Dutch snippets of the week

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Wireless Leiden sets up network in Turkey

The foundation Wireless Leiden, which has set up a wireless network in the city of Leiden is now exporting its knowledge and experience to Turkey. The foundation has established the largets free wireless citynetwork in The Netherlands in the town of Leiden (roughly 40 square kilometers and 100.000 inhabitants) and the villages around it. The city of Kazim Karabekir has 5.000 inhabitants. The network will provide video, voice-over-IP and Internet. The physical network will be built by the WiFi company Kogero.

KPN starts collaboration with Telefonica

The Dutch incumbent telco KPN will collaborate with the Spanish telco Telefonica in the field of international datanetworks. Through this cooperations KPN will extend its network capability to Latin-America, while Telefonica gets more access to Europe. The collaboration can be seen as a first start to more coorperation. In 1999/2000 both companies talked about a merger, but could not get to an agreement.

Parliament put the brakes on Big Brother legal storage duty

The Dutch parliament does not want a full out legal storage duty for ISPs. The Justice minister wants to have all the telephone calls and internet sessions stored by telcos and ISPs. However Parliament has forbidden the Justice minister to agree to the full European agreement. Recently the European ministers agreed for storage of the telephone calls over fixed and mobile lines. ISPs will be exempted for the time being.

Netherlands against trivial software patents

The Dutch government is against the limitless patenting of new software. The advice has been published in the frame work of a European proposal. The Netherlands will not ask to stop the negotiations on the directive. Big companies claim patents on hundreds of trivial software at this moment. Most of these patents do not contribute to technology and should not be recognised.

Netherlands broadest of all in Europe

The Netherlands has reached the top of the broadband ranking among the 25 EU memberstates. On average these 25 countries have a broadband population of 9 per cent. The Netherlands has 19 per cent of the population, with ADSL leading ahead of the TV cable. Worldwide, The Netherlands is the second country after South Korea.


Graph of the 25 EU member states on broadband

More mobiles than inhabitants

In The Netherlands there are more mobiles than inhabitants. Telecompaper counted 16,4 million mobiles at the end of March; 0,4 per cent more mobiles than inhabitants. In The Netherland incumbent KPN is the largest mobile operator with 38,7 per cent.