- the workshop held on 7 December that provided an opportunity for the players to compare their views on the changes at work;
- the publication in early 2017, in association with the Directorate-General for Enterprise (DGE), of a study on cross-border parcel shipments originating in France, for the purposes of e-commerce.
J. Coulier & A. Peroneau ("Mail, parcel & broadcast" department), T. Jeans & J. Gerbaud ("Europe & international" department), J. Siroteau & B. Amar ("Economy, markets & digital" department) & A. Gandar ("Legal affairs" department)
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Mark your calendar
GRACO annual conference - 10 January 2017
"Meeting the challenge of small businesses' digital transformation" is the theme of this year's GRACO (the discussion forum between Arcep, local authorities and operators) conference.
Information and registration (in French)
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5 to 8 January 2017 in Las Vegas
Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
... one of the world's biggest, if not the biggest, trade shows devoted to technology and innovation. CES is more than 3,600 exhibitors from the world over, 170,000 industry visitors and some 2,000 products and innovations on display every year. Sébastien Soriano, Chairman of Arcep and BEREC, the body of European regulators, will be on hand to take part in workshop titled: "Internet of Things: Benefits, Challenges and Opportunities"
Find out more
1 February 2017 in Brussels
BEREC Internet of Things workshop
One year after publishing its report on the Internet of Things, BEREC is hosting an experts workshop to take stock of the sector's progress. Questions regarding privacy, security, interoperability and connectivity will all be on the agenda, along with case studies of the transportation and energy sectors. The event will be live streamed on the BEREC website.
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