THE EUROPEAN BROADBAND PORTAL

The development of the EBP was initiated by the European Commission (DG Information Society & Media) following an open Call for Tender for the supply of a "Web Portal for Exchange of Good Practice for Broadband Deployment". The project commenced in January 2008 and lasted for a period of 30 months. Following a review and approval this second phase commenced in January 2011 and runs until December 2012.

The EBPII project seeks to animate a coherent on-line community of relevant stakeholders, providing them with the tools for effective sharing of experiences and good practices and a participatory environment for seeking common and shared solutions.

The European Broadband Portal aims to: 

• stimulate the exchange of best practices and the sharing of experiences;
• Utilise the broadband blueprints to deliver the practical solutions that change people’s lives
• facilitate demand aggregation and joint procurement;
• act as a central information platform, publishing calls for tender, expressions of interest, awards and other notices;
• become in this way a virtual meeting point between community broadband champions, suppliers and rural, urban, municipality, regional and national governments;
• permit sparsely populated areas to coordinate their demands for broadband, establishing a critical mass for technological solutions, next generation access and such as satellite, that provide large coverage.

Alignment to Digital Agenda - The EBPII blueprints are designed to “bridge the gap” from policy to practice, to bring solutions to life, to make a vision a reality, and to contribute directly to the Digital Agenda.

Our first blueprint is focused on broadband infrastructure development that can be applied in many contexts with “bottom-up” approaches being a primary example

The Portal provides its users with access to:

• Secure registration and login profile;
• News features updates daily and a monthly newsletter; Calendar and schedule of events;
• User noticeboard, Wiki, and user surveys;
• Chat forums and on-line thematic discussion groups;
• Access (for upload and retrieval) to searchable databases of
• broadband projects,
• broadband strategies & action plans,
• calls for tender and pre-notifications,
• industry suppliers,
• EU policy & regulation.
• Assessment, analyses and reviews of good practice broadband projects;
• Syntheses of good practice broadband projects and strategies;
• Guides to Good Practice on broadband deployment in under-served areas (To-Do Check List for public authorities which will be updated with broadband blueprints and regional workshops);
• Animation of on-line discussions and related fora;
• User participation in through these groups:
• Expert Advisory Group
• Industry Liaison Committee
• National Contact Points