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.

Under the aegis of the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Initiative and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Geneva Declaration of Principles (December 2003), which affirms “…the common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life…” 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 

To register for the upcoming ITU/EBU Meeting of High-Level Experts on Competitive Platforms for the Delivery of Digital Content, please click here or contact Ms. Cristina Bueti at digitalcontent@itu.int

More information about this meeting is available here.

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.

Under the aegis of the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Initiative and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Geneva Declaration of Principles (December 2003), which affirms “…the common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life…” the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will jointly organize a High-Level Experts Meeting on “Competitive Platforms for 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

More information about the Call for Papers is available here.

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.

The second edition of the World Information Society Report: Beyond WSIS is going to be launched on the occasion of the World Information Society Day on 16 May 2007.

Published by ITU and UNCTAD, this report looks beyond the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS, Geneva 2003 - Tunis 2005) to the creation of an inclusive, people-centered and development-oriented Information Society, open to all. Some of the themes covered in the report are: the evolution of the digital divide, trends in the information society, ICT growth strategies, cybersecurity and WSIS implementation. The report tracks progress in digital opportunity for 181 economies over the past few years since the start of the WSIS process and is accompanied by a series of tables providing the latest statistics on the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) worldwide.

The report has been created by the “Digital Opportunity Platform”, an open multi-stakeholder platform with contributions from governments, private sector, academics and civil society, as well as inter-governmental organizations.

More information on the forthcoming publication will be made available on its website in due course.

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 Indian Merchants' Chamber held its 5th international conference on communications convergence on 16-17 March 2007 in Mumbai, focusing on the theme: new technologies, new business horizons (webcast).

Speakers included, among others, J. Patil (Minister for Finance and Planning), S. Pitroda, V. Bhatkar (Chairman, ETH Research Lab), R.A. Mashelkar (Former Director-General, CSIR), N. Rupani (Chairman, Enkay Technologies), R. Patel (Chairman, Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd), S. Chowdury (CIO, Reliance Communications Ltd), K. Goyal (Chief General Manager, BSNL) and K. Dasgupta (CEO, Sony Entertainment Television Pvt. Ltd).

ITU's Lara Srivastava delivered a talk in the plenary session entitled "communications convergence and the new global village". Her presentation is available 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 international conference on the impact of technology on society was held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 7-9 February. LIFT 2007 welcomed more than 40 international speakers, from F. Devouard (Chair, Wikipedia) to Jaewoong Lee (Founder, Daum Communications).

Sessions included, among others: technological overload, digital divide, the social web, post-industrial worlds, from robots to cyborgs, perspectives on ubiquitous computing, technological opportunities for society. In this latter session, ITU's Lara Srivastava gave a presentation on "communication technologies and new forms of social interaction". 

Lara Srivastava also participated as a panelist in the session "Digital Divide: Bringing it Home". Her presentation entitled "digital divide, digital disconnect" is available here.

The conference includes a LIFT + feature, a living and creative platform intended to develop new ideas through the active interaction of participants.

More information about LIFT 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.  

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.

The European Parliament held an STOA Workshop on "RFID in the everyday life of Europeans: A citizen's perspective on ambient intelligence" on 24 January 2007. The workshop was organized as part of the project "RFID and identity management: Case Studies from the frontline of the development towards ambient intelligence" commissioned by the Scientific Technology Options Assessment (STOA) Panel of the European Parliament, and carried out by the European Technology Assessment Group.

ITU's Lara Srivastava delivered a presentation on the topic "Is our enviroment getting smarter? Are we". Her presentation is available here. 

As one the series of Google TechTalks, Van Jacobson presents his talk entitled "A New Way to Look at Networking."

Jacobson's motivation for giving this talk is his feeling that in the last decade network research in the United States has been at a dead end. Despite technological advances, everything with networking is becoming more difficult. People are spread out over multiple devices, wireless barely works, and the solutions that are being presented solve the small problems but do not deal with the larger cause.  In the current situation, Jacobson feels the Internet is not a bad solution but the problem has changed. We are on the verge of a Copernican revolution. A good analogy to this situation is the one faced in the 1960s and 1970s when efforts were being made to use the telephony system to move data.

The traditional telephony system was not about calls, it was about wires. To have a successful business model, a ubiquitous wire system was necessary. Jacobson provides an explanation of the system, how it works, and the issues that arose over ownership of the network. One characteristic of the network was its unreliability. Every piece had to work all the time. Because of this the network was designed to have reliable elements instead of being reliable as a whole. 

The current issue is in order to have access to information, the device used must be connected to the Internet or the user will be cut off. This can be difficult because the device must have a topologically stable address. Also, the Internet does not like things that move or broadcast; it was not designed for this.  How the network is being used has changed. We are not longer in a conversation model. A conversation model cannot be transformed into a viable security model. Instead, Jacobson promotes a dissemination model by discussing the work that is being done with this framework including ways of transferring and storing information and their advantages.

Jacobson feels that the continued reliance on the conversation model has evolved the situation to the point where the user must now do the low level connection plumbing to get what he/she wants.  If we change our view to the dissemination model, the network does the plumbing. 

The full talk can be found here.

The ITU New Initiatives workshop The Future of Voice (15-16 January 2007, Geneva) discussed, inter alia, the regulatory implications of the development of voice communications. A background report Regulatory Trends: New enabling environment framed the debate. Authors of the paper are Andy Banerjee from Analysis Group Inc, Gary Madden and Joachim Tan from CEEM at Curtin University of Technology, Australia.

In a few short decades, radical changes in technology, market institutions, and regulatory and competition policy have transformed telecommunications markets. Telecommunications service traditionally meant voice communication. However, with the deployment of triple play, the phenomenon of convergence has emerged as both the principal offspring and driver of the technology-market-policy triad. Convergence is bringing together previously disparate communication services, content, and consumer market segments. This phenomenon raises questions about the future of communications and, in particular, about that of voice communication.

The authors maintain the hypotheses that: the future of voice communication will be the future of all forms of electronic communication; and the market will most likely be served by a combination of broadband technologies, prominent among them end-to-end fibre (wireline) and 3G (wireless) technologies (and their successors). In this context, the central question is: how must regulatory policy change to facilitate such a future? Specific regulatory or policy reforms in future communications markets marked by convergence and intermodal competition must be guided by the dynamic efficiency principle.

First, when the last mile access bottleneck disappears, regulatory focus should shift from the terms on which service and content providers can gain access to end users towards ensuring interconnection among IP networks, and between IP networks and access networks. Peering or bill and keep arrangements may suffice, in the absence of significant asymmetry in cross-network traffic patterns, for most forms of interconnection.

Second, any blanket network neutrality rule should be resisted. While undue discrimination may still need to be monitored and rooted out, traditional common carrier regulations accompanied by a blanket network neutrality rule can actually prove to be counter-productive.

Third, regulatory authorities must redesign licensing regimes to adapt to new market realities created by convergence and intermodal competition. Such licensing regimes should not favour the emergence of a particular technology or service but rather allow the market to make those decisions.

Finally, regulation for the future voice environment must mean prudent applications of discretionary policies. Those policies may include: providing incentives to develop and deploy small-scale, modular, and scalable broadband technologies; providing opportunities and systems for aggregating demand for broadband services; constraining international mobile roaming charges to encourage roaming and international voice communication demand; rejecting mandatory MVNO access to the networks of incumbent mobile operators unless specific market failure warrants such access; encouraging pricing models that recognise the multi-sided nature of emerging broadband markets; and renewing global efforts to control spam.

One of the eight background papers of the ITU New Initiatives workshop The Future of Voice (15-16 January 2007, Geneva) look at Communications in New Generation Networks. Authors of the paper are James Alleman from the University of Colorado and Paul Rappoport from Temple University, United States.

Based on demand side and supply side considerations, the authors focus on market dynamics and the drivers of change. While technologists or policymakers may prefer one market structure outcome over another, what the consumer is interested in is communications – simple, easy-to-use, cost effective and available on demand. These needs are not always satisfied in the current market environment. Currently, they must be satisfied with multiple networks and devices. Business and households now have fixed telephones, mobile phone (many times more than one for a household), a broadband connection which could be satellite, cable, DSL, WiFi, or WiMax, and Blackberries. Are consumers indifferent to technology and the protocols to communicate? Does a consumer’s desire to “communicate” transcend any one platform? Voice is not a unique form of communication; e-mail, facsimiles, video phones, and self-generated content are all means to communicate. For the next generation of consumers, simplicity, availability and access are required. To satisfy these consumers, the diversity of communications has significantly expanded. From this perspective, consumer demand is the driver of change.

An example of the change-driving demand is the music download on internet. The figure below clearly underscores the substitution in terms of the preferred or growing importance of the internet as a channel for delivery. The popularity of MP3 files is due in part to the increased level of choice – downloading singles, creation of custom play lists and so forth. However, perhaps the most significant factor is price. The rapid growth in MP3 downloads suggests that demand for MP3 downloads in elastic and that there are large cross price elasticities.

Do people communicate more taking opportunity of all new channels and modalities and are all of these driving telecom revenue bigger while best serving the users? While the popularity of online downloads is constantly growing, real revenue growth is lagging behind, as this is a service substitution phenomenon (MP3 music files for music CDs) rather than new source of revenue. Clearly the magnitude of own and cross-price elasticities need to be considered when assessing the convergence of communication, entertainment and data services as well as the future of ICT as a whole.

The full paper is available at the Future of Voice website.

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.

The ITU has just published a Survey on Radio Spectrum Management, available for download here (.pdf format).

The survey was prepared by Marco Obiso, Cristina Bueti, Rochi Koirala and Lorenzo Mele of the Strategy and Policy Unit (ITU).

Together with other background papers will form part of the input material for an international ITU/FUB Workshop on Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management to be held in Geneva (Switzerland) from 22-23 January 2007.

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

More information about the Workshop can be found here.

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

The 8^th edition of the ITU Internet Reports, entitled "digital.life" was prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World 2006 (December 4-8 2006, Hong Kong). The report examines how innovation in digital technology is radically changing individual and societal lifestyles.

Chapter two: lifestyles.digital, examines the key technologies and services enabling new digital lifestyles, including higher-speed networks and content distribution. Digital technologies are fast becoming indispensable. A growing array of devices and technologies are on offer today, making users much more mobile. These range from slimmer and faster laptops, to MP3 players with video capabilities and mobile phones with high-speed internet access. While it took around 21 years to reach the first billion mobile users, the second billion signed up in just the three years. By contrast, it took some 125 years to reach the first billion fixed-line users (see figure below).

In the cellular industry, the evolution from second to third generation networks is arguably just as important as the jump from analogue to digital (which took place more than a decade ago) and is proceeding much more rapidly. By the end of 2005, the number of subscribers to 3G mobile networks of broadband speed (equal to or greater than 256 kbit/s in one for both directions) was just over 60 million and a further 50 million or so were added during the first six months of 2006, passing the 100m subscribers mark. This is a significant milestone and illustrates that this technology is approaching maturity.

Download chapter two: lifestyles.digital to discover more about underlying technological enablers of new digital lifestyles, including mobile technology, broadband networks, user-generated content, IPTV and so on.

The full text of the report is available online at the digital.life website. For more information, please contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int.

The eighth edition of the ITU Internet Reports, entitled "digital.life" was prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World 2006 (December 4-8 2006, Hong Kong)and is available now online. The report examines how innovation in digital technology is radically changing individual and societal lifestyles.

Chapter one: going digital outlines the meanings of "digital" and reflects on the many ways of being digital. Around one in every three people on the planet now carries a digital mobile phone around with them wherever they go. Globally, more hours are spent consuming digital media, such as the internet, than any analogue media, including television and radio. Digital technologies are transforming businesses and governments, and changing the ways we live and interact. We are witnessing what has been termed a “digital revolution”, which had its beginnings in the early 1980s and refers to the replacement of analogue devices and services with their digital successors. This technological shift has brought about considerable change in the human condition itself, especially in its socioeconomic and cultural aspects.

The transition from narrowband to broadband digital networks (figure below) is now well-advanced in the fixed-line world where there were some 216 million broadband subscribers across the world at the end of 2005, amounting to just over half the total number of internet subscribers and around one-fifth of total fixed lines.

As the world becomes increasingly digital, new challenges and important dilemmas arise for businesses and policy-makers. Private individuals, too, are faced with a bewildering number of choices for their information and communications needs.

If you are eager to discover more about these challenges as well as about the importance of being digital and digital ubiquity, you can download chapter one: going digital.

The full text of the report is available online at the digital.life website.  For more information about the report, contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int.

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.

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.

A presentation entitled "Evolution of Digital Media in a Convergent Era" (PDF), was made by Cristina Bueti, Project Officer, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit,at the Festival International du Film et de la Télévision on 4 November in Geneva, Switzerland.

As part of the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme 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 (Strategy and Policy Unit and Radiocommunication Sector) and and the Ugo Bordoni Foundation will jointly host a workshop to identify global trends and good practice in radio spectrum management.

The Workshop on "Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management" will be held from 22 to 23 January 2007 in Room C at ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.

It will examine, inter alia, the use of market mechanisms for both primary allocation of spectrum (e.g., auctions) and for secondary trading. It will look at recent trends in ITU Member States, the increasing demand for spectrum and will examine future challenges in developing policies for access to radio spectrum.

ITU Member States, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their spectrum related contributions to the meeting. All contributions will be posted on the meeting website. Please send your contributions to spectrum@itu.int

More information can be found 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.

Dear Subscribers,

We regret to inform you that as a result of scheduling complications it has been necessary to postpone the Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management Workshop from the 2nd and 3rd of November 2006 to the 22nd and 23rd of January 2007.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Those directly affected will be contacted by us individually.

More information about the workshop and related activities can be found here.

On 20 June 2006 Singapore launched a new ten-year infocomm masterplan that will propel the nation into 2015 and beyond, with a line-up of activities and goals that spell benefits for the people, businesses and the global community. The vision is to turn the country into an Intelligent Nation and Global City, Powered by infocomm. The masterplan recommends the way forward for Singapore, into a future where infocomm will bring a sea change and become intrinsic in the way people live, learn, work and play.

The masterplan sets bold targets for 2015:

• Singapore to be No. 1 in the world in harnessing infocomm to add value to the economy and society
• Achieve a two-fold increase in value-added¹ of the infocomm industry to S$26 billion
• See a three-fold increase in infocomm export revenue to S$60 billion
• Create 80,000 additional jobs²
• Have at least 90 per cent of homes using broadband
• Ensure 100 per cent computer ownership for all homes with school-going children

Further information on the masterplan is available here.

Anti–spam legislation for the Cayman Islands is being considered by the Information and Communications Technology Authority.

The ITCA is now seeking input through a public consultation campaign. The goal is to ensure that any anti–spam legislation enacted in Cayman Islands is an effective tool as part of a multi–pronged attack on spam.

More information can be found here.

The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has conducted a legislative review of the Spam Act.

The review is required by legislation to assess the operation of the Spam Act after two years of its operation. The Department prepared a report based on the submissions received. The Minister tabled the report in Parliament on 22 June 2006.

The Minister’s press release is available here.

More information can be found here.

The ITU held an international workshop under its New Initiatives Programme on the topic "The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services" in Mainz (Germany) from 21-23 June 2006. The final report [PDF]  of the chairman has now been published.

Workshop presentations can be found here. Background documents, including country case studies and thematic papers are also available on the workshop homepage.

Interim results of the investigation on regional policy and regulatory trends related to the Voice over IP have been presented today as a contribution to the ITU New Initiative Programme project on the Future of Voice.

In her presentation, Ms Anna Riedel focused on VoIP in South and Eastern Europe: Strategy and Policy Considerations [pdf]
Ms Nathaly Rey concentrated on Ruling Voice over IP: Challenges for Regulators in Latin America [pdf]

Both presentations are available on the new resources website related to the Future of Voice project.

Ministry of Information Industry (MII), Internet Society of China (ISC) and China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) launched a national anti-spam campaign on June 21, reports Nanfang Daily. An insider at ISC said MII has set up a hotline at 01-12321 for spam-related tip-offs and is preparing to send out one million anti-spam notices.

The report said that professional training will be offered for 1,000 email administrators and that 20,000 anti-spam volunteers will be recruited.

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]

Microsoft today gave the world a rare - albeit conservative - glimpse of its view on just how bad the virus and bot problem has gotten for Windows users worldwide.

The data comes from 15 months' worth of experience scanning computers with its "malicious-software removal tool," a free component that Microsoft offers Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 users when they download security updates from Microsoft.

More information can be found here.

The 5th Annual Mobility Roundtable was held in Helsinki from 1-2 June 2006, hosted by the Helsinki School of Economics. Since 2002, mobility roundtables have been held in Tokyo (Japan), Stockholm (Sweden), Austin (United States), and Hong Kong, China. The main objectives of the roundtables are:

1. to build and support a sustainable international network of research and industry best practices for the mobile communication and computing business, market and industry;
2. to exchange research and knowledge about best practices for different mobile modes of business; and
3. to facilitate communication and collaboration among global researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

The 2006 programme, and all final papers can be found here. There were four keynote speakers at the event: Jarkko Sairanen (Vice President and Head of Corporate Strategy, Nokia), Dr. Elizabeth Keating (University of Texas at Austin), Ari Tolonen (CEO, InfoBuild), and Lara Srivastava (ITU).   Lara Srivastava is a member of the international advisory committee for the mobility roundtables. Her keynote address was entitled "Mobiles for a Smaller World" and is available here.

The 6th roundtable will be held in Los Angeles (California) in June 2007, hosted by the University of Southern California.

Australian PC users can now get more proactive about combating SPAM email with the launch of a reporting system by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

More information can be found here.

The trial will include about 400 participants. A wide variety of partners are involved, including operators, service providers, handset manufacturers, credit card companies, consumer electronics manufacturers, and retails. More information can be found in the RFID Journal article 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.

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on RFID, with a view to developing a coherent RFID Policy for Europe. In order to prepare for the consultation, the Commission is organizing a series of workshops (5) between March and June 2006, in which experts and stakeholders from all over Europe and the world come together to debate the key issues.

ITU's Lara Srivastava spoke at the first workshop (6-7 March 2006), and also at the third workshop in the series held 16-17 May 2006 on "RFID Security, Data Protection & Privacy, Health and Safety Issues" (see the presentation here). The Policy Framework Paper written by the Commission in advance of the meeting highlighted the vision of the ITU's 2006 Internet Report on "The Internet of Things" released in November 2005.

Two more workshops are planned in early June, after which the Commission will open up the debate for a wider on-line public consultation, resulting in a Communication on RFID to be issued later this year.

For more information, including webcasts, see the European Commission RFID Consultation Website.

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.

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 Telecommunications Policy Review Panel was established by the Minister of Industry on April 11, 2005, to conduct a review of Canada's telecommunications framework. The Panel was asked in particular to recommend on:

1. how to implement an efficient, fair, functional and forward-looking regulatory framework that serves Canadian consumers and businesses, and that can adapt to a changing technological landscape,
2. mechanisms to ensure that all Canadians continue to have an appropriate level of access to modern telecommunications services,
3. measures to promote the development, adoption and expanded use of advanced telecommunications services across the economy.

The Panel's reviewed Canada's telecommunications policy and regulatory framework and made recommendations on how to make it a model of 21st century regulation.

The Final Report of the Telecommunications Policy Review Panel 2006 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.

China’s Ministry of Information Industry has adopted the Measures for the Administration of Internet E-mails. The regulations, which took effect from 30 March 2006, are designed to apply to email service providers and apply to any person operating an email service for Internet users in Mainland China.

The regulations are as follows:

• A provider is defined as any person in the service supply chain involved in delivering or helping users to receive email;
• Service providers must register with the government and obtain a license before providing email services;
• Violators face warnings or penalties of up to 30,000 yuan (approx. $3,700 US) and risk losing their license;
• Firms are barred from sending unsolicited commercial messages without prior consent from recipients;
• All commercial email must have a subject header of “AD” or the Chinese character for advertisement;
• The rules only apply to email containing commercial advertisements;
• The rules state that providers must stop delivery of any messages containing commercial advertisements even if a recipient first consents, but later changes his or her mind.

A copy of the rules (in Chinese) can be found here.

The Federal Trade Commission and members of the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) are meeting in Jeju, Korea, on March 26-28, to discuss the progress of international efforts to combat cross-border fraud and explore new international initiatives to protect consumers around the world.

The FTC’s participation in ICPEN is one part of the agency’s ongoing effort to combat a rising number of cross-border fraud complaints from American consumers. ICPEN members discussed the results of a recent Internet surf for Web sites that are “hidden traps online.”

Over 30 countries participated in the international surf. In the United States, the focus was on Web sites with fraudulent claims advertising “miracle cures” for diabetes, with the FTC, FDA, and several states Attorneys General offices participating.

The FTC and its partners reviewed over 1,000 Web sites and identified over 150 with potentially misleading diabetes claims. The FTC will follow-up, sending warning letters to Web sites that appear to have deceptive or false claims.

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).

Internet service providers could face huge fines if they do not provide spam filtering or impose email sending limits under new rules set down by a communications watchdog. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) today registered the world's first legislative code of practice for internet and email service providers.

More information can be found here.

At a technology forum in Brussels hosted by EuroISPA - the European Internet Services Providers Association, and co-sponsored by Interpol, Neil Holloway, president, Microsoft (Europe, Middle East and Africa), inaugurated a global law enforcement campaign targeted at cybercriminals responsible for phishing attacks.

This is part of Microsoft's larger program dubbed - the Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative (GPEI), that aims at co-ordinating and expanding the company's anti-phishing efforts globally.

More information can be found here.

On 23-24 March 2006 at ITU headquarters, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit hosted a high-level experts workshop entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? focused on the policy and regulatory challenges related to the deployment of IP-enabled NGNs. The following materials are now available:

• The original workshop concept document providing details on the objectives of the workshop
• Final Agenda
• Background papers:
  • Ruling the New and Emerging Markets in the Telecommunication Sector by Christian Wey, Pio Baake and Sven Heitzler 
  • Interconnection in an IP-enabled NGN Environment by Scott Marcus
  • Universal Service in an IP-enabled NGN Environment by Patrick Xavier
• All presentations and contributions
• Webcast archives

A public talk was given on 22 March 2006 at Michigan State University's Quello Center for Telecommunication Management and Law on "The Changing Face of Cyberspace" (Lara Srivastava, ITU). 

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. 

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in 1998 that spam was "an annoying and sometimes destructive use of the Internet's unprecedented efficiency." Gates communicated the problem. The makers of Spam Cube created the solution.

The launch of Spam Cube gives everyday personal computer users a revolutionary new tool in the battle against unwanted email. Working in harmony with every operating system and nearly all email providers, Spam Cube protects up to four home computers with its breakthrough anti-spam technology. A technology spawned by the frustration felt by computer users worldwide, forced to endure invasive junk e-mail campaigns.

For more information, please click here.

Including data from some of the world's largest Internet Service Providers, MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group) has developed its first metrics report outlining the scope of the problem and validating that approximately 85 percent of Internet traffic today is abusive email.

The report, "MAAWG Email Metrics Program: The Network Operators' Perspective," provides data for the fourth quarter of 2005 and will continue to be updated on a quarterly basis as an objective tool for tracking the industry's efforts at controlling abusive email.

For more information, please click here.

Efforts by governments to counter internet spam by tracking down and prosecuting spammers have had limited impact and require far more resources than most countries can muster, the United Nations telecoms agency (ITU) warned on Tuesday.

It says in a report that while all countries need anti-spam legislation so that spammers have nowhere to hide, a more effective approach would be to require the establishment of enforceable codes of conduct by internet service providers (ISPs).

For more information about the article, please click here.

For more information about the report "Stemming the International Tide of Spam", please click here.

A study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) has found that cell phones and other portable electronic devices, like laptops and game-playing devices, can pose dangers to the normal operation of critical electronics on airplanes.

"We found that the risk posed by these portable devices is higher than previously believed," said Bill Strauss, who recently completed his Ph.D. in EPP at Carnegie Mellon.

"These devices can disrupt normal operation of key cockpit instruments, especially Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, which are increasingly vital for safe landings." Strauss is an expert in aircraft electromagnetic compatibility at the Naval Air Warfare Center in Patuxent River, Md.

For more information, please click here.

Recognising the importance of electronic interdependencies, India and the United States on Thursday agreed for greater cooperation to protect electronic transactions and critical infrastructure from cyber crime.

"The two sides recognised the importance of capacity building in cyber security and greater cooperation to secure their growing electronic interdependencies, including to protect electronic transactions and critical infrastructure from cyber crime, terrorism and other malicious threats," the Indo-US joint statement said.

For more information, please click here.

Soon PC users could be literally stamping out spam instead of hitting the delete key.

"Many information workers spend a majority of their time trapped at their desk dealing with e-mail," said Brian Meyers, from the Step User Interface Project Group who helped develop the prototype.

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]

On Tuesday, the anchors of the coalition – the Electronic Freedom Foundation and Free Press -- hosted a national conference call asking for allies to unite to fight AOL's "e-mail tax."

Under the banner of DearAOL.com, a total of fifty organizations, including MoveOn.org, Civic Action, Gun Owners of America, The Association of Cancer Online Resources and Craig Newmark of Craigslist.com joined in to offer up a number of explanations as to why such a "pay-to-send" policy would harm the Internet forever.

For more information, click here.

Symantec launches a new Internet security barometer that gives consumers clues on which online activities are currently safest. But unlike rival security meters, Symantec's new Internet Threat Meter breaks out current risks by activity: e-mail, Web browsing, instant messaging, and file sharing.

For more information, please click here.

For more information, please click here.

Vodafone's Face Sensing Engine uses a 3.2-megapixel camera to authenticate a user's facial features and eliminate the need for passwords or fingerprint verification.

A face recognition technology with a one second validation feature from Oki Electric will be offered on a Vodafone Group handset in Japan this April, according to an announcement Tuesday by Oki.

For more information, please click here.

A group of security researchers claims to have found the first virus that can jump to a mobile device after infecting a PC.

"Crossover is the first malware to be able to infect both a Windows desktop computer as well as a PDA running Windows Mobile for Pocket PC," the research group said.

For more information, please click here.

APCAUCE's 2006 meeting was organized in Perth, Australia in conjunction with the APRICOT Conference. The Regional Update meeting was on Sunday 26 February 2006, and APCAUCE (Asia Pacific Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) will also organize an antispam technical conference track as part of APRICOT on 1 March 2006.

For more information, please click here.

A group of technology chief executives are calling on the U.S. Congress and President George Bush's administration to create a "21st century" radio spectrum policy that would transfer poorly used government spectrum to private companies.

For more information, please click here.

Since Yahoo first proposed its DomainKeys authentication standard for email (DKIM), AOL has played coy. That strategy has apparently served the uber-ISP well, as it has been extended indefinitely.

In a standing-room-only webinar courting direct marketers, AOL speaker Nicholas Graham was asked when the firm will get around to adopting DKIM's cryptographic-based technology. Christine Blank of DMNews reports Graham responded, "We will have to wait and see. The facts are still out."

For more information, please click here.

Commtouch has announced spam and computer virus statistics for the month of January 2006. The data is based on information continuously gathered by the Commtouch Detection Center, which analyzed more than 2 billion messages from over 130 countries during the month of January.

For more information, please click here.

Liberal political action group MoveOn.org is organizing a petition drive against America Online's certified email service, whereby advertisers could pay a per-message fee to guarantee their messages will bypass AOL's spam filtering technologies and be delivered directly to AOL users.

Claiming the service amounts to an "email tax" by granting large email senders preferential access to AOL users mailboxes, while leaving other email users (like small businesses, friends, family members, charities, and co-workers) in the dark, wondering if their mail will get through.

For more information, please click here.

Ahmed Bin Ali, Manager Corporate Communications, Etisalat, said: 'We are happy to make this option available to all our valued customers, and we are empowering them to be able to decide what content they receive and from whom. Our customers have shown interest in a service like this, and we have taken all the steps to make this option available at the earliest.'

For more information, please click here.

Programs that fight viruses have become a necessary evil on Windows PCs. Now the antivirus industry is turning its attention to mobile phones, but it's running into reluctance from cell service providers, who aren't so sure that the handset is the best place to handle security.

For more information, click here.

China's Ministry of Information Industry launched its anti-spam center, www.anti-spam.cn, today as part of their net safety efforts. There are ongoing efforts to also enhance its email management sometime between March and April 2006.

Additionally, the Chinese government issued a regulation on the management of emails, which will take effect on 30 March 2006. Sending advertisement emails without the receiver's permission is banned, according to this new regulation.

For more information, click here

At the behest of the GSM Association (GSMA), fifteen network operators have founded a joint initiative against the spread of spam via mobile communications networks and published a "Code of Practice" (PDF file).

The initiative is focusing on spam sent as a text message or MMS, which has been divided into three categories: first, advertising that the cell phone user did not request; second, messages that directly or indirectly lead to calls of expensive premium services; and third, fraudulent content, such as the spoofs familiar to users of fixed Internet.

For more information, click here.

The ITU is hosting a workshop on Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) from 14-15 February 2006, bringing the spotlight on the emergence of a so-called "Internet of Things", enabling ubiquitous network connectivity, anytime and anywhere. The agenda and an accompanying press release are available.

Update: The workshop is being audiocast live and archived.

Malaysia has recently launched its latest 5 year ICT master plan called MyICMS 886.

[Via James Seng's blog]

The internet as we know it is set to transform radically, according to a new ITU Internet Report entitled The Internet of Things, specially prepared to coincide with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005. From an academic network for the chosen few created in the late 1960s, the internet is now a mass-market, consumer-oriented network being accessed by over 900 million people worldwide, through personal computers, mobile phones and other wireless devices. But this is only the beginning. According to ITU’s report, we are standing on the brink of a new ubiquitous computing and communication era, one that will radically transform the Internet, and with it, our corporate, community, and personal spheres. The new ITU report looks at key enabling technologies for ubiquity (e.g. RFID, sensors and sensor networks, telematics, robotics, nanotechnology) and how they might impact the future human and technological landscape.

At WSIS, the report was launched at a Press Conference and Panel Debate moderated by Kenn Cukier of The Economist. The lively debate included the following speakers and panelists: Nicholas Negroponte - MIT Media Lab, Olivier Baujard - CTO of Alcatel, Hitomi Murakami - VP General Manager of KDDI (Japan), Jonathan Murray - VP and CTO, Microsoft EMEA, Walid Moneimne, Senior VP and Head of EMEA Networks - Nokia, John Gage, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office - Sun Microsystems, and from the ITU, Lara Srivastava, lead author of the report.

LightReading has an article on the recent NGN Industry Event in London on 18 November 2005, where ITU unveiled Release 1 standards for NGN by ITU-T's Focus Group on Next-Generation Networks (FGNGN). The event also outlined the next phase of NGN work to be progressed under the banner of the NGN Global Standards Initiative (NGN-GSI). In the presentation (Zipped PowerPoint) by BT Group Technology Officer Mick Reeve:

"...the world's telecom standards groups are, at last, all singing from the same song sheet with their work on next-generation network (NGN) standards.

"Addressing an International Telecommunication Union meeting in London today, Reeve, a key figure in the development of BT's 21st Century Network (21CN), praised the ITU for its role in bringing together the work of many different groups around the world and delivering a unified vision of what an NGN should look like and deliver. (See BT Unveils 21CN Suppliers, Bross: More to Come on 21CN, and Wales to Get 21CN First.)

"The ITU has done a great job in finding a global agreement on NGNs. There's a high level of agreement globally about NGN principles" that has helped deliver an "overall architecture for next generation networks and systems, something that has been unheard of before now," says the BT man. He cited the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), TeleManagement Forum, and Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) as organizations that have helped in the ITU's work."  

Other presentations made at the event can be found here.

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. 

Yesterday the Honourable Anne McLellan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, introduced legislation on the lawful interception of communications. The Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act (MITA) will ensure that the law enforcement community and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) maintain their ability to investigate crime and terrorism in the face of rapidly evolving communications technology.

“Currently, under the law, police and CSIS can only intercept communications with authorization. This Act will not change that,” said the Deputy Prime Minister. “However, that authorization may be of no effect if companies do not have the technical ability to intercept new communications technology. This legislation will ensure that criminals can no longer take advantage of new technologies to hide their illegal activities from the law.”

Click here to read more.

From the soon to be released ITU Internet Report 2005: The Internet of Things comes this fresh survey data showing the top 10 3G mobile markets worldwide, by millions of subscribers and type of technology (CDMA 2000 1x and W-CDMA) at the end of 2004. The USA leads in total number of 3G subscribers with 49.5 million (16.7% of the population) but the Republic of Korea has the highest national percentage with 57.4 of the population using 3G services (27.5 million subscribers).

The Finnish technical research center VTT has developed a new technology that makes it possible to identify the user based on their physical movements such as walking style. This feature is said to prevent unauthorized use of portable devices such as laptops or mobile phones. The research center said that in the future this technology could also be used for credit cards to verify a user's identify based on their physical movements before approval of payment transactions.

The new identification system provides users with the advantage of increased security and reduced risk in situations where a portable computer, mobile phone or other digital device has ended up in the wrong hands due to loss or theft. The technology makes the device non-usable in the wrong hands. For example, the identity of a mobile phone user can be verified before the phone can be used for banking transactions. Compared with passwords and traditional bio-identification, the new method is simple: confirmation of identity takes place as a background process without any need for user's intervention.

For more information go to IT News Online.

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.

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.

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.

Korea's Chosun Ilbo has an article on how competition is heating up in deployment of Korea's national NGN project which is called the Broadband convergence Network (BcN). BcN is the fusion of communication, broadcasting and the Internet, is a next-generation information network that the Korean government is pushing to complete by 2010 as part of its national IT 839 Strategy.

At the WSIS Thematic Meeting "Towards the realisation of the ubiquitous network society", held 16-17 May in Tokyo, co-organised by MIC Japan, ITU and United Nations University (UNU), a new project to develop and mass-manufacture a US$100 laptop, primarily for use in schools, was launched by MIT Media Lab together with an Open Computer Initiative from UNU. The partnership aims to have working prototypes available for demonstration by the Tunis Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), November 16-18 2005. The initial specifications for the laptops are 500 MHz processor, 1 GB hard drive and wi-fi enabled, running LINUX. Over time, it is planned that the laptops would become more powerful, but not more expensive.

For more information, see: http://www.unu.edu/hq/rector_office/press2005/mre12-05.doc.

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 Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Conference (WSIS thematic meeting): Toward the realization of a Ubiquitous Network Society, organized by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and United Nations University (UNU), has opened. The programme and related presentations/documents are available on the meeting website.

Singapore's IDA has announced Intelligent Nation 2015 or iN2015 — a 10-year master plan to grow the infocomm sector, and chart the use of technology for work, life and leisure. [via James Seng's Blog]

Telecommunications Magazine has an article on ITU's recent Ubiquitous Network Societies workshop.

• So what does ubiquitous really mean? One take has a future where everything is connected to everything else by some type of wireless network. Alongside this is a future that sees superconvergence of everything from fixed to mobile networks spanning multi-platforms, multi-functions and multi-applications.
• In short, it sounds like the long-held dream of all telecom professionals everywhere, providing services and applications to everyone regardless of their location. “Technology and network access will become an afterthought to daily activities,” predicts [ITU Secretary-General Yoshio] Utsumi.

An experts workshop on Ubiquitous Network Societies was held from 6 to 8 April 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland at ITU Headquarters. The Chair's Report from the meeting is available here. Workshop presentations can be downloaded here. The background and thematic papers presented at the workshop include:

Thematic/Background Papers

• Background paper: Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of Radio Frequency Identification (PDF)  
• Background paper: Privacy and Ubiquitous Network Societies (PDF)
• Background paper: Ubiquitous Network Societies: Their impact on the telecommunication industry (PDF)

Country Case Studies

• Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of Japan  (PDF)
• Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of the Republic of Singapore (PDF)
• Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of Korea (PDF)
• Ubiquitous Network Societies: The Case of Italy (PDF).  See also Ubiquitous Network Societies - Survey on the Case of Italy (PDF)

Silent Commerce is Accenture's take on ubiquitous networks, using "tagging, tracking, sensing and actuating technologies to make everyday objects intelligent and interactive. When combined with continuous Internet connectivity, a new infrastructure for the collection of data and for the delivery of services can take place without human interaction". Accenture has authored some white papers with the Auto-ID Center, which was mentioned in the post Ubiquitious Networks & RFIDs.

In the Asia-Pacific region in particular, there is increasing discussion around the concept of "ubiquitous networks" and "ubiquitous communications". The term "ubiquitous comes from the Latin "ubique", meaning "everywhere". Although it is still an evolving concept, the vision is a pervasive information infrastructure of interconnected devices where computing, content, and network resources become transparent to users (if you saw the film "Minority Report", it gives you an idea of what a ubiquitous networked world may resemble). Ubiquitous communications will mean the constant presence of networks that permit interacting and exchanging information with anybody, anywhere, any time and with many types of equipment, typically using radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies.

RFID standardization work has been going on in the Auto-ID Center, which involves a number of companies, MIT (US), the University of Cambridge (UK) and the University of Adelaide (Australia). Recently, the RFID Journal announced a new Japanese-backed Ubiquitous ID Center, indicating it was a potential rival to the Auto-ID Center. The piece The Auto-ID vs. the Ubiquitous ID vs. ? from Professor Ken Sakamura's TRON laboratories at Tokyo University explains the differences between the two initiatives.