The UK regulator for communications, OFCOM, has today published its fourth annual report on The Communications Market 2007. The report reviews convergence in the market for communications in the UK, as well as trends in the television, radio and telecom sectors. The report is packed with useful analysis, description of trends and discussion of their implications for the future of the telecom industry.

For more information, please see here.

Telefónica Group today posted a 3'830 million euro profit for the first half of the year, fuelled by a 10.6% increase in revenues and an 11.3% increase in customer base to achieve a total of 212.6 million 'accesses' or customers by the end of June 2007.  Telefónica Group has subsequently raised its guidance for its full year results and now expects full year revenues to increase by 8-10%.  By the end of June 2007, Telefónica had 9.1 million retail broadband accesses, nearly 155 million mobile accesses and in excess of 1.3 million pay TV accesses.

Telefónica Espana accounted for 36.6% of consolidated Group revenues, while Telefónica Latinoamérica was the source of 34.6% of consolidated Group revenues. Telefónica O2 Europe contributed just over a quarter or 25.4% of Group consolidated revenues. Highlights of interest include:

- high growth in mobile data revenues for Telefónica Espana, with data Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) achieving its "highest growth in years, due to content and connectivity services";
- A total of 121.8 million accesses for the Telefónica Latinoamérica group, up nearly 14% year-on-year, with mobile clients exceeding 90 million for the first time;
- Revenue growth for Telefónica O2 Europe remains steady at an expected 11-14% for the full year.

For more information, please see here.

 

 

The UK regulator OFCOM has just published new research on the market for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the United Kingdom.  OFCOM estimates that VoIP services had been used by 2.4 million UK households by the end of 2006, double the estimated total at the end of 2005. Nearly one quarter of VoIP users (23%) claimed to be with more than one service provider. However, OFCOM found that a large proportion of users were unaware of all the different types of services they had access to and concluded that there seems to be a substantial lack of knowledge among VoIP users about the services they have or can access.

The research report on VoIP has been released to coincide with OFCOM's latest consultation on the regulation of VoIP services. OFCOM has conducted two previous consultations on VoIP in October 2004 and on VoIP regulation in February 2006, followed by a Statement in March 2007. In its latest consultation, OFCOM proposes that any VoIP provider offering VoIP calls to traditional fixed phones or mobile phones ("type 2 VoIP services"), or making calls to and receiving calls from traditional fixed phones or mobile phones ("type 4 VoIP services") should allow users to call 999.  The closing date for responses is by 30 September 2007.

For more information, please see here.

BT Group announced its results for the first quarter of 2007. Total revenue has risen by 3.5 per cent to £5,033 million in the quarter with continued strong growth in new wave revenue. Growth in total revenue outweighted the rise in EBITDA before specific items and leaver costs, which grew by 2.8 per cent.

Strong growth was observed in 'new wave' revenue generated from networked IT services and broadband, which grew by 11 per cent more than last year to £1,815 million and now accounts for 36 per cent or more than a third of the BT Group’s revenue. Networked IT services revenue grew by 8 per cent to £1,061 million, and broadband revenue surged by a massive 19 per cent to £540 million.

By 30 June 2007, BT had 11.2 million wholesale broadband connections (DSL and LLU), including 2.4 million local loop unbundled lines, an increase of 2.5 million connections year on year as the broadband market continues to show strong growth. In the UK, BT is rebuilding its core national network and reports that, following a successful pilot trial of in Cardiff, it is on track to launch 'next-generation broadband' services delivering up to 24Mb nationally in early 2008.

For more information, please see here.

Europe puts in a solid performance in the latest analysis of digital opportunity by the ITU. Although Europe loses out on the first two places in digital opportunity to the broadband kings of Asia (the Rep. of Korea and Japan), five out of the top ten countries are European. Denmark ranks at Number three and, alongside Japan, is a top contender for first place next year, if its current growth rates in broadband subscribers (fixed and mobile) continue.

Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands lead Europe. Within Europe, a sharp divide in digital opportunity between Eastern and Western Europe is apparent (with Estonia and Lithuania notable exceptions to this rule, with over 90% of their Internet subscriber base using broadband connections). A combination of rising disposable incomes, falling prices for broadband and a thirst for new technologies among the countries of Eastern Europe mean that this gap is closing fast, however. Albania and Moldova are notable for having the lowest digital opportunity in Europe; at 107th and 111th worldwide (out of 181 countries measured by the Digital Opportunity Index), their 'low' rankings within Europe help put the global digital divide into context.

 

For more information, please see the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

WiMAXCounts.com provides data on the top operators in terms of BWA/WiMAX subscriber numbers as of Q1 2007. According to WiMAXCounts.com, three of the top nine operators originate in the United States (Clearwire, Mobile Pro and Aerotechtel), while two of the top nine operators are Spanish (Iberbanda and Banda Ancha). These results can be compared with findings from the research consultancy ABI Research, which projects that Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, and NextWave Wireless will be the three dominant mobile WiMAX service providers in the United States, with a range of mobile services to support different devices.

For more information, please see here.

WiMaxCounts.com suggest that the total number of WiMax subscribers worldwide is set to break through the one million subscriber count anytime soon. WiMaxCounts.com records 950 million WiMax subscribers by the end of Q1 2007, 17.5% up on December 2006 and equivalent to 85% growth year-on-year over Q1 2006. At the start of 2007, the market for WiMAX was growing at a rate of 150,000 subscribers per quarter.

This rapid growth in subscriber numbers confirms the growing market acceptance of WiMax. For more information, see here.

In this year's edition of the World Information Society Report 2007, ITU includes the very latest statistics monitoring the evolution of the digital divide, using a variety of statistical techniques. The digital divide is narrowing most rapidly in mobile telephony, with one in two people in the world expected to have access to a mobile phone by the end of this year. Low-income countries are making important gains in mobile telephony (see Figure), with mobile phones outnumbering fixed lines by seven to one in LDCs and by as much as nine to one in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The digital divide is also narrowing in terms of Internet usage.  In 1997, the nearly three-quarters of the world's population living in low-income and lower-middle income economies accounted for just 5% of the world's total Internet users.  By 2005, they accounted for 32.5% or nearly a third of all Internet users. The digital divide is evolving, however, and gaps in access in the high-speed broadband technologies that will matter the most in tomorrow's 'information economy' are more marked - low-income economies accounted for under 1% of total broadband subscribers worldwide, while lower-middle income economies accounted for just 20% or one fifth of the global total.  The digital divide may be narrowing, but it is taking on new aspects in terms of speed and the quality of access.

"Chapter two: Bridging the Digital Divide" of the World Information Society Report 2007 can be read here.

The ITU has monitored trends in broadband subscribers and the price of broadband services around the world since 2002.  By early 2007, broadband was commercially available in 170 countries, with the latest country to launch commercial ADSL services being Lesotho in early 2007.

In 2002, broadband services were available in just 81 countries, mostly industrialized OECD countries, transition economies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and some developing countries in Asia-Pacific.  By 2006, the number of countries with commercial broadband service had more than doubled to reach a total of 166 countries, with a number of operators in African countries launching broadband services, including in Botswana, Ghana, Rwanda and Libya.

Chapter three: The Digital Opportunity Index of the World Information Society Report 2007 tracks growth in the Information Society around the world, particularly in the more advanced broadband technologies of 3G mobile and broadband Internet service.  It examines key trends in telecom markets, such as whether subscribers are 'cutting the cord' and the death of dial-up.  To download the text of the chapter for free, please click here.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) are jointly holding a meeting of high-level experts to identify key trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

To view the ITU/EBU conference via webcam, click here.

More information about this meeting can be found here.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will jointly organize a Meeting of High-Level Experts on “Competitive Platforms for the Delivery of Digital Content” to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

ITU Member States, EBU Membership, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their competitive platforms for digital content related contributions to the meeting at digitalcontent@itu.int

Click here to see the meeting agenda.

Onlline registration is available here.

Information about this meeting can be found here.

 

 

 

 

The European Association for the Co-ordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation (ANEC) held its General Assembly on 1 June 2007 in Brussels. For the first time, the group considered issues relating to RFID and digital identity, and in particular the impact that these technologies may have on consumer interests. ITU's Lara Srivastava spoke at the assembly, emphasizing the need for a better understanding of the wide-reaching implications of RFID and the development of global solutions to the digital identity problem. Her presentation is available here.

ITU and UNCTAD are delighted to announce the publication of the World Information Society Report 2007, published on 16 May 2007. The Report seeks to benchmark progress in meeting the WSIS targets, to be achieved by 2015 at the latest, and evaluates the evolution of the digital divide. It presents 200 pages of analysis of the latest trends in ICTs, exploring whether consumers are 'cutting the cord', the death of dial-up and growth in broadband and 3G. It evaluates the digital divide using a variety of techniques and finds that the strong growth of mobile telephony offers the greatest potential to bridge the digital divide.

Using the methodologies endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society, it finds strong growth in digital opportunity around the world. Asian and European countries continue to lead in digital opportunity, but there are shining examples of strong progress in the take-up of ICTs in Africa - five of the ten top gainers in digital opportunity are African economies. Last year's World Information Society Report benchmarked the gender divide and regional divides. This year's Report uses the Digital Opportunity Index to benchmark gaps in access and use of ICTs by different age groups in the age divide in Singapore.

Growth of the Information Society is not without risks, however, and online security threats remain a cause for concern, however. Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs was a key aim of WSIS, and the report examines the evolution in cyberthreats, including spam, spyware, botnets, identity theft, breaches of privacy and other risks associated with online transactions.

The Report also examines national strategies that various countries have adopted to promote growth in ICT development, illustrating these with reference to a wealth of country case studies. It presents examples of successful projects promoting WSIS implementation around the world. The Report combines theory with authoritative analysis from the ITU and UNCTAD and country examples from around the world. It is due to be presented to the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, holding its Tenth Panel Meeting in Geneva next week to discuss progress in WSIS implementation.

For more information, please see here. Articles will follow all next week, to highlight different aspects of the Report.

The Guardian (United Kingdom) reports that Europe's $4.9 billion satellite navigation system is in deep crisis and will require more public funds to get back on track, according to the European Union.

The Galileo project - Europe's rival to the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS - has already seen major delays because the eight companies in the consortium are arguing over how to divide the workload. The consortium of companies from France, Germany, Spain, Britain and Italy had been given until 10 May 2007 to set up a joint legal entity to run the project or risk losing control of it. But German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, speaking on behalf of the EU, said he had "little hope left" the consortium will end the infighting in time.

Like GPS, Galileo is envisioned to be a network of satellites orbiting Earth that will beam radio signals to receiving devices on the ground, helping users pinpoint their locations.

See more on this story in The Guardian.

An International Telecommunication Union (ITU) delegation headed by ITU Secretary General Hamadoun I. Touré visited European Broadcasting Union (EBU) headquarters in Geneva today. The delegation met with EBU Secretary General Jean Réveillon, Phil Laven, Stefan Kürten and Giacomo Mazzone and visited EBU headquarters and Eurovision.

In the afternoon future common activities were discussed and a letter of intent was signed by the EBU and the ITU confirming both Unions' commitment to work collaboratively on a number of inititatives and activities in relation to the implementation of the plan of Action of the WSIS (World Summit for the Information Society.)

                                   

A high-level experts meeting, jointly organised by the ITU and the EBU and entitled “Competitive Platforms for Digital Content”, will take place at EBU headquarters on 21 and 22 June 2007.

The main aim of this meeting is to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

Click here for more information on this meeting.

EBU press release is availble here.

 

For the first time, Denmark tops the rankings of The Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007’s "Networked Readiness Index", as a culmination of an upward trend since 2003. Denmark’s outstanding levels of networked readiness have to do with the country’s excellent regulatory environment, coupled with a clear government leadership and vision in leveraging ICT for growth and promoting ICT penetration and usage.

The Networked Readiness Index (NRI) measures the propensity of countries to leverage the opportunities offered by ICT for development and increased competitiveness. It also establishes a broad international framework mapping out the enabling factors of such capacity.

More information can be found here.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) are jointly organizing a high-level experts meeting to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

This meeting is being held under the "Shaping Tomorrow's Networks Initiative" and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Tunis Commitment (November 2005), “…[recognizing] in addition to building ICT infrastructure, there should be adequate emphasis on developing human capacity and creating ICT applications and digital content in local language, where appropriate, so as to ensure a comprehensive approach to building a global Information Society ….”

The ITU/EBU High-Level Experts Meeting on "Competitive Platforms for Digital Content" will be held from 21 to 22 June 2007 at EBU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.

Please note that the meeting will be conducted in English only.

More information about the meeting can be found here or by contacting us at digitalcontent@itu.int

More information about Shaping Tomorrow's Networks Initiative can be found here.

The Commission on 9 March has unveiled an updated text of the modernised "Television without Frontiers" Directive. After a first reading in the European Parliament and the Council, there is now broad agreement with the Commission about the future legal framework for Europe's audiovisual sector.

The new rules, which have been called for especially by the European Parliament, are a response to technological developments and create a new level-playing field in Europe for emerging audiovisual media services (video on demand, mobile TV, audiovisual services on digital TV). European TV- and filmmakers will be given more flexibility to produce digital content which they can then make freely available to consumers thanks to advertising.

The new Directive reaffirms the pillars of Europe's audiovisual model, which are cultural diversity, protection of minors, consumer protection, media pluralism, and the fight against racial and religious hatred. The Commission also proposes to ensure the independence of national media regulators. The modified proposal will be adopted in the third week of March.

More information can be found here.

The WSIS Stocktaking is a continuous process and the database remains open for all new submissions. During the WSIS process, stakeholders expressed their wishes that this publicy-accessible database of WSIS-related implementation activities should be further maintained (see Tunis Agenda, para 120). It should become an effective tool for the exchange of  information on the projects fostering development of the information society, structured according to the 11 WSIS action lines. All WSIS stakeholders were encouraged to continue to contribute information to this public database.  

As part of this stocktaking exercise of WSIS-related activities, especially regarding implementation of the WSIS Plan of Action, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the ITU Secretary-General, has just sent out a letter and a questionnaire to all stakeholders inviting them to share the information on the implementation activities and projects. The information collated from the WSIS Stocktaking questionnaire is archived in the database of WSIS Stocktaking activities.

In order to submit new project or make an up-date, please click one of the following shortcuts: NEW PROJECT / UP-DATE

To search the WSIS Stocktaking database, please click here.

The SHA-1 algorithm, which has been widely used in many of today's mainstream security products since 1995, was significantly compromised in February 2005 by a team of researchers led by Xiaoyun Wang based at China’s Shandong University. (This team had already undertaken attacks against the MD5 and SHA: hash functions previously, prior to their attack on SHA-1).

Their success prompted calls for a replacement algorithm. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology had already announced that they planned to phase out the use of SHA-1 by 2010 in favour of the SHA-2 variants. The need for a replacement algorithm has now led NIST to launch a contest to devise a successor on 27 January 2007. The competition is to begin in the fall of 2008, and continue until 2011, with full completion and approval by 2012. Contests like this one have a promising history in cryptography. Notably, the Advanced Encryption Standard (devised as a more secure replacement to the prior Data Encryption Standard) was devised through an open competition between fifteen teams of cryptographers between 1997-2000.

The 2007 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms Competition has just been launched.

The ITU Young Minds in Telecoms Competition is open to graduate students and recent graduates in economics, political science, law, literature, telecommunications, computer science, information systems and related fields. The objective of the ITU Young Minds Programme is to give young people valuable exposure to the international telecommunication environment and to the work of the ITU. The first Young Minds in Telecoms Competition was launched by the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in 2005. Information on the winners and runner-ups for the 2005 and 2006 competitions are available on the Young Minds in Telecoms website. One of the main criteria for evaluation is the submission of an essay and those essays that were highly-ranked in the evaluation process have been made available on the Young Minds in Telecoms site.

The essay topics for the 2007 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition are:

• What do you understand by the concept of technological convergence and what are its key trends?
• In your view, what are (1) the main benefits arising from technological convergence as they relate to the information and communication technologies (ICTs) sector? (e.g. new devices, new applications, new services etc.), and (2) the biggest challenges brought about by technological convergence? (e.g. regulatory challenges, cybersecurity threats, socio-ethical implications etc.).
• How can we ensure that the drawbacks of convergence do not outweigh its benefits?

See details on how to take part in the 2007 Young Minds in Telecoms competition here.

The New York Times has published an article on the early moves by European governments to implement the European Union Data Retention Directive.  The initial programs proposed by the governments of Germany and the Netherlands are more stringent than the directive requires.  The New York Times has noted that some of the people involved in this issue are concerned that these programs may represent a policy shift within Europe, which has traditionally followed a policy of protecting individuals' privacy rights.

More information can be found here.

The New York Times article can be found here.

The European Commission published a Communication entitled "Rapid access to spectrum for wireless electronic communications services through more flexibility".

The Communication builds on the Commission's close cooperation with Member States within the Radio Spectrum Policy Group. It sets out practical steps for a more flexible approach to spectrum management, starting with the identification of several spectrum bands in which current regulatory restrictions need urgent investigation.

More information can be found here.

An unlicensed model, tradable rights and standards regarding the service and technology neutrality, within a very clear framework, are the key principals for a future European policy on radio spectrum, says the European Parliament in an own-initiative report drafted by Fiona HALL (ALDE, UK) and almost unanimously adopted.

Fiona HALL said: "Creating a more flexible approach to radio spectrum management is essential. European innovation in wireless technology will be held back unless more efficient use is made of spectrum. At the heart of this debate is the Lisbon agenda of growth and jobs. It's important not to get this political commitment mixed up with the technical issue of how such services ought to be delivered. It be a big mistake to ring-fence the frequencies currently used by broadcasting services by insisting on their exclusion from any new approach to spectrum management."

More information can be found here. 

The Chairman’s Report from the ITU New Initiatives Programme workshop on "What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?", held in March 2006 in the ITU Headquarter, is available on the event's web-page.

To download the document, please click here. 

The UK ENUM Consortium has launched the RFP/ITT for the UK Tier 1 Registry and it is possible the UK may go commercial with ENUM sometime this year or in 2008.  Organizations that would like to respond to the ITT should inform the UKEC of their intentions by 7 February and the response must be submitted before noon on 28 February.

The ITT and related documents as well as presentations and details from the 17 January workshop can be found here.

The full article can be found here.

 

Under the "Shaping Tomorrow's Networks Project" and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (November 2005), that “… ITU and other regional organisations should take steps to ensure rational, efficient and economic use of, and equitable access to, the radio-frequency spectrum by all countries ….”, ITU and the Ugo Bordoni Foundation (Italy) jointly organized a workshop to identify global trends and good practice in radio spectrum management.

The Workshop on "Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management" was held from 22 to 23 January 2007 at ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.  

In preparation for the workshop a Background Resources Website on Spectrum Management was created. This website aims to provide a number of background resources on regional and national initiatives as well as some background information on spectrum management policy and regulation in general.

Background papers as well as Contributions to the workshop can be found here.

To download the Speaker's Presentations, please click here.

Link to Workshop Webcast Archives is available here.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Project can be found here.

More information about the workshop can be found here.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

We would like to inform all workshop participants that the Chairman's Report will be made available at the event website in the next few weeks.

According to a recent article in The Register, two young Dutch hackers who built a large botnet were sentenced to prison earlier this week. The main suspect, now 20, was handed a two-year sentence and a €9,000 f($11,800) fine, while his 28-year-old partner was given 18 months and ordered to pay €4,000 0 ($5,200).

As stated by the article, the men, part of a larger hacking ring, and one other suspect, were arrested in 2005 for extorting a US company, stealing identities to purchase cameras and games consoles, and distribute spyware. The operation netted an estimated €60,000 over a period of six months.

Read the full The Register article here.

A public forum on the availability and robustness of electronic communications networks was held in Brussels, Belgium on 18 January, 2007.  It was done as part of a study being conducted for the European Commission by Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs and professional services organizations on this issue.  The study provides insights into the availability and security provisions of electronic communication networks and also makes recommendations to the Commission, Member States, and private sector designed to enhance the security and resilience of these networks.  The findings of the study will be presented at the multi-stakeholder dialogue in Europe, which will be attended by representatives of governments, industry, and users.  Opening the dialogue will be speakers from the financial sector, the electricity sector, and the transport sector who will stress the importance of reliable communications in their operations. 

This study follows a request form the European Council in June 2004 to prepare a critical infrastructure for Europe, the adoption of a Green Paper on critical infrastructure protecion in November 2005 (more information), and a proposal by the Commission for a European Programme on Critical Infrastructure Protection (EPCIP) in December 2006.  In May 2006, the Commission adopted a Communication on a strategy for a secure Information Society - "Dialogue, partership and empowerment" (COM(2006)251).  This action was endorsed the Council Resolution adopted on 11 December 2006.

See more information here.

ITU is hosting a Workshop on “Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management” in collaboration with the Ugo Bordoni Foundation (Italy), 22-23 January 2007.

The dramatic increase in demands for radio spectrum from every industry segment – from broadcasters, wireless carriers or satellite providers to emerging unlicensed services or even the public safety and homeland security community – has highlighted the critical importance of spectrum management and related spectrum issues. This timely conference will present an unusually broad and deep look at the full range of issues affecting today’s “spectrum wars”.

Furthermore, in light of the work being carried out under the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme this workshop will serve as a basis of discussion for possible future approaches, in line with recent technological developments, attempting to provide realistic forecasts in an increasingly ubiquitous, user centric and converged telecommunication environment.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme can be found here.

All presentations can be found here.

More information about the international workshop on the topic can be found here.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

For the purposes of the New Initiative Programme event on The Future of Voice, held on 15-16 January 2007 in ITU Headquarters, five background papers as well as four regional studies have been developed and presented for comments. In order to access documents, please click on the links below.

Background Papers

• "Innovation Dynamics in the IP Environment" by Dr. Knud Erik Skouby and Dr. Reza Tadayoni
• "The Future of Communications in Next Generation Networks" by Dr. James Alleman and Dr. Paul Rappoport
• "Regulatory Trends: New Enabling Environment" by Dr. Aniruddha Banerjee, Dr. Gary Madden, and Joachim Tan
• "The Status of Voice over Internet Protocol Worldwide, 2006" by Phillippa Biggs
• "The Future of Voice: Consumer Issues" by Ewan Sutherland

Regional Case Studies

• "Future of Voice in Africa" by Russell Southwood
• "Communications: Government and Business Practices in the Asia Pacific Region" by Khelia Johnson and Oluwaseun Oyeyipo
• "Regulatory Challenges of Voice over IP Telephony: Analysis for Selected South and Eastern European Countries" by Anna Riedel
• "Ruling Voice over IP: Challenges for Regulators in Latin America"

A presentation entitled Update on ITU Cybersecurity and Countering Spam Activities (PDF), was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, at the 2nd Joint London Action Plan (LAP) - EU Contact Network of Spam Authorities (CNSA) meeting on 13-14 December in Brussels.

At the same event, Mark Sunner of MessageLabs gave a presentation entitled Security Landscape Update describing the latest kinds of security threats, including the emergence of a new peer-to-peer 'SpamThru' zombie botnet (Slide 7).

Prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World (December 4-8 2006 in Hong Kong), the 8^th in the series of ITU Internet Reports, entitled digital.life, begins by examining the underlying technologies for new digital lifestyles, from network infrastructure to value creation at the edges. In studying how businesses are adapting to fast-paced digital innovation, the report looks at how they can derive value in an environment driven by convergence at multiple levels. Moreover, a great challenge lies in extending access to underserved areas of the world. In light of media convergence, a fresh approach to policy-making may be required, notably in areas such as content, competition policy, and spectrum management. And as our lives become increasingly mediated by digital technologies, digital identities (both abstract and practical) take on a new dimension. Concerns over privacy and data protection do not seem to be sufficiently addressed by today's online environments. In this context, the report examines the changing digital individual, and outlines the need for improving the design of identity management mechanisms for a healthy and secure digital world.

The summary of the report highlights a few themes from each chapter to give a flavour of the report and puts forward key findings of digital.life.

 

For more information about the report as well as for downloading the full text of the report, please see the digital.life website or download the presentation from the digital.life press briefing.

You can purchase a hard copy of the report as well as a full electronic copy (including the complete statistical annex) online at the ITU Electronic Bookshop.

For more information about the report (including media enquiries), please contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int.

The UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) has launched its new book "Communications - The Next Decade". It consists of a series of essays by academics, politicians and regulators that examine the effect of convergence on the communications sector and the authors come to some provocative conclusions.

The book is available for download as a pdf either in sections or in its entirety from the Ofcom website.

OFCOM has just released its first research publication, The International Communications Market 2006. Report focuses specifically on the international communications market, reflecting the increasing impact of global issues on the UK commercial and regulatory communications agenda. 

To read executive summary, please click here.

To download the document, please click here.

According to the European Commission, EU member states are not doing enough to tackle the problems of spam, spyware and malicious software, despite the existing EU legislation. The implementation by EU members of this legislation is still a problem and Europe continues to suffer from illegal online activities from inside the EU and from third countries.

The Commission is now calling on all regulatory authorities and stakeholders in Europe to step up the fight against spam, spyware and malicious software and urging governments and industry to cooperate fully in this fight by applying proper filtering policies and assuring good online commercial practices. The Commission has also called for prosecution of those involved in illegal online activities. Because of the criminal and fraudulent trend in spam, and its cross border aspects, good cooperation and dialogue between the EU and third countries is essential to succeed in this fight. According to Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Information Society and Media "it is time to turn the repeated political concern about spam into concrete actions to fight spam."

For more information, see the newly released Commission Communication.

Read also the SiliconRepublic article.

OFCOM has just released a new public discussion document on Regulatory Challenges Posed by Next Generation Access Networks. 

To read executive summary, please click here.

To download the document, please click here.

A major new study prepared for the UMTS Forum by Booz Allen Hamilton quantifies the economic benefits of maintaining a harmonised approach to spectrum management across EU Member States.

To download the study click here.

On 16 November 2006, during the ECTA Conference 2006, Ms Viviane Reding, Member of the European Commission responsible for Information Society and Media spoke on From Service Competition to Infrastructure Competition: the Policy Options Now on the Table.

In her speach Ms Reding focused on recent trends in the European ICT sector. She discussed issues related to the efficient regulation, liberalization process, spectrum, investment, competition as well as "separation" stating:  

"...we have to be clear as to what is meant by terms like “structural separation” and "functional separation". The term "structural separation" has been used to mean several things: full divestiture of companies; legal separation with separate management structures; functional separation of organisational and management structures within vertically integrated undertakings; and simple accounting separation of specified activities within vertically integrated undertakings. I have expressed myself already in June in favour of finding a European way on the separation issue.

I believe that functional separation, which is a specific form of separation in the large sense as just described, could indeed serve to make competition more effective in a service-based competition environment where infrastructure-based competition is not expected to develop in a reasonable period. It may be a useful remedy in specific cases. It is certainly not a panacea. A cost benefit analysis therefore has to be made on a case by case basis, before such a remedy is imposed. And the effects of imposing such a remedy in Europe’s internal market have to be carefully analysed in each individual case. Functional separation is certainly a field where one will not be able to do without the “two pair of eyes” principle. "

For full version of the speach, please see here.

Ofcom published its second annual Technology Research and Development Report which provides an overview of emerging technologies that have the potential to make more efficient use of the radio spectrum.

More information can be found here.

ITU-T will host this year's Broadband Europe Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, 11-14 December 2006. BBEurope is an annual event which was initiated by the European Commission Framework Programme 6 BREAD project which is part of the "BroadBand for All"-strategic objective of the European Commission.

Peter Van Daele, BREAD Project Leader: "The concept of 'Broadband For All' refers to a situation in which broadband is not only available to every citizen, but is actually used by all of them. In that respect it is a more demanding concept than the traditional universal service obligation in telephony, which merely stipulates the availability, at certain conditions, of a given service. The usage of information and communication technologies via broadband infrastructures by all citizens is a policy objective because it is considered to be a key component of transforming Europe into a knowledge-based society, thus enhancing economic growth and increasing employment."

The BREAD project has amongst its objectives to develop a holistic vision encompassing technical, as well as economical and regulatory aspects. Another important aspect is of identifying roadblocks on European, national/regional level and share visions and best practices on national level to EU level.

BBEurope brings together on an international level all the BroadBand players, researchers, service providers, content providers, operators, manufacturers, policy makers, standardisation bodies, professional organisations. The meeting will discuss topics such as NGN, IPTV, wireless access, powerline, security, QoS, and broadband in rural areas. The event will conclude with a panel discussion titled: Future Perspectives in Broadband.

For a draft meeting agenda and more information on the call for papers (deadline: 10 November 2006), see the event website.

"In a sweeping set of measures, the German Federal Network Agency has ordered more than 80 network operators and service providers not to bill or collect for any phone numbers used illegally. A large number of consumers had complained to the German Federal Network Agency about so-called ping calls and other forms of telephone spamming."

"A ping call is where a call is made to a telephone number and broken off after just one ring. The subscriber’s display shows a “missed call” with an expensive premium-rate number or an 0137 number. In addition to these ping calls, another form of telephone spamming promises prizes where the person called hears a prerecorded message saying that they have won a large amount of money that can be collected by calling an expensive premium-rate number."

"The Federal Network Agency’s stringent measures are a continuation of the intense battle against telephone spam. Since May 2006 alone, the Federal Network Agency has disconnected 237 call numbers on account of ping calls and prize promises. In addition, a ban has been imposed on billing and collecting for 78 call numbers. These bans protect consumers that have called a spam number back, and prevents them from having to pay any charges. The spammer does not receive any payment for the calls initiated."

See the Federal Network Agency's press release here.

United Kingdom's telecommunications regulator Ofcom criticized a proposed European Union law regulating the internet, warning that "it could devastate the continent's internet-TV, mobile-multimedia and online-games industries". Under the EU proposal, many internet broadcasts would face the same requirements on advertising content and production quotas as traditional television.

The U.K. regulator hired Rand Corp. to conduct an impact-assessment study, which outlined the possible negative effects. There are major uncertainties about the future "trajectory" of Internet TV, the regulator said in a note accompanying the study. "Creators will simply distribute their own material via the open Internet, bypassing the need for any form of commercial relationship with other distributors," the regulator said, adding that internet broadcasters would move offshore to escape the regulation. The U.K. position is crucial.

When the EU proposal was first floated last year, London opposed all extension of broadcasting rules to new media. Ofcom spokesman Simon Bates said the U.K. has realized that some new services will fall under the regulation. The key is to gain exemptions for particularly vulnerable services. "We understand that some TV-like services that look like TV and feel like TV warrant some protection," he said, adding that fledgling services should remain exempt. "Our worst fear would be if blogs are required to be regulated like mass-media television services, with rules for example about offensive content." If infant industries are regulated, Ofcom says they risk being pushed offshore. Even though mobile-phone operators could restrict their services available on the open Internet, the EU regulation would give them "incentives to artificially structure businesses so that the regulatable activity of making and creating content takes place outside the EU." The regulation could devastate Europe's online-games industry, the report added. "Rand Europe finds that this industry is global, and that the added value activity of creating and developing games is highly 'portable,'" the regulator writes. "This industry is therefore highly susceptible to increases in regulation in one territory, however small, especially when that regulation does not have parallels in other territories." The regulator recommends "excluding online games altogether from the scope" of the EU regulation.

The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on the proposal by year end. EU governments meeting in the Brussels-based Council of Ministers also must approve it. Intellect, a U.K. trade association, recently said the regulation threatens to stifle services such as on-demand and interactive-video content.

Please see William Echikson's article in Wall Street Journal Europe for more details.

The gender divide is a key facet of the digital divide that merits the attention of policy-makers and ICT stakeholders, based on a substantial body of evidence from different countries and cultures that children's welfare can be enhanced through improved maternal education and hygiene.

Despite this, in many countries around the world, women are limited in their abilities to access ICTs and reap their benefits - in better communications, a wider education and better livelihood. This may be partly through external factors (e.g. women may be restricted in their access to a mobile/computer or prevented from frequenting Internet cafés) or through personal choice (e.g. ICTs are not perceived as a priority, and women may prefer to spend any income they may have on food and clothing).

Many development projects seek to address these issues - through community centres, programmes of free or subsidised access to ICTs for women, publicity/awareness campaigns and specific projects aiming to get women using ICTs - for education, information on healthcare and hygiene and e.g. contacts and networking, to sell trade and handicraft products to more markets at better prices. Examples of all these projects and many more can be found on the ITU Success Stories website.

However, impact analysis to monitor the evolution of the gender divide and the impact of projects such as these is difficult, as ICT indicators disaggregated by gender are extremely scarce. Detailed information on gender access to ICTs exists only for a tiny number of countries. In this year's World Information Society Report, Digital Opportunity (DOI) was assesssed for the Czech Republic, on the basis of information prepared for last year's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In the Czech Republic, women can readily become engineers, factory managers, lawyers and accountants on the basis of hard work and a relatively meritocratic education system. Men and women face the same prices for access to ICTs, but a slight difference in income and purchasing power. However, 8% fewer women have mobile phones, whereas the number of women with advanced, mobile broadband phones is only half that of men (see figure below). All in all, the evidence shows that the ICT gender divide in the Czech Republic is negligible, at around 5% less digital opportunity for women than for men.

This methodology is very flexible and can be applied to other countries and cultures where evidence suggests that the gender divide may be greater. ITU will continue to monitor efforts to extend the benefits of ICTs to women, as well as the progress made by countries in addressing this issue. The Digital Opportunity Index offers an accurate and informed analysis of the evolution of the gender divide in countries around the world.

The gender divide in the Czech Republic

Source: ITU, abridged from information provided by the Czech Statistical Office and the Ministry of Informatics of the Czech Republic.

For more information about the World Information Society report, please click here.  For information on the applications of the Digital Opportunity Index, please click here.

The European Commission held its final conference on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) on 16 October 2006 in Brussels, to close the series of consultations initiatives announced by Commissioner Viviane Reding at CeBit in March 2006. The conference (RFID: Heading for the Future) was opened by the Commissioner and featured Commission officials, members of the European Parliament, and relevant stakeholders from industry, government and civil society who have been involved in the ongoing European debate about RFID. ITU's Lara Srivastava spoke at the conference on the topic "RFID: from identification to identity" and her presentation is available here.

More information about the EU's RFID consultation is available here.

 

 

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is a composite index that has been developed by the ITU/Digital Opportunity Platform to measure countries' progress in ICTs and digital opportunity, as part of the endorsed methodology for WSIS evaluation and follow-up. It is a flexible methodology that has been used in many different ways. Every day this week, SPU will demonstrate a different application of the DOI, to show its flexible and versatile applications for policy analysis.

The urban/rural digital divide is one of the most obvious divisions in many countries (depending on their geography, degree of urbanisation and industrial development, among other factors). ITU has traditionally sought to monitor the urban/rural divide in telecoms using the indicators of % of main lines in urban areas and mainlines in the largest city. For example, in China, as recently as 2004, just over two-thirds of all mainlines were to be found in urban areas (World Telecommunication Indicators).

However, the urban/rural divide extends far beyond connectivity. Differences in digital opportunity between urban and rural areas are also evident in the price of access to ICTs (often more expensive in rural areas), speed and quality of access (what the Nigerian blogger Oro calls "plug and pray") and technology in e.g., coverage of population with a mobile signal. The Digital Opportunity Index measures all these different aspects to access to ICTs.

For most countries, detailed data on urban/rural differences for all these aspects are difficult to come by. However, at the recent Digital Opportunity Forum held in Korea, the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology presented its expert analysis of the urban/rural divide in Egypt (see figure below). Taking into account differences in price, coverage, Internet availability and usage, the Ministry calculated that the rural population in Egypt has one quarter less opportunity to access and use ICTs as in urban areas. This points to a measurable and significant urban/rural divide in connectivity in a country where the vast majority of the population (95%) live in the fertile Nile valley. The DOI provides a means not only of quantifying the extent of this urban/rural divide, but also of monitoring its future evolution.

The urban/rural divide in Egypt

Source: Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, presented to the Digital Opportunity Forum, 1 September 2006.

For more information about the Digital Opportunity Index, click here.

Om Malik points to an article in French that discuss how Free.fr, the world's leading multiple play provider based in France is now quickly moving into wireless mesh networks with its new Freebox HD set-top box/wiifi offering. To understand the quantitative advantages of wireless mesh networks, see this presentation from Dave Beyer from 2002 that explains how mesh coverage has the interesting property of increasing coverage and capacity as the more subscribers are added (since the subscribers are part of the routing infrastructure).

Free recently announced the delivery of their 300,000 Freebox HD, which they say creates a wi-fi mesh network that allowing their new wi-fi based phones to roam.

Olivier Gutknecht reported on some of this in English back in April 2006.

Free is also going to do a rollout of FTTH to every home in Paris which they say they will unbundle to competitors.

They also now have a national WiMax license acquired through the acquisition by their parent company, Iliad, of Altitude Telecom.

This recent presentation on Iliad's mid-2006 results provides a good overview of their strategic direction and their financials. What is next?

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 70,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR) since July.

The World Information Society Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The Digital Opportunity Index can strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The DOI has been cited by the US Federal Communications Commission to measure the state of broadband in the United States, monitored in Ireland to track the price of broadband and used by the Egyptian Government to measure the urban-rural divide in Egypt.

Every day this week, SPU will profile a different practical application of the Digital Opportunity Index, to demonstrate its genuine use for policy purposes and to show how it can monitor WSIS follow-up. The Digital Opportunity Index is relevant for policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

To find out more, please click here.

Three of the world's leading Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), AMS-IX, DE-CIX and LINX are hosting the first European Peering Forum on 29-30 November 2006 in Frankfurt, Germany.

Sponsored by Foundry Networks and IXEurope, the event is designed to bring together representatives from the respective IXP member organisations to discuss all aspects of peering from negotiating to operations. (Peering is a cost neutral arrangement between two Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to exchange Internet traffic. It is undertaken to reduce costs and provide more direct routing of that traffic.)

For more information on the event see the European Peering Forum website.

This story was accessed through Total Telecom.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

Europe is the most advanced region with a DOI score of 0.55, considerably higher than the world average (0.37), followed by the Americas (0.4). DOI scores show that basic telecom access and affordability are the main areas of achievement for most countries.

European countries, which are mostly developed economies, provide good digital opportunity for most of their inhabitants, with extensive infrastructure, generally low prices and widespread use of new technologies. Poorer European countries generally have medium DOI scores (e.g. Albania, Belarus, Turkey and Ukraine). Poland and Russia are among the top 15 gainers in the DOI worldwide over the period 2000-2005, making significant progress in ICT infrastructure.

The economies from the region are also leveraging their investments in infrastructure well in order to widely introduce new technologies and yield more advanced forms of usage. One interesting aspect of mobile Internet usage is the wide variation in access among countries of similar economic or geographic circumstances. Almost a third of Slovenian households and one fifth of Finnish households use mobile phones to access the Internet, while in other countries, less than five per pent of households use mobile phones to access the Internet.

Despite the favourable global picture, disparities in connectivity within the region persist and many are concerned about the European digital divide, which is likely to result from the sometimes modest convergence between the economies.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

"The ICT industry is expected to grow by 6% in 2006 and, looking ahead, highest growth will be driven by Internet-related investments, Linux servers, digital storage, personal digital assistants and new portable consumer products." But any return to the heady days of 20% and 30% growth in many products and market segments in the 1990s are unlikely, according to the 2006 edition of the OECD’s Information Technology Outlook 2006.

For more information, see the OECD Information and Communications Policy website.

The European Commission has signed a contract with the consortium Equant/Hewlett Packard for the provision of the infrastructure replacing several data communication infrastructures at EU level. sTESTA (Trans European Services for Telematics between Administrations), is the European Union's classified telecommunication network and responds to the growing need for secure information exchange between European and National administrations.

In order to respond to the need for a telecommunication network serving multiple stakeholders in multiple policy areas, the European Commission, the European Council, Europol and the European Railway Agency have joined forces. The sTESTA framework contract was awarded following a jointly launched tendering procedure. This contract will allow European and National Administrations to exchange data within several policy areas in a secured and reliable way. Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen, responsible for enterprise and industry policy, said: "This initiative will make the EU’s electronic communication infrastructure considerably more efficient. It will enable us to better respond to the many challenges in the field of eGovernment, making our society more modern and safer."

Read more in the EC Press Release.

As part of the ITU's work in follow-up to the WSIS, the World Information Society Report 2006 is addressed to all stakeholders and intended to provide insights as well as useful benchmarks for building the Information Society. The Report gives practical examples of how the DOI can be used, and highlights projects around the world that are working to meet the commitments made at the WSIS.

Chapter five, Beyond WSIS: Making a difference globally, focuses on WSIS implementation and follow-up in different countries. The WSIS called for governments to move from principles into action. There are many efforts underway, both large and small, to implement the WSIS goals, involving a range of stakeholders at the community level, regionally, nationally and internationally. This chapter of the report highlights some of these initiatives to implement the WSIS Plan of Action, from national strategies to grassroots projects. A variety of initiatives have been launched to promote digital opportunity, infrastructure and advanced ICT applications and these highlight fresh approaches and innovative new solutions to ICT development.

One of the biggest challenges for the uptake of ICTs and for building a people-centered and development-oriented Information Society is the affordability of the services. The Digital Opportunity Index monitors the mobile communications that promise to bridge the digital divide in many parts of the world, as well as more recent technologies such as broadband and mobile Internet access. The price of broadband continues to fall worldwide, by as much as twenty per cent a year over the last two years according to ITU’s analysis, while broadband speeds continue to increase. The lower cost of ICTs greately facilitates their diffusion and utilization, and contributes to increased digital opportunity.

Internet affordability (cost of 20h internet connection as a % of monthly GDP per capita)

Note: 1 means affordable; 0 means that the price of lower-user basket is in excess of average GNI per capita.

These positive trends are not restricted to developed countries, and many valuable multi-stakeholder initiatives are underway to further promote ICT development worldwide in the wake of WSIS. 

The DOI has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, the Digital Opportunity Platform, comprising ITU, UNCTAD and KADO (the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion) and which is open to new partners. It will be reported annually in order to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets, and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society, by 2015.

"Chapter Four: From Measurement to Policy-Making" considers the changing telecommunications policy landscape, in areas of universal access/service, affordability, digital inclusion, broadband and wireless, amongst others. It shows how policy-makers can use the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to inform policy-making and policy design to achieve the WSIS goals. The DOI is not an abstract mathematical construction, but has real ‘hands-on’ applications for policy-makers, particularly in the context of the commitments made by governments at the World Summit on the Information Society.

Chapter Four uses the DOI for analysing digital gaps between regions at the national and international levels, for assessing gender gaps and for monitoring digital inclusion. The DOI is a useful policy tool that can be adapted to assess all of these data requirements. Chapter four of the World Information Society Report uses the DOI to analyse digital opportunity throughout the continent of Africa; perform a benchmark comparison of India’s performance relative to its neighbouring countries (see Figure below); examine regional disparities in digital opportunity in Brazil; and examine the gender gap in the Czech Republic. The chapter also outlines the next steps in ICT measurement for policy-making that the Digital Opportunity Platform plans to undertake.

Using the DOI for Policy Purposes

To find out more about the World Information Society Report, please click here.

"Chapter Three: Information Society Trends" tracks the shifting dynamics of the Information Society worldwide. It monitors the changes in digital opportunity across different countries and regions, and investigates those that have made the strongest gains in digital opportunity.

The Asian economies of the Republic of Korea and Japan continue to lead in digital opportunity, mainly due to their pioneering take-up of broadband and 3G mobile services. Nearly all Internet subscribers in the Republic of Korea are broadband subscribers, whilst Japan is the only market where Internet subscribers are most likely to access Internet over their mobile. Dramatic progress has been achieved by developing countries, however, which made the greatest progress in digital opportunity - notably India, where digital opportunity nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005, and China, which experienced remarkably strong gains in infrastructure. Some countries are leveraging their investments in infrastructure more successfully than others, however.

Major Gainers in digital opportunity (2001-2005)

Note: Component indices of the DOI are represented by O = Opportunity; I = Infrastructure; U = Utilization.

Chapter three analyses trends in digital opportunity, broadband speed and price, as well as the price of other telecommunication services. Find out more about the WISR here.

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" outlines the background to the World Information Society Report (WISR). It sets out the background to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the origins, aims and achievements of the Summit. In particular, it considers the call by member governments for an effective means and methodology for follow-up to monitor progress in building the Information Society through implementation of the Summit's recommendations.

The Geneva Plan of Action calls for a composite ICT Development (Digital Opportunity) Index to be published annually, or every two years, in a report on ICT development to clarify the magnitude of the digital divide in both its domestic and international dimensions.

Chapter One of the WISR reviews WSIS implementation since the Summit concluded in Tunis in November 2005, and explains why composite indices give a more complete picture of the development of the Information Society in any given economy than a single indicator. It gives an overview of the main composite Indices for measuring Digital Opportunity, and how they differ. It concludes by explaining the main virtues of the Digital Opportunity Index, especially for developing countries: it evaluates digital opportunity in 180 countries, the most of any index published to date; it is based on standard indicators (as defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development); it uses objective data rather than survey data; it can be split into its fixed and mobile components, so developing countries can be measured on the basis of their strengths; it uses household penetration data (which favour developing countries, on the basis of their large average household size); and it is simple and easy-to-use.

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" of the World Information Society Report can be downloaded for free here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 17,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR), over the two months since its publication.

As part of the ITU’s follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The DOI is part of the agreed evaluation methodology endorsed during the WSIS and will be published annually in the World Information Society Report to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society by 2015.

The WISR shows how the Digital Opportunity Index can be used to strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The Report is addressed to policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

Starting next week, SPU will profile a different chapter of the World Information Society Report each day, to show how the Information Society is evolving and how you can contribute to WSIS follow-up. 

For more information, please see the WISR website. 

Within the framework of the 17th European Regional ITS Conference, session on the Next Generation Infrastructure (see programme)C.B. Blankart, G. Knieps, and P. Zenhäusern presented their new paper on "Regulation of New Markets in Telecommunications? Market Dynamics and Shrinking Monopolistic Bottlenecks".

In the paper the Authors focuse on the debate on the EU telecommunications regulatory framework and analyse whether new markets create new monopolistic bottlenecks or extend the borderlines of existing bottlenecks. Three kinds of transmission qualities on service markets can be dif-ferentiated according to the products provided: narrowband services like PSTN/ISDN or GSM, semi high-speed broadband services like broadband inter-net access up to 6 Mbps download and VDSL services up to 50 Mbps. As long as, due to the absence of alternative network infrastructures, a monopolistic bot-tleneck in local infrastructure networks exists the question arises what the re-maining bottleneck components are for these different markets. In this paper we will demonstrate the shrinking-bottleneck hypothesis.

Download the full version of the paper.

European Commission published three studies by external consultants on the review of the EU 2003 regulatory framework.The three studies are the following:

• An assessment of the regulatory framework for electronic communications: growth and investment in the EU e-Communications sector, by London Economics, in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers.
• Preparing the next steps in regulation of electronic communications, by Hogan & Hartson and Analysys.
• Experts’ report in relation with the Review of the Recommendation on markets subject to ex ante regulation, by Dr Ulrich Stumpf, Professor Martin Cave and Professor Tommaso Valletti.

Implementation of the outcomes of the recently concluded World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) gathered momentum with the launch of the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS). High level representatives of twenty-two UN agencies met on Friday, 14 July 2006 at ITU Headquarters in Geneva under the chairmanship of ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi to facilitate the process.

UNGIS will serve as an interagency coordinating mechanism within the UN system to implement the outcomes of WSIS. The Group will enable synergies aimed at resolving substantive and policy issues, avoiding redundancies and enhancing effectiveness of the system while raising public awareness about the goals and objectives of the global Information Society. UNGIS will also work to highlight the importance of ICTs in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

See ITU Press Release for full text. 

The European Commission recently published the draft of the new roaming regulation to bring down the high roaming charges within Europe.

What will the regulation mean for consumers?

• "Prices paid for international roaming when travelling within the European Union will not be unjustifiably higher than the charges for calls paid within the user’s country.
  
• Consumers will benefit from lower prices for making calls in the visited country, back home or to any other EU Member State.
  
• Consumers will make considerable savings when receiving calls.
  
• Prices operators charge each other (wholesale charges) will be considerably lower than what they are today. This ensures all operators will be in a position to offer lower retail tariffs.
  
• Transparency of roaming charges for consumers will be enhanced. Mobile operators will be required to provide customers with full information on applicable roaming charges when subscriptions are taken out and to update consumers regularly about these charges. Consumers can ask for information on roaming charges free of charge either via SMS or voice call.
  
• National regulators will also be tasked to monitor closely the development of roaming charges for SMS and multi-media message services (MMS)."
  
• Etc.

Read more about the roaming regulation on the EC website.

This article was accessed through Richard's Blog for VoIP and ENUM.

Cullen International has just released new Cross-Country Analysis on IPTV Commercial Offers.

Apart from the overview of the commercial offerings available in selected EU countries the material provides comprehensive comparison of the national regulatory frameworks for the IPTV.

The analysis is available here or on the website with background materials for the New Initiatives Programme project on the Future of Voice. Further information on the project can be found here.

The European Commission published the Communication on the Review of the EU Regulatory Framework for electronic communications networks and services and launched public consultation.

Further information is availabel at the EC's website.

Indicative Timetable with Roadmap for the 2006 Review
Call for Input	25 Nov 05 - 31 Jan 06
European Commission published Communication on Market Reviews under the EU Regulatory Framework	8 February 2006
11th Implementation Report published	20 February 2006
Publication of contributions for Call of Input	March 2006
Communication on the Review of the EU Regulatory Framework for electronic communications networks and services and launch of public consultation	29 June 2006
Recommendation on relevant markets and launch of public consultation	29 June 2006
Public Consultation	29 June - 27 Oct 2006
Public workshop: Public Consultation on the Communication on the Review of the regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services	20 September 2006 (provisional)
Publication of contributions to Public Consultation	4th Quarter 2006
Communication reporting on the public consultation on the functioning of the regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services	4th Quarter 2006
Proposals for European Parliament and Council Directives modifying the regulatory framework for electronic communications and services	4th Quarter 2006

Source: European Commission  

United Kingdom's Ofcom is currently working on a publication examining various national and international approaches to protecting consumers on the internet.

Coincidening with this publication, the regulator will hold a seminar will that allow stakeholders to examine the results of Ofcom's survey, hear the views of Internet industry stakeholders and discuss what can be done in the future to better protect consumers on the Internet. Ofcom organising such an event is a measure of the challenge posed to both regulator and consumer by the growth of net services and the collision of the highly regulated world of broadcasting with the virtually unregulated world of the internet.

This news item was accessed through Roger Darlington's CommsWatch blog.

Cullen-International has just released it's 2nd Country Comparative Report:

Supply of Services in Monitoring of South East Europe: Telecommunications Services Sector and Related Aspects.

The report provides comprehensice overview of telecommunication sector in the region, including regulatory profiles. In order to download the 1st and the 2nd report, please click here.

According to a recently released article by CircleID, the United Kingdom today is one of the main attack targets by phishing organized crime groups, globally. Worldwide it is estimated (CircleID) that phishing damages will amount to about two billions USD in 2006 -- not counting risk management measures such as preventative measures, counter-measures, incident response and PR damages.

In most cases, phishing is caused by the fault of the users, either by entering the wrong web page, not keeping their computers secure or falling for cheap scams. Often this is due to lack of awareness or ability in the realm of Internet use rather than incompetence by the users.

For more information see CircleID article on Phishing: Competing on Security. 

A news release by the Japanese MIC announces the signing of a "Joint Statement between France and Japan, Concerning Cooperation in the Field of Anti-spam Policies and Strategies".

Particular areas of cooperation will include:

• Exchanging information about anti-spam activities such as anti-spam policies and strategies, as well as technical and educational solutions to spam, including mobile spam;
• Encouraging the adoption of effective anti-spam technologies and network management practices by French and Japanese Internet service providers and major business network managers, and further cooperation between government and private sectors;
• Supporting French and Japanese marketers or bulk email senders in adopting spam-free marketing techniques;
• Identifying and promoting user practices and behaviours which can effectively control and limit spam and supporting the development of public relations and awareness campaigns for the multi-stakeholders to foster increased adoption of anti-spam practices and behaviours by end users in France and Japan;
• Cooperating to strengthen anti-spam initiatives being considered in international forum.

More information can be found here.

[Via APCAUCEWiki News]

The Lithuanian Radio and TV Centre is currently large scale trialing a Lithuania-wide pre-WiMAX solution in the 3.5 Ghz range. The map below shows the current almost blanket country coverage using Aperto gear which is being used to offer services such as broadband internet access for SMEs, government agencies, schools, libraries, L2 VPNs for corporate customers and municipalities, VoIP, radio and tV over IP, videoconferencing and the backbone for road traffic control systems.

Will Content Be King?, presentation by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, at the 7 June 2006 conference Digital Content: a Modern Fairy Tale or the Old King in the New Clothes in Vilnius, Lithuania. The event was organized by the law offices of Norcous & Partners, in association with the Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania and Vilnius University Faculty of Law.

The ITU has just published an Issues Paper on the Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services, available for download here (.pdf format).

The paper was prepared by Lara Srivastava, of the Strategy and Policy Unit (ITU), and Ingrid Silver & Rod Kirwan of the law practice of Denton Wilde Sapte.

Together with case studies (on Germany, China, Hong Kong SAR) and a thematic paper on spectrum flexibility, these background papers will form part of the input material for an international ITU New Initiatives Workshop on The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services, to be held in Mainz (Germany) from 21-23 June 2006, and jointly hosted by Germany's Federal Network Agency.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the ITU New Initiatives Programme can be found here.
More information about the international workshop on the topic can be found here.  

 

Do not panic if your data is hidden by virus writers demanding a ransom. A woman from Greater Manchester has become a victim of an internet scam in which hackers hijack computer files and blackmail owners to get them back.

More information can be found here.

The winners of the third annual Mobile Entertainment Awards (the "Meffys") were announced by the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) this week in London.

The mobile games award went to Digital Chocolate, the mobile music award to Warner Music's WAMO Packs, the mobile content award to Chooz Active Content's Foreplay, and the mobile entertainment handset award to Nokia's N70. Wiinners in other categories included Bango, France Telecom, 3 UK and Yospace.  The special recognition award was given to Jim Brailean, CEO/President and Founder of PacketVideo. The top entries for each category were selected by panels of independent industry media and analyst experts.

The Awards took place alongside Mobile Entertainment Market (MEM) 2006 at Islington's Business Design Centre in London (UK), at which the MEF also revealed its new Board of Directors. Ingrid Silver (Partner, Denton Wilde Sapte) was newly elected to the MEF Board and attended the Meffys reception with ITU's Lara Srivastava. Ingrid Silver and Lara Srivastava (with Rod Kirwan of Denton's) are presently co-authoring a paper on "The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services" as part of the ITU's New Initiatives Programme. The paper will be presented at an international workshop on the topic to be held in Mainz, Germany from 21-23 June 2006.

 

On 1-2 June 2006 the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in collaboration with London Business School (LBS) will hold a joint conference on the measurement of ICTs and the macro-, micro- and meso-impact of ICTs in the Information Society.

The conference will explore the impact of ICTs in industry, firms, growth and productivity. What is the real meaning of the digital divide? Can investment in ICTs help to reduce the productivity gap? Are countries really at a disadvantage through falling behind in take-up of ICTs?

For more details on this event please click here.

This brochure summarizes the results of a workshop on Tomorrow’s Networks Today, held in Saint Vincent (Aosta), Italy from 7 to 8 October 2005. It was prepared by Cristina Bueti and Marco Obiso on the basis of specially prepared case studies, input documents and contributions to the workshop. The enclosed CD-Rom contains the background materials and documents of the workshop as well as a wide range of background resources related to tomorrow’s networks.

More information can be found here.

Click here to buy the brochure.

The April MessageLabs Intelligence Report includes analysis of the threat landscape during the first quarter of 2006. Overall, threat levels remained largely stable with previous months, with the U.S. continuing to play the role as the largest source of malware, spam and phishing attacks, hosting 18.1 percent of the world’s compromised (zombie) computers in the first quarter of 2006 (down from a high of 44 percent in Q2 05).

More information can be found here.

Use the Internet at home and you have a 1-in-3 chance of suffering computer damage, financial loss, or both because of a computer virus or spyware that sneaks onto your computer. That's one of the unsettling conclusions from the 2005 Consumer Reports State of the Net survey of online consumers.

More information can be found here.

The Filipino telecoms watchdog, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), says it will revoke the mobile licence of any operator found guilty of breaking its guidelines on unsolicited broadcast messaging via SMS. The amended rules and regulations also require content providers – alleged to have sent out spam promos to subscribers – to register with the NTC.

This will serve as the basis of an application with the Department of Trade and Industry that grants permits to allow companies to advertise promos. Mobile phone operators and content providers risk being blacklisted if found guilty of violating the agency’s rules.

More information can be found here.

The Draft Amendement to the Rules and Regulations on Broadcast Messaging Service is available here.

Mobile Industry Outlook 2006, a new 180-page report from Informa Telecoms & Media answers the most significant questions facing today's mobile operators, equipment vendors and handset vendors as they seek to plan their strategy in 2006.

The report is available here.

3 Italia has launched Walk TV, the first digital TV mobile broadcast using DVB-H technology in Europe. Programming will initially consist of channels from state broadcaster RAI, Mediaset and News Corp unit Sky Italia. And in June, the TV services will expand to include 3 Italia's own La3-branded channels, and World Cup soccer action, for which 3 Italia has bought the DVB-H Italian territory rights.

The 3 Italia DVB-H service reaches 65% of Italy's population and customers will need specific handsets to access the content.

More information can be found here.

Singapore’s mobile users – 99.8% of Singapore’s population, according to the Infocomm Development Authority’s (IDA) February 2006 stats – will have more protection against mobile spam in the future. IDA has put its foot down on this issue, warning of “swift enforcement” of penalties should mobile operators continue to fail to resolve mobile spam issues satisfactorily.

A strong warning letter was sent to SingTel, StarHub and M1, the three mobile operators in Singapore. In addition, IDA decided to make an example of errant content operator mTouche in the highly publicized mTouche spam case. Between 30th January to 5th February this year, 300,000 mobile end users were billed S$1 for unsolicited SMSes sent by mTouche through the three telcos.

More information can be found here.

China has introduced regulations that make it illegal to run an email server without a licence. The new rules, which came into force two weeks ago, mean that most companies running their own email servers in China are now breaking the law. The new email licensing clause is just a small part of a new anti-spam law formulated by China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

The impact on corporate email servers, which are commonly used by companies with more than a handful of employees, appears to have gone unnoticed until now. However, Singapore-based technology consultant, James Seng, who first drew attention to the new email licence requirement, believes the inclusion of the prohibition on mail servers is no accident.

More information can be found here.

The "Survey on Industry Measures taken to comply with National Measures implementing Provisions of the Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications relating to the Security of Services" conducted by the Technical Department of ENISA, Section Security Policies is available here.

A new wave of spam could be on the way that tricks recipients by looking like it’s a message sent from their friends' e-mail address. This sort of spam would bypass even those filters that currently weed out 99% of the bad stuff, says John Aycock, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Calgary.

Aycock and student Nathan Friess conducted research and wrote a paper dubbed "Spam Zombies from Outer Space" to show that generating such customized spam -- such as in the form of e-mail replies -- would not be too difficult, as has been assumed in the past. Spammers have leaned toward bulk e-mail generation that is less customized.

More information can be found here.

In a press release, the European Commission has indicated its views on follow-up to the international policy commitments made at WSIS:

To keep up the momentum of the successful World Summit on Information Society (Tunis, 16-18 November 2005), the European Commission has set out today its priorities for implementing the international policy commitments made at the Summit. These priorities include safeguarding and strengthening human rights, in particular the freedom to receive and access information. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) should be used to contribute to open democratic societies and to economic and social progress worldwide. The Commission calls for continuing international talks to improve Internet governance through the two new processes created by the Summit: the multi-stakeholder Internet Governance Forum and the mechanism of enhanced cooperation that will involve all governments on an equal footing.

The EC has also issued a FAQ on Internet Governance.

Looking back, 2005 saw a rise in profit-driven attacks. These were reflected by phishing, which now represents as much as one percent of the global e-mail traffic and is far more effective than spamming.

Viruses, worms, and malicious software are becoming part and parcel of information and communications technology. According to Trend Micro's report, called Virus and Spam Roundup 2005 and Predictions for 2006, this year will see more spy phishing and spear phishing on the Internet.

More information can be found here.

Though the United States is making progress in the war on unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, it still generates more than any other nation in the world, according to recent statistics from Sophos, a provider of anti-malware solutions.

Sophos ranked spam outputs of the top 12 countries and top six continents based on messages it received in its “global network of spam traps” between January and March, according to the group’s release.

More information can be found here.

The National Communications Authority of Hungary (NCAH) started last summer the elaboration of a regulatory strategy for the period 2006 to 2010. In this process a detailed breakdown is given of the means by which NCAH intends to promote the development of electronic communications markets which play an increasingly important role in the Hungarian economy contributing to the creation of the information society and consequent improvement of the country’s competitiveness.

The concept is available here.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) joined 29 other countries in calling for increased cooperation between nations in combating spam. The FTC signed off on a set of anti-spam recommendations by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a coalition of 30 countries organized to promote economic growth and trade.

More information about OECD activities on  countering spam can be found here.

Please clik here to read the article.

"The European Commission launched a new website which aims to help consumers get a better deal when using their mobile phones abroad. For this purpose, the website makes public roaming tariffs from the operators in all 25 EU Member States. The launch of this site was signalled in July when Commissioner Viviane Reding highlighted the high cost of using mobile phones abroad and the need to ensure greater transparency of these charges. By means of tables of sample tariffs and direct links to EU mobile operators, the website intends to give EU consumers a concrete idea of the level of tariffs they are likely to face when going on holiday as well as guidance and tips on how to manage their international roaming bills. Since the announcement of the website before this summer, there are signs that competition is starting to develop, in particular with some operators offering special holiday and other tariff packages."

More information can be found here.

Activités de l’UIT dans la Lutte contre le SPAM, PDF, Cristina Bueti, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit,21 March 2006, presented at the workshop on "Lutte contre le SPAM"(Rabat, Morocco).

From today's Wall Street Journal Europe: How France Became A Leader in Offering Faster Broadband

"For years, France's telecommunications industry was a state-owned monopoly with one of the world's most backward broadband markets. But thanks to deregulation six years ago, French consumers have access to high-speed Internet service that is much faster and cheaper than in the U.S.

One telecom company in particular has exploited the changes and created competition in France -- a start-up called Iliad. Over 1.1 million French subscribers pay as low as €29.99 ($36) monthly for a "triple play" package called Free that includes 81 TV channels, unlimited phone calls within France and to 14 countries, and high-speed Internet. The least expensive comparable package from most cable and phone operators in the U.S. is more than $90, although more TV channels are generally included.

"We are coming into people's living rooms and changing the way they consume telecom services," says Michael Boukobza, Iliad's 28-year-old chief executive."

Key to France's success has been the active intervention of ARCEP, the French communications regulator. At last week's ITU workshop What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?, François Varloot of ARCEP presented an overview of the French marketplace and their views on emerging symmetric and asymmetric IP regulatory issues.

The « Direction du Développement des Médias (France), l’Agence Nationale de Réglementation des Télécommunications (Morocco), l’Institut Francophone des Nouvelles Technologies de l’Information et de la Formation (Francophonie) et le Service Public Fédéral Economie, PME, Classes moyennes et Energie (Belgium) » are jointly organizing a workshop on the « Fight against Spam ».

The workshop will be held in Rabat (Morocco) from 22 to 23 March 2006.

More information can be found here.

Click here to see the agenda.

The OECD hosted a workshop entitled The Future of the Internet in Paris on 8 March 2006. Presentations given at the event will serve at "food for thought" for future OECD work.

The Economist has a related article entitled Reinventing the Internet.

"The case for promoting a global culture for cybersecurity was strongly emphasized at the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) during an information session for participants conducted by ITU on Friday.

ITU pointed out that in an increasingly interconnected and networked world our societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on our economies and on our societies. In order to safeguard our systems and infrastructure, we need to strengthen our collective cybersecurity.

As this depends on the security practices of each and every networked country, business, and citizen, we need to develop a global culture of cybersecurity. According to ITU, cybersecurity is critical in the use and development of ICT. The lack of adequate security is an obstacle for using ICTs that rely on the protection and confidentiality of sensitive data. Unless these security and trust issues are addressed, the benefits of the Information Society to governments, businesses and citizens cannot be fully realized.

The information session was aimed at raising awareness on this very important subject and to contribute to bridging the information and knowledge divide between and within countries.

At that session, ITU launched a new reference guide on Cybersecurity for Developing Countries and informed delegates of ITU’s initiative in Promoting Global Cybersecurity as the theme for World Telecommunication Day on 17 May this year. ITU will also assist developing and least developed countries in increasing cybersecurity and will conduct workshops and seminars to enable countries to exchange ideas and discuss common issues." [Via WTDC 2006 Highlights]

For more information about the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC), please click here. 

An interesting workshop organized by WIK: Bill and Keep: A New Model for Intercarrier Compensation Arrangements?, 4-5 April 2006, Hotel Königswinter near Bonn, Germany.

The European Commissions’ plan to promote digital access to Europe’s heritage is rapidly taking shape. At least six million books, documents and other cultural works will be made available to anyone with a Web connection through the European Digital Library over the next five years.

In order to boost European digitisation efforts, the Commission will co-fund the creation of a Europe-wide network of digitisation centres. The Commission will also address, in a series of policy documents, the issue of the appropriate framework for intellectual property rights protection in the context of digital libraries.

For more information, please click here.

Italian mobile operator 3 Italia has launched a VoIP service, allowing calls to 23 countries for EUR 0.05 an hour, up to 10 hours a day. The 'International No Limit' service costs EUR 15 to activate.

The service is valid for calls to the fixed network in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan, and to fixed and mobile numbers in the US, China, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong.

3 Italia's parent company Hutchison announced last month an agreement with VoIP provider Skype to offer the services across all its mobile networks in Europe. [Via TelecomPaper]

  The Golden Book — a record of work undertaken to implement the goas of the World Summit on the Information Society and build the future Information Society — was launched on 24 February 2006 during the Consultation Meeting of WSIS Action Lines Facilitators/Moderators, convened by ITU, UNESCO and UNDP in Geneva.

This Golden Book highlights some of the valuable work being done around the world to promote ICTs in projects, large and small, by governments, individuals or team effort, for the benefit of all. It provides illustrative examples of new and innovative projects to build infrastructure, promote ICTs in education, health and governance, ensure fair access and enhance online security.

The Golden Book has been published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as a permanent record of the new commitments and resources pledged by stakeholders during the Tunis Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). All WSIS stakeholders at the Summit were invited to submit an online questionnaire with details of their activities announced during the Tunis Phase. These activities have been planned or are already being undertaken to implement the WSIS Plan of Action. The Golden Book also serves as a tool helping to coordinate the action taken to implement the 11 Action lines and avoid duplication.

More than 375 submissions were made to the Golden Book by governments, international organizations, NGOs, companies and individuals, describing their work towards promoting ICT activities. ITU estimates that the activities announced during the Tunis Phase to promote WSIS goals represented a total value of at least € 3.2 billion (US$ 3.9 billion). Governments committed to implement projects for some € 1.9 billion, representing nearly two-thirds of estimated total value of all commitments, while international organizations pledged to carry out activities for around half that amount, i.e. 0.83 billion Euros. Business entities announced plans to realize projects for around 0.35 billion Euros and civil society projects amount to least 0.13 billion Euros.

Amount of financial commitments by stakeholder

Breakdown by anticipated expenditure

For more information on the Golden Book, please see here.

European Commission has just released 11th Report on the Implementation of the Telecommunications Regulatory Package.

The report draws attention to many regulatory and market developments in the European telecommunication market. Telecom operators in Europe are investing in new technologies to cut costs and seize new opportunities opened up by the convergence of communication networks, media content and devices. Growing competition, especially in retail markets, is bringing increased consumer benefits and the outlook for innovation and investment within Member States and across borders is positive. Member States have made good progress in implementing the EU telecom rules of 2002, which is opening up markets to new entrants. The report highlights rapid take-up of high-speed “broadband” internet connections. In the mobile phone sector, while take-up of services is still growing, particularly in the new Member States, there are signs that the voice market is maturing. Meanwhile, revenues from traditional voice services remain the largest source of revenue in the fixed line market, despite a gradual decline.

For full version of the Report, please click here.

The Financial Times has an article entitled Privacy Under Pressure in Europe

A European directive is in preparation that will require the providers of publicly available communications services to retain details of fixed-line, mobile phone and e-mail communications for at least six months, and possibly up to two years. It is a requirement that even the US has not imposed in its war on terror.

Regular economic analysis by EU Member States and the European Commission of competition in electronic communications markets and Commission scrutiny of draft national rules are paving the way to free markets, regulated solely by competition law, says a progress report published by the Commission today. Regulation in this sector applies only to operators whose significant market power could prevent the full benefits of telecoms liberalisation from getting through to consumers. Wherever a market analysis has found tangible signs of sustainable competition, regulation has been trimmed back or removed altogether. However, much remains to be done. As of 30 September 2005, sixteen EU Member States had found no effective competition on one or more of the 18 electronic communications markets defined by the EU and had taken steps to boost competition on the markets concerned. Five Member States had found only partial competition on one or more of these markets and had imposed remedies where it was lacking. But nine Member States had yet to notify the Commission of their analyses of any of the 18 markets. Of the analysed markets (152 out of 450), 123 were not competitive, 19 fully competitive, and 10 partially competitive.

For more information, please click here.

Today (7 February 2006) marks the third edition of Safer Internet Day, held under the patronage of Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

Safer Internet Day is celebrated by more than 96 organisations in 36 countries across the world: 24 EU countries, and others including Russia, Argentina, New Zealand and the USA. Safer Internet Day's biggest event is a worldwide blogathon on safer use of internet launched by Commissioner Reding in Brussels at a minute past midnight, then taken up by New Zealand who post an entry a few minutes later.

All day long the blogathon will continue to move across the world, through Australia and Russia to Europe, then across to Argentina, Canada and the USA. Over 300 local, regional and national events include press conferences, and competitions in Finland, Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic. There will also be internet safety quizzes and crosswords in Greece, pupil-teach-parent days in Belgium and the Netherlands, conferences in the UK, Hungary and Argentina and a broad palette of activities in schools and libraries.

For an overview of the days' events, see the main Safer Internet website.

To view the International Telecommunication Union's entry to the blogathon, click here.

To coincide with Safer Internet Day, British Telecom (BT) announced today that, over the last 18 months, the number of attempts to access sites hosting child abuse images has increased from around 10,000 a day to 35,000 a day. All these attempts have been blocked utilising the company's Cleanfeed technology which uses a database of sites supplied by the United Kingdom's Internet Watch Foundation.

According to Roger Darlington's blog, "BT developed and implemented Project Cleanfeed during my tenure as independent Chair of the IWF and, throughout the process and since, I have been a strong supporter of the initiative and would like to see all British Internet service providers using the same or similar technology."

For more information and analysis with regards to this steep rise in attempts to access sites hosting child abuse images, see Roger Darlington's blog.

More regulation while competition is increasing? That does not sound right, according to the GSM Association. Instead, given the innovative nature of 3GSM, its embryonic status and the current lack of market and legal certainty, regulatory forbearance is advisable.

10 Regulatory Principles:

1. Regulators should continue to seek a balance between the benefits and costs of intervention, on the one hand, and regulatory forbearance, on the other.

An overly interventionist approach, which could lead to short-term benefits, could potentially stifle a dynamic market process with inevitable and adverse competitive, economic and even social consequences on the longer term. In general, competition is deemed to be a better approach to economic efficiency than regulation, and the regulators must encourage sustainable competition for the long term.

2. Regulation should be based on clearly defined goals and policy objectives and should be kept to the minimum necessary to meet these objectives.

Once effective competition is established or there is a reasonable prospect of a effectively competitive market in the near term, regulatory forbearance should prevail (with competition law providing appropriate safeguards).

3. Regulators should acknowledge that 'normal' competitive markets reflect a range of operator return and should not intervene in competitive markets where one or more operators' return appears to be above the 'norm'.

In the mobile market, the reality is that some operators have made good returns (on invested capital), while others have not. This situation is not of itself a cause to regulate away 'excess profits'. If a regulator judges from the highest standard, and regulates accordingly, then the less performing companies will unavoidably hit, thus further reducing already inadequate returns and threatening long term competitive development.

4. Regulation should fit (reflect) the market situation and balance the micro and macro views.

For example, when in certain cases mobile termination or roaming charges may appear high to regulators in certain countries, these cannot be judged in isolation.

5. Regulators should be publicly accountable and act in a transparent way.

Regulatory intervention should only be imposed after an appropriate public consultation process, which in most cases, will include market definition and assessment and a further assessment as to the appropriate regulatory remedy. A full right of appeal both on grounds of law (substance) and procedure (process) is an essential element of the checks and balances, which are necessary between operators and regulators.

6. Governments should adopt licensing practices that encourage new investments in telecommunication infrastructures and facilitate competition within the sector.

Un-harmonized license award procedures together with varying license conditions/obligations may lead to varying investment incentives in national markets and may eventually give rise to some discrepancy with respect to the levels of mobile service developments. Licensing policies and procedures must be applied judiciously] since not only they can influence market entry but also the post-entry conditions affecting competitiveness and market development. For auctions to contribute positively to economic welfare, they must meet a set of stringent preconditions (all potential bidders must be fully informed as to any Government imposed terms and conditions, including fees and changes to fees). When designing auctions, policy-makers should seek to achieve efficient resource allocation rather than primarily aiming to raise surplus government revenue. High license fees in some developed countries may constrain the ability of operators to invest in developing countries.

7. Spectrum should be allocated on the basis of achieving economically efficient, competitive and structurally desirable outcomes rather than to extract monopoly rents from the industry.

If the market is the best allocator of scarce resources, as most economists would argue, it is important that countries should be able to develop their own spectrum trading arrangements. In principle, regulators should allow for secondary trading of spectrum within planned internationally frequency allocations, after a thorough consultation process with the industry (i.e. mobile operators) evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of spectrum trading.

8. The feasibility and commercial desirability of sharing of facilities and infrastructure is a matter, which is operator and market specific.

In certain circumstances, sharing can be beneficial by, for instance, driving efficiencies through accelerated network rollout, the potential elimination of unnecessary cost duplication and the minimization of certain adverse environmental impacts. Accordingly, regulators should enable commercial negotiations on facility sharing among mobile operators to proceed subject however to license conditions not prohibiting the proposed form of sharing and competition not being materially and adversely impacted by the proposed form of sharing.

9. Restrictions on the deployment of mobile networks should be based on science and substantiated studies, and not in response to 'public concern' which is without scientific basis.

10. Adequate consumer safeguards against the inappropriate use of customer data are in place in most countries.

In overseeing the implementation of those safeguards, regulators should balance the interests of consumers to data privacy, on the one hand, and timely and easy access to services and information on the other. Further, regulators should look first to relevant self-regulatory industry initiatives to achieve those objectives.

ITU's Market and Finance Unit has just released publication ICT Market Liberalisation Reports for CEE Countries and Baltic States.

The publication includes seven following contributions:

• Significant market power in telecommunications: theoretical and practical aspects
• Increasing the competition in the Polish mobile telecommunication market
• Lithuanian telecommunication market
• Liberalization of the ICT Market in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Economic and institutional implications of network convergence in Hungary
• Implementation of the new act on electronic communications in Slovenia
• Implementation of the New Regulatory Framework in Lithuania

To download publication, please click here.

The Act of 29 December 2005 on transformations and modifications to the division of tasks and powers of state bodies competent for communications and broadcasting (Official Journal of 30 December 2005, No 267, 2258), hereinafter referred to as the Act, defines the principles for the transfer of tasks and powers between Polish state bodies responsible for communications and broadcasting and the principles, scope and mode of transformations within the communications administration.

Under the Act, a new central-level government administration body - the President of the Office of Electronic Communications (President of UKE, Prezes Urzêdu Komunikacji Elektronicznej,) was established as of 14 January 2005 in place of the central-level government administration body - the President of the Office of Telecommunications and Post Regulation (President of URTiP) which was liquidated as of 13 January 2005.

The President of UKE shall assume the tasks and powers that have so far fallen within the competence of the President of URTiP as well as certain powers of the President of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT).

This in particular refers to the following issues:
- reservation of frequencies for the purposes of radio or TV programme transmission or retransmission (in communication with the President of KRRiT),

- competition for a reservation of frequencies for the purposes of digital transmission or retransmission of radio or TV programmes,

- keeping registers of telecommunications undertakings with respect to the provision of conditional access systems, electronic programme guides and multiplexing of digital signals,

- relevant market analysis and the imposition, maintenance, amendment or withdrawal of regulatory obligations with respect to telecommunications undertakings concerning conditional access systems, electronic programme guides and multiplexing of digital signals.

The Prime Minister, having considered three candidatures proposed by the National Broadcasting Council, shall appoint the President of UKE.

The President of UKE shall be supervised by the minister competent for communications (currently the Minister of Transport and Construction who is also competent for communications).

Continuity of cases and rights and obligations

Cases initiated by the National Broadcasting Council, the President of the National Broadcasting Council or by the President of URTiP with respect to tasks assumed by the President of UKE and not completed by the date of entry into force of the Act (i.e. before 14 January 2006) shall be handled by the President of UKE according to the provisions of the Act.

With respect to cases completed within the framework of administrative proceedings, but not completed in the course of court proceedings, the provisions in force to date shall continue to apply.

The rights and obligations of the President of URTiP as a party to cases in which a complaint to an administrative court or an appeal to the District Court in Warsaw - the competition and consumer court - may be lodged or has already been lodged, shall be assumed by the President of UKE.

Frequency reservations made by the President of the Broadcasting Council or by the President of URTiP shall remain valid, unless they are modified or expire under separate provisions.

Entries in the register of telecommunications undertakings as well as decisions and other settlements with respect to tasks assumed by the President of UKE made before the date of entry into force of the Act shall remain valid.

All rights and obligations of URTiP shall become the rights and obligations of UKE.

For more information, please click here.

IDATE has just released material with 2005 statistics on FTTx in Europe.

At mid 2005 IDATE identified 166 FTTx projects in Europe of which 13 are new initiatives since mir 2004.

By the end of June 2005, there were approximately 646 570 FTTx subscribers in EU 181 and
roughly 2.51 millions Homes/Building passed showing a penetration rate of 25.8%. Compared to
mid June 2004 this represents a growth of 18% for subscribers and 28% for Homes/Building
passed. There are still no major deployments in the 10 new members and we should also notice that nearly 97% of these FTTx Subscribers are concentrated in 5 countries (Sweden, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway).

To read brief material with statistics, please, click here.

From Richard Stastny's VoIP and ENUM blog comes information out of a recent annual meeting of FTTH Council Europe where an announcement was made that the City of Vienna, together with the city-owned electricity company (Wienstrom) and the sewage company (Wienkanal), will provide all households in the city (~1 million) with FTTH (or FTAH=Fibre to All Homes).

Richard Stastny on his blog VoIP and ENUM brings news that the German ccTLD manager, DENIC has announced in a press release that the responsible ministry (Wirtschaftsministerium) has accepted the proposals from DENIC regarding ENUM operation and production is starting immediately.

DENIC's enum pages are available here.

Light Reading is reporting that a joint initiative comprised of UPC Netherlands, Casema, MultiKabel, Essent and CaiW, totaling more than 7 million subscribers with more than 450,000 telephony subscribers today awarded a VoIP Peering contract to a partnership of XConnect and Kayote Networks. The agreement enables all participating operators to share VoIP traffic directly over their IP networks, completely bypassing traditional phone networks and thereby eliminating PSTN interconnection fees.

Richard Stastny's VoIP and ENUM points to a paper published today by The European Telecommunications Platform (ETP) on the technology, business models and regulatory aspects of NGN.

The official website of the 1st Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), to be convened later this year in Greece has been launched.

The report Co-Regulation Measures in the Media Sector from the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Hamburg, Germany, and the Institute of European Media Law, Saarbrücken, Germany is a study commissioned by the European Commission, Directorate General Information Society and Media.

The study aims at providing a complete picture of co-regulatory measures taken to date in the media sector in all 25 EU Member States and in three non-EU-countries, as well as of the research already done in this field. The study indicates areas in which these measures mainly apply, their effects and their consistency with public interest objectives. The study also examines how best to ensure that the development of national co- and self-regulatory models does not disturb the functioning of the single market by re-fragmenting the markets.

The Hans-Bredow-Institute and the Institute of European Media Law presented the Draft Final Report on 19 January 2006 in Brussels. The authors will consider all comments which have been submitted by the 5th of February 2006.

• Draft Final Report (pdf-file, 912 KB)
• Seminar 2 Presentation (pdf-file, 287 KM)
• Presse Release (pdf-file, 33 KB)
• Agenda of Seminar 2

More details about the study are available in German and English.

An entry on Richard Stastny's blog (VoIP and ENUM) points to a number of interesting presentations made at an ERO hosted event on scenarios for NGN naming, numbering and addressing, interconnection and QoS.

France Telecom (FT) has announced plans to launch a very high speed fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) pilot programme to households in Hauts-de-Seine and Paris, which will go live before the summer of 2006. Based on the result of its test phase, it plans to cover other regions of France or abroad in 2007.

The International Telecommunication Union is pleased to announce the 2006 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition.

The essay topics for this year's Young Minds competition are:

• What are the key opportunities and threats raised by the growing use of services over IP, such as voice (VoIP) and television (i.e. IPTV)?
• What are, in your view, the most important regulatory challenges raised by an increasingly wireless world?
• What does the term "internet governance" mean to you? What needs to change as a result of the World Summit on the Information Society outcomes?
• What, in your view, are the most important mechanisms available today for bridging the digital divide by bringing connectivity to underserved areas of the world?
• How can the interests of end-users in the information society (e.g. affordability, privacy protection) be balanced with the interests of business (bottom line, rapid innovation)?

Information on eligibility and how to apply can be accessed on the link below.

Deadline for applications is 17 March 2006.

Click here to learn more about the 2006 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition.

Asia-Pacific maintains its lead in providing the best broadband bargains to be found worldwide. The latest ITU research comparing international prices for broadband access confirms that the three cheapest broadband economies are in Asia, with Japan still the cheapest at just 7 U.S. cents per 100 kbit/s followed by Korea. Both Japan and Korea offer the highest speeds for the cheapest prices per 100 kbit/s.

Prices among the cheapest fifteen broadband economies continued to fall and nearly halved, falling by 46.6 per cent from 2004-2005. Other countries are following Asia’s lead in bargain-value pricing. In 2004, just five economies offered broadband access under 1 USD per 100 kbit/s (which included four from Asia). In 2005, eleven economies offered cut-price access, including six from Europe. The good news for operators is that such pricing strategies seem to build market share. Eleven of the fifteen cheapest economies also rank in the fifteen economies with the highest broadband penetration. This implies that operators are successfully winning customers through cheaper pricing plans. Whether strong market shares can be translated into profit is another question, however. Bargain-value pricing builds subscriber bases at the expense of profit margins, which are likely to be eroded.

Source: ITU research, based on data available in the Statistical Annex to ITU Internet Report 2005: The Internet of Things, November 2005.

The European Regional Seminar on Regulatory and Economic Aspects of VoIP and Broadband Promotion for Central Eastern European countries (CEE), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Baltic States took place from the 29 to 30 November 2005, in Istanbul, Turkey. The agenda and presentations made at the meeting are available.

The European Commission has released a new draft proposal to update the EU's "TV without Frontiers" Directive. In a press release, the Commission notes the proposal is intended to keep pace with rapid technological and market developments in Europe’s audiovisual sector. Highlights from the press release:

• The proposal will create a level playing field for all companies that offer TV-like services, irrespective of the technology used to deliver them (e.g. broadcast, high-speed broadband, third generation mobiles).
• The Commission proposes replacing disparate national rules on protection of minors, against incitement to racial hatred and against surreptitious advertising with a basic, EU-wide minimum standard of protection for audiovisual on demand services.
• Under the Commission proposal, the modernised TV without Frontiers Directive would govern TV and TV-like services. To open up the present EU rules to technological developments, the proposal distinguishes between “linear” services (e.g. scheduled broadcasting via traditional TV, the internet, or mobile phones, which “pushes” content to viewers), and “non-linear” ones, such as on-demand films or news, which the viewer “pulls” from a network. Today’s TV broadcasting rules would apply to linear services in a modernised, more flexible form, whereas non-linear ones would be subject only to a basic set of minimum principles, e.g. to protect minors, prevent incitement to racial hatred and outlaw surreptitious advertising.
• More flexible advertising rules: For scheduled broadcasting, the Commission proposes to remove red tape, make existing rules more flexible for new forms of advertising, and encourage self- and co-regulation. Instead of detailed prescriptions on how often and under which conditions programmes may be interrupted by advertising, the modernised Directive would simplify the existing EU rules. In the future, broadcasters would be able to choose the best moment to insert advertising in programmes, rather than being obliged, as they are now, to allow at least 20 minutes between advertising breaks. However, the quantity of advertising would not be allowed to increase as the Commission proposes to maintain the existing 12 minutes per hour ceiling.
• The new Directive would also support new forms of advertising, such as split-screen, virtual and interactive advertising. Product placement would, for the first time, be explicitly defined and provided with a clear legal framework. Except in news, current affairs and children’s programmes, clearly identified product placement would be permitted in Europe, both in linear and non-linear audiovisual services. To prevent surreptitious advertising, consumers would be informed at the start of a programme that product placement is in use. These new rules should remove legal uncertainty, provide additional funding for European productions and thus enhance the competitiveness of Europe’s audiovisual sector.

[Via Roger Darlington's blog] 

Call for input on the forthcoming review of the EU regulatory framework for electronic communications and services, including review of the Recommendation on relevant markets! Deadline 31 January 2006

The Commission Services invite interested parties to give their views on possible changes to the five EP and Council directives that constitute the current EU framework for electronic communications, and to the Recommendation on relevant markets.

The consultation document can be found here.

A public workshop is provisionally planned for Tuesday 24 January 2006 in Brussels. The workshop will be open to all interested parties, but prior registration is required. A registration form can be found here.

For more information, please click here.

The European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate General has commissioned a series of four monitoring reports at nine-monthly intervals on the market for electronic communications networks and services in 8 EU candidate and potential candidate countries. The first Country Comparative Report is now available.

For the Report, please click here.

Today the French Goverment has organized a workshop on Spam at the World Summit on Information Society with the support of the European Presidency and the European Commission. At this occasion, France, Marrocco and the Francofone Institute of New Information and Formation Technologies (INTIF - OIF) have annonced the organisation of the first francofone anti-spam workshop in Rabat to be held at the begining of 2006.

Presentations will be available soon at the ITU/SPU website on Spam.

 

The WSIS Stocktaking Report has been officially launched during the World Summit on the Infrmation Society in Tunis. The report has been prepared on the basis of activities entered to the WSIS Stocktaking Database that by November 2005 contained more then 2500 entries. 

For the launch presentation see Stocktaking.pdf (1.47 MB).

For the WSIS Stocktaking Database see here. 

The Belgian Federal Public Service Economy, SMEs, Self-employed and Energy has published a brochure on spam named “Spamming: 24 questions & answers”.

The objective of the brochure is to raise awareness of spam affected persons as to the spamming issue; applicable spamming regulations in Belgium; advice to follow in order to cope with this phenomenon and information on the authorities having competency to receive complaints.

Click below to download the brochure available in four languages: English; French; German; Dutch

The European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) today called on EU policy makers to reject the idea of an "NGN moratorium" in favour of a policy to boost investment confidence for the entire communications sector.  Pointing to wealth of evidence that markets with competition enjoy higher levels of innovation, and ECTA’s own broadband scorecards which confirm that competition also boosts broadband adoption, ECTA recommends that policy makers maintain the pro-competitive approach that underpins the EU regulatory framework.

The proposal for a so-called "NGN Moratorium" was floated by [EC] Commissioner Reding in September as an idea for next year’s review of the Telecoms Directives. Since then, the issue has become live with a proposal from German politicians to grant a three-year regulatory moratorium on plans by the incumbent to upgrade its access network, undermining competitors’ current and future investment plans. 

The detailed ECTA position can be found here.

Roger Darlington's CommsWatch is reporting that the UK's Ofcom has published an independent report which it commissioned from Indepen, Ovum and fathom on the impact of changes to the Television Without Frontiers (TWF) Directive proposed by the European Commission in July 2005.

Virus scanners made moot by new exploit.

Recently, researcher Andrey Bayora revealed that it is possible to fool the scanners into thinking that a file under scan is one kind, when it is in actuality something entirely different. Bayora (of www.securityelf.org), a Russian-born Israeli, has issued an advisory that details how to bypass many popular Windows AV programs.

The London Action Plan of spam enforcement authorities has a new website with news. A spam enforcement workshop is now taking place in London:

The Office of Fair Trading, through the UK presidency of the European Union, has invited members of the London Action Plan (LAP) network and the Contact Network of Spam Authorities (CNSA) to participate in a two-day ‘spam enforcement workshop’. The workshop will be held in London at the Department of Trade and Industry Conference Centre on Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th November 2005.

According to BBC News: A third of the UK's top companies are not complying with the European Union's (EU) regulations on unsolicited emails, or spam, a report has alleged.

The Information Commissioner's Office - an independent body appointed by the Crown - said that while it has the power to fine transgressors up to £5,000 it often proves impossible to track them down.

Austrian Regulatory Authority (Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH) released the Guidelines for VoIP Service Providers on 10 October 2005.

For more information and documents, please click here.

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Communications, the Ugo Bordoni Foundation and the Aosta Valley regional authority, organized a Workshop on “Tomorrow’s Network Today” on 7-8 October 2005.

The workshop considered five broad themes:

• International Visions of Ubiquitous Networks and Next Generation Networks
• National Visions of Ubiquitous Networks and Next Generation Networks
• Creating an Enabling Environment
• The Italian Path Towards Ubiquitous Networks
• An example of Italian best practice: "Being Digital in the Aosta Valley"

Now available on the workshop website  are the agenda, with links to presentations as they were delivered and the two Case Studies on Italy – “Bridging the Gap: Taking Tomorrow’s Network Today” presented by Marco Obiso and “Ubiquitous Networks Societies: The Case of Italy” presented by Cristina Bueti - as well as background papers and voluntary contributions produced for the workshop.

During the event, Tim Kelly, Head of the Strategy and Policy Unit (ITU) presented “Tomorrow’s Network and the Internet of Things”, showing some of the outcomes of the forthcoming ITU Internet Reports publication that this year will be dedicated to the theme of the “Internet of Things “.

A final report of the workshop will be available in the next few weeks at the workshop website.

Roger Darlington has a post on speeches by European Commissioner Vivianne Reding and Ofcom Chairman Lord Currie at an Audiovisual Conference in Liverpool discussing the draft proposas for reform of the EU's Television Without Frontiers Directive: 

The European Commissioner Viviane Reding has been attacked over her draft proposals for reform of the Television Without Frontiers Directive and accused of wanting in effect to extend elements of broadcasting regulation to the Internet but, at a conference earlier this week, she came out fighting....

To further encourage the development of a ubiquitous network society, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, the Italian Ministry of Communications, the Ugo Bordoni Foundation and the Aosta Valley are hosting a Workshop on "Tomorrow's Network Today" that will be held in Saint-Vincent (Aosta), Italy on 7-8 October 2005.

This Workshop will discuss specific measures to help overcome potential challenges and determine possible future actions.

One session will be dedicated to Next Generation Networks (NGN) as a framework to harmonize the worldwide technical and functional basis needed to extend the use of integrated ICTs to as many users as possible.

During the workshop there will be an Exhibition which will bring together a wide range of leading industry participants as well as high-level representatives from government and regulators.

Click here for more information about the event.

EC Press Release: The European Commission has adopted today a proposal for a Directive on the retention of communications traffic data. The proposal provides for an EU-wide harmonisation of the obligations on providers of publicly available electronic communications, or a public telecommunications network, to retain data related to mobile and fixed telephony for a period of one year, and internet communication data, for six month. The proposed Directive would not be applicable to the actual content of the communications. It also includes a provision ensuring that the service or network providers will be reimbursed for the demonstrated additional costs they will have. For its adoption, the proposal requires the approval both of the European Parliament and the Council. The Council is currently discussing an alternative text, a Framework Decision which would allow for data retention of up to 3 years and could be adopted by the Council alone. A related memo with additional information is available.

Roger Darlington has a note about a new UK cybersecurity initiative to be launched soon called Get Safe Online. 

"I spent yesterday at a conference with the title eConfidence - Spam, Scams And Security and posted a short report. I mentioned that a major awareness campaign is due to be launched at the end of next month. It has been nine months in conception and creation and was planned under the name "Project Endurance", but it is being launched under the banner Get Safe Online. At yesterday's event, Tony Neate of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit described the content as "outstanding", but so far the only public presence is one page on the web. As you can see from this page, eight companies have joined the Home Office and the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit to sponsor the campaign, but more sponsors are sought. I understand that the Netherlands and Norway have run similar campaigns against spam, scams and viruses. Anyone out there got any relevant information? I welcome this initiative. My concern is that there are now a variety of web sites and organisations providing advice on different forms of Internet content and activity - with some major gaps, such as harmful and offensive content -and what the consumer needs is a 'one stop shop' linking all these resources in a high-profile, user-friendly manner."

Roget Darlington points to a thoughtful speech on the future of content regulation, including broadcasting over the internet, by Richard Hooper, Deputy Chairman of the UK's Ofcom and Chairman of Ofcom's Content Board.

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, looks into the possibility to end RFID licence fees as an attempt to boost RFID development. RFID licence fees may be scrapped after Ofcom launched a consultation on making the technology available free of charge to supply chain users. Currently anyone developing or testing the technology has to pay an annual fee of £50 for every site that uses it.

"The European Conference of Telecommunications and Postal Administrations recommended last year that RFID be made free of charge to encourage further adoption. Ofcom is now seeking to allow RFID users to utilise the standard 865-868MHz radio frequency without payment."

René de Sousa, senior procurement specialist at CIPS, said: 'This can only be to the benefit of a more integrated use of technology and increase business efficiency and effectiveness.' He added that a Europe-wide exemption from fees would also aid the technology’s take-up. David Lyon, business manager for RFID standards body EPCglobal, said it would make trials cheaper and easier. 'It’s an administration and cost headache to get a licence,' he said. Tesco said it had anticipated the move and was already using the standard for its RFID trial."

"Chris Hopper, marketing manager at RFID printer manufacturer Printronix, said the plan would help to close the gap in adoption between Europe and the US. 'Legislative uncertainty has been one of the primary barriers to adoption.'"

Ofcom's consultation period runs until 12 September.

For the full article featured in the SupplyManagement TechZone online magazine, click here.

The Italian Communications Authority (AGCOM) has issued a consultation on its planned policy and regulatory approach to VoIP. See Consultazione pubblica concernente proposte di interventi regolamentari in merito alla fornitura di servizi VOIP. It includes a discussion of a distinct numbering block for VoIP as well as the imposition of requirements for emergency services.

Via Ewan Sutherland's weblog.

Stakeholders, EU Member States, regional and local authorities have been invited to read the Digital Divide Report and express their views on policy measures needed to bring high-speed internet access to Europe’s under-served areas until Friday 16th September 2005. Herewith European Commission opened a public debate on closing the broadband gap in European Union.

The presented Digital Divide Report proposes two policy orientations:

• strengthening national broadband strategies as part of the Commission’s growth and jobs strategy and of the Commissioner Reding’s new i2010 Roadmap;

• improving the exchange of best practices, inter alia by gathering and sharing information on broadband deployment projects and tenders.

To join debate click here.

To read the "Digital Divide Forum Report: Broadband Access and Public Support in Under-served Areas" click here.

Under a recent regulatory measure authorized by the European Commission, France Télécom will be required to provide, for a transitional period, market players with wholesale nationwide high-speed access to France’s telecoms network.

"This regulatory measure, proposed by the French national regulatory authority for electronic communications, ARCEP, was authorised today (27 July 2005) by the European Commission. The measure will apply until competing network operators have built a sufficiently wide backbone network and a large enough customer base to enable them to invest further in regional high-speed ('broadband') services, such as access to the web and services connecting subscribers’ premises to the network ('local loops']). The Commission asked ARCEP to review this market again within a year to fully take account of new market developments which could enhance competition in the wholesale nationwide broadband market in France."

"The measures proposed by the French telecom regulator ARCEP aims at "opening up competition to supply wholesale broadband in the French market. It includes products of the 'Option 5 nationale'-type already supplied by France Télécom to alternative network operators and ISPs. This product enables competing market players to provide retail services directly to end-users. It complements the two other types of wholesale broadband access regulation, namely unbundling of local loops and regional bitstream products, which were previously assessed by the Commission."

"France Télécom’s market shares, its capacity to supply the whole range of broadband products at both wholesale and retail level, its size and its control of the local infrastructure, led ARCEP to conclude that France Télécom is dominant on the wholesale nation-wide broadband access market. ARCEP considers that competition in this market will be facilitated if France Telecom is obliged, inter alia, to ensure internal accounting transparency between its wholesale 'network' branch and its retail 'ISP' entity as the recent reintegration of Wanadoo into France Telecom may have potential consequences on retail competition."

See EC press release here.

Click here for further information.

Roger Darlington writes about the UK's Ofcom, (the UK regulator for communications industries, with responsibilities across television, radio, telecommunications and wireless communications services), and its recently published Annual Report for 2004/5. He highlights a few points:

• In his Chairman's Message, David Currie writes: "Ofcom operates with a bias against intervention. We are fully aware that regulatory intercession comes with a price tag attached; the resulting cost to industry invariably yields added cost to the consumer. As such, we firmly believe that targeted deregulation is in the public interest and will seek to pursue this wherever possible."
• In his Chief Executive's Report, Stephen Carter states: "Unnecessary regulation imposes costs on business, stifles innovation and provides a barrier to market entry - as a consequence, increasing prices and diminishing choice for consumers. Therefore, as a matter of operating principle and in line with our statutory mandate, it is our ambition to be a deregulating regulator wherever feasible.
• The Communications Act 2003 requires that Ofcom's activities should be proportionate and targeted only at cases in which action is needed; the Act also encourages Ofcom to seek, promote and facilitate opportunities for self-regulation. Ofcom's own regulatory principles state that in all of our work we will operate under a bias against intervention, with a commitment to seek the least intrusive regulatory mechanisms to achieve our policy objectives.
• In operational terms, as a matter of mandatory internal process, proposals from the Executive to the Ofcom Board are required to contain a full analysis of the 'do nothing' deregulatory option in response to market developments."
• This is all very well, but regulation should not necessarily be seen as a bad thing, rather as a reasonable cost of doing business in a market which has profound impacts on the consumer. As Colette Bowe - Chairman of the independent Consumer Panel which advises Ofcom - put it in her foreward to the first Panel Annual Report "We are convinced that a freer market in communications should be able to deliver better prices and more innovation. But this process needs to be driven by clear, up-to-date information that is readily, cheaply and easily available. So we watch very carefully Ofcoms stated intention to adopt a light touch in regulation. A light touch in correcting market failure may be the wrong touch. We expect Ofcom to be ready and able to intervene in markets where they are not performing in the interests of consumers."

"Romanian CDMA operator Zapp has launched a pre-paid mobile broadband internet access service, the first of its type in the country, according to its press release. The Zapp Internet Express Card package includes a modem and a card allowing the user 40 hours of web surfing within six months of activation at a total cost of USD175. Once the initial surf time is up, the user can purchase pre-paid cards of various denominations, starting at USD10 for seven hours."

Click here to view the article featured in TeleGeography.

Article was accessed through Ewan Sutherland's weblog.

The Office of the Information Commissioner (ICO), enforcer of the UK's main anti-spam laws, has received around 600 spam complaints in the past 12 months. But it has taken no legal action, in part because its powers are inadequate and impractical.

For the full article click here.

See: Information Commissioner's Report, July 2005

See also: Information Commissioner publishes annual report

A brief history of mobile phone texting in the United Kingdom described below.
(Source: Media Center):

• The first text message was sent in December 1992.
• SMS was launched commercially for the first time in 1995.
• 1998 - Interconnect between UK Operators O2, Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile.
• The first recorded monthly text message total was 5.4 million, in April 1998.
• The first TV programme to use text messaging in a storyline was Eastenders, in 2000.
• August 2001 was the first month in which over one billion messages were sent in the UK.
• The first local and mayoral electoral vote in the UK by text message took place on 23rd May 2002.
• December 2002 - 1 billion SMS per day were exchanged globally
• On New Year's Day 2003, the number of text messages sent in one day topped one hundred million for the first time.
• 92 million text messages were sent by Britons on Valentine's Day 2005
• In December 2004, 2.4 billion text messages were sent in Britain as the traditional Christmas card was dumped in favour of a seasonal text message.
• A-Level - 81 million messages were sent throughout the UK on August 19th 2004, compared to 67 million text messages on A-level result day, August 14th 2003.
• The Rt. Hon Tony Blair MP became the first UK Prime Minister to use text message technology to talk directly to the people on 25th November 2004, answering questions submitted in advance by text message from members of the public as well as in real-time in a mobile phone chat-room, transmitted live from No. 10 Downing Street.
• On New Year's Day 2005, the total number of text messages sent reached 133 million, the highest recorded daily total.
• Annual SMS totals: 1999 -1 billion; 2000 - 6.2 billion; 2001 - 12.2 billion; 2002 - 16.8 billion; 2003 - 20.5 billion; 2004 - 26 billion.
• The MDA has forecast that a total 30 billion text messages will be sent in the UK by the end of 2005 compared to the figure of 26 billion for 2004.
• 53 million UK subscribers were registered as active on UK networks as of the end of September 2004, of which over 70% send text messages.
• Text messages contribute up to 20 % of operator revenues.
• 95% of 16-24 year olds use text messaging regularly, each sending an average of 100 texts per month In 2004, UK mobile phone owners sent an average of 72 million text messages on a typical day across the four UK GSM network operators
• On average, over 3 million messages are sent every hour in Britain.
• The peak hours for texting are between 10.30pm and 11.00pm.

The full article can be accessed here.

An FWC article featuring resources and the fight against electronic crime points out that although "electronic crimes are increasing at an alarming rate, there is a lack of reliable statistics measuring the frequency, size and impact of such crimes and little scientific research being done to profile the perpetrators".

An interview in the article also mentions that "law enforcement officials need better capabilities and more resources to deal with electronic crime whether it is committed in cyberspace or traditional crimes involving digital devices."

The article goes further on to say that "Some businesses aren’t reporting cybercrimes to law enforcement, but instead handling them internally. With the advent of instant messaging, voice over IP and other communication technologies, there are legal issues of intercepting messages to determine whether a crime has been committed. And getting information about possible crimes from Internet Service Providers might also pose a problem."

For the full article click here.

Article accessed through fergie's tech blog.

The European Commission has issued a decision on the harmonised use of radio spectrum in the 5 GHz frequency band for the implementation of Wireless Access Systems including Radio Local Area Networks (WAS/RLANs). Additional background information is available in a press release and here.

European Commission and roaming charges: The European Union is planning a web site to help cut mobile phone charges.

Phone companies charge consumers too much for using mobile phones while abroad, the European Commission stated, promising to publish details of charges in an effort to let market forces push down prices. The European Union executive has been probing international roaming charges for years amid accusations that mobile phone operators are ripping off customers who make mobile calls while on trips abroad. Together with telecoms regulators from the EU 25 nations, the Commission has now concluded that "retail charges in the European Union are currently very high without clear justification." Roaming charges are also very complex and murky for most users which prevents full competition, the Commission said. The Commission's remedy is a Web Site from this autumn that lists all charges when mobile phone users travel from one country to another, Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr told a daily news briefing.

Deutsche Telekom's (DTEGn.DE) T-Mobile unit rejected the Commission's charges. "We don't think that is justified. We have recently taken several measures to cut roaming fees and to make them more transparent. Apart from that, we can only pass on what the foreign operators charge us, and we see some discrepancies there especially when it comes to southern Europe," said a spokesman for T-Mobile International.

For the full story see Yahoo! news article (Reuters article)

In November 2004, the UK's Ofcom published a consultation on Next Generation Networks: Future arrangements for access and interconnection which explored the potential regulatory issues raised by the move to Next Generation Networks (NGNs). In a follow-up consultation released in June 2005, Ofcom aims to establish a regulatory framework to address those issues and to support the development of NGNs.

The full version of this document, along with the Annexes, are available via the links below.

• Next Generation Networks: Further Consultation
• Next Generation Networks: Further Consultation: Annexes

According to IT and Telecoms: Liberalisation of the long-distance telecommunications market has been postponed from 1 July 2005 until 1 January 2006, Russia Journal reported on the press service of the IT and Telecommunications Ministry. The government has been asked by the Ministry for the delay because some documents required for the deregulation had not yet been drafted by the Economy Ministry. According to the Telecommunications Ministry, the postponement has already been ratified. The Ministry itself asserts that it has presented all the documents required.

Russia Journal further informs that long-distance telecommunications services were included into the list of licensed services in February this year. Prior to that, Rostelecom had been the only nationwide long distance and international telecommunications operator. In late May, the federal telecommunications supervision service granted licenses to three more operators – Centerinfocom, Golden Telecom and Multiregional Transit Telecom (MTT). However, these three companies are not entitled to render the services unless the rules of joining, which stipulate operators’ behavior on the market, come into effect.

"Preparations for the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis (16-18 November 2005) have entered a crucial phase. This summit should reach an international consensus on two key unresolved issues from the first phase: Internet governance and financial mechanisms for bridging the digital divide between developed and developing countries. The European Commission has now adopted a communication outlining the EU's priorities for the Tunis meeting. To promote an Information Society for all, respectful of human rights and of freedom of expression and cultural and linguistic diversity, the EU wishes to preserve and strengthen the sound foundations laid during the first summit in Geneva."

For more details click here.

On 31 May 2005 the European Telecommunication Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) ran its 3rd annual conference on "New Generation Networks: The Next Telecoms Revolution". The discussion focused mostly on three issues 1) convergence, 2) regulatory and policy challenges, and 3) business opportunities. 

For more information as well as links to the presentations click here.

In an article from Reuters: A bill for mandatory logging of emails, phone calls and other electronic communications to combat terrorism and fraud will limit data storage to a year at most, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said a similar proposal put forward by four member states in 2004 wanted data to be stored for three to four years, which she said would impose a costly burden on phone and internet companies.

[Via Fergie's Tech Blog and Reuters]

The Directorate-General Information Society and Media of the European Commission has released a working document on Broadband access in the EU: situation at 1 January 2005.

"Take-up of high-speed "broadband" internet connections is growing fast, according to figures released on 1 June by Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. There are now 40 million broadband lines in the EU, an increase of 70% on last year. This represents 45 000 new broadband lines on average per day, up from 29 000 per day in 2003. The surge in broadband take-up, driven by competition among market players to provide consumers with faster, lower-priced internet access, bodes well for the "i2010" strategy, tabled on 1 June, to boost jobs and growth in the digital economy. New entrants are stepping up investment in broadband infrastructure to build market share. Some European countries are among the top performers in the world while others are lagging behind."

NB: The EU provides statistical rankings in their survey only EU25 member states. The ITU's statistics in broadband include non-EU25 economies.

At an ITU/EU (ENISA) Regional Seminar on Cybersecurity for CEE, CIS and Baltic States in Riga, Latvia, Robert Shaw of the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit has given a presentation (PDF) on the upcoming ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity which will be held June 28-July 1 2005 at ITU headquarters.

Other presentations on available on the event web site, including an update by Pernilla SKANTZ on the establishment of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).

The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the EC Joint Research Center (JRC) has released a report on the "Demand for Furture Mobile Communication Markets and Services in Europe". 

"In order to prepare for the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Word Radio Conference in 2007 (WRC'07), where national delegations will consider the future demands of wireless services for radio spectrum, efforts are being made to reach agreement on future traffic volumes within the European Union. This study forms part of this effort and was led by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS1), on the request of DG INFSO. It aims to explore (qualitatively) the way that citizens will use future wireless communications services over mobile networks, and to assess (quantitatively) the traffic that will be generated by 2010, 2015 and 2020."

The report explores different possible scenarios for Europe for the future. "Disposable income determines consumption – what is bought and how it is bought. The failure to understand this or to grasp the real utility to the user of the service, combined with affordability and accessibility, has led to many errors in estimating demand for services in telecommunications. Too often, a technocentric view of new services has resulted in demand being vastly underestimated or overestimated. Thus while some of the biggest product launches in communications services over the past 20 years have delivered flops, seemingly trivial services have exploded. For instance, the impact of a simple service, SMS, has been greatly underestimated and was largely unforeseen by the industry."

"The initial European impacts over 2000 to 2004 of WAP (Wireless access protocol) for mobile web access to rich data services were greatly overestimated for its first form - only now is its utility being seen. We should also note that in wireless services, a regional market such as the European Union will be increasingly shaped by a global market. In 2020, there could be of the order of 5 billion mobile users, shaping technology, services, content and pricing."

For the full report, see here.

Skype CEO and co-founder Niklas Zenström's keynote presentation from VON Europe 2005 is now available for download. [via Pulverblog]

His two solutions for emergency services calling are interesting, particularly the second:

• Provide open interface to emergency centrals which can receive text, voice and video over IP
  
• Build up national IP geo mapping databases managed by national authorities

Update: The Register has their take on the speech.

"Anti-spam enforcement authorities in 13 European countries recently agreed to share information and pursue complaints across borders in a joint drive to combat electronic junk mail. The nations will cooperate in investigating complaints about crossborder spam from anywhere within the European Union to make it easier to identify and prosecute spammers anywhere in Europe.The voluntary agreement establishes a common procedure for handling cross-border spam complaints". The participating European countries, including Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Spain, will through these initiatives try their best to address complaints from each other.

Spain's data protection authority, Agencia Española de Proteccion de Datos, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission also recently signed a bilateral memorandum of understanding to promote enhanced cooperation and information sharing on spam enforcement activities. In July 2004, the FTC signed a similar agreement with the United Kingdom and Australia.

"Germany is taking spam control into its own hands. People who send junk e-mail in Germany will face fines of as much as 50,000 euros according to a draft law agreed upon by Germany's ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. The law will also prevent spammers from disguising their name and the nature of the e-mail. German lawmakers hope that the steep fine will make people think twice about sending spam. It has been illegal to send spam in Germany since July 2004, but the ruling coalition hopes the new legislation will help stop the practice."

Click here to view the full article.

According to Warren's Washington Internet Daily on 24 May 2005:

Stuck in an "embryonic" stage of sharing cybersecurity information, many European countries look to govt. for encouragement, the head of the European Network & Information Security Agency (ENISA) said in an interview. Despite claims of willingness to work together, a lack of actual cooperation is the chief roadblock to better infrastructure protection, said ENISA Exec. Dir. Andrea Pirotti, adding that many stakeholders want national or European Union authorities to nudge them. ENISA will be the "director of the orchestra" beginning later this year, Pirotti said.

The new agency has created working groups on security awareness-raising, risk analysis and assessment, and computer emergency response teams (CERTs), Pirotti said. The CERT panel will devise an effective way to stimulate cooperation among European nations and to establish as many CERTs as possible, he said. In smaller communities, ENISA may also push for warning, advice and reporting points (WARPs), sometimes called "mini-CERTs." Often set up and run by volunteers, WARPs field network threat information from and report problems to the larger CERTs, Pirotti said. But unlike CERTs they don't provide technical fixes.

ENISA working groups will set best practices with detailed procedures for establishing CERTs and WARPs, Pirotti said. ENISA officials then will take the ideas to national officials and push for their creation. "We shall do our best, but this is just the beginning," he said. Local authorities are keen on the idea but want ENISA to give them a framework and suggestions. Most know the risks of not having CERTS, he said, and are willing to invest in them.

ENISA is beginning to develop a presence, joining the ITU at a June forum on network security in central and east Europe, the former Soviet bloc and the Baltic states (WID May 23 p6). The group also plans a late Sept. information security conference in Budapest.

A permanent ENISA stakeholder group has 30 members from industry, academia and the consumer community, Pirotti said. The group, which first met in March, convenes June 2 to discuss mobile phone security, among other issues.

ENISA's workforce is far from complete -- of 40 workers authorized, 4 have been hired -- but a massive recruiting effort for agency administrative and technical personnel now underway will end in late July, Pirotti said. ENISA will occupy its permanent hq in Heraklion, Greece, in Sept. and start work in earnest in Oct. or Nov. -- Dugie Standeford

Internet Telephony Providers Can Seek Exemption from Obligations: On April 15 2005 the Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority published a policy paper entitled Regulation of VoIP Services. The paper presents the authority's views on how Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services are regulated under Norwegian law.

The policy paper indicates that VoIP service offerings that are designed for any-to-any communication and are publicly available are considered to be publicly available telephony services. Therefore, these VoIP services are subject to all obligations to which providers of electronic communication services and publicly available telephony services are subject under the Electronic Communications Act and the Regulations on Electronic Communications Networks and Services.

The policy paper also indicates that the authority would consider granting temporary exemptions from some of the obligations imposed on internet telephony providers offering VoIP services that are designed for any-to-any communication and are publicly available.

On May 2 2005 the authority sent a letter to service providers offering VoIP services in Norway, requesting them to send applications for temporary exemptions by June 1 2005.

From International Law Office [via my weblog]

OPTA, the Independent Dutch Post and Telecommunications Authority, has released their annual Vision of the Market report. 

"The vision of the markets reflect the commission’s view on important trends and competition developments in the markets, as well as on the position of the end-user. In the annual report, OPTA accounts for its activities and results in the year 2004. The annual accounts give insight into OPTA’s financial house-keeping."

Each year OPTA publishes its Vision of the Market. The publication contains OPTA’s ideas regarding developments on the markets for post and electronic communication. The report furthermore recognizes that:

"The landscape in the communications sector is changing. Convergence is now reality: technological developments have made it possible to offer the same services using the same technology (the internet) via multiple types of networks. This is evident in the introduction of voice and television services via the internet. The communications sector is also broadening through integration with the IT, media and entertainment sectors. Convergence has as consequence that companies that did not compete in certain services in the past now do so. The competition potential is increasing, but the problem areas will not immediately disappear because network owners are still able to create entry barriers for competing parties. OPTA will intervene if and when providers abuse their dominant position."

For the full report, please click here.

[Via my weblog]

The internet edition of the "E-Commerce and Development Report 2004" published by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has been released. The E-commerce and Development Report is intended to provide policy-makers and practitioners with information and analysis to better assess the implications of the growing role of ICTs in economic development.

From the report foreword by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan:
"Information and communications technologies have considerable potential to promote development and economic growth. They can foster innovation and improve productivity. They can reduce transaction costs and make available, in mere seconds, the rich store of global knowledge. In the hands of developing countries, and especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, the use of ICTs can bring impressive gains in employment, gender equality and standards of living".

To view the full report and highlights from the report, click here.

 

 

The European Commission will hold an Open Workshop on Identifying Policy and Regulatory Issues of Next Generation Networks (PDF) on 22 June 2005. The workshop is directed towards policy makers and regulators, but is open to anyone who may have an interest. A provisional programme can be found here (PDF). Attendance is free of charge but registration is required.

The ITU is also hosting a workshop on NGN policy and regulatory issues in February 2006. More details will be announced later here.

VoIP and ENUM gives news on the first ENUM-based operational number range in Austria: "As already announced here one month ago, the ENUM-based number range +43 780 went into operation today. A short decription of the number range is available here. Anybody may register such a number, for available registrars see enum.at."

Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, released its newest data on Internet usage in EU25, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Norway and Iceland. The ICT household and enterprise surveys run by Eurostat measure, among other things, the rate of take up of the Internet and the use made of ICTs. This current edition highlights some of the first results from the 2004 survey round.

A comparison of Internet usage by individuals and by enterprises in several European countries, and for the first time EU25, shows that in 2004 just under half (47 per cent) of the EU25 population aged between 16-74 used the Internet. The average percentage of enterprises using the Internet in the same year was 89 per cent.

The Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark and Finland had the highest density of Internet usage both by individuals and enterprises. Estonia was the highest user in both ranges from the new EU Member States, with the same degree of usage as the EU15 average with 50 per cent of individuals and 90 per cent of enterprises using the Internet.

Some of the main points raised in the report are:
  • SMEs are lagging behind large enterprises in Internet use.
  • There is a gender gap in Internet use overall, but this narrows in the 16-24 age group.
  • The broadband roll-out is gathering speed, overtaking ISDN as a means to access the Internet in enterprises.
  • Enterprises interact via Internet with public authorities more than individuals.
  • Almost half of the enterprises with more than 250 employees purchase via the Internet.

For the full report, see:
Statistics in Focus: Internet usage by individuals and enterprises 2004

For the related press release, see:
Internet usage in the EU25: Half of individuals and nine out of ten enterprises used the internet in 2004

The high reliance on ICTs as an enabler for social and economic development and the speed with which critical information systems and data can be accessed, manipulated and destroyed has put cyber security on the top of the agenda as one of the main challenges to the emerging Information Society and the knowledge-based economy.

Within the framework of its mandate in the Istanbul Action Plan Programme 3, ITU and the Government of Latvia are organizing a regional seminar on Cyber Security for CIS, CEE and Baltic States. The seminar will provide a forum for Member States and Sector members from the region to discuss and exchange views on the main cyber security threats and challenges faced by countries in the region. Countries will have the opportunity to present national initiatives related to cybersecurity policies, strategies and legislation.

More information on the event can be found here.

Roger Darlington's CommsWatch notes some of the issues facing Ofcom concering regulation of next generation access networks. Ofcom's Phase Two consultation document (PDF), which is  part of its strategic review of telcommunications devoted six pages (paras. 8.49 - 8.74) to the subject of regulating next generation access networks. From the Phase Two consultation document (8.60-8.61):

• "We believe that the deployment of next generation access represents an opportunity for a new competitive structure to emerge which would avoid the regulatory battles of the last twenty years. Next generation access networks also have a slightly different regulatory imperative to today’s infrastructure. Because they are not yet in place to any significant degree, there is a strong imperative that regulation does not disincentivise their timely and efficient deployment. As we noted in Chapter 4, there is widespread acceptance among our stakeholders that widely-available broadband is critical to economic competitiveness, and many consider that this effect will become more pronounced with the advent of the more powerful broadband applications which can only be supplied over next generation broadband access networks. This suggests that there is a strong citizen interest in seeing these networks deployed as soon as possible. But this needs to be carefully balanced against our duty to safeguard the interests of consumers, where appropriate by promoting effective competition.
  
• These are clearly conflicting factors..."

backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC's new developer network, providing content feeds for anyone to build with. Alternatively, share your ideas on new ways to use BBC content. [via Slashdot:]

News on VoIP regulatory proceedings since the beginning of 2005 from the ITU-D's Regulatory Reform Unit newsroom.

• The Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority issued an outline of the regulation of VoIP (21 April 2005) Executive Summary
• The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission rendered its decision on 9-1-1 emergency services for VoIP service providers (4 April 2005) Press release - Decision
• Philippines' NTC issues draft VoIP rules for public comment (30 March 2005) - Memorandum - Draft VoIP Rules
• United States' Federal Telecommunications Commission (FCC) prohibits blocking of VoIP applications (3 March 2005) - Press Release -  Decree
• The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) from Philippines declares its support for VoIP deregulation (22 February 2005); See related NTC's VoIP regulation consultation process: - VoIP Discussion Paper; - Comments from Operators
• The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) of Ireland issued draft Directions to allow access to the new ’076’ number range for voice over Internet phone services (VoIP) (17 February 2005).
• The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) proposes regulatory guidelines for VoIP and International Access/Gateway (11 February 2005)
• The European Regulators Group (ERG) for electronic communications networks and services issued a Common Statement on Voice over IP regulatory approaches (11 February 2005) - Press Release
• The Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) of Spain finalizes consultation on VoIP regulation and proposes VoIP numbering and portability guidelines (7 February 2005, in Spanish) - a) Press Release - b) Results from VoIP public consultation
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) of Japan invites comments on draft report concerning Measures for Preserving Important Communications Such as Emergency Messages on IP Networks (28 January 2005)

The UK communications regulator OFCOM has done one of the first public consultations on the regulatory implications of Next Generation Networks (NGN), particularly with regard to BT's 21CN NGN initiative. The consultation document, entitled Next Generation Networks - Future arrangements for access and interconnection (overview,complete) explores the implications of Next Generation Networks (NGNs) for access and interconnection arrangements in the UK. The responses to the consultation are available here.

In BT's response to the consultation, it indicates some of its views on 21CN regulation:

Finally BT observes that some key aspects of the strategic positioning, NGN access and interconnect, are not addressed in Ofcom's questions. We wish to point to the following specific points.

1. We would expect that NGNs will blur many of the boundaries all of us in the industry currently take for granted. For example, the distinction between "operators" and "service providers" will diminish; and one could foresee an increase in pan-European alternative providers leveraging their IP infrastructure using next-generation interconnection more effectively. Further, as the barriers to market entry are lowered through technology advances and open standards, we would expect many new entrants to change the landscape - some with innovative value propositions and others by identifying and exploiting new arbitrage angles.

2. We believe end user customers will soon demand seamless, ‘any to any’ interworking between mobile and fixed networks. Operators will require the ability to roam on, and interconnect to, other national and international fixed and mobile networks in order to facilitate the provision of next generation services. The regulatory regime needs to become more technologically neutral and focus on economic bottlenecks, irrespective of the underlying network technology.

3. We believe that innovative services will be heavily reliant on intelligent interworking to provide coherent services. Therefore, cross platform access (including roaming and interconnect) to intelligence capabilities will be essential in ensuring further development of services and competition in the convergent marketplace.

4. BT is disappointed to see the level of potential regulatory intervention and micromanagement, both in commercial and technical terms, demonstrated in this Consultation. This is particularly inappropriate as it followed so soon after the second phase of the Telecoms Strategic Review, which promulgated a deregulatory agenda and a focus on regulating only bottlenecks. This Consultation also includes some substantive inconsistencies of approach which will need to be addressed.

5. It is critical that the outcome of this - and any later - consultation processes should be a regulatory regime which rewards investment and does not leave BT with a significant proportion of the 21CN investment risk, whilst distributing the investment returns across the industry. Ofcom will wish to consider this issue as they contemplate the responses to the Consultation.

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, in cooperation with the ITU-T and ITU-D, is organizing a workshop on NGN Policy and Regulation in February 2006.

CommsWatch has a post on the challenges to content regulation with convergence:

"It is not obvious why, in a news item today, the "Guardian" should highlight the challenge to conventional regulation of broadcasting posed by the growing trend to put broadcast material over the Internet. After all, it was 20 January 2005 when Ofcom published its Annual Plan for 2005/06 which contained the following statements:

• "We will prepare for further change, for example, by examining how digital platforms and services are likely to evolve and the implications for regulation, including regulatory withdrawal. (para. 1.5)
• "We will also look forward by conducting a review of digital, multi-media platforms. We hope this will facilitate a wide-ranging public debate about whether content, including internet content, could or should be regulated in a converged world, and, if so, how. (para. 2.15)
• "In setting the agenda for media literacy, we will complete a major research programme and seek to identify areas of concern relating to emerging communications technology and services, particularly relating to fixed and mobile internet content. We will encourage public debate and engagement on key issues such as labelling. (para. 3.30)
• We will carry out a review of digital platforms that will address the regulatory issues associated with content becoming available via a range of different media. (para. 3.47) andWe hope this review will facilitate a wide-ranging public debate about the future development of content and the implications for regulation, if any. (para. 3.48)
• "Media literacy agenda setting: Identify areas of concern relating to emerging communications technology and services, particularly relating to fixed and mobile internet content, and encourage public debate. (Annex 3, section 3)

There [i]s obviously a theme here: Ofcom wants a debate on Internet content and it intends to encourage, facilitate and inform such a debate. It is now up to broadcasters, Internet service providers, and others to engage in that debate. Today's "Guardian" piece suggests that the issue has "come to a head" because of the European Commission's review of the Television Without Frontiers Directive. However, it was 21 March 2005 when the new European Commissioner Viviane Reding used a speech to the Council of Presidents of UNICE in Brussels to state:

• "Let me be clear. The Television without Frontiers Directive can no longer just be concerned with broadcasting. Television is now on the Internet; it is also going mobile. Admittedly, for the moment TV on the internet is small scale but it will grow. We have to make sure it grows strongly and correctly. And for this we need the right, modern framework. I will only regulate this new market where absolutely necessary in the concerns of European citizens for diversity, quality, decency and safety from abusive uses. Also, convergence means increased competition between media. This indicates relaxing regulatory restrictions to leave more to the market and to consumer choice than in the traditional media world. In particular, I am thinking about easing advertising restrictions.""

The programme and presentations at the European Electronic Communications Regulatory Forum held 13-14 April 2005 in Barcelona are available [via ERO and my weblog]

The latest EU Competition Policy newsletter has an article on pages 8 - 15 entitled State aid rules and public funding of broadband:

• In the recent months, the Commission had the opportunity to assess several projects involving public support to broadband  development. The considerations developed in this article reflect the Commission's conclusions in the ensuing decisions and aim at providing guidance on how to design forms of intervention that do not raise competition concerns. A word of caution is, however, necessary. These are the first decisions on State aid relating to broadband projects: the present views might evolve in the light of further experience and in view of the quick pace of economic development and technological evolution in the sector.

[via EuroTelcoblog]

Russian security authorities should be given broader powers to control telecommunications and the Internet, argues Dmitri Frolov, of the Federal Security Service's Information Security Center.

Frolov spoke Thursday in the Federation Council, or Russia's upper house of parliament, at a panel discussion devoted to telecommunications and Internet regulations.

The Federal Security Service proposes setting new rules for Internet providers so that it could prevent the spread of extremist ideas, track down illegal online operations, and get access to databases with mobile telephone subscribers' details, such as e-mail addresses, Frolov said. There should be compulsory registration of mobile phone users with Internet connectivity.

The Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications is opposed to the idea of adopting a separate law on Internet operations. Speaking at today's panel discussion in the Federation Council, Deputy Minister Boris Antonyuk said the use of the Internet could be regulated by more general laws already in effect, including those dealing with advertising, the protection of consumer rights, and administrative offenses.

[via Fergie's Tech Blog and RIA Novosti]

Cybercrime Costs Billions But How to Report It?

Cybercrime costs societies billions of dollars every year, but it is not easy for European citizens to report that their digital identity has been stolen, according to anti-virus software companies and police.

Britain's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) three weeks ago estimated the nation's cost of computer crime at $4.7 billion a year. Yet common computer break-ins such as hacking, phishing and identity theft must be reported to the local police.

Britain's police offer online forms for citizens to report "non-emergency minor crimes" including theft, criminal vandalism and damage to motor vehicles, but there is no special category for computer crime.

Elsewhere in Europe, citizens are also mostly referred to local police forces to report these crimes.

"It really is a problem. These crimes are global, but citizens work with local police. Most of the police are trained to catch bank robbers rather than Internet robbers," said Mikko Hypponen at anti-virus company F-Secure in Finland, where citizens have to report to local police.

Dutch police have admitted that most are ill equipped to deal with cybercrime.

"Victims of high-tech crime experience this every day," wrote Pascal Hetzscholdt, policy adviser of the Dutch police's digital investigation unit, in a recent article for a police detectives magazine.

"When reporting a crime, they find that the police have big problems with taking and processing the technical aspects of the incident. Police and the public prosecution also have trouble estimating the importance," Hetzscholdt said.

Weak police skills lead to low interest, others say. From Reuters [via my weblog]

ENISA’s Seat Agreement signed in Heraklion: ENISA Seat Agreement was signed today in Heraklion, Crete, by ENISA’s Executive Director, Mr Andrea Pirotti, and Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, Mr Anastasios Nerantzis, in the presence of the Greek Prime Minister Mr Kostas Karamanlis. High level representatives of the Greek Government and Parliament attended the event as well as representatives from the Foundation for Research and Technology, FORTH, and from the ENISA Management Board. From ENISA [via my weblog]

From VoIP and ENUM comes the news that Switzerland has started an ENUM trial. For more information see Swiss ENUM (German only at this time).

The UK mobile phone operators, O2, Orange, TMobile, Virgin Mobile, Vodafone and 3, have today appointed a body to oversee the self-classification of new forms of adult commercial content on mobiles. The new body, which is named the Independent Mobile Classification Body (IMCB), is a subsidiary of premium rate regulator ICSTIS, and has been formed for this purpose. It has now launched a classification framework (press release (Word)) against which providers of commercial content to mobile subscribers will be able to self-classify new forms of content such as still images and video clips. [Via Ewan Sutherland's blog]

Mesh Less Cost of Wireless: A group of wireless enthusiasts provide a town in western England with Internet access at a fraction of the usual cost. They use a device that supplies hundreds of users with broadband piped from a single connection. [Wired News]

Guy Kewney's Mobile Campaign has a fascinating article on Locustworld's affordable wireless mesh network solution, Meshbox. LinuxDevices.com has a primer explaining the MeshBox - a Linux-powered wireless mesh repeater by Jon Anderson, its creator.  As Guy Kewney's article notes: "However, there are going to be some controversial areas in the Locustworld experiment. The cheekiest move was the setting up of an IP address numbering authority, WIANA, or The Wireless Internet Assigned Numbers Authority." Also see my earlier articles on wireless mesh/parasitic/symbiotic networks in Watch this airspace and parasitic networks and Seeding Mesh Networks.

Ebone staff have announced that they've got a two week reprieve to keep their network operations going.

Update on KPNQwest bankruptcy on Total Telecom: Key European, U.S. groups to bid for parts of KPNQwest network. Update on Ebone: Since June 6, 2002, the employees of Ebone (part of KPNQwest) have occupied the European Network Operations Centre in Hoeilaart, Belgium and are maintaining the Ebone network on an unpaid basis. Their web site provides a running update on the state of things.

The European Commission yesterday refused to give the green light to the renegotiation of third generation mobile phone licences - despite pressure from the cash-strapped industry. However, Brussels left the door open to some licence changes in exceptional circumstances. It estimates European telecommunications companies have spent some €110bn ($104bn) in acquiring the 3G licences. [FT]

Slashdot is reporting in its article KPNQWest Admins Keep Bankrupt Network Running on how some dedicated staff are keeping the KPNQwest network running (but for how long?). See the earlier article on this: "KPNQwest Crisis and a lesson about Critical Network Infrastructure". Some of the NOC folks have got some web pages up to show they're doing their best.

Is there a bottom in the telecoms onslaught? The sudden collapse of KPNQwest, who operated a large pan-European data network carrying an estimated 25-30% of Europe's IP traffic is a hot topic of discussion on Total Telecom. The collapse is going to have an unknown impact on Internet infrastructure and connectivity within Europe and internationally. Ebone and GTS, who KPNQwest acquired only in March 2002, appear to be casualties.

The rapid collapse of KPNQwest provides an interesting lesson vis-à-vis contingency planning of critical network infrastructure. Besides the large numbers of customers who'll be left stranded or scrambling for new providers, KPNQwest's infrastructure provided DNS services (secondaries through ns.eu.net*) for a number of Internet country code top level domains (ccTLDs). Those ccTLDs may need to rapidly find out whether they have enough distributed secondaries if ns.eu.net vanishes. Update: RIPE NCC has made an agreement with KPNQwest to temporarily take over the hosting of ns.eu.net.

This reminds me that less than a year ago there was a partial unavailability of one of the Internet's master root name servers, namely c.root-servers.net, located in PSInet's network infrastructure, when a large backbone provider, Cable & Wireless, disconnected PSINet's peering connections because they no longer met C&W’s requirements. The result was that C&W customers were unable to reach that root name server until the peering arrangement was reinstated.

*EUnet was acquired by Qwest in 1999 before KPNQwest was created.