Enterprises in all industry sectors, from energy to finance, and healthcare to education, have spent years investing in a complex and costly arrangement of communications assets that are often distributed around the country, or even the world.

In an increasingly competitive global market, these same enterprises are fighting to restructure their network assets to attract an increasingly diverse client base. It's a struggle often carried out against the clock, as markets are squeezed by growing competition.

But IP network services and the increasing maturity of convergence technologies are allowing enterprises to focus on opportunities for service differentiation by introducing networks that provide local, long distance and mobile voice, data and internet services to businesses.

While industry authorities such as the EU are largely responsible for increasing and facilitating competition across markets, these same bodies are also instrumental in increasing the availability of tools to compete more efficiently.

Viviane Reding, the EU's Information Society Commissioner, recently confirmed the importance of ICT take-up across the economy from the largest down to the smallest business.

"Productivity gains at company level through innovations such as e-procurement are transforming business performance," she said.

The European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) has also asserted that facilitating the adoption of network services will introduce great benefits.

The message is clear: the adoption of broadband by businesses and consumers accelerates when the market opens up and more choice is made available for users.