Connect-World Complimentary edition, Europe II 2009 - ICT and the EU Innovation Agenda

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National developmentDigital Britain 3by Lord Stephen Carter, Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR)

Romania and the EU innovation agenda 6by Gabriel Sandu, Minister of Communications and Information Society, Romania

Regional development and innovationSpectrum-driven innovation - Europe’s great opportunity 9by Dániel Pataki - President of the Hungarian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, NHH (Nemzeti Hírközlési Hatóság) and Chairman of the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG)

Regulatory affairsPromoting telecom competition in Albania 11by Ilir Shehu, Chairman of Board and Executive Director, AKEP, Electronic and Postal Communications Authority, Albania

Digital dividendDividing the ‘digital dividend’ 14by Professor N. Alexandridis, President, Hellenic Telecommunications & Post Commission (EETT)

Satellite - regional developmentClosing the digital gap in Europe 16by Aarti Holla-Maini, Secretary General, European Satellite Operators’ Association (ESOA)

Internet marketsInnovating to reach the consumer 20by Dana Dunne, CEO, AOL Europe

ICT innovationInnovating at the speed of life 22by Larry Stone, BT President Group Public and Government Affairs

Complexity and innovation in the connected era 26by Stephen Murdoch, Vice President & General Manager, Large Enterprise Business Unit, Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA), Dell

Innovation stimulusThe EU innovation agenda and recovery package 29by Katie Miller, Director, Government Relations, EMEA, Nortel

Mobile service Mobile service intelligence 32by Mark Quinlivan, CEO, Carrier IQ

Mobile InternetMobile Internet opportunities abound 34by Sean MacNeill - Vice President & General Manager, Global Services and Support, Openwave

Satellite spectrumMobile satellite and spectrum harmonisation for innovation 37by Stewart White, CEO, Stewart White Consulting

Mobile data Change today for tomorrow’s demands 41by Ben McCahill, Director of Mobile Strategy, Tellabs

Digital advertising Advanced advertising - from concept to product 44by Tim Spencer, President, Sigma Systems

Internet PrivacyInternet privacy? 46by Andrei Korobeinik, CEO, Serenda Investments OU

ConnectionsFrom the Editor-In-Chief’s deskby Fredric J. Morris

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Europe issue II 2009 n 01

02 n Europe issue II 2009

CONNECTIONS

The theme of this issue of Connect-World Europe is ICT and the EU Innovation Agenda.

The EU has actively promoted innovation of all types through a series of programmes and conferences. The EU has committed over €2 billion to its plans for ‘Inventing the Future’ by promoting research and development in ICT, including its use in such leading edge fields as ICT-bio, photonics, robotics and cognition. The far-reaching EU development programmes promise to open new markets, new sectors, and bring new players.

This issue of Connect-World Europe tracks the progress and the promise of some of these important EU initiatives.

Fredric J. Morris, Editor-in-Chief, Connect-World

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means elec-tronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission from the publishers. The content of this publication is based on best knowledge and information available at the time of publication. No responsibility for any injury, death, loss, damage or delay, however caused, resulting from the use of the material can be accepted by the publishers or others associated with its preparation. The publishers neither accept responsibility for, nor necessarily agree with, the views expressed by contributors.

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ISSN 1468-0211

Connections

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National development

My goal as communications minister is to ensure Britain has a clear and achievable strategy in place to secure our position at the forefront of the digital economy. There is life after recession and we must make sure our companies are ready to take advantage of new opportunities when the market picks up.

The Digital Britain report, launched last month, lays down the strategic approach government should be taking to ensure Britain’s place at the forefront of the digital economy. Although only at an interim stage,

already one of the firm conclusions is that in order to reach that goal Britain needs a fundamental upgrade of our wired and wireless communications and broadcasting networks. This means action on spectrum, broadcasting and broadband.

Broadband is becoming an increasingly integral tool for almost every company. This demand means that broadband will inevitably become a core part of the UK’s infrastructure, just as roads and electricity networks are today. It is therefore essential that we, as a

Digital Britainby Lord Stephen Carter, Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting,

Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR)

The Digital Britain Report describes the strategic approach the government envision taking to ensure “Britain’s place at the forefront of the digital economy”. It makes clear the need for a fundamental upgrade of Britain’s wired, wireless and broadcasting network infrastructures. The plan calls for establishing universal broadband access within five years; it specifies minimum broadband speeds and the infrastructure needed to deliver broadband services throughout the country. Private investment is thought to be sufficient to pay for most of the new infrastructure.

Stephen Carter is the Minister for Communications, Technology & Broadcasting, Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR). Mr Carter served previously in a variety of high-level executive positions including: Group Chief Executive of Brunswick Group LLP; Founding Chief Executive of Ofcom, the Communications Regulator; Managing Director of NTL UK & Ireland; and as Managing Director & Chief Executive of J. Walter Thompson UK Limited. Mr Carter is a Past Chairman of the Marketing Group of Great Britain, Chairman of the Ashridge Business School, a Vice President of UNICEF UK and a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Stephen Carter was awarded a CBE in the 2006 Honours list for services to the Communications Industry. He is a law graduate from Aberdeen University and completed the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Programme.

“Broadband is becoming an increasingly integral tool for almost every company. This demand means that broadband will inevitably become a core part of the UK’s infrastructure, just as roads and electricity networks are today.”



nation, invest in high-speed broadband, both for our immediate economic needs and for those of future generations.

In today’s economic downturn, creating a comprehensive and cohesive digital infrastructure is absolutely fundamental to our economic development. The debate now is about how we get there.

The report provides a universal service commitment, ensuring minimum broadband connection speeds throughout the whole of the country. Establishing the correct infrastructure to deliver this is vital; it features right at the top of the Digital Britain agenda.

Our competitive market has taken broadband out to 99 per cent of the country, but speeds are variable. Last year BT said it would invest £1.5 billion in next generation services and Virgin is already in the process of upgrading its network to 50mbps by the end of this year.

Nevertheless, despite all the planned upgrades to infrastructure, we can expect only about 96 per cent of the country to be within reach of 2 Mb/s service by 2012.

If we are to achieve the aim of establishing universal broadband within the next five years, and maintain Britain’s status as a world leader in the global digital economy, then government requires an active and strategic approach. We need to identify what is standing in the way of a full rollout and how to help industry to establish the infrastructure needed.

In practice, I believe, we will develop plans for Universal Service Commitment to be effective by 2012 and delivered by a mixture of fixed and mobile, wired and wireless means. The independent Caio Review, published in September last year, found that the UK is well placed to deliver private investment in high speed broadband networks and the case for major government intervention was weak.

We also need to address the need for a Highway Code for our digital transportation networks. Rather than ‘regulation of the Internet’, it needs to be something more delicate that adequately reflects the need

to create a balance between freedom and mutuality, privacy and control and security and access. This poses a challenge for the traditional structures and line accountabilities of government, which, unsurprisingly, are not structured around the Internet. They can identify common issues, but these appear in different guises in different parts of many individual departments; this can result in a series of isolated initiatives that fail to deliver a strategic response to the big questions.

Economic conditions for investment are now the worst seen in many years, so we must look at ways the government can facilitate and finance the next generation of broadband without distorting the market by overlooking monopoly and sacrificing competition for investment.

Another pivotal element of the strategy will be making possible the widespread online delivery of public services, which will require both the universality of availability and the universality of participation. Today, the 70 per cent of individuals who are online at home and up to 99 per cent online at work are adapting to the digital world at a much faster pace than government, central or local, and their expectations have risen accordingly. A gap is opening up between individual citizens’ and businesses’ expectations of what broadband technology can do for them and the public sector’s ability to exploit and use those same capabilities. We need a radical step change in the way we think and act to prevent that gap becoming unacceptably wide.

At present, the take-up of e-government services by individuals is only slightly higher than the European average and take-up by businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises, is slightly below average. If we are successful in establishing universal broadband, the potential benefits to e-government are enormous - especially for a vast improvement in costs and efficiency.

This will only work, however, if we can ensure that the entire population is empowered to access and use digital media. We must aim for our e-skills to be amongst the top three globally. We will need to tackle the issue of why 40 per cent of those who can get broadband now choose not to take it.

When published in the early summer, the full Digital Britain report will bring together the government’s contributions in a coherent and focused form. I appreciate there has been criticism from some companies that we are not acting quickly enough, but it is essential that we use this time to work with businesses and determine the right course of action. The digital economy provides us with the opportunity to create thousands of new jobs and we cannot take our responsibility lightly. n

“Economic conditions for investment are now the worst seen in many years, so we must look at ways the government can facilitate and finance the next generation of broadband without distorting the market by overlooking monopoly and sacrificing competition for investment.”

Connect-World is celebrating its 12th anniversary

Through the years, Connect-World’s authors told of the rise of mobile, of fibre, of wireless and of broadband; they told of the dot.com meltdown, ofdigital inclusion and conver-gence, of standards and break-throughs, the rise of IP and the fall of switching and of the regulatory turnaround.

In every issue of Connect-World heads of state, ministers and regulators, heads ofinternational institutions and leaders of industry speak of what the ICT revolution, as it happens, means to the people in their regions of the world.

www.connect-world.com

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Romania and the EU innovation agenda by Gabriel Sandu, Minister of Communications and Information Society, Romania

Romania is developing a national ICT policy in compliance with EU policies. The ‘Digital Romania - eStrategy for an Information Society’ initiative and the National Broadband Strategy are the keystones of Romania’s ICT efforts. Among its priorities are eGovernment and projects for education, health, culture and tourism and a portal to integrate all cultural, tourist, historical, geographical, religious and territorial administrative information. Improved legislation and infrastructure projects are planned to encourage investment and promote partnerships between ICT sector researchers and academic institutions.

Gabriel Sandu is Romania’s Minister of Communications and the Information Society. He has been active in politics for the last ten years, and served as a deputy in the Romanian Parliament until being appointed to his current post. He is currently the Vice President of the Democrat-Liberal Party. Mr Sandu has also served as a member of the Executive Office of the Liberal Party, as the Vice President and secretary general of the UFD and as the President of the UFD, Prahova. Prior to his political career, he was the Vice President SC Elvila International SRL Bucharest, the Chairman of the Tracia Group and the Chief Import-Export Officer at Mizil Relax.

Gabriel Sandu graduated from Academy of Economic Studies with a degree in Economics.

A united European vision is required to develop our society, to modernise it, increase its competitiveness and help it grow in response to the significant transformation of today’s global economy. To comply with the EU’s common objectives, the Romanian Communications and Information Society policies are changing, in accordance with Romania’s specific conditions, to better accompany the changes the Information Society is imposing upon the European region and the world.

Romania’s strategic concept

In Europe and throughout the world, ICT is considered one of the most efficient and practical means to reduce the effects of the

current global crisis. Today, it is important to find solutions for the problems that the crisis is causing by using whatever advantages the Information Society and new technologies can bring to create new jobs.

In accordance with our national strategy, ‘Digital Romania - eStrategy for an Informational Society’, we will be promoting a number of specific strategies intended to create opportunities and produce added value through new and improved information and communications services. The strategies will be implemented following concrete action plans, which will set forth the specific objectives, responsibilities and the necessary means for developing an information society in Romania.

The transition to the Digital Television Strategy will significantly improve the quality of services and extend the range of available services as well.

Widespread access to broadband Internet is a critical need; our ‘Information Society for All’ programme intends to double Broadband Internet access in the country.

The National Broadband Strategy is the subject of a comprehensive document now being refined and elaborated. The document will include an analysis of Romania’s ICT needs, set forth the general principles, major goals and strategic objectives for ICT development, and provide an action plan for the implementation of widespread broadband


Mobile accessMobile payment systemsMobile accessNational development

access. Taking into account the importance and large scale applications of this strategy, we are consulting all the partners and players in the market prior to completing the document. In parallel, we intend to implement the eRomania project - with strong eGovernance and eTax components - in an integrated, distinct and coherent manner.

All of these initiatives and actions are being undertaken as part of our commitments as a European Union member; we are developing the domestic ICT market in full compliance with the applicable European Union market rules.

Priorities

To ensure the effective and practical implementation of our strategic programmes for Information Society technologies, we have identified several priorities for future action.

Within an integrated framework, our main priority is to provide all Romanian and European citizens with access to public information and give them the ability to obtain any specific document, instantly, by using online eGovernment services.

The National Broadband Strategy is currently a high priority because it can generate added value and new jobs. Our strategic action priorities are directly connected to the relevant European Union anti-crisis programme elements such as investment in developing our broadband Internet infrastructure.

Another priority is the enhancement of integrated services; this will create conditions for interoperability between the systems of various national institutions and the development of both the Information Society and of a national information and communications technology (ICT) competence cluster. The ITC sector has a significant growth rate and it is an important contributor to our GDP. It also represents a very attractive field for both foreign investments and for players in the local market who have developed into regional leaders. In this context, broadband communications represent an important factor in the progress towards a new knowledge-based economy; it contributes

to economic development, helps create new jobs and improves the quality of life.

Together with a number of other public authorities, we will finalize and implement a number of eGovernance projects in the fields of education, health, culture and tourism. The eEducation project will provide for the translation all of the school curricula into an electronic format and will help modernize educational instruments. The eEducation project is likely to become one of the most popular widely used features of the eRomania programme.

The eRomania project will also create a portal to integrate all cultural, tourism, historical, geographical, religious and territorial administrative information. The portal will also centralise all types of information useful to the citizen and give them access to public electronic services available from national and local sources.

We are working on a range of projects to improve legislation and have identified the infrastructure projects needed to encourage ICT investors. One of our priorities in this respect is to stimulate the search for innovation solutions to market, technological and social needs by encouraging cooperation and partnerships between ICT sector research and development activities and academic institutions.

Strengthening relations with strategic operators is an important priority for the Romanian government, especially during this time of crisis when it is especially important to maintain existing jobs and create new ones by encouraging private initiative.

The digital divide that exists between the urban and rural areas and between generations is an important problem in Romania. The problem of eSkills is a sensitive one; it will be necessary to educate the population, to help evolve the public mentality, and to help citizens understand and develop the ability to use new information technologies. The development of user-friendly, native language, applications and content will be a vital part of any programme designed to accelerate the popular adoption of ICT-based services.

The absolute necessity for the insertion of ICT within the educational process and the lives of citizens is obvious. The use of information technologies is making firm progress and the ability and willingness of citizens to use these technologies in their everyday lives is increasing, but an increased focus on training people to make effective use of Information Society tools is still a vital priority.

The development of programmes that promote the widespread use of ICT will lead to more efficient solutions for many of the daily problems our citizens face and improve the quality of the lives they lead. n

“The National Broadband Strategy is currently a high priority because it can generate added value and new jobs. Our strategic action priorities are directly connected to the relevant European Union anti-crisis programme elements such as investment in developing our broadband Internet infrastructure.”






Telephony Ad5.indd 1 24/2/09 17:14:02


Regional development and innovation

At the end of the 1980s, just as Europe was on a political push to complete the EU single market, Member States agreed to reserve some radio spectrum bands for the exclusive use of GSM technology.

This decision provided a tremendous boost for the telecoms industry as it sought to develop innovative, cheap, but high-quality mobile communications services across the whole of the EU - services which whole new swathes of citizens could benefit from as national borders were torn down.

These developments ultimately turned the EU into the world leader in the telecoms industry, a position it held for the following 20 years.

The importance of spectrum

So, what was the key to this success?

It was, in large part, due to the cross-border availability of high-quality spectrum, which drove European telecoms companies into innovating and developing new technologies and services. And the pre-condition for this success was simple: Member States agreed

to coordinate their decisions on spectrum allocation, rather than taking individual national decisions.

Why, at that time, did Member States decide to look beyond national boundaries? To better understand it, we need to explain what spectrum is about.

Spectrum is a cross-border resource that is scarce; it is also a public good. Spectrum needs to be regulated so it is not wasted, but in a Europe with no borders, only coordination can ensure it fully achieves its EU-wide potential.

Spectrum-driven innovation - Europe’s great opportunity

by Dániel Pataki - President of the Hungarian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, NHH (Nemzeti Hírközlési Hatóság) and Chairman of the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG)

The EU’s allocation of spectrum to GSM mobile technology provided an enormous boost to innovation that made Europe the leader in mobile telecommunications for almost 20 years. The digital dividend - the frequencies freed by the transition from analogue to digital television - once again gives the EU the opportunity to allocate spectrum in a way that will stimulate innovation, provide its citizens with access to low cost services and put Europe at the forefront of the wireless revolution.

Dániel Pataki is the President of the Hungarian Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, NHH (Nemzeti Hírközlési Hatóság) and the 2008-2009 Chairman of the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG), which advises the European Commission on spectrum and brings together the EU’s 27 national spectrum authorities. In 2008, Mr Pataki chaired the European Regulators Group (ERG). as the Deputy Secretary of State in charge of communications, he elaborated Hungary’s new acts on Electronic Communications and on the Post.

Prior to joining the government he held various positions at Total, Andersen and Vivendi Telecom Hungary.

Dániel Pataki graduated from the Budapest University of Economics and completed a postgraduate management program in Paris.


Regional development and innovation

Spectrum was a tremendous enabler back in the 1980s. Member States seized their opportunity to stimulate growth. Today, Europe’s politicians and regulators face a similar situation with spectrum, yet this time the stakes are far higher.

The world is going through a severe recession that all experts say will last some time. Europe is losing its leadership role on telecoms; the United States is leading the fourth mobile generation, not Europe. The Lisbon Agenda’s objective to make the EU the most competitive, knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010 is far from being achieved, but now is a time when radio spectrum could once again spearhead Europe’s innovation and growth.

Innovation and growth in the ICT sector can benefit the economy as a whole. To achieve this, the EU must tackle two decisive, interrelated, spectrum issues - first, what to do with the digital dividend and, second, how to develop wireless broadband?

If we can give a satisfactory answer to these questions the future of Europe’s ICT industry, and of Europe’s economy as a whole, looks promising. The European Commission, well aware of these challenges, is working on both issues and plans to come up with proposals by the end of the year. We, the national spectrum authorities, gathered together in the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG), believe these issues are of upmost importance and are committed to shaping the forthcoming decisions on spectrum.

The RSPG advises the European Commission on high-level political issues related to spectrum. Created in 2002 it brings together the spectrum authorities of the 27 EU Member States. We act as a platform for debate amongst all spectrum stakeholders. We hold a unique position. We are both technical experts with an in-depth knowledge of the local market and we have a global vision of EU spectrum policy and political issues. We are in close contact with spectrum users and policy-makers at national, EU and international levels. We are ideally positioned to advise policy makers and ensure progress is made to the benefit of consumers.

Digital dividend

2009 is the year to decide what to do with the so-called digital dividend, the frequencies which will be freed-up when the EU’s Member States switch from analogue to

digital broadcasting, a process set to be complete by 2012. The additional spectrum made available by this shift could stimulate businesses to innovate, developing new, cheaper, better and wide-ranging services at the same time everywhere in Europe, bringing real added value to European consumers.

One such example is the very promising LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology. If granted enough radio spectrum, this technology could achieve its full potential, and provide access to quality mobile voice and high bandwidth data services to every citizen and businesses anywhere in the EU.

In order for this to happen, though, some tough decisions need to be taken regarding how to apportion the digital dividend. There are a number of challenges that need to be addressed: different timeframes in different Member States; the risk of Member States taking individual, not collective, decisions; what neighbouring countries and international spectrum organisations will do; and how to balance the (apparent) conflicting interests of different parts of the industry. The question here is not about privileging one industry over the other! We should not pre-empt spectrum for any specific use, as we cannot know which direction the most innovative services and technology will take. Service and technology neutrality must be ensured. Also on the institutional front - what is important is not who, or which, body makes the necessary decisions; what is important is to make sure that these decisions are taken.

All these challenges, but also the vast potential up side, are why I have made the digital dividend a priority for my RSPG Chairmanship. We are currently working on constructive, workable solutions. We will present our first findings, to feed into the Commission’s roadmap on digital dividend, in our plenary session on May 13. I am convinced the RSPG’s opinion will be a useful contribution to the debate and will pave the way for a coordinated solution that I believe will be acceptable to all stakeholders.

Wireless broadband

Wireless broadband also features high on the agenda of my RSPG Chairmanship. Wireless broadband has great potential for innovation and growth. It is inextricably linked to the

digital dividend debate as some of the bands freed up by the digital switchover could be used to develop it.

Wireless broadband is a real chance for Europe. It could help bridge the digital gap within Europe. It is especially useful in remote areas where other technologies would be rather expensive to provide broadband connection. It also plays an important role satisfying the market demands due to the increasing mobility of users.

Developing wireless broadband networks requires far less costly infrastructures than fibre networks, and can ensure good quality service. It could give high-speed Internet access to everyone, everywhere, support the spread of ICT and make Europe a real knowledge-based economy. Wireless broadband could reinforce competition between networks, technologies and services, to the benefit of consumers.

The European Commission’s 14th telecoms progress report published on March 25 says that not only is mobile broadband taking off in the EU, it is already becoming a viable alternative to fixed broadband in some EU countries!

Yet here again a number of obstacles lie in our way, and again unilateral decisions must be avoided. The RSPG is currently working on this issue and will come up with a position paper on May 13. As strategic adviser to the Commission, we will provide concrete proposals and ideas that we hope will be reflected in the Commission’s forthcoming roadmap on wireless broadband.

The EU stands at a crossroad. As it did more than 20 years ago, the EU must seize the opportunity offered by the spectrum to regain its leading position in the telecoms sector. To do so it must take decisions on spectrum that are acceptable to all while enabling innovation - and it must take them now. We at the RSPG believe spectrum-driven innovation is a golden opportunity for Europe. Innovation is a tremendous source of growth, and this is particularly true for the ICT sector, but we must act now or we run the risk of lagging behind and depriving Europe of a promising way forward on the path to economic recovery. n

“Wireless broadband is a real chance for Europe. It could help bridge the digital gap within Europe.”


Regulatory affairs

The electronic communications market in the Republic of Albania is currently one with very fast and variable dynamics. The market is undergoing important changes not only from the regulatory point of view, but also in terms of service quality and variety, tariff reductions for network users, total market liberalization and the like. These changes have created favourable conditions for fair and effective competition in this market.

Referring to the legal framework, which regulates relationships in the electronic and postal communications market, law No. 9918, ‘On Electronic and Postal Communications in the Republic of Albania’ entered into force in June 2008. It replaced

the previous law ‘On Telecommunications in the Republic of Albania’. The new law is one of the most fundamental and important measures undertaken in this market by the Council of Ministers. This expression of sector policy is in compliance with the National Plan for Implementation of the Stabilization Association Agreement, and it approximates our national legislation with that of the EU acquis communitaire. The law is framed within the spirit of approximation with the regulatory framework for electronic communications of the European Community (Directive 2002/EU).

With regard to secondary legislation, the project for Communications Regulation

Development funded by EBRD/EU is assisting AKEP in the process of drafting and completing the supporting sub legal framework for the implementation of the law on electronic and postal communications. Hence, from the legislative point of view, we can proudly say that we are optimally positioned and developed for a country like Albania, which aspires to become a member of the greater European family.

In the fixed telephony market, after the successful privatization of the biggest operator in the country Albtelecom S.A., and the great investments made the infrastructure and services of the network, the system - and its penetration rate - continues to grow

Promoting telecom competition in Albaniaby Ilir Shehu, Chairman of Board and Executive Director, AKEP, Electronic and

Postal Communications Authority, Albania

Last year, Albania’s government passed a law that changed the regulatory framework for the telecommunications sector. The law, which basically follows EU directives and policies, established AKEP, an independent regulatory agency. AKEP has been moving forward vigorously to increase competition in the sector. The recent granting of a license to a third mobile operator and regulations controlling the tariffs charged by operators with significant market power, for example, was quite successful; it also significantly reduced the tariffs for mobile services.

Ilir Shehu is the Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of AKEP, Albania’s Electronic and Postal Communications Authority. For many years he has been a part time professor at the Polytechnic University as well as at the Military Academy. Until his current appointment by the Albanian Assembly Mr Shehu served as the Head of the Inspection Sector at AKEP. Prior to AKEP, Mr Shehu worked for the Albanian government in the National Intelligence Service, as Head of Sector responsible for the implementation of Information Systems at ICA, and as the Director of Communications Systems in the Ministry of Defence.

Ilir Shehu graduated in Electronics from the Polytechnic University of Tirana; he also earned a degree in Economics from Tirana University.


Regulatory affairs

into a modern network offering a wide variety of services. Albania’s liberalization policy was strongly encouraged and supported by the Council of Ministers’ policy through legislation. After removing licensing barriers and implementing the new General Authorization regime, there has been substantial growth of fair and effective competition in the fixed telephony market. This has brought performance and quality improvements for both local and regional operators, an increase in the number of new undertakings and services in the spirit of technological convergence as well as other alternatives offered by the most advanced technology in this field as well as tariff reduction.

The mobile telephony market, which is also much more sensitive with regard to its subscribers, is currently in a dynamic process of tariff reduction and is evolving into an increasingly effective and fair market. The start of the third mobile operator, Eagle Mobile, has been much quicker than expected. AKEP’s intervention, implementing tariff regulation for the other two mobile operators - AMC and Vodafone Albania - has been quite satisfactory and has resulted in the reduction of service tariffs.

Due to changes in the legislation, the rise of public awareness and the influence of the government new projects in education, public services, protection of public order and the like have flourished. This has largely been due to concrete action by the government to encourage such projects by creating an attractive tax and fiscal environment. Policies and actions such as these have also stimulated the rapid development of the Internet service providers market.

Tariffs in the mobile telephony market have been reduced compared to the previous period since Eagle Mobile started to offer its services competitively and AKEP implemented its tariff regulations for SMP’s (companies with significant market power) AMC and Vodafone Albania.

Tariffs for services offered by AMC for national calls of the ALBACARTA programme were reduced as follows:

4% for AMC on net calls, first • minute;57%, for AMC on net calls, second • minute;68% for AMC on net calls, over two • minutes;20% for off net calls, first minute;•

53% for off net calls, second minute;• 63% for off net calls, over two • minutes;22% for calls to fixed networks, first • minute;48% for calls to fixed networks, • second minute; and59% for calls to fixed • networks, over two minutes.

Tariffs for services offered by Vodafone Albania for national calls using its Vodafone Card programme were reduced as follows:

24% for Vodafone Albania on net • calls, PEAK;3% for Vodafone Albania on net calls, • OFF-PEAK;24% for off net calls; and• 26% calls to fixed networks.•

A very important change for both major mobile telephony operators (AMC and Vodafone Albania) is the reduction of the minimal chargeable time from 30 seconds to 15 seconds, which together with the reduction of per minute tariffs, substantially reduces expenses for short calls.

As part of their sector development plans, The Council of Ministers and AKEP have considered the emergence of a fourth operator in the market as essential to increase competition, improve quality and expand the range of services. More important, this will provide services for those with special needs, in accordance with international standards for alternative services. The fee for these services will not, in any case, be higher than the average fees in the EU countries. The public tender for the frequencies in the E-GSM and GSM 1800 bands called for presenting and opening the bids on 20 February 2009.

The law on electronic communications defines AKEP also as a regulatory body for the supervision of the postal service market in the Republic of Albania. This is a novelty for this institution and in this respect the Ministry of Public Works Transport and Telecommunications (MPWTT) and AKEP are taking the first steps towards exercising our competencies and taking on legal responsibility. Since supervision of postal services was not included in the duties and functions of TRE, the precursor institution, AKEP has initiated its work by taking organizational measurements in order to build the structures and the necessary administrative and human capacity. On the other side, in order to define the legal competencies of

AKEP in the implementation of the legal obligations, the MPWTT as the line ministry has undertaken the legal initiative to change the law for postal services; this is actually at the stage of consultation with the interested parties and very soon will be passed to the Assembly.

Another specific aspect for the market as well as for AKEP is the ‘.AL Domain’ administration. At present, AKEP administers the .AL Domain based on regulations approved in accordance with the new law on electronic communications. Importantly, the servers enabling this service for the domain were transferred from Pizza, Italy to Tirana this month. This transfer marks the accomplishment of one of the duties assigned to AKEP by the government and the Assembly of Albania. This, considering the importance of maintaining and guaranteeing extremely high security, is a barometer of the progress achieved in the electronic communications sector and the attention paid by the Council of Ministers and the Assembly to the advance and development in this field.

There are many challenges ahead in the electronic communications market, among the most important is the realization of the legal obligation to provide universal service access, number portability, improvement and development of leadership, administrative and professional capacities.

Universal service, providing a base package of affordable telephony services even for users in need of residing in remote regions within the territory of the Republic of Albania, is one of the highest priorities for 2009.

Secondly, offering number portability is an indispensable legal requirement and an important part of Albania’s commitment in the framework of the EU’s SAA (Stabilisation and Association Agreements), is under way. AKEP has drafted the respective regulation, which has been published for public consultation.

The biggest challenge is to guarantee the manpower to accomplish the other goals. The improvement and development of AKEP’s leadership, administrative and professional capacities is the key to strengthening its independence and performance as a regulatory body.

AKEP’s primary job remains the supervision of the electronic and postal communications market with the aim of creating a real, effective, fair and competitive market. n


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5_9_october_2009_210X297mm.indd 1 4.12.2008 17:43:40


Digital dividend

Dividing the ‘digital dividend’by Professor N. Alexandridis, President, Hellenic Telecommunications & Post Commission (EETT)

The transition from analogue to digital broadcasting will free significant amounts of spectrum for other uses; digital channels use one-fourth the bandwidth of analogue channels. The freed spectrum, or ‘digital dividend’ can be used for many new and better services and can have an important social impact if wisely apportioned. Greece and other EU countries are reserving part of the dividend for new TV services, mobile TV, a wide range of public interest services and for stimulating economic growth.

Dr N. Alexandridis is the President, Hellenic Telecommunications & Post Commission (EETT). Dr Alexandridis devoted most of his career to academic positions including Professor of the first Chair of Computer Science in Greece at the School of Engineering of the University of Patras; Professor of Digital Systems and Computers at the National Technical University of Athens; and as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the George Washington University, Washington DC.

Dr Alexandridis has published many works in international scientific journals and conferences. He is the author of 12 textbooks including three in English. He was a founding member and the first President of the Greek Computer Society. He is a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece, is listed in a number of versions of Who’s Who, and has received many honours and awards.

Dr Alexandridis graduated from Anatolia College. He earned his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Ohio University and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

In finance, a dividend is the proportion of the earnings of a corporation paid out to shareholders. With the coming of digital television and digital broadcasting, another dividend, of the digital kind, is expected to accrue for the benefit of society. It is commonly referred to, in political and technical circles, as the digital dividend.

The transition from analogue to digital broadcasting will lead to significant gains in spectrum efficiency since the spectrum required for a digital channel is about one-fourth of that required for an analogue one. Once all analogue TV channels have been switched to digital, there will be free spectrum - the digital dividend - which could be used for a range of new or improved services:

• Extension of mobile communications coverage • Ubiquitous broadband access through wireless broadband• Mobile TV services• Enhanced social services (e-government, e-health, e-education, etc)• High-definition TV• Others to be defined in time

A European Commission communication (May 2005) on, ‘accelerating the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting’, proposed early 2012 as the deadline for closing down analogue terrestrial broadcasting. It also encouraged member states to develop plans for the optimal use of the digital dividend so that new types of

electronic communications services could be developed.

This was followed in November 2007 by another communication on ‘reaping the full benefits of the digital dividend in Europe: a common approach to the use of the spectrum released by the digital switchover.’ The Commission proposed a coordinated EU approach to ensure optimal use of the digital dividend.

Finally, on September 24, 2008, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the Commission’s communication of November 2007. The positions of the Parliament can be summarized as follows:


Mobile accessMobile payment systemsMobile accessDigital dividend

1. “Calls for close cooperation among member states to achieve an efficient, open and competitive electronic communications internal market…”

2. “Is convinced that new multi-play packages… may soon be offered due to increased technological convergence, and at the same time observes that the emergence of those offers depends crucially on the availability of valuable spectrum…”

3. “Emphasizes that the digital dividend provides the European Union with unique opportunities to develop new services… and to remain a world leader in mobile multimedia technologies…”

4. “Calls on the Member States to develop, following a common methodology, national dividend strategies by the end of 2009…”

5. “Acknowledges the right of Member States to determine their use of the digital dividend, but also affirms that a coordinated approach at Community level greatly enhances the value of the dividend and is the most efficient way to avoid harmful interference between Member States…”

6. “Emphasizes that Member States may consider technology-neutral auctions for…allocating frequencies that are liberated because of the digital dividend and making those frequencies tradable… in full compliance with ITU radio regulations…”

7. “Supports a common, balanced approach to the use of digital dividend, allowing both broadcasters to continue offering and expanding their services and electronic communications operators to use this resource to deploy new services addressing other important social and economic uses, but stresses that… the digital dividend should be allocated on a technology-neutral basis.”

8. “Urges the Commission to undertake, in cooperation with the Member States, the appropriate technical, socio-economic and cost-benefit studies to determine the size and characteristics of the sub-bands that could be coordinated or harmonized at Community level…”

The Commission’s legislative proposal is expected in 2009.

It must be emphasized that the size of the digital dividend will vary from country to country due to geographical and cultural reasons. The following is an attempt to

describe the situation on a country-by-country basis from Cullen International.

Most EU countries will have completed the transition to all-digital broadcasting by 2012. Six of them have already decided the size of their digital dividend: Finland at 189MHz (for broadcasting and for “digital broadband mobile”); Sweden at 149MHz (for broadcasting and electronic communications); Czech Republic at 100 MHz (for broadcasting, mobile broadcasting and mobile services); Norway at 458MHz (for local radio, broadcasting and electronic communications); France at 72MHz (for audiovisual services mainly, and for mobile communications); and Great Britain at 123MHz (Ofcom has proposed a market-based, technology- and service-neutral approach to the award of the digital dividend, stating that the dividend is most suitable for mobile TV, mobile broadband and TV broadcasting, including HDTV).

In Greece, the government announced that digital terrestrial television services could officially be launched on November 1, 2008. Services should be available nationwide and offer content from both the public service broadcaster ERT (Hellenic Radio and Television) and commercial broadcasters.

As a next step, the government will invite commercial broadcasters to tender for digital television licenses.

In addition, the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the Ministry for Media, with the help of a consultant, will produce a new frequency plan to allow for the introduction of digital television services. A draft was issued in summer 2008. The size and use of the digital dividend is currently being investigated. The Hellenic Telecommunications and Posts Commission (the telecommunications regulator in Greece) has commissioned a study to identify possible uses of any digital dividend in the country after the transition to all-digital broadcasting.

Since January 2006, ERT (Hellenic Radio and Television) has tested digital television services on a trial basis in Athens, Thessaloniki and Thessaly and offered viewers access to its Prism, Cine+ and Sport+ services. The trial used the MPEG-2 compression format.

On February 2009, at the conference organized by the Hellenic Telecommunications and Posts Commission on the Digital Dividend, we stressed the following points for the

smooth transition to digital broadcasting and the best utilization of the digital dividend in Greece:

• the right political decisions must be made now so that this “once in a generation” golden opportunity for spectrum redistribution is fully taken advantage of to transform the lives of the citizens of Greece;• the state must decide very soon how the digital dividend will be used to satisfy the ever-increasing need of the citizenry for coverage of mobile voice communications everywhere and for continuous uninterrupted access to the Internet, television programming and multimedia services;• decisions relative to the use of the digital dividend should be harmonized, to the extent possible, with those made by other Member States of the European Union; and• finally, decisions with regard to the allocation of the digital dividend should be based on five basic principles:

1. maximization of benefits to the citizenry2. assurance of flexibility in the use of the digital dividend3. establishment of a stable and predictable regulatory environment, which will trigger new investments and the creation of novel services4. technological neutrality; and5. harmonization, to the degree possible, with the rest of the European Union.

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, in addressing the ComReg Conference in Dublin on October 1, 2008, stated the following:

“For me, the conclusion is clear: broadcasting must get an important share of the digital dividend so that it can develop new services, in particular High Definition TV and also interactive services and mobile TV. But it is also clear that we also need to reserve a large share of the dividend for other public interest services and for stimulating economic growth…

“I have two suggestions to make: First, let us jointly choose a political figure for the distribution of the digital dividend. I propose a ‘fair play’ 50:50 rule. That is, half the dividend for the broadcasters and half the dividend for the new users. A bold step like this will show the world that we mean business. This is the only way we will cut the knot and make real progress. Second, let’s move ahead together on spectrum. Together Europe is strong, divided it will fail to reap the rewards of the digital dividend.” n


Satellite - regional development

Closing the digital gap in EuropeBy Aarti Holla-Maini, Secretary General, European Satellite Operators’ Association (ESOA)

EU has set broadband Internet access as one of the goals of the i2010 strategy. Many EU programmes, including e-Health and e-Education, depend on networks capable of transmitting large quantities of data at high speed. Nevertheless, it is difficult to economically bring broadband service to people in remote areas. Satellite connectivity can easily and economically resolve this problem, but two EU policies - technology neutrality and structural funding for individual regions - currently block EU funding for satellite broadband deployment programmes.

Aarti Holla-Maini is the Secretary General of European Satellite Operators’ Association (ESOA); she has worked for many years in the aerospace industry, especially with satellite business strategy and the legal aspects of technological development. She has been the secretary general of ESOA since 2004. Previously, she worked in Brussels representing Galileo Industries where she worked closely with European Institutions on the development of the public-private partnership scheme and management aspects of the Galileo programme. Ms Holla-Maini started her career in the aerospace industry at DaimlerChrysler Aerospace (now EADS) in Munich, Germany.

Aarti Holla-Maini holds an MBA from HEC in France, a diploma in German law from the University of Passau, Germany and a law degree from King’s College at the University of London.

Nearly 200 million of all European citizens do not use the Internet at all and 230 million households in the Union still do not have access to the World Wide Web. The statistics cause even more alarm when we consider the differences between urban and rural areas, and also when we compare individual Member States. In countries such as Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, more than 60 per cent of the population does not use the Internet, whereas in Denmark or the Netherlands, that percentage goes down to just over ten per cent.

i2010 strategy

These are just some of the results published in the mid-term review of the i2010 strategy

and although some figures look discouraging, in fact a lot of progress has been made over the last few years. Launched in 2005 as an integral part of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy for a knowledge-based society, this plan brings together all the policies and initiatives aimed at boosting the use and benefits of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

A lot more still remains to be done however and the mid-term review makes it very clear: “Europe needs to shift up a gear to lead the transition to the next generation networks while not slacking off in its effort to overcome the digital divide.” The case is especially true when we talk about broadband connectivity, which the EU has set as one of the goals of the i2010 strategy.

Broadband connectivity

The speed and capacity of broadband turns the Internet into a powerful communication tool for both consumers and business, as well as into a source of information and research. Sixty per cent of public services in the EU are fully available online and there are revolutionary programmes being implemented in areas such as e-Health and e-Education. They depend on a network capable of transmitting large quantities of data at the fastest speed possible.

Broadband - used already by 20 per cent of the EU population as of January 2008 - is clearly becoming the standard mode of connectivity. Despite continuous growth over


Mobile accessMobile payment systemsMobile accessSatellite - regional development

the last few years, penetration is slowing down and the gaps between Member States in terms of take-up, speed, price and coverage are widening. Broadband penetration in northern countries such as Denmark, Finland, Holland and Sweden exceeds 30 per cent of the population while in Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia, Greece and Romania it accounts for even less than ten per cent.

The reasons for this are many. Firstly socio-economic barriers in several Member States result in lower skills and correspondingly lower interest and need for advanced technological services. Secondly: speed, price and coverage. It may take a few years to balance social disparities across Europe but improving on the availability and affordability of access should be feasible within a reasonable timescale.

Technology neutrality to the test

The European Union’s approach to improve access to broadband connectivity and other ICT-related services has been exclusively pinned on the notion of ‘Technology Neutrality’. This principle aims at maintaining a level competitive playing field by not favouring any particular technology. Based on that idea, legislators have long hoped to stimulate competition among the different alternatives capable of delivering broadband connectivity, which would eventually result into wider areas of coverage, better services and lower prices.

Some countries, and especially highly populated urban areas, in which there were already competing technologies, have benefited enormously from competition. The bundling of products including broadband access, telephony and/or television is also becoming more and more common in many of those highly developed regions. The growth rate of DSL, still the most common system for broadband in Europe, has started to decline and some new alternatives are increasing their market share.

Despite the promising figures, the EU strategy to spread the use of broadband has not been able to solve the differences between the most and the least developed Member States, nor between rural and urban areas. The rollout of DSL and cable is accelerating in European cities but in the remotest parts of the Union the deployment of those technologies is,

at best, not commercially attractive and, at worst, substantially more expensive than other alternatives.

That is why policy-makers should not be held back in the name of ‘technology neutrality’ from promoting technologies, such as satellite that are not only optimally suited to respond to many public sector requirements, such as emergency response, but are also a proven infrastructure that can quickly bridge the geographical digital divide - reaching out to Europe’s islands, mountains and villages - in a cost-effective way. Satellites are a natural complement to existing land-based technologies, both wired and wireless, taking one step further to ensure that access to broadband is available to all European citizens.

Geographical digital divide

There are two types of digital divide: social and geographical. The first depends on a multitude of educational, cultural, and socio-economic factors that need to be tackled using a long-term approach. The latter can be eradicated thanks to technologies that have a global reach and that do not depend on the deployment of lengthy and costly terrestrial infrastructure to access those remote and scarcely populated areas of very little commercial interest to service providers.

As has been seen with broadband penetration, broadband coverage has also rapidly grown in the last few years and with it too, the gap among Member States and, more importantly, between rural and urban areas. DSL, the most common system for broadband access, is now available in 89 per cent of all the telephone lines in EU25, but this percentage has now started to plateau while other alternative technologies are still marginal in many Member States.

The differences are just getting wider and in the case of rural areas in countries such as Greece, Czech Republic, Malta, or Cyprus there is no DSL coverage at all. Waiting patiently for a technologically neutral market to take its natural course to stimulate competition and bring connectivity to those areas will not bring results. Even when there is coverage, the speeds are usually low and the prices way too high.

Universality of service

Satellites already deployed in space offer broadband connectivity using just an antenna attached to housetops. They provide a universality of service that can be a real solution to the geographical divide cutting across borders and covering the entire globe. Satellite capacity is available to start a significant rollout of services although action is still necessary to improve awareness in a Europe afflicted by technology neutrality: a concept that those outside Brussels may not have heard of and may care even less about. Companies have been investing in new solutions and applications to lower the cost of the end-user terminals and reach rates similar to that offered by DSL in Europe. An expert group made up of industry members working with the European Commission on the issue of the Digital Divide came to the conclusion that satellite was best in areas with a minimum of 20 households per square kilometre.

Satellite infrastructure requires large investment and operators need a return on that investment. In addition, service providers and local support infrastructure is needed including user terminals and installation. Whereas it is relatively easy to see how structural funds, for example, could be used to support the construction of new phone or cable infrastructures, in more remote regions it is not a new terrestrial deployment that is required but a satellite one.

Can structural funds be used to bring satellite connectivity to those without any? Since structural funds are given to individual regions they do not naturally lend themselves to satellite services, which draw upon economies of scale and are most cost-effective when providing service to multiple regions and a great numbers of users. Satellites infrastructure is available for sharing by many regions and Member-States and cannot

“The European Union’s approach to improve access to broadband connectivity and other ICT related services has been exclusively pinned on the notion of ‘Technology Neutrality’. This principle aims at maintaining a level competitive playing field by not favouring any particular technology.”


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Satellite - regional development

be amortized on the same basis as a fibre optic network or a cable. Structural funds should also be available to fund services and equipment in regions where there is a clear market failure.

Appropriate recognition

EU officials must therefore not only embrace the potential and advantages of satellite communications, but also ensure that legislation allows taking advantage of their technical strengths. During the Fifth Space Council in 2008, space ministers already recognised the substantial contribution of space to attaining the EU’s Lisbon Strategy objectives. Member States clearly asked for “an appropriate regulatory framework and the sustained access to radio-spectrum for space applications”.

After travelling the 36,000km from outer space, satellite signals are fragile when arriving on earth and the stronger terrestrial frequencies easily interfere with them. That is why protection must be in place to avoid

interference with crucial services such as emergency or sea communication, but also with the day-to-day information and entertainment that the world has come to take for granted. Satellite orbital positions and the allocation of the frequency bands they operate in is coordinated by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). European legislation must be consistent with those international agreements to avoid potential conflicts among operators and Member States. Such conflicts would only serve to jeopardise the quality of satellite services within Europe.

Global backbone

Satellites provide an invisible safety net, a global backbone, upon which most of today’s communications services rely. Even cable TV often relies on this satellite backbone. The networks that satellites are able to create also enhance social cohesion among all European citizens, making the world genuinely a smaller place by fostering a rich cultural exchange.

The European Union still talks about total connectivity years after it originally said it wanted to make it a reality. Satellite technology could have brought Europe one step closer to achieving that objective. Policy makers should not be afraid of promoting specific technologies when they are so clearly the optimum solution for a persisting problem. After all, politicians will be remembered for the bridges they build, not for the gaps they leave. n

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Internet markets

Innovating to reach the consumerby Dana Dunne, CEO, AOL Europe

Consumers expect services on the Web to be free, so advertising will have to pay the way, but it is increasingly difficult to target advertising to the right consumers, the right sites and on the correct device. Advertisers need to reach the consumer whether on a computer, mobile phone, iPod, PDA or television. By aggregating content from rival services and distributing it to multiple platforms - mobile, fixed, PC, etc. - consumers, advertisers, content providers and service providers all benefit.

Dana Dunne is the CEO of AOL Europe; he served previously in the US as the head of AOL’s transformation programme. Prior to joining AOL, Mr Dunne was the Chairman and CEO of WebTV Europe, a mobile music and private investment company based in London. Previously Mr Dunne was President of the Wholesale and International Carrier Services business unit for Belgacom, where he had served earlier as the General Manager of the Business Division. Earlier in his career, Mr Dunne was at the American telecoms company US West as Head of Corporate Strategy and Development as well as President of US West International. He was a leader of McKinsey & Company’s telecommunications practices, based in their London, Brussels and Madrid offices.

Dana Dunne holds MBA and MA joint degrees from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, and is a fellow of Joseph H. Lauder Institute.

It is safe to say that advertising will fuel the future of the Web. Consumers increasingly expect free access to just about everything on the Web - free email, free content, free services and that model requires the support of ad dollars to continue. Yet with the explosion of the Internet, advertisers face an increasingly difficult job of reaching people on the Web - audiences are fragmenting, platforms are multiplying, consumers have greater control than ever over what they see and when, and, on top of that, the pace of change continues to accelerate. Is the Web getting ahead of itself? How do advertisers keep up?

Who needs a gatekeeper?

Five years ago, portals were gatekeepers and many millions of customers valued that service. It was a simple and straightforward

set up that made it relatively easy for advertisers to reach consumers.

As the Web has developed, people have become more accustomed to viewing Web pages from a huge multiplicity of sources, so the concept of a gatekeeper to content has disappeared. Consumers roam widely on the Web, using search to find what they are looking for, social networks to connect with people they care about, and an increasing array of blogs and niche sites that appeal directly to their passions. According to Technorati, a blog tracking service, roughly 60,000 blogs are created every day. Each week, the equivalent of 57,000 full-length movies are uploaded to YouTube. Social network usage has tripled in the past three years.

From a content perspective, reaching

consumers today means producing great content, carefully targeted to specific audience groups. From an advertising perspective, reaching an increasingly fragmented online audience is a challenge.

The blending of information and communication technologies creates powerful tools that bring people together, enhancing their digital experiences.

What will help advertisers in this fragmented world is the rise of improved analytics and advertising networks that can potentially serve millions of websites. Fast forward ten years into the future, to a time where all of our media, including TV, newspapers and books, could be IP-based, and the power of the intelligent network becomes obvious. Imagine also that by reducing creative production costs advertisers can produce multiple versions


Mobile accessMobile payment systemsMobile accessInternet markets

of the same campaign. Two consumers then, reading the same IP-newspaper, can be served the same advertising campaign, but with separate creative content targeted to appeal specifically to each type of user.

More platforms

Among the ICT initiatives pursued by the European Union is the goal of introducing multi-platform access for content. Our strategy reflects this and we continually look for new ways to give consumers their preferred content, irrespective of location, time and method of delivery. One example of this is the recent launch of new portal features that allow consumers to access multiple email services from one online location.

Portals, social networks and niche websites focused around ‘passion points’ that engage with consumers feed into the growing desire of mass audiences to have individualised content, irrespective of whether it gets delivered via a computer, mobile phone, iPod, PDA or television.

In the past 18 months, for example, there has been a rapid acceleration of website usage and products on mobile phones. Two key things have driven this - new handsets like the iPhone, and the massive rise in mobile usage of social networking sites such as Bebo. What this clearly shows is that people want access to the Web services they use and trust on their mobile devices. Mobile Web browsing is growing faster than PC Web browsing in key EU markets - eight times faster in the UK according to recent research (http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/research/2392.html) - and content providers need to make sure that their websites deliver a compelling and engaging experience on these devices. We now see around 40 per cent of mobile traffic in the EU is coming from the iPhone. This has been a fast and rapid development, but it’s a validation of the growing strategy to deliver the fullest possible breadth and depth of content from Web to Mobile - the stories and articles available online as well as in full on mobile sites. As more and more customers use their mobile devices to browse the Web, they will use optimised mobile sites to access exactly the same content as they would on

the Web. The ability to access and browsing the Web on the go is becoming a standard feature of all mobile phones, just as taking and storing pictures and video online seems to have become a common service within the last three years. With this rapidly growing new usage comes the opportunity of new monetisation from mobile advertising. One thing is for certain, as this credit crunch bites deeper into the manufacturing and retailers’ purse, the use of the Web to reach potential consumers will evolve from an ‘additional consumer channel’ to a ‘must have channel’. The rate of growth of online advertising in Europe is predicted by a number of researchers to enjoy double digit growth in 2009. Online advertising is a great new platform with exciting new customer response paths - notably click-to-call, where a click on a banner directly launches a call to the call centre of the advertiser’s sale department. The integration between Web and mobile is its key strength. With global, multi-platform, advertising networks, ads can be dynamically targeted across the Web and mobile sites wherever the customer is. For instance, iPhone customers can be targeted on both mobile and websites, making sure that ads are optimised for the device customers are using to view the site. This sort of functionality is at the vanguard of monetising this exciting new cross-platform, convergent world.

New era of openness

Adding to the cross-platform complexity will be a new trend just now taking off - openness. Just as publishers once learnt that adding links to competitors’ sites was a good thing rather than a threat, they are now learning that adding competitors’ content to their sites can have the same positive effect. Bebo, for example, recently joined the new OpenSocial platform that allows any developer, including competitors or advertisers, to develop content for Bebo. It is a win-win situation - Bebo dramatically enhances its own user-experience and developers get access to a high-profile platform to promote their applications.

Consumers can also access custom feeds from social networking services, local news, and RSS enabled sites directly from portal homepages. On the social networking front,

feeds are now aggregated from rival sites into single services, creating competitive advantages that benefit Web and mobile consumers.

This ‘co-opetition’ - collaborating with competitors for mutual benefit - will be increasingly commonplace in the year ahead. It is a direct response to consumers’ desire to have as much of their content in one place, unfettered by any limits imposed by the platform or the content provider. Europe just got smaller.

The pace quickens

In the last year alone almost 300 new online ad networks were launched; millions more consumers became online publishers via their Bebo, Facebook and MySpace pages; bloggers beat professional newsrooms to exclusives and the launch of a new generation of smartphones heralded a revolution in mobile Internet.

For brand owners and advertisers, just keeping up with the pace of change is a challenge in itself. Online advertising was always supposed to be simple but as the number of publishers, outlets, formats and channels continues to grow at a breathtaking rate so online advertising is fast becoming more complicated than TV, radio or newspapers.

Exploiting technology to win

Consumers have been spared the headache of the Web’s new complexity by RSS feeds, recommendation sites, cost-comparison portals for every product under the sun and the latest semantic services like Twine.

Up until very recently, confused advertisers have been poorly served. That is quickly changing as the latest full-service, global ad-networks are now leveraging hugely powerful technology to reach an increasingly disparate online audience. Barriers to reaching the consumer are falling.

That is good for advertisers, good for consumers, and good for the Web. The flow of cash into this sector will fund faster, smarter, better technology to reach more consumers, drive up usage and give advertisers more opportunities to reach consumers. n

“We now see around 40 per cent of mobile traffic in the EU is coming from the iPhone. This has been a fast and rapid development, but it’s a validation of the growing strategy to deliver the fullest possible breadth and depth of content from Web to Mobile.”


ICT Innovation

Innovating at the speed of lifeby Larry Stone, BT President Group Public and Government Affairs

The pace of change is accelerating at a rate many times faster than any time in the past. Innovation is not only important to companies; the economies of whole countries depend upon it. One way to stimulate innovation is to collaborate with other organisations and absorb new ideas. The European Commission’s Framework Programmes provides financial support for collaborative research in ICT.

This lowers risks so companies can participate in collaborative projects and provides additional skilled resources to address complex challenges.

Larry Stone is BT’s President of Group Public and Government Affairs; he looks after EU affairs, UK parliamentary and political matters, and public affairs globally with teams in Washington and Singapore. Mr Stone is also responsible for CSR and sustainability in the BT Group. Previously, he served as group company secretary, as a trustee of the BT Pension Scheme and as a member of the Faculty of ifsProshare (financial education charity), the UK Social Investment Fund Advisory Board and the London Stock Exchange Primary Markets Group. Mr Stone also served as BT’s external and media affairs in Asia (based in Tokyo) and for the European Union (based in Brussels). Prior to that, he was at Cellnet (now O2 UK). Mr Stone is on the Board of the Europe-America Business Council (EABC) and on the Advisory Board of the European Policy Council (EPC). He is Honorary Colonel of 81 Signal Squadron (Volunteers) in the Territorial Army and is a Foundation Board Member of Kingston Grammar School.

Larry Stone has degrees in Law and in Communications Policy.

If you feel the world is spinning faster these days, you certainly are not alone. The pace of change is accelerating all the time. It was at least 50 years in the world’s wealthiest countries before the majority of homes received electricity from a main power line. When broadband came along, similar levels of take up were achieved in some countries in less than a decade.

Once innovations have captured the public’s imagination, they spread like wildfire. And innovation is no longer just about new technology products. Indeed, innovating the way firms do business can have a bigger impact on their success than a new technology alone.

The room for poor performance is already small, and it is vanishing fast. Firms that have too few of the right ideas will soon find business ebbing away. So too will businesses that are slow to turn their ideas into marketable products and services.

On the other hand, if you have a winning idea and can get it to customers quickly enough, the market could well be yours for the taking - even if it is dominated by firms from a completely different industry than your own as various examples such as Apple’s iTunes have demonstrated.

The problem, unfortunately, is that any lead might be short lived. New ideas can come from anywhere at any time. Add to that the

fact that it is getting easier and easier for firms to clone their competitors’ products, and it is clear that having just one or a few winning ideas is far from good enough. To take and hold the initiative, you need a pipeline that can pour innovations onto the market at what, by yesterday’s standards, would be a blistering pace. You may only have a few weeks’, or perhaps a few days’, head start on your competitors, so there is no chance at all to stand still. The ideal would be to be able to innovate at the speed of life - that is, to be so at one with your customers’ thinking that you consistently deliver the new products and services they are looking for at just the moment they need them, and ensure there never is a gap between what they ask for and what you offer. And what matters is the speed



ICT innovation

at which customers are able to improve their personal and professional lives, not the speed at which new technologies become available. As far as customers are concerned, genuine innovation happens only when their daily lives actually get better or their firms achieve greater success as a result.

This is an ideal, of course - but it is impossible for firms to even get close if they use traditional methods of innovation hampered by secrecy and strict need-to-know policies. To aspire to match the speed of their customers’ lives, firms must innovate at the speed of their lives.

Those who get it right will reap big returns. According to Arthur D. Little, “Top innovators have 2.5 times more sales and get more than ten times higher returns from their innovation investments.” How, then, can firms transform their innovation processes to deliver the throughput they will need in the future? The answer varies from industry to industry, and from business to business. Central to the success of many firms to date, however, has been the concept of open innovation.

In open innovation, firms invite people from outside their traditional R&D teams to take part in the innovation process. They may be people working in other parts of the company - in sales, marketing, or customer support, for example. They could be university researchers and academics, business partners or suppliers. They could even include the firm’s customers and the public at large. Equally, adopters of open innovation recognize that there are more ways of getting returns on their innovation investment than turning them into products and services or using them to improve their own efficiency.

Forward-looking companies that have adopted open innovation have had great results. In addition to achieving advances that have improved customer satisfaction, by stimulating innovation, companies have brought many new products and services to market. Studies of scientists and engineers, for instance, have shown that those with access to the widest variety of information are the most creative. It stands to reason: if innovation is a chain reaction, the more ideas someone is exposed to, the more he or she is likely to generate.

Looking back, it is clear how easy it is for firms to lose the initiative and sink without trace. Of the companies included in the Fortune 100 when it was first published in 1917, 61 no longer exist. Of those that remain, only 18 make the list today - and only two of those have performed better than the average

over the past 90 years. And it is a similar story on the other side of the Atlantic. Only 24 of the companies listed when the FTSE 100 Index was established in 1984 remain in the list today.

Innovation in Europe

In Europe, an important aspect of many organisations’ Open Innovation Strategy is the participation in European-funded collaborative programmes.

The European Commission has provided funding to support collaborative research in ICT over a number of years through the Framework Programmes schemes (FPs). The FPs provide financial support of between 50 per cent and 75 per cent of the research costs

(depending on the type of organisation) for agreed collaborative research projects. The current scheme aims to provide €9 billion in grants to support research in the ICT domain.

Formal collaborative research allows companies to leverage technology and insight from industry partners, suppliers and universities through participation in projects that are part of formal EU research programmes. The ‘outreach’ provided by such collaborative research provides an invaluable perspective on the global science base, and affords some protection against new technologies that could disrupt current business models.

In addition to undertaking the collaborative projects themselves, BT currently participates


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in three European technology platforms. These are industry driven groups producing Strategic Research Agendas to advise the EU on the key research challenges that should be addressed by future calls for project proposals.

The financial support provided by these funding programmes helps to lower the barrier for companies to engage with collaborative research. This reduced risk means that companies can research areas earlier than it could otherwise. The involvement of partners in a collaborative project means that additional skilled resources are available to address complex research challenges that could not be addressed by one organisation working alone.

In a global environment many technologies are interconnected and a single country or even a large region cannot work in isolation. Given this, funding programmes need to be more flexible and allow non-EU players to participate. There are also some global challenges where there would be benefits in working with equivalent funding schemes in other regions to create a global initiative. Then too, the process to review proposals and allocate funding can be long and complex. As technologies evolve faster many areas might not be able to use these funding programmes to support innovation. Another issue is that projects that aim to address challenges which cut across the organisational structure of the Commission find it difficult to get funding under the current funding programmes.

There is another important area where the EU can drive the way to more innovation and competitiveness. This is by creating a more level playing field in the telecommunications industry across the EU. This will have a positive impact not only on those that provide electronic communications services, but even more importantly on those who use them: residential and business customers.

Politicians often overlook the indirect benefits of a competitive electronic communications sector, as they tend to have the residential customer more in mind than the business customer. However, modern networked IT solutions play an increasing role in the competitiveness of European businesses. They are an enabler to compete in a global market place.

Competition in ICT helps businesses in all sectors - whether these are major international corporations or local businesses. The availability of innovative ICT services attracts more investment, and improves business processes. Competition means lower prices and forces incumbent players to become more efficient, which ultimately leads to lower costs for consumers. Lower costs for communications and other ICT solutions make international companies more likely to invest in a country (it is not just about manpower costs). Therefore, there is also a direct and an indirect impact on employment. All this makes ICT essential to future economic growth and prosperity.

With its proposals for the Review of the European Electronic Communications Framework, the European Commission has put forward the right key parameters. They could help to regulate the electronic communications industry in a more effective and consistent way across the EU. It is now up to the Member States and Members of the European Parliament to make the right political choices and not to fall into the trap of favouring national champions or supporting protectionist policies in times of economic crisis. Open trade and open innovation are key components of the solution to the current situation.

We are all facing challenging times ahead and the innovation agenda will be important for Europe’s future success. The pace of change will quicken, so we need an environment in place that rewards innovation for the benefit of European businesses and European citizens. n


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Complexity and innovation in the connected eraby Stephen Murdoch, Vice President & General Manager, Large Enterprise Business Unit, Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA), Dell

Always-on connectivity makes our lives simpler and more efficient and stimulates innovation and interaction with customers, friends and peers. Nevertheless, the infrastructure for this connectivity has become too complicated and costly. Fortunately, new standards-based computing and virtualization technologies, (that is, ‘cloud computing’) cost less, are easier to maintain, and save space, energy and money. The Internet and social media (Facebook, and so on.) make it easier to connect with customers, tap their ideas to stimulate innovation and offer customers better products and services.

Stephen Murdoch is the Vice President and General Manager of Dell’s Large Enterprise Business Unit for Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA). Prior to his current role, Mr Murdoch was responsible for defining, establishing and leading Dell Global Infrastructure Consulting Services; he previously led Dell’s services and enterprise systems business in EMEA. Mr Murdoch spent many years at IBM where, most recently, as Vice President of the Communications Sector, he was responsible for the entire telco, media and utilities industry portfolio. At IBM, Mr Murdoch held a number of global, EMEA and UK senior management roles with experience spanning software and services, storage, and enterprise systems.

Stephen Murdoch has a BSc (Hons) in Physics.

The IT industry has reached a crossroads, shaped by the macro-trends of globalisation and balanced by the more sobering reality of recession and our increased responsibilities relating to Green IT. Within that, the online world is undergoing the most significant transformation in its history, and there is a blurring of professional and personal space through the explosion in social media and online communications. Change creates opportunity for those that embrace it and eagerly adopt new routes to innovation opened up by mass usage of the Internet. The trick is to harness all of this dynamism and make sense of it, in order to provide innovative and realistic solutions that can meet the growing needs of today’s organisations.

Always-on connectivity

The Connected Era is driven by a surge in always-on connectivity - from mobile technology and unified communications, to RFID, overnight delivery and the immediate needs of today’s global businesses. This connectivity opens up new opportunities for innovation and interaction with our customers, friends and peers, utilising technology to make our lives simpler and more efficient.

However, somewhere along the way, the underlying infrastructure has become too complicated. The same systems that deliver so much benefit can also be expensive, difficult to operate and hard to maintain. Some complexity is unavoidable, providing differentiation and competitive advantage, but there is unnecessary complexity that needs to be identified and removed for our vision of innovation to become a reality.

“The Connected Era is driven by a surge in always-on connectivity - from mobile technology and unified communications, to RFID, overnight delivery and the immediate needs of today’s global businesses.”



ICT innovation

Data centre management and cost

CIOs face escalating management and cost issues in their data centres. Server sprawl, storage constraints, data protection and security concerns, compounded by ultra-mobile always-connected devices, continue to put pressure on resources and budgets. To cope with these pressures and the worldwide flood of digital data predicted by 2010, users have found themselves adding more machines, employing more staff and hiring more consultants to manage it all.

More service at lower cost

The CIOs’ dilemma is that innovation is typically constrained today, in times when we need it most. A typical business spends only 30 per cent of its IT budget driving innovation to support strategic business growth or for cost control. That means 70 per cent of the budget goes for ongoing IT maintenance. This, combined with reduced budgets, means CIOs must deliver the same - or greater - levels of service at lower cost. CIOs need to scale and protect their current environment without creating more complexity by realigning their investment.

Technology to the rescue

What has become clear today is that this 30/70 investment ratio is no longer sustainable. If the EU is to meet its goals of fostering innovation, research and entrepreneurship across Europe1, and if organisations are going to ride out the current recession, then the imbalance of investment on maintenance versus innovation needs to be quickly addressed by all sectors. For this to happen IT must be simplified. Ultimately, it is important that organisations act now to address the spiralling problem of IT complexity - ensuring long-term goals and objectives are still achievable and innovation does not suffer.

Fortunately, the proprietary systems that once dominated data centres are steadily giving way to standards-based computing that is both more affordable and easier to maintain. However, it is not just a matter of getting the hardware right. Virtualization technologies

can make space in the data centre, save energy and streamline manageability; data can be de-duplicated and storage consolidated and tiered. Solutions delivered from the ‘cloud’- via the Internet - are becoming more attractive, economically, environmentally and in terms of performance, and a great deal of service, support and maintenance can now be handled remotely.

Opportunity to innovate

The positive news is that organisations are now exposed to more opportunities to innovate than ever before. Fundamentally, there is increased opportunity to interact directly with customers. Listening to customers has been forever redefined; whereas it used to mean commissioning a customer survey, it’s now about real-time engagement with your customers (and critics) online and then using those relationships to create a smarter, more innovative, business. Tapping into the ideas of your customers is like having an open source R&D lab. In one example, a company invited customers to share their ideas on the Web for improving products and services; they attracted more than 11,000 ideas and put more than 280 ideas to use.

Innovative IT

The industry has many other examples of innovative IT in action, not least in the education sector. Solutions such as unified communications have supported local education and authorities in making the virtual classrooms a reality. As well as bringing more innovative learning techniques, this technology is helping the sector meet government directives regarding inclusion and schooling of 14-19 year old students in the UK2. By incorporating easy-to-use Office Communicator Server (OCS) based voice and video conferencing, which enables 360 degree round table discussions, remote learners can now see their peers and fully participate.

Location need no longer be a barrier to education.

Small and medium business innovation

The small and medium business (SMB) sector is also making significant headway through innovative technology programmes. UK-based gardening firm, Wriggly Wigglers, is making the most of the Connected Era by implementing tools to ensure regular customer and community interaction. Social media technology allows the company to reach out to thousands of customers via weekly podcasts from the Wiggly sofa. Using the latest communications vehicles, such as Facebook, Wriggly Wigglers keeps in contact with the 1,375 customers currently listed as friends on their profile page. Social media has also helped them build a mail order catalogue based on Wiki ideas generated on its Facebook page by experts and customers. This is just one of the many organisations now utilising social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to reach new audiences.

Despite sceptics, I believe much progress has already been made in both the private and public sectors. I continue to see more examples of innovative programmes in action. I have been involved in IT all my professional life and believe we are embarking on our most dynamic period of technological innovation yet; opening up unseen levels of customer intimacy to those that can harness it. The spread of social media and inventive communication methods, boosted by a real hunger within the corporate world and public sector to throw off legacy mindsets and get serious about investing in the future, will further open up the Connected Era. Managing complexity whilst keeping us all connected will continue to be the greatest challenge, and this calls for smart IT investments that allow CIOs to do more with less, as they focus their energies and budgets on future innovation. n

“The small and medium business (SMB) sector is also making significant headway through innovative technology programmes. UK-based gardening firm, Wriggly Wigglers, is making the most of the Connected Era by implementing tools to ensure regular customer and community interaction.”

1 The EU Lisbon agenda: http://www.euractiv.com/en/future-eu/lisbon-agenda/article-1175102 14-19 education and skills: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/14-19/

“The industry has many other examples of innovative IT in action, not least in the education sector. Solutions such as unified communications have supported local education and authorities in making the virtual classrooms a reality.”


At the end of November 2008, EU commission president, José Manuel Barroso, set out a Recovery Plan for the EU to address the economic crisis. He outlined how he hopes this package will inject purchasing power into the economy and address the EU’s long-term competitiveness in line with the Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs. Among the specific measures included in the announcement was €5 billion for trans-European energy and broadband infrastructure projects. With these new measures, could we be in line for growth in European ICT innovation?

In contrast to regulatory interventions, industry is rarely shy when supporting new government investment, so it is no surprise the industry has responded positively to the proposals in the Recovery Plan. Mark MacGann, Director General of the body representing the telecoms, IT and consumer electronics industries in the European Union, EICTA, said, “We are glad that the Commission has understood that Internet and the digital revolution need real political commitment and fiscal incentives to ensure a rapid return to growth and prosperity in Europe.” It is hoped that the billions

of Euros that Mr Barroso has committed to broadband investment in the Recovery Package will support the Lisbon goals and the EU Innovation Agenda, for advancing developments in ICT, in particular. Beyond the stereotypical support for more money, it seems on this occasion industry may concur with the policy objectives; there is optimism that the money will stimulate innovation in the EU.

The highest speed broadband yet

Timing is everything. Clearly, the imperative to invest has been set by the economic collapse, but a principal reason this public investment is likely to promote technical innovation, is that we are coincidentally on the cusp of a new generation in broadband technologies, both mobile and fixed. In February 2009, in Barcelona at the GSMA Mobile World Congress we saw public demonstrations of live mobile high definition international video calls using LTE technologies, giving weight to the predictions that leading operators will begin building new networks this year, and more notably will be offering commercial 4G mobile broadband services from 2010.

In fixed networks, we have seen rapid take up of 40G technologies to address network congestion and lots of interest in the 100G technologies expected later this year. In the fixed access network, at least ten operators worldwide are trialling the latest wave-splitting technologies which promise to offer more than 1Gb of symmetric broadband. This symmetric bandwidth is valuable for uploading video to social networking sites and is important for business users as it offers the same high bandwidth for both upload and download. Operators are also looking seriously at applying wave-division technology in access networks because it offers a lower total cost of ownership compared to today’s fibre broadband equipment. It enables operators to build just one network to offer the broadband bandwidth needed by businesses located in residential areas and in areas where duct space is limited.

Investing for innovation

This public investment will mean that industry can leverage the R&D spending in a way that would not be possible if the money just bought more of a mature technology. By investing now, the money will stimulate

The EU innovation agenda and recovery packageby Katie Miller, Director, Government Relations, EMEA, Nortel

The EU’s Economic Recovery plan, will inject money into the economy to combat the global recession. Some €5 billion will go to trans-European infrastructure projects including broadband. Much of the spending will likely support the EU’s Lisbon goals and the EU Innovation Agenda, and go towards ICT development. This spending to promote technical innovation, coincides with the rollout of a new generation of high speed broadband technologies, both mobile and fixed, and will stimulate the offer of many new services.

Katie Miller is the Director of Government Relations for Nortel in EMEA; her career in regulation and industrial policy covers both corporate and public sector perspectives. Ms Miller has previously held roles at Ofcom the UK regulator, RM plc and NatWest and has undertaken consultancy work for companies such as The Economist and Royal Mail. Ms Miller is a fellow of the RSA, The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, an associate of the Association of Project Managers, and of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

Katie Miller has an MSc in project management and a BSc in mathematics.

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both innovation and price competition, not just lower prices. By investing now in innovative technologies, public money can generate demand and demonstrate a good business case. This, in turn, will reduce the risk for commercial investment in innovative technologies, and reducing investment risk is critical in current capital markets.

The funding, together with imminent spectrum releases, will likely enable European businesses and consumers to access these technologies at the head of the curve, keeping pace with other leading countries, such as Japan. Keeping pace is important because broadband is an infrastructure like roads and airports which influences foreign investment decisions and empowers regional economies. For example, fast upstream and downstream broadband enables businesses with branch networks, supplier networks or businesses who want to encourage home working to improve productivity and reduce costs. Good, symmetric broadband connections enable suppliers to do more for their customers remotely. They enable regional employees (perhaps in lower wage areas) to interact with company systems and colleagues as well as those who work in metropolitan head offices. Good symmetric broadband will make it possible for us to easily share the videos we capture of those exciting moments on new HD video cameras with our family and friends wherever they are.

By contrast, the main argument levelled against this investment commitment is that it is simply not enough; it is a drop in the ocean - or more appropriately - like comparing 512Kb dial-up speeds to 1Gb broadband. McKinsey analysis suggests over €300 billion will be needed to provide fibre-based broadband access across the EU. However, by targeting public investment, it is likely the relatively small investment will unlock more commercial investment because competition rules suggest public investment will be used where commercial investment is uneconomic. Therefore, public broadband investment will bring broadband to a greater proportion of the business and residential population, which in effect increases the overall market for services delivered over broadband networks. In turn, new content services and applications become viable, and they increase the value placed on broadband by users, giving them a reason to pay a premium for better broadband. If publicly funded broadband demonstrates that business and residential consumers will pay for faster broadband, then there will be a commercial business case to bring broadband to more areas. In this case, the public funding may lead to many times more commercial investment.

Driving broadband demand

Although investment in next generation broadband networks will likely stimulate innovation, it would be wrong to conclude that associated new revenue streams are the main incentives for commercial investment in superfast broadband. There are too many types of risk in this investment already. The stereotypical investment strategy of multinational businesses is to manage risk by either investing in new technologies in mature markets, or bringing mature technologies into new markets. When it comes to broadband, few countries have more than 30 per cent take-up of broadband in residential markets, suggesting demand is not mature. At the same time, the economic climate brings a degree of risk, and business cases are in flux. Consumers are getting used to paying for data instead of calls. We are beginning to see competition between fixed and mobile broadband networks with reports that 50 per cent of consumers in the UK city of Manchester have swapped their fixed line for a dongle. There is also significant regulatory debate on the future of call termination revenues and universal service obligations. All of this means there are already more types of risk in a network providers’ business plan than would usually be entertained. So the commercial drivers for investing in next generation networks seem unlikely to be the opportunity to sell new services to new customers.

Still, there are three reasons that do seem to be driving operators’ decisions to upgrade - competition, capacity and cost-saving. Telecoms markets are renowned for their ‘stickiness’ - the propensity of customers to stick with their provider. This means that there is enormous value in being first to market with innovations. So the behaviour of competitors is a significant driver when it comes to investing in innovation. There is a game to see who blinks first; no one wants to be last to market.

Capacity constraints are also real drivers since recent innovations to take-off, such as the mobile broadband dongle and the BBC iPlayer, have caused enormous increases in the volume of data being sent over mobile and fixed networks. iPhone users typically use 20 times more capacity than the average mobile phone user. This is putting a strain on current networks and, accordingly, stimulates interest in next generation technologies that offer more capacity and use spectrum more efficiently.

Next generation broadband technologies also offer significant cost-savings, the importance of which is growing as customers start to

tighten their belts. The next generation technologies are all-IP, and this simplicity means technologies are more robust and more maintenance can be handled remotely reducing the cost of having engineers on the road.

Improved broadband access

However, even if innovation and the associated new revenue streams will not drive commercial investment in broadband, they will inevitably be a consequence. The potential for innovation generated by next generation networks derives from their simplicity. The technology does not dictate as many service boundaries compared to today’s networks, which means it will be much easier to maximise the contribution of the network to services and applications. So, in addition to the timing being right, investment in next generation broadband is likely to stimulate innovation, because their simplicity enables network operators to play a greater role in new services and applications.

This simplicity means it will become more practical and affordable to extend enterprise applications, such as unified communications, outside of the enterprise. It means home workers, or remote branches, will get the same experience as head office staff. Not only does this suggest businesses will improve their relationships with remote employees or suppliers, but they might also choose to outsource more of their IT costs to network operators, and save even more.

This is just one example where network operators may be able to assume responsibility for a process more efficiently or effectively than might be achieved by businesses alone. Networks have valuable information about users such as their location, their identity and the characteristics of the device they are using to connect. The same simplicity might lead to operators taking responsibility for privacy or security, for example, for their business customers by opening the interface of enterprise applications to the network. As next generation broadband rolls out to more areas, we may see network operators offering new, innovative services to business customers.

The timing is right for government investment in broadband, and though network operators are faced with an enormous degree of risk today, this government intervention in the market improves the prospects for innovation. n

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Mobile service

Mobile service intelligenceby Mark Quinlivan, CEO, Carrier IQ

Today’s complex service environment is hard to control without adequate data. Most of the traditional ways of measuring network services are based upon the use of network measurements that quite often do not give an accurate picture of the end user’s experience. This is particularly true for data-based services. Mobile Service Intelligence uses information from today’s highly sophisticated handsets, while in normal use, to monitor true customer experience both to assess service quality and, importantly, to predict future revenue opportunities.

Mark Quinlivan is the CEO of Carrier IQ; he has over 23 years of domestic and international management experience. Most recently, Mr Quinlivan was the COO of edocs, acquired in 2005 by Siebel Systems. Before edocs, Mr Quinlivan held senior positions at Lucent Technologies including as SVP of Worldwide Consulting and Integration. Prior to Lucent, Mr Quinlivan held senior management positions at Ascend Communications and Stratus Computer.

Mark Quinlivan earned an undergraduate degree in Management and a Masters degree in Computer Science from WPI, and completed the PMD program at the Harvard University School of Business.

In a mobile world where devices are increasingly expected to access more data, perform more functions, and live off-line as well as off-portal, Mobile carriers and handset vendors need far more insight into the way networks and devices combine to deliver mobile services. It is a world that has expanded far beyond voice and SMS; it is no longer enough just to know how the network is performing, how much the customer is spending or the phones’ capabilities.

The growth of mobile broadband services among European carriers amplifies the need to connect the dots to manage and improve the quality of the end-to-end customer experience and be able to segment this data in detail by device type, application and location. This is particularly challenging when no network traffic is generated; for instance, when a user

attempts - and fails - to access a data service or when it is the speed of the response of the device that matters.

With the arrival of new techniques for delivering detailed and accurate data about usage and experience at the handset, carriers are finding new ways to improve customer satisfaction. Mobile Service Intelligence uses information from phones while in normal use to monitor true customer experience both to assess service quality and, importantly, to predict future revenue opportunities.

Tracking customer needs

The European mobile market is constantly evolving but quality remains a critical differentiator, whether you see the mobile industry as a leading-edge content provider

or as a utility pipe that delivers third-party offerings. Gone are the days when services were just a network with a phone at the end. Today’s services are the result of a complex value chain including content providers, aggregators, gateways, and handset, laptop and device applications. As a result, it is no longer sufficient to measure the quality of the component parts alone; operators need to know about the end-user experience and the way they consume the delivered services. The customer expects decent data, music, video and/or games, not just quality voice communications. Like with other services, when expectations are not met consumers simply go to another provider.

Meeting customer expectations by improving a service or a handset in isolation is increasingly difficult if you do not know


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exactly what is happening as the customer sees it. Sure, carriers can deploy drive testing, use network probes and protocol sniffers, wait for returns, conduct user surveys, or just hope that customers will call in describing their experiences. The problem is that none of these options really gives a picture at the level of detail needed or within the timeframe required.

Without detailed and accurate data, carriers miss opportunities to improve customer services and, importantly, to anticipate threats to revenue or opportunities. In fact, recent evidence suggests that some of the KPIs (key performance indicators) carriers presently use to manage their businesses have a limited impact on overall customer satisfaction, so crucial in the current market climate. For instance, one commonly finds traditional voice-based metrics being used to monitor network quality including data services, and with very few metrics that directly measure data services and provide true indications of end-point, customer’s device, performance.

Operator challenges

In this world of complex services, operators can play a range of possible roles - from total service provider to pure data transport. Data transport is a commodity business that is unlikely to bring operators new revenues. On the other hand, many operators that tried to be total service providers have since elected to provide an intelligent pipe in collaboration with established content brands (like Google, Yahoo and even Apple) giving consumers what they crave whilst keeping the door open to new revenue opportunities.

So the operator has two challenges, if their product is a commodity, the differentiation is based on price and customers’ experience. If the operator is an intelligent pipe, it needs to acquire the intelligence to play this role. The challenge to provide this intelligent insight is being able to understand, evaluate and strategise about areas which have previously remained hidden from the operator. Two examples articulate this problem well, especially in regards to mobile content:

To accelerate mobile content usage and uptake during the last ten years, carriers have

been increasingly adopting an open network approach. To achieve this they involve numerous third-party content providers, who use the carrier’s network to attract their own subscribers. This indirect relationship means that carriers who already experience severe limitations measuring the usage and usability of content are now challenged to measure the even wider field of content distribution. When they can measure how content is consumed on the device itself, operators get a better picture of the customer satisfaction and usage levels.

A specific example comes from an operator that was monitoring data services to assist them in selecting between equipment vendors. The operator was using traditional ‘dropped calls’ statistics to measure data quality. Investment decisions were based on this and other information. When the actual throughput was measured based on delivered services the results were very different; the number of dropped ‘data calls’ was shown to have very little impact on total data throughput or the customer’s experience. In effect, the historical measures did not accurately provide the needed information and could have led the operator to make incorrect business decisions. Traditional methods including surveys, network monitoring and device management tools all work well, but they do not give the depth of insight into service quality and customer experience required. Now, as phones and devices become smarter, more capable and more complex, it is possible to use the device itself to measure service quality and user experience at the device - where the customer receives the service - and obtain a level of insight previously unavailable to operators.

Mobile service intelligence

This approach is called Mobile Service Intelligence; it uses the mobile phone or broadband dongle itself, combined with advanced data processing applications to provide detailed metrics. These metrics directly represent the quality and nature of the services being delivered to the customer base. Mobile Service Intelligence is able to do this by analysing data on usage patterns and fault conditions by type, location, application or network performance from millions of users, even when that functionality is independent of the network. This analysis puts the ‘IQ’ or ‘smarts’ into the data collected.

For example, a carrier launching a new service targeted at a certain age group, initially has strong take-up, but then it tails off. The operator is then uncertain whether this is due to market saturation or up-take

issues and cannot resolve the problem using current methods.

By using Mobile Service Intelligence, operators can monitor services in detail, allowing them to quickly identify problems at the root. For instance, it may be that the limited take-up is not due to lack of demand, but to the difficulty users have accessing the service on the first attempt. With this insight, the operator working with the handset or application vendor can resolve the problem early in the product’s life cycle and use an advertising push to drive a new wave of take-up.

This new approach can also help operators set new KPIs to improve the customer experience. For instance, an operator’s product manager hears complaints from the field regarding a service, but each of the internal departments claim, based on their own operating statistics, that their part of the solution is functioning well. Mobile Service Intelligence techniques helps classify the problems and create new KPIs based on actual customer experience. As a result, business units can track customer-focused rather than equipment-focused KPIs and ensure that investment and improvement choices are targeted for customer benefit.

Actionable intelligence

Every division and every business unit can use Mobile Service Intelligence applications. A recent report by Tony Cripps at Ovum called, ‘Mobile service metrics: overcoming the experience gap’, highlights the importance of this intelligence. Without device-side insight, operators miss the opportunity to improve the customer experience and increase revenues. The report concluded that there was a high degree of interest in utilising such data by a broad spectrum of vendors, including suppliers in the network and service management space, mobile device management, data warehousing, business intelligence and customer care arenas. This new generation of ‘actionable intelligence’ is increasingly sought after and operators have come to recognise the value of actively managing the business towards end customer experience based on insight and differentiation. Carriers will compete to offer content and service providers a value proposition beyond simple data transport.

Mobile Service Intelligence can provide the insight and differentiation that helps wireless operators make smart business decisions that can dramatically lower operating costs, increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer churn and increase revenues. n

“To accelerate mobile content usage and uptake during the last ten years, carriers have been increasingly adopting an open network approach.”


Mobile Internet opportunities abound by Sean MacNeill - Vice President & General Manager, Global Services and Support, Openwave

The mobile Internet is growing rapidly; 25 per cent of the UK’s population already use the mobile Internet. It has always been a challenge to access the Internet using mobile devices given the small screen and, until recently, slow speeds. The operators’ efforts to restrict mobile access to a few ‘approved’ websites has frustrated users and slowed uptake, but this is changing. Lower data tariffs, conversion of PC formats to mobile friendly screens are driving user adoption of mobile Internet.

Sean MacNeill is the Vice President and General Manager of Global Services and Support for Openwave. Prior to this position, Mr MacNeill was Openwave’s VP and GM of Sales for the Americas region. Prior to joining Openwave, Mr MacNeill was President and Chief Operating Officer at Dynavar Corporation and led the sale of the company to Sun Capital Partners who merged Dynavar with Solunet Inc. where he served as Chief Operating Officer. Before Dynavar, Mr MacNeill held a variety of senior level management positions in sales, marketing, and operations for such companies as Vocalscape Communications, a VoIP software developer, and Intrinsyc Software, Inc., a mobility software and services company.

Sean MacNeill earned a B.A. with distinction and an M.B.A. from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

The mobile Internet has taken off and is likely to become the medium that bridges the digital divide worldwide. In Europe, interconnectivity through the mobile Internet has become an integral, irreplaceable part of many people’s lives. Analyst firm Forrester predicts that 125 million Europeans will access the mobile Internet by 2013, more than tripling today’s users. According to a December 2008 comScore report, 25 per cent of the total UK population now accesses the Internet from a mobile device, up nine per cent compared with last year.

So, what are the key drivers for mass adoption of the mobile Internet in Europe, and how can companies leverage the mobile Internet to develop products which are relevant to ordinary consumers within the mobile eco-system?

Using the Internet on mobile devices has historically proven to be a challenging feat, specifically with regards to harnessing the power of a system that was designed to be used and viewed on personal computers with large screens and at broadband speeds.

Traditionally, we had a hybrid world structured, essentially with two Internets, one for mobile and one for the desktop. Slow networks, expensive mobile infrastructure and an overall poor user experience have hindered mass adoption of the mobile Internet leaving consumers frustrated. In preventing simple access to the Web, ‘the operators’ ‘walled gardens’ limited their ability to increase data ARPU (average revenue per user) and offer other revenue opportunities. Mobile phones are, by nature, constrained devices with limited screen size, memory and supported content. However, they are always on, always

with you and always yours, making them one of the most personal items you own.

As handsets advance, and tariffs become more data-friendly, mobile operators can no longer limit access to just a few sites, they must enable an open environment in which general Web content, not specifically designed for the mobile device, can be delivered (including Java, Flash and other richer media content types). In addition, the environment must provide for promotion of content partners and preferred services to a user population who are discovering, in increasing numbers, that the mobile Internet is starting to look like the desktop experience. This has led to a number of other, non-traditional players, entering the mobile Internet market.

In February, France Telecom-Orange announced a large push into the combined

Mobile Internet


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mobile and PC Internet space, through a joint deal with HP. Skype announced deals with Nokia and Sony Ericsson to integrate its service into several different phone models. Before Christmas, the operator Hutchinson and INQ, the handset vendor, focused on social networking, launching the INQ1, which built data services such as Facebook, MSN and eBay directly into the software of the handset. The network infrastructure to bring these types of services to life was highlighted by Telstra’s announcement of the fastest mobile broadband, clocking in at 21mbps.

With the traditional walled gardens coming down, mobile software companies are helping operators avoid becoming bit pipes that merely transport data. By offering a key set of high-value services, the carrier instead serves as an ‘intelligent smart pipe’ to their subscribers, ensuring a great user experience. As users connect directly to the Internet or via applications, whole new areas of innovative businesses and services are starting to appear, such as application stores.

As we are already seeing in the traditional Web, niche information and personalised content are usurping mass market ‘hits’. We now see major brands prioritising the customer experience and exploring the best ways to reach their customers through what some are calling User Experience 2.0, an attempt to proactively unite users with relevant content and services. One Internet for all devices, where the content is fast, secure and easy-to-use, driving mass adoption and offering huge revenue opportunities in Europe is where mobile Internet is headed.

Providing a more personalised experience means allowing users to share, collaborate and exploit content to extend their online activities and communities into the mobile space. The goal is to make content discovery much simpler and more targeted, eliminating the awkward left-to-right scrolling when browsing, presenting the most relevant content first, allowing for intelligent inter-website navigation. It is a dynamic process of interpreting the content being served and enhancing and adapting it on the fly to provide the best possible user experience.

To this extent, one of the interesting developments over the last 18 months has been the development of open platforms

that can be used by developers to create applications. These do not necessarily access the mobile Internet, but draw on mobile data services, and sometimes GPS technology, to create strong customer-focused applications. The iPhone App Store was one of the first, incredibly successful incarnations of this model. It has spurred innovation all over the world as developers are continually creating relevant and exciting products for consumers. These applications can range from games, to social networking applications, to GPS applications, and everything in between. Nokia’s announcement that it will be developing its own app store similar to Apple’s is an indication that the industry as a whole will be moving in this direction.

The reason why applications succeed is that they can provide a much more personalized experience, which allows users to share, collaborate and exploit content to extend their online activities and communities into the mobile space. The goal is to make content discovery much simpler and more targeted, while eliminating the awkward left-to-right scrolling when browsing. It becomes a dynamic process of interpreting the content being served and adapting it on the fly to provide the best possible user experience. Since the platforms are open, they are wholly available to canny entrepreneurs. Facebook, which runs a similar system, has over 600,000 developers worldwide, many of whom are running successful businesses just through application development.

Interestingly, as the mobile Web opens up opportunities for external players, there’s been real innovation in revenue generating models as well. Mobile advertising, in particular, promises to dramatically reshape business models and presents new revenue opportunities for all players in the value chain, but it is critical for the industry to focus first on delivering a great open Internet experience to everyone. To this extent, understanding the preferences and behaviours of the user population, with due consideration to privacy, before developing the scope of advertising, will be critical. It is a fine balancing act between monetizing new opportunities presented by the mobile Internet without alienating the user base. It is not something that will be solved overnight, and there will undoubtedly be consumer backlashes. There have been notable examples from the PC

Internet industry - such as the user backlash to the Beacon product from Facebook, and Phorm from British Telecom.

In short, there are opportunities within the entire mobile eco-system for innovation. While the operator is still the main control point, there are countless other areas for innovation, including mobile Web-specific applications, mobile applications, mobile advertising delivery networks and much more. Consumers must be nurtured and brought along with the new technologies or an increasingly complex eco-system will cause users to feel that they are being exploited just for the sake of new revenue streams. n

Mobile Internet

“Interestingly, as the mobile Web opens up opportunities for external players, there’s been real innovation in revenue generating models as well.”






Mobile accessMobile payment systemsMobile accessSatellite spectrum

With the European Commission’s objective of facilitating the introduction of innovative communications underway, and having focused their attention on a harmonised authorisation for mobile satellite services (MSS) and spectrum, there remain challenges aplenty. Keeping on schedule is first among them. How the Commission is able to do this will have significant implications within the EU and beyond.

Regulatory certainty can provide a welcome backdrop against which satellite operators and

their investors may evaluate the substantial risk over the long lead times involved in the introduction of satellite-delivered services. Such certainty should be seen as an important public policy goal, both at a European Level and against the overarching processes of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to secure relevant space segments, and coordination of proposed satellite services with other potential satellite systems.

With increasing consumer demand for ubiquitous, cross-border services, the

Commission has been aware of the public policy benefits of adopting a harmonised regulatory framework for delivery of mobile data multicasting and voice services across the community as part of the Lisbon agenda1, however this is the first time that they have adopted such a framework.

Background

On December 3, 2004 the Council of Ministers concluded that an effective and coherent use of radio spectrum was essential for the

Mobile satellite and spectrum harmonisation for innovation

by Stewart White, CEO, Stewart White Consulting

Mobile service innovation, especially in regions poorly served by traditional networks, depends upon the availability of broadband services that satellite transmission can bring. The EU’s recent regulatory initiatives will harmonise the 2 GHz S-band throughout the EU and make it available, on a competitive basis, to groups seeking to introduce EU-wide mobile satellite services. The regulatory certainty this provides will reduce the risks faced by satellite operators and foster investments to meet the increasing consumer demand for ubiquitous, cross-border services.

Stewart White is the CEO of Stewart White Consulting; he is also acting as the Public Policy Advisor of Solaris Mobile. He served previously as the Group Public Policy Director of Vodafone Group. Originally from Australia, Mr White moved to Europe to join a UK based law firm where he advised on satellite related issues for the Murdoch group and on the first satellite procurements of SES-Astra. He has advised a number of satellite operators, such as PanAmSat and Thuraya, as well as service providers such as CNN, and has been an expert advisor to the European Commission on a range of policy issues in the ICT sector. Mr White has had a long involvement with the ITU and has also advised a number of governments on sector reform, drafting legislation to implement and establish regulatory authorities, drafting licences and interconnection agreements, particularly in the Middle East.

Stewart White is a lawyer by training and has spent more than 25 years specialising in satellite law, regulation and policy as well as other regulated sectors.

1 The Lisbon strategy is an action and development plan for the European Union set out by the European Council in Lisbon in 2000.


The intelligence behind theworld's leading business events

www.marcusevans.com

22 – 24 April 2009 Fairmont Le Montreux Palace, Montreux, Switzerland

[email protected] www.europeanciosummit.com

European CIO Summit 2009The CIO role continues to evolve as technologies mature and businesses move from cost control to boosting productivity and driving competitive advantage. The European CIO Summit 2009 focuses on the top priorities of the modern CIO: leading business innovation and growth.

It's been a while since we last won some new businessGraham Pawar, Vice President International Business Development (Would benefit from attending this marcus evans' summit)


Regulatory affairsMobile accessMobile payment systemsMobile accessSatellite spectrum

development and growth of competitive and flexible electronic communications services and to offer greater consumer choice.

This was followed by a resolution of the European Parliament on February 14, 2007 entitled ‘Towards a European Policy on the Radio Spectrum’2, which focused on the importance of communications for rural and less developed regions and the deployment of broadband by various means to provide efficient solutions to achieving universal coverage in the 27 Member States. On the same day, the European Commission adopted the Spectrum Decision3 allocating the 2GHz S-band spectrum to MSS, including those with a complementary ground component (CGC) in all Member States. This decision complements an earlier Commission Communication of April 26, 2007 on European Space Policy - a common regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services aimed at encouraging ubiquitous service throughout the European Union.

Following the allocation of S-band spectrum to MSS through the Spectrum Decision, on June 30, 2008 the European Parliament and Council adopted its MSS Decision4 defining the European Selection and Authorisation Process (ESAP) for systems providing MSS in the S-band. Although the MSS Decision establishes a harmonised spectrum allocation process, the subsequent authorisation to use spectrum in national markets is the responsibility of individual Member States.

Once the Commission’s selection process is concluded, the selected operators will submit a notification to Member States before exercising their rights under the selection process5. Because the selection results hold for all Member States, each State has only

to grant the selected applicants the right to use the S-band spectrum already assigned. No additional competitive process must be established by Member States. These national authorisations will apply to the MSS and to the CGC6, both of which may be deployed as part of the MSS network.

Where costs are levied by Member States for national authorisations, doing so on a cost-recovery basis is the best way to ensure that the EU’s public policy objectives are met. Indeed, the European Framework Directive7 mandates that National Regulatory Authorities (NRA) take appropriate measures when levying fees to ensure that there is no distortion or restriction of competition, to encourage efficient investment in infrastructure, and to promote innovation. To that end, any national authorisation framework that imposes authorisation costs above those of administrative cost recovery creates an entry barrier for providers of alternate communications platforms, and tends to undermine the economies of scale for user equipment and service charges delivered through the harmonised single market spectrum allocation process. This would fragment the internal market.

Commissioner Reding recognised the need to alleviate the necessity to seek authorisations from individual countries within the EU in announcing the MSS Decision to allow selected operators to provide their services using 2GHz spectrum ear-marked for the purpose EU-wide and not only in metropolitan areas. Importantly, she recognized that:

“these satellite services depend on substantial investment and therefore need simple and swift procedures as well as long-term legal certainty. This is why the Commission,

in close cooperation with the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, set up, in a record time of only 10 months, a single EU procedure for selecting interested operators of mobile satellite services. There is now one market, not 27 in Europe for mobile satellite services. Henceforth, the ball is in the camp of the industry.”

Harmonising process

The sector has accepted the challenge laid down by Commissioner Reding and broadly welcomed the opportunity for simple and swift authorisation procedures and for long-term legal certainty, but the ball is not only in their camp. In order to meet the timetable laid down in the MSS Decision not only does the Commission now need to adhere to the timetable itself in order to issue the relevant authorisations, but Member States through their NRAs also have an important part to play. Each NRA must observe the timetable in issuing the necessary authorisations for each Member State for the space segment, the MSS component (although in some Member States

“Where costs are levied by Member States for national authorisations, doing so on a cost-recovery basis is the best way to ensure that the EU’s public policy objectives are met. Indeed, the European Framework Directive7 mandates that National Regulatory Authorities (NRA) take appropriate measures when levying fees to ensure that there is no distortion or restriction of competition, to encourage efficient investment in infrastructure, and to promote innovation.”

2 Official Journal of the European Union, 287 E, 29.11.2007, p. 364. 3 Commission Decision on the harmonised use of radio spectrum in the 2GHz frequency bands for the implementation of systems providing mobile satellite services, February 14, 2007, Official Journal of the European Union, L43/32. 4 EC DEC 626/2008/EC of the European Parliament and Council of June 30, 2008 on the selection and authorisation of systems providing mobile satellite services.5 Directive 2002/20/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of March 7, 2002 on the authorisation of electronic communications networks and services (Authorisation directive).6 In this context, Member States should also be aware that although the European Decision identifies the S-band for MSS and CGC, it does not mandate MSS operators to deploy a terrestrial component (CGC) in the band. 7 Directive 2002/21/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of March 7, 2002 on a common regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services. (Framework Directive)

“In order to meet the timetable laid down in the MSS Decision not only does the Commission now need to adhere to the timetable itself in order to issue the relevant authorisations, but Member States through their NRAs also have an important part to play.”


Satellite spectrum

reliance for the MSS may simply be placed on the Commission’s blanket authorisation) and the necessary terrestrial authorisations for CGC.

On October 7, 2008 the Commission received four applications for S-band spectrum from:

ICO Satellite Limited • Solaris Mobile Limited• Inmarsat Ventures limited • TerreStar Europe Limited •

These applicants are now subject to a two-phase selection process. During the first phase, the technical and commercial ability of the candidates to actually launch their systems, as well as their compliance with a set of contractual and manufacturing milestones, will be assessed. Applicants successful in the first phase are required to have committed and demonstrated substantial investments and procured the construction and launch of the necessary satellite in order to meet the timetable laid down by the Commission in their Call for Applications8.

If, following this phase, the Commission determines that there is insufficient spectrum available to award each viable applicant the spectrum that it has sought a second selection phase will take place. The second phase involves assessing candidates against four pre-defined selection criteria, those being:

1. consumer and competitive benefits provided, including rural coverage and the number of users supported;2. spectrum efficiency;3. the speed at which all Member States will be covered by S-band MSS and4. the capacity of the systems to fulfil public policy objectives.

Timeline

Under the current Commission timetable9 announced on December 19, 2008 a selection Decision is expected between May and August

of 2009 - depending on the results of the first selection phase and the cumulative spectrum requirements of the credible applicants. This represents a delay of more than one month in the initial indicative timeline published in the Commission’s Call for Applications. The Commission is working hard to meet the timetable, since any delays introduce an element of regulatory uncertainty; especially applicants who intend to launch their satellite in 2009 or otherwise well ahead of the Commission’s prospective target launch date of 2011.

A further element of uncertainty involves the status of the UK administration’s ICO-P satellite filing with the Radiocommunications Bureau (BR) of the ITU, which received notification on January 26, 2004. ICO launched an action on September 26, 2008 against the Parliament and Council10 seeking orders that the MSS Decision is void for a number of reasons including that the MSS Decision did not acknowledge the existence of its pre-existing rights derived from the ITU. This aside, the Commission is proceeding with the selection process as announced.11 Recital 10 of the MSS Decision recognises that the regulations of the ITU provide procedures for satellite radio frequency coordination as a tool for management of harmful interference, but do not extend to selection or authorisation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the regulatory landscape within the EU is being changed for those seeking to introduce MSS services in the 2GHz S-band. The policy objectives stated in the MSS Decision have been broadly supported by all of the applicants in the ESAP process. It remains to be seen whether this move by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament will deliver in a timely way the public policy objectives stated in the MSS Decision and whether this can therefore be regarded as a successful move into future pan-European spectrum planning and authorisation. For the

applicants, regulatory certainty and timely authorisation of their proposed MSS services remains a goal yet to be delivered. The industry world-wide is watching with interest these developments in Europe. n

“Under the current Commission timetable announced on December 19, 2008 a selection Decision is expected between May and August of 2009 - depending on the results of the first selection phase and the cumulative spectrum requirements of the credible applicants.”

8 European Commission, Administrative Procedures (2008/C 201/03): Call for applications for pan-European systems providing mobile satellite services (MSS).9 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ecomm/current/pan_european/index_en.htm.10 Case T-441/08 (2009/C 6/68).11 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/ecomm/current/pan_european/index_en.htm. The Commission has said, “In October 2008, a request for annulment of the legal basis for the selection procedure has been brought to the Court of First Instance of the European Communities. Without prejudice to the legal prerogatives of the Court, it is not expected that the request would impact the timing of the selection process.”






The pace of change in the mobile industry is arguably faster than any other. The mass-market uptake of mobile Internet among subscribers, together with the arrival of the ‘applications supermarket’ business model and the proliferation of user-generated content, shows the pace at which the mobile industry is evolving. It is moving in an exciting new direction where data functions and services provide new opportunities for people to communicate and interact with one another seamlessly while on the move.

As the mobile industry as a whole becomes more data-centric, operators are getting more and more nimble. This puts them in the best position to react as quickly as possible to meet consumer expectations. Of course, when it comes to forecasting what mobile customers will want, a crystal ball would be handy, but here in the real world, the best course is to cultivate an in-depth understanding of customers and their requirements - now and for the future.

Knowledge is power

Armed with comprehensive market data, operators can prepare their networks for a large array of differentiated mobile data services and deliver the quality that those services deserve.

We commissioned the Nielsen Company to undertake the first major in-depth survey of mobile users during the economic downturn. The survey investigated the future intent of current users and non-users of ten mobile data services, covering mobile email, multimedia messaging (MMS), music downloads, mobile video, LBS/GPS, mobile Internet, uploading photos, game downloads, software/application downloads and mobile commerce.

More than 50,000 mobile users in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the United States participated in the study. The survey showed that more than half of the approximately 200 million mobile data users in those countries expect to increase their

usage in the next two years, increasing the network traffic from services such as mobile Internet, email, photo uploading and MMS.

Mobile data usage up

The results provide detailed insight into mobile data user attitudes. Despite the economic slump, consumers intend to increase use of the analysed mobile data services dramatically; more than half of the current mobile data users expect to increase use in the next two years.

Mobile Internet leads demand, followed by email, MMS, uploading photos and software/applications download. In most countries, convenience tends to be the leading lifestyle factor driving use of services, followed by entertainment and then work and socialising.

For operators, the positive trend in demand shown by the survey can represent a multi-million dollar opportunity.

Change today for tomorrow’s demandsby Ben McCahill, Director of Mobile Strategy, Tellabs

According to a recent survey, the future of the mobile industry is increasingly tied to data. A recent survey of more than 50,000 mobile users in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the United States showed that more than half of the mobile data users in those countries expect to increase their usage in the next two years and that many new users will join them. To efficiently meet the demand, operators need to begin upgrading their platforms now.

Ben McCahill is the Director of Mobile Strategy at Tellabs. Mr McCahill has held various roles since he joined Tellabs in R&D, Customer Services, and Product Management as well as serving as Head of the regional Business Solutions Group in EMEA. Mr McCahill left Tellabs for three years to join e-Net, an operator in the fibre wholesale market and re-joined it in his current role. Mr McCahill has over 15 years experience in networking and ten years in telecoms; prior to joining Tellabs, he worked in the UK, USA and the Far East.

Ben McCahill holds a Bachelor Degree in Engineering from the University College Dublin and a Master of Science degree from Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh.

Regulatory affairsMobile accessMobile payment systemsMobile accessMobile data


Addressing user concerns

Mobile users continue to raise concerns about cost, speed and quality of service. So while it is clear that mobile data is here to stay operators must also note the issues highlighted by the survey: cost (too expensive or unclear), speed, quality and reliability.

The results underline one key point: if operators want to meet users’ expectations, they must act now to make sure their networks are ready for the growth in demand for high-speed mobile services.

Is your network up to the task?

Pressure on networks will be compounded since 41 per cent of European and 71 per cent of US respondents anticipate daily use of mobile Internet services. Mobile email is on a similar growth trajectory and it is increasingly available on a range of mobile devices.

The sustained increase in high-bandwidth applications and corresponding data traffic will create significant challenges for mobile operators looking to maintain profitability. Since most of the growth is expected within the next 12 months, this issue demands immediate attention.

Operators who address these challenges early will take advantage of the increasing demand, while enhancing margins. However, this demand presents operators with a further challenge. Network development critical to future competitive differentiation and success is required at a time when the telecommunications sector - like everyone else - is in a period of economic turmoil.

Yet even conservative estimates suggest that there will be 200 million broadband-enabled mobile devices in use by 2011. This trend and the accompanying consumer hunger for services as outlined by the Nielsen survey means that it simply is not viable to delay investments that will enable operators to manage the rapid technology change required to support these services.

A reluctance of some telecommunications players to move quickly is understandable. Many are used to making incremental, tactical changes to their network capabilities and, until recently, that was a reasonable approach.

The pace of technological evolution and innovation is relentless. Reactive network

changes no longer enable operators to stay ahead of application and service development. Operators could be left behind as technology trends overtake their networks, and services running with more complex combinations of transport protocols demand increased bandwidth.

Challenge and opportunity

Now is the time to take a strategic approach to network development. For some operators, that will mean radically adjusting cost structures to reduce operating expenses, streamline operations and increase backhaul efficiency.

The key to success lies in a forward-looking strategy based on the concept of a single provisioning model. This approach will enable operators to deliver consistently fast, accurate and scalable services regardless of data type.

If backhaul networks are to support the new wave of multi-protocol services, operators must restructure their networks around flexible, transport-agnostic, managed anchor points that remain constant, but enable attached components - services and protocols - to be developed as required. This strategy maximises the network’s ability to support multiple protocols, service delivery options and traffic types at the same time. It also helps network planners select the most economic transport protocol for services while ensuring vital quality of service.

Given the current economic climate, it would be both imprudent and unsustainable to suggest immediate, large-scale, backhaul replacement. It is possible, however, to plan changes that will meet the anticipated rise in demand for services and provide profitable service delivery in an appropriate timescale. Operators should do this now, while accommodating data growth is still manageable and before traffic volumes become overwhelming.

Operators must identify network limitations, so they can begin anchor point installation and roll out changes, first to less stressed points, until the whole network is a single, future-ready platform.

Lead with effective backhaul

Many operators have already responded to the market trends, and are initiating backhaul network developments. The UK’s BT Group

is deploying access platforms in the Ethernet-based mobile backhaul service that gives mobile operators access to its ‘21CN’ next-generation network. Vodafone’s Backhaul Evolution Programme is designed to reduce network costs across its 16 operating companies.

This Backhaul Evolution Programme is a classic example of how an operator is tackling the need for strategic change today. Vodafone began its programme in Ireland, where it has a high dependency on microwave. It is using the platform to introduce statistical multiplexing gains, collecting numerous small sites and multiplexing them on a packet basis to obtain backhaul efficiency. As the project evolves, Vodafone plans to use the information it delivers to drive the changes required in its other operating companies.

If operators reduce these cost structures now and make sure service delivery is accurate and consistent, and is delivered using the most economic available transport, they will be well placed in an increasingly competitive market. They can seize a key role in service rollout, turning the challenge of bandwidth demand into an exciting opportunity to meet user expectations with proven network quality and tightly managed transport costs.

Plan for tomorrow

The findings of the survey present mobile operators with a clear route forward. They must prepare their networks today for the mobile data services and applications users will demand tomorrow. The research substantiates what operators have been hoping for over the past few years - those who use mobile communications will want to use them more. Services will become even more sophisticated and customers say they want them sooner rather than later.

It is therefore clear that if operators are to benefit from the growing appetite for mobile data, they need to act now to ensure that their networks are ready to deliver high quality service and a positive experience for the end-user. Only then will the potential of mobile data be fulfilled - for operators and customers alike. n

Mobile data


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Accelerate your business

September 17-19, 2009Pragati Maidan Exhibition CentreNew Delhi, India

Organized by:

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EXPO COMM INDIA 2009 is a truly unique ICT exhibition and conference for the Indian market that integrates technology with business.

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Digital advertising

Advanced advertising - from concept to productby Tim Spencer, President, Sigma Systems

Advertisers are facing greater budget restraints than ever before. To get the best results for their spending they are increasingly turning to the sort of advanced, targeted, advertising that digital media makes possible. By combining demographic data and viewing habits, Subscriber Information Services (SIS) construct individual, group and community profiles that are used to target meaningful advertising to specific viewers on their mobile phones, TVs or PCs. The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ SCTE 130 architecture standardizes this process.

Tim Spencer is the co-founder President and COO of Sigma Systems, having served previously as Sigma’s CTO; he has over 20 years experience in telecommunications software design and development. Prior to Sigma, Mr Spencer held various senior positions with Bell Canada. He was Director of Software Engineering for advanced services at Bell Mobility, where he was responsible for the design and development of real-time OSS solutions such as message processing, service activation and fulfilment, inventory and network management. Mr Spencer also led several international OSS consulting projects for Bell Canada International in Central and Latin America.

Tim Spencer holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and software design from DeVry University.

While there have never been greater opportunities for advertisers to identify and reach specific customer communities, there has never been more competition or market pressure facing those who provide advertising channels. As the global economy staggers, advertisers are under severe budget pressure and need to demonstrate tangible returns on their ad investments. Those returns are best measured through vehicles that can target specific customer segments and support measurable interactions with them. This is why advertisers are intrigued by the promise of interactive TV advertising. It combines the power of the TV medium with the Internet’s interactivity, behavioural targeting, and community-orientation. Delivering interactive advertising as a viable, value-added product is high on many TV providers’ priority lists, but not everyone will make it work right on the first go around.

The business case

Many print publications have lost massive portions of their ad revenue to thousands of online publications. Traditional broadcasters have lost revenue and market share to an

ever-increasing number of specialized programmers and cable channels. With businesses looking to optimize their marketing dollars, competition to sell ad space has further intensified. The search to find better ways to identify, engage with and sell to customers continues to advance while advertiser expectations increase.

Advertisers want to target, interact with, and measure their success in reaching out to specific customer segments. Part of the reason print publications are struggling is that they couple a high cost to advertise with relatively poor means of customer identification, interaction, and measurement. Advertisers cannot justify major investments in print advertising if they cannot demonstrate tangible returns on those investments.

Similar forces are affecting major television advertising outlets. What is a strong audience share today was an embarrassment ten years ago. Rarely does one see a television commercial that does not attempt to push interested prospects to a website where they can be captured as qualified leads and be exposed interactively to various content-based

promotions. Converting the passive viewer into an active prospect is a major challenge now because there is not a direct linkage between the TV advertisement and the online, or mobile, ad components.

This is where the business case for advanced advertising becomes extremely relevant. From the viewer’s perspective, advanced advertising brings together the TV, mobile phone and Internet experiences into one seamless channel. Technically, it allows the viewer to do anything from an impulse buy to ‘deep-dive’ research on a product and find detailed information and specifications, professional and peer reviews, cross-marketed and affiliate discounts, and trial offers. The big challenge is to put this kind of information and interactivity in place, make it work seamlessly, and ensure that it is directed to relevant audiences.

Targeting matters

TV network programmers seek ‘DVR proof’ in new programming. One of the reasons live programmes, like major sporting events, can command premium advertising rates is


Regulatory affairsMobile accessMobile payment systemsMobile accessDigital advertising

that they are immediate. A recorded match just does not carry the same excitement, anticipation and emotion as the live event. Viewers are more likely to view such events live rather than see them later on a DVR (digital video recorder) that allows them to fast-forward through the adverts. Advertisers know that many viewers, especially when using a DVR, ignore broadcast advertising. Advertising that the viewer does not look at is worthless, so finding ‘DVR proof’ content is essential.

Advanced advertising capabilities are game-changers for TV programmers and service providers because of targeting. A major reason viewers change the channel or hit fast forward on their DVR during a commercial break is that they are just not interested in whatever is being advertised. Huge percentages of viewers will turn away from a given advert because it is only relevant to a small percentage of the audience.

Advanced advertising changes the way ads are delivered - via TV, web and mobile device. All viewers do not receive the same ads. Instead, they sees ads targeted to their interests based on an analysis of their subscriber information, the services they already use, the shows they view and interact with and preferences they can adjust. This helps ensures the delivery of only relevant - potentially compelling - advertising content to each viewer. It also allows TV providers to sell each time slot to a number of advertisers.

Well-defined ‘audience qualifiers’ will direct content to the right audiences. Audience qualifiers are advertising-relevant attributes that apply to viewers and groups of viewers. These qualifiers, and specific combinations of them, mark subscriber profiles as belonging to defined audience groups. Audience qualifiers can be based on anything from traditional demographic characteristics, like geography and household income, to viewing or usage habits. In layman’s terms, a viewer from Toulouse, say, could be tagged as a middle-income, rugby-loving, DVR user. Audience qualifiers, and the subscriber profiles of which they are part, also include the viewer’s device and location.

The mechanism whereby audience qualifiers and subscriber profiles are defined, stored, managed, and made available to systems that handle advertising delivery is now called a Subscriber Information Service (SIS). In North America, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers’ (SCTE) 130 architecture specification for advanced advertising ensures a standardized and extensible message-based interface for both

the cable and telecommunications worlds. SCTE 130 specifically defines the SIS as the component of the architecture that centralizes and manages information about viewers and audience groups. SCTE 130 also provides tools to define granular audience qualifiers. The SIS provides the audience qualifier information to the systems that execute ad insertion and delivery. The European market is likely to adopt the SCTE 130, or a similar standard, as well.

Interaction sells

Audience targeting will help counter the DVR effect and, when coupled with interactivity, will increase revenue opportunities even further. Introducing interactivity to advertisements makes targeted ads more engaging and compelling by including animation, games, live contests, polling, and access to detailed information.

Interactive elements can be present in other places beyond the traditional commercial time slots on TV or standard banner ads online. Interactive elements can be tied to product placements or embedded in programming; they can also be telescoping elements in a window frame or translucent overlay that the viewer can choose to interact with at any time. These elements can appear as pre-roll ads in advance of pay-per-view and VOD (video on demand) movies, or on-demand DVR and entertainment programme guide menus. This allows TV providers to offer new advertising products that can behave similarly to online ads.

Picture a scenario where any time a viewer presses fast-forward on the remote, a telescoping ad appears. The same ad can be served to viewers online or to their mobile device. Outside of the constraints of in-program time slots, ads are more difficult to tune out or fast forward past, and they also let viewers choose when they want to be entertained, browse, shop, or learn. Coupled with targeting and opt-in/opt-out controls, it becomes possible to deliver a highly personalized experienced. Interactivity makes TV a more effective element in multi-channel campaigns that aim to engage, capture, qualify, and transact with customers at any entry point. In other words, the advertiser should no longer need to entice prospects to visit a website just to engage them as customers.

Making it work

Bringing advanced advertising to market will involve significant challenges. For example, advertisers and service providers ultimately

need to agree upon common audience qualifiers or common guidelines for defining them. This will allow them to develop ads and campaigns that target similarly defined viewer communities regardless of on which service provider’s network they appear.

Initially, audience qualifiers can be defined based on demographics, a subscriber’s existing services, and even pay-per-view and on-demand transaction records used for billing. Delivering more granular and adaptive targeting over time will require an enhanced infrastructure to collect and analyze viewer usage and behaviour data. As patterns, trends, group and community preferences emerge from this information, new audience qualifiers can be defined and attuned to them. This will result in more accurate ratings and more specific targeting of both viewer groups and behavioural patterns. Behavioural analytics are already commonplace in the Internet realm and have become part of advertisers’ general expectations.

Any solution, however, that involves detailed user data must respect the audience’s desire for privacy and needs to be coupled with both education and support for strict opt-out/opt-in controls. The service provider community needs to provide customers with the opportunity to control the in-flow of ads. Further, any SIS-like component’s job is to abstract personal information from audience information. Advertisers should be able to select the groups defined by audience qualifiers they wish to target without ever having access to personal information.

Complex fulfilment processes represent another key challenge. While most interactive elements like on-screen buttons and menus are embedded in the set-top box infrastructure, the viewer’s actions can kick off a variety of fulfilment processes - such as financial transactions, hard goods shipments, and content retrieval and delivery - that call for third-party involvement. These processes need to be automated and integrated into other operations, such as billing, supply chain, warehouse, credit and debit card processing, credit checks, and any number of business-to-business processes related to ad campaigns, promotions, and trials.

Leading technology suppliers have been working with organizations such as the TM Forum and CableLabs to define the standards and specifications necessary to automate these processes. This work has resulted in the first generation of production-ready solutions that can deliver advanced advertising capabilities today and provide a foundation for more complex options in the near and long term. n


Internet Privacy

Internet privacy?by Andrei Korobeinik, CEO, Serenda Investments OU

The Internet, like any significant new technology, poses a number of serious challenges for society.

In time, both the technology and ethics of privacy will evolve to meet the needs of our virtual lives and of an online society. However, until society adjusts to the social implications of these new technologies, and people get used to the exposure the Internet brings and integrate it into their daily lives, the only privacy one has online is the privacy we, ourselves, preserve.

Andrei Korobeinik is the CEO of Serenda Investments. He has worked in Web development for the last decade, first as an entrepreneur, then as the Technical Director of an Internet gambling enterprise.

Mr Korobeinik then launched his own project, the Rate.ee, social network, which became the most popular Estonian Internet site. Mr Korobeinik is still the CEO of his own social networking company, operating in more than 20 different countries and has invested in a number of Estonian Internet startups.

Andrei Korobeinik studied computer science at the University of Tartu, where, in addition to IT, he studied psychology and economics.

The Internet, as we know it, has been around for some 15 years and it is developing at an incredible speed. Many things have already happened, but it is always exciting to imagine what to expect next.

Half a year ago, at a conference on Internet trends, on one of the slides of my presentation about Internet privacy I forecasted that airlines would start using social networks to get more data on their customers’ tastes. They could then use the data to give you advice about hotels you will probably like, show you movies you have not yet seen or even let you know what interests you share with the passengers sitting next to you, which might be quite useful to know for a long trip.

What has happened during the last few months? The largest travellers’ community site, Tripadvisor.com, has launched a social

network where you can get advice from your friends about the cities you are planning on visiting or the hotels you are going to stay in.

At the end of January, I have received an email from KLM airlines saying that they are launching a new social network called Bluenity.com. The goal of this network is, “to discover other travellers and meet them at any point”, not just on the plane. Good idea, but to take part you have to surrender a bit of your privacy.

Internet as a platform

The Internet is changing every day. New sites appear and new concepts substitute the old ones. Only three or four years ago, large Internet sites were trying to defend their user bases by any means; now, quite logically, large ‘offline’ companies are doing the same

thing. However, today the situation is totally different.

Large players feel that synergy is more important than competition threats. New open standards appear, allowing services to access each other’s data. One day your favourite Internet shop will allow you to discuss the content of your shopping basket with your LinkedIn friends, or your mobile operator will enrich your smartphone contacts with their pictures from Facebook. Open ID, Open Social, Facebook API, Google Friends Connect are just a few words from the Web 2.0 vocabulary that can take us to the future.

The vast majority, some 99 per cent, of data in the Internet is currently unstructured, so it is not always easy to use data from other sites. The Web 3.0 - the semantic web - though, is not far away; it will consist of data structured


so computers can ‘understand’ it. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web considers the semantic web to be the “right Internet”. Indeed, the new Internet will be much more efficient in using and sharing data according to your needs.

Big companies and big social networks can already mine data and discover things about your life and habits you almost surely don’t want just anyone to know. With the semantic Web, the dangers multiply.

Let’s get back to KLM. Of course, my scenario is not there yet, but will it take long to integrate KLM’s service with some of the global social networks? I don’t think so.

Internet everywhere

Just five years ago, the Internet was accessible from one place - a desktop computer on a table. Some WAP sites could be used from your mobile phone and you even heard about Internet television, but these things, due to their inconvenience, were quite far from being mainstream solutions. In spite of that, the ‘three-screen’ concept descends from that time. Telecoms and media companies believed that the same content should be accessible from everywhere all three screens - the computer, the mobile phone and your TV set.

This is what is happening today. Fewer people really care about desktop computers - people are buying laptops they can take everywhere. The newer smartphones are becoming real Internet devices - it is often easier to go online than to find a socket to charge your phone. The only thing which is not yet ready in many parts of the world is IPTV, but it is just a matter of time.

It is hard to say whether TV will go online or the Internet will finally appear on the TV screens. The Internet TV service Joost is not very successful and other approaches by MSN TV (formerly WebTV), Yahoo TV, and so on. have yet to succeed. Still, TV is becoming more and more interactive and it seems that a tipping point will come in a couple of years. The infrastructure is almost there, and consumers’ habits are slowly but inevitably changing; many people already prefer to watch their favourite TV shows on

the Internet. These are great services, but every time you use Web-based services a bit more data about your life and tastes goes into the service provider’s database.

However, TV is just a part of the whole picture. Rapid convergence is affecting the way our data is processed. There are dating service systems that will allow you not only to choose your dates from pictures, but also meet them instantly (look left, she is 15 meters away). These advances affect not only dating services - the same sort of system can help you find investors at a business conference or a given service provider during a trade show.

It is not science fiction; such applications already exist. Many people have smartphones with GPS chips and Internet connectivity via EDGE or 3G. In some cities, you can find the closest restaurant and see what others think about its service and food. Another service lets you check pictures made nearby - really nearby - for example, in 50 meter radius.

The progress is fast; too fast to understand all the consequences it brings. When I walk in London I can use an iPhone application to check pictures of the sights to see; I can also see nearby accommodations, including pictures of the owners. Do they really want me to see those pictures? I doubt it.

Quite often, the invasion of privacy issues are hidden. The Internet messenger called Google Talk had a privacy agreement saying that all the content of conversations held by the users belong to Google. It was changed two weeks after the service’s launch when someone checked the terms of agreement and the Internet community started to discuss the situation.

However, another Internet messenger, ICQ, belonging to America Online, still has the rights to all the ideas and inventions discussed by its users. It is clear that AOL is just trying to manage the risks of possible civil actions, but still, do you think it is a good idea to discuss your personal or business ideas or affairs using the ICQ messenger? Like most people, I do not always read the online service agreements, however it is better to read the terms before accepting them and giving companies free reign to devise ever-more creative ways to use your personal data.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Different writers describe gloomy anti-utopias; most have to do with futures too scary to contemplate and most predict the death of privacy. True, the world’s outlook is changing, long-accepted standards and morals are swiftly disappearing. Is it true that the layer of glamorous civilization is disappearing as well? Is it true we face a scary future? If we check what is happening on the Internet, the answer is definitely yes.

The Internet is a kind of a brave new world for newcomers, without many of the traditional boundaries set by society. It is a world where you can date people without knowing them; you might even doubt their age or gender. On the Internet one can send messages to a prime minister and tell him that he is a dumb communist spy or leave a note ‘on the wall’ saying that they have gone on vacation and will be back in a couple of weeks.

However, when the virtual world meets the real world the results are not always what an overly trusting user might expect. That fantastic, just perfect, computer matched date might well be nothing like what you were led to expect; an indiscrete bit of fiction - or an unsavoury truth - posted on your site or blog might lead to an unexpected visit by the police. Finding, upon returning from vacation, that your house has been robbed is a powerful reminder that you have no idea who is actually reading your blog. You might also discover that your erotic pictures are available not only to your Facebook friends, but to your employer as well - and somehow he/she is not convinced that those pictures are forged.

In time, both the technology and ethics of privacy will evolve to meet the needs of our virtual lives and of an online society. Until society adjusts to these new technologies, and people get used to the exposure the Internet brings and integrates it into their daily lives, it may be useful to remind people - especially children - that the ethics and morals they choose to live by must be followed carefully everywhere, both online and offline. n

“TV is just a part of the whole picture. Rapid convergence is affecting the way our data is processed. There are dating service systems that will allow you not only to choose your dates from pictures, but also meet them instantly (look left, she is 15 meters away).”

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A deep understanding of what people want and need. An ability and expertise in making television more

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