Demand for broadband access in Greece

As broadband access networks are relatively new in Greece, it is really difficult and involves great risk to determine the potential market for broadband services. The intent of this paper is to add to the discussion of delivering fixed broadband lines to customers in Greece taking into account regulation issues, the strategic movements of the market key players and the commonly admitted inequality of broadband access availability between urban and rural areas. In addition, using time-series analysis and examining the correlations between the number of fixed broadband lines and specific demographic factors for the past three years (mid 2006–mid 2009), an attempt to estimate empirically the forthcoming demand for broadband lines is conducted. Population’s income and effective competition are recognized as the strongest determinants of broadband development. In addition, it yields that demand for broadband will continue to have a positive trend for the years to come as people are becoming more and more familiar with new technologies, with youth being the pioneer to the use of innovative services that require broadband access.     

An exploration of user-generated wireless broadband infrastructures in digital cities

This paper examines the broadband connectivity options available in digital cities. It offers an overview of services provided by commercial operators, the public sector and by citizens themselves, arguing that shortcomings in existing fixed broadband and commercial mobile broadband services provide an opportunity for citizens to share their own wireless broadband connections. It explores Wi-Fi hotspot provider FON’s approach to extending mobile broadband infrastructure by enabling shared connections within communities. The paper outlines some reasons why this specific user-generated approach to infrastructure provision has been unable to deliver highly robust broadband infrastructure, and discusses ways in which users and the public sector can be involved in developing new mobile infrastructures that will meet citizens’ needs.     

Service-oriented broadband wireless network architecture - [Guest editorial]

In the past few years, broadband wireless networks have been very attractive as a key technology for providing Internet access because of quick and cost-effective deployments. In addition to the features of high data rate and large coverage, broadband wireless networks also promise to rapidly provide access to locations in the world?s rural and developing areas where broadband is currently unavailable, as well as compete for urban market shares. Till now, most existing efforts have been focused on basic access capability. However, to successfully operate broadband wireless networks, a crucial issue must be addressed: how to support a variety of services and applications within the broadband wireless networks? As an example, there is an increasing need to efficiently support applications such as voice over IP (VoIP), video streaming, music downloading, IP TV, and many others.     

Techno-economic evaluation of narrowband and broadband accessnetwork alternatives and evolution scenario assessment

The paper presents the main results obtained within the Research in Advanced Communications in Europe (RACE) project: 2087 TITAN regarding minimum-risk introductory routes for new narrowband and broadband services in the residential and small business market. The project developed a methodology and a tool for techno-economic evaluation of advanced narrowband and broadband telecommunications networks and services. Results from four extensive access network studies are presented. For the narrowband services, optical access and radio in the local loop have been assessed and compared to conventional copper layout in a greenfield environment. Access network upgrade strategies for emerging new broadband services have been evaluated in three studies, with technological options ranging from enhanced copper to hybrid-fiber-coax (HFC) and broadband passive optical networks. An extensive study on different broadband access network upgrade alternatives for public network operators (PNOs) were carried out, taking into account the diversity of conditions met today by European countries. In another study, the effect of competition In the access network was modeled assuming two main operators sharing the market. Broadband upgrade alternatives were evaluated for a new cable operator, competing with the dominant public network operator. In addition, video-on-demand (VoD) and Internet access upgrades have been analyzed. The paper demonstrates the viability of techno-economic studies for the access network, including in-depth analysis of the time-dependence of component cost, tariffs, service penetrations and market shares     

Broadband wireless access with WiMax/802.16: current performance benchmarks and future potential

The IEEE 802.16 family of standards and its associated industry consortium, WiMax, promise to deliver high data rates over large areas to a large number of users in the near future. This exciting addition to current broadband options such as DSL, cable, and WiFi promises to rapidly provide broadband access to locations in the world's rural and developing areas where broadband is currently unavailable, as well as competing for urban market share. WiMax's competitiveness in the marketplace largely depends on the actual data rates and ranges that are achieved, but this has been difficult to judge due to the large number of possible options and competing marketing claims. This article first provides a tutorial overview of 802.16. Then, based on extensive recent studies, this article presents the realistic attainable throughput and performance of expected WiMax compatible systems based on the 802.16d standard approved in June 2004 (now named 802.16-2004). We also suggest future enhancements to the standard that could at least quadruple the achievable data rate, while also increasing the robustness and coverage, with only moderate complexity increases     

存量客户发展现状及保有策略案例研究

在当前日益激烈的行业竞争形势下,河北移动“高新增”、“高离网”、“高成本”三高问题严重,净增用户增长率逐步下降,存量客户价值凸显,基于这样的背景,我们对存量客户进行研究分析,结合现有存量客户的消费行为及消费偏好,从服务、渠道、促销、宣传四个方面提出相应的客户保有策略,为后期的市场发展起到了一定的引导作用,具备一定的参考价值。     

CellStream — pilot customer experience

The announcement in October 1996 of BT's pilot CellStream asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) service marked a significant milestone in the provision of broadband services within the UK telecommunications market. Building on the success of BT's initial broadband Switched Multi-megabit Data Service (SMDS), CellStream provides BT's customers with high-speed and operationally flexible communications within the UK and internationally. This paper outlines BT's CellStream ATM services, and, by taking a particular example, illustrates how customers have been supported in their introduction to them.     

基于IPTV的宽带提速技术研究及应用

随着宽带业务同质化竞争愈发激烈以及IPTV用户数的爆发式增长,差异化产品与服务提升在市场竞争中尤为重要。介绍了IPTV产业发展及宽带提速技术,阐述了基于IPTV的宽带提速技术核心业务流程。研究结果表明,基于IPTV的宽带提速技术可为用户提供便捷的带宽动态调整服务,可满足海量宽带及IPTV用户个性化带宽需求,能够建立差异化服务提升优势,降低用户流失风险,提升宽带及IPTV用户价值。     

Broadband and digital ‘content’ in the EU-25: Recent trends and challenges

This paper focuses on recent trends and issues in the EU-25 countries related to one key broadband application area: digital media ‘content’ applications. It draws upon recently completed research addressing current and future uses and applications of broadband in the EU-25 area.

The paper presents key findings from the BEACON project concerning the broadband content trends and issues in the EU-25 countries. First, the paper briefly considers recent literature on broadband and digital media innovations as well as the policy context in Europe, which has an important influence on framing supports for innovation in content and digital media. Next, it addresses a number of key issues that impact upon the creation of content services. These include the high cost of content production and the difficulty of forming attractive business cases given the uncertainties related to user demand, and the IPR and copyright regimes. It will also consider users’ patterns of engagement with broadband content and emerging user applications. Next, the paper discusses whether broadband is reaching a ‘tipping point’, whereby broadband access is becoming the norm and in the next five years we will see the emergence of innovative, dynamic content services. The paper considers whether recent moves by three sets of significant actors (media corporations, the advertising sector, and EC regulators) could be early signs of a tipping point in favour of the creation of and more focused support for broadband content services.     

Analyzing competitive and collaborative differences among mobile ecosystems using abstracted strategy networks

During the last 5 years, we have witnessed extraordinary development in the mobile market. Apple’s launch of the iOS platform and associated App Store marketplace turned the market around, and Apple became the leading company in the business. This development caused existing players, such as Nokia, to renew their business and attracted new players, such as Google and Microsoft, to enter the market and introduce their own mobile platforms. To understand this development, we suggest that a generic abstracted model of the ecosystem around mobile platforms should be developed describing how the actors, including users, individual app developers, companies, and digital services, are connected and interact. In this work, we propose that competition and collaboration in this kind of abstracted ecosystem can be modeled and analyzed using network analysis. In our research, we derived weighted competition and collaboration networks for each mobile platform from an expert survey, and by calculating companies’ degree centrality in their networks at different times we were able to illustrate how companies’ strategies to build and maintain an ecosystem differ and develop over time. We believe that this kind of analysis is useful both for companies that build ecosystems and also for companies that plan to do business in them. The former can use it to compare their strategy with existing competitors and also evaluate emerging new ecosystems and the latter to compare and choose between possible ecosystems with which to do business.