By Paul Kirby EU reporter, BBC News

Viviane Reding wants wireless for all

The Information Society Commissioner believes the spread of wireless broadband is the "industrial tissue" required to expand Europe's economies.

As countries across Europe switch over from analogue television to digital, she sees the space being freed up as an ideal opportunity for the spread of wi-fi.

"Some of the spectrum will go to TV but some has to go to boosting wireless," she says.

Challenging the old firms

Before that can happen, the commissioner believes the telecom industries need a level playing field. And, flushed with the success of forcing down the cost of mobile calls abroad, Ms Reding is preparing for another challenge: taking on the major broadband suppliers whom she sees as building walls of protectionism to the expense of consumers..

The commissioner says the market is still dominated by Europe's former state monopolies and considers them as one in a series of bottlenecks obstructing progress towards a single European market.

According to the commission's figures, the big companies have an overall share of 55.6% of the broadband market and the proportion in Cyprus is as high as 89.9%.

She sees BT's separation of its network business from its other services as a blueprint for other countries. Other coutnries including Italy and Sweden, she says, are heading the same way.

But one of the biggest companies, France Telecom, believes that, in pushing for what's known as 'functional separation', the commission might be heading in the wrong direction.

Deutsche Telekom says it will hinder investment.

Viviane Reding says consumers are losing out because the regulators are too close to the companies they are supposed to oversee: "I am for the consumers and I'm going to be the one who is going to question this intimate relationship".

Pan-European regulator

I am prepared for a fight... because I don't care who's in the way" Viviane Reding European Commissioner

"I could have eliminated the regulators," she says. Instead she wants to haul all 27 of them in, sit them down and keep them in check with an over-arching regulator (European Telecom Market Authority).

The commissioner accepts it is an "uncomfortable intervention" and the UK regulator, Ofcom, says the existing structures are quite capable of doing the job.

In Germany, the deputy economy minister, Bernd Pfaffenbach, sees no point in a pan-European watchdog. "It seems like an ambitious, almost self-important goal," he says "to replace the undisputed expertise of the national regulators with... a new European agency."

Germany's opposition does not faze the commissioner: "I am prepared for any fight which in the end will be good for European citizens in particular and for the European market in general. Because I don't care who's in the way."

Cyber attack

The super-regulator would also help fight against cyber attacks which, in Viviane Reding's opinion, will become more and more common. Networks in Britain, France and Germany have all suffered and, in April this year, substantial areas of Estonia's government and private sector came to a standstill.

The commissioner wants a Chief Network Security Officer in place to co-ordinate Europe's response to any future assault. She has described her reforms as "a wake-up call which many are against" but she has served notice that she is prepared to take on her opponents.

Her success or failure may well be judged by the speed at which wi-fi spreads across Europe.