FORGET the information superhighway. The telecommunications revolution that is stirring the European soul at the moment has more basic roots.
Customers of monopolies and former monopolies are angry because a neglected aspect of Europe's deregulation of the industry by the beginning of 1998 is beginning to hit home.
While businesses will undoubtedly enjoy more choice and lower charges, phone bills will rise sharply for many Europeans as operators begin to bring the prices they charge in line with the real costs of running their networks.
European phone monopolies were for decades the pawns of politicians, who sometimes demanded more services but did not allow operators to pass on the costs to residential customers.
Instead cheap monthly rental fees and local call charges were offset by bloated long distance charges and high costs to industry for leasing lines for their internal networks.
But anticipating fierce competition for lucrative corporate accounts after deregulation, operators in continental Europe now hope they can cut prices quickly enough to head off competitors like AT&T and British Telecom (BT).
In industry jargon it is called "rebalancing" slashing long distance rates and raising local calling rates.
"In the past we had political telephone prices, just as earlier with the price of bread," Deutsche Telekom chairman Ron Sommer told the weekly magazine Der Spiegel.
"But we are getting ready for competition and we will only withstand it if we are competitive in long distance and international calls. Prices in these areas have to fall".
In response to questions on a German TV talkshow recently, Sommer said the soon to be privatised German company was still "losing billions" on its local networks because of low local rates.
Telekom introduced a new rate structure this year that lowers the long distance charges and raises basic connection fees and the costs of long local calls, sparking a storm of protest from consumers and the tabloid press.
Italy's state run operator,
Telecom Italia, also felt the wrath of angry customers this month after the government approved its plan to raise local calls an average 18.7 per cent and cut long distance charges 18.3 per cent.
British investment bank James Capel has identified Spain's Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom as the most expensive operators in Europe when matched against British Telecom.
Paul Ryb, telecoms analyst at the bank, said charges for a local three minute call for most European operators were just half of what they should be, while charges for business services and leased lines for businesses were far too high.
In a 1995 study to be repeated again this year, James Capel forecast that BT would lower bits overall rates 13 per cent over the three years leading up to 1998 when member nations of the European Union (EU) must deregulate their telecoms businesses. When European markets are opened, Deutsche Telekom business rates could still be 10 per cent higher than those of rival BT.
"Germany could become a mecca for competitive vendors in 1998 if their state of affairs is not addressed," Mr Capel said.
Whether companies like Deutsche Telekom will achieve the needed rate cuts is still an open question. With consumer, or voter, dissatisfaction rising, political bravery could wane and most of these operators are still state owned.
A poll by the Forsa group published this month said 83 per cent of Germans believe Telekom's new tariff system was not as fair as the previous structure. More than two thirds believe the government should force Telekom to take back the changes.
And governments in both Germany and Italy have announced they will take another look at the new tariffs.
. Muscovites will soon have to pay by the minute when they make phone calls, ending the current system of free calls (apart from a small monthly flat fee). A study by the Moscow phone company showed that 10 per cent of users clock up 2,000 to 3,000 minutes of conversation a month, compared with 75 per cent of people who talk about 600 minutes a month.