Brussels -- According to the European Commission, the number of broadband lines in the EU increased by 70 percent year-on-year to more than 40 million lines, according to the latest government figures. On average, more than 45,000 broadband lines were connected every day in the EU in 2004, a remarkable increase compared to the average of 29,000 lines per day recorded in 2003. EU Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding warned that many member states' performances have been patchy despite the fact that Europe's overall performance has been very strong. The Netherlands and Denmark lead the pack with penetration rates of 19 percent and 18 percent, respectively, but a second group of member states averages out at about 8 percent, while a third group has been unable to push its average rate above 6 percent, Reding said.
We know artificial intelligence consumes huge amounts of energy. The power grid is now a major concern in enterprise technology strategy, and it's reshaping decisions that used to belong entirely to the CIO. For three decades, capacity planning meant negotiating with a cloud provider or a colocation vendor. Today it increasingly means understanding utility interconnection queues, local zoning battles, and the willingness of hyperscale operators to build faster than the grid can comfortably absorb. New research from Synergy Research Group puts deep market data behind a trend every large enterprise buyer has already felt: the constraints are real, but the AI infrastructure build-out is not slowing down. Electric Power Grid Market Development Synergy's tracking shows that total U.S. data center capacity is on pace to double within the next three years, even as power availability and local opposition create genuine friction for new projects. It's a striking signal that demand ...