When competition's not enough

Ms Reding's mind may well have been concentrated by that meeting. Taiwan, and its regulator Bonnie Peng, have been squeezing shut Taiwan's rural/urban digital divide by extending broadband out to small villages with the aim of slowing the urban drift.

The upshot of that policy, plus major investment and government direction, is that 81 per cent of Taiwanese households enjoy broadband access and Taiwan is aiming to ensure that it becomes a 'citizen's right' along the lines of universal telephone access in many countries.

To that sort of end, Reding thinks more 'effective' competition is still needed in Europe and that it would benefit consumers and take us to the same place. She points out that 10 per cent of European citizens still have no access to broadband (even if they wanted it) and therefore more of the same medicine involving "new consumer rights and more effective competition are needed" to put Europe's digital economy "on track".

Reding's competition comments once again show that the one set of platitudes you can usually get from any player, any time of the night or day in this market, is the one marked "Competition: why it's good." Out it comes and it never gets challenged. Maybe it should.

There's nothing wrong with competition, but to rely on it alone (as surely the global banking crisis has shown) can create a perverse outcomes. In particular, to invoke competition as a palliative to difficult regulatory issues like neutrality is a mistake.