Dutch snippets of the week

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Techies are no teenagers

The most active users of new technologies such as mobile phone, MP3 players and internet are not teenagers, as often thought by people, but the people between thirty and fifty years of age. Consumers spent most time online on home shopping sites and eBay-like sites. Half of the people have never used MMS services and 78 per cent goes first to Internet to inform themselves about products before buying.

New boss for telco watchdog

The minister of Economic Affairs has appointed mr Christ Fonteijn as new chairman of the telco watchdog OPTA. Mr Jens Arnbak will leave the chair after seven years. He has been instrumental in liberalising the Dutch telco market and has worked on spam and autodialers. Mr Fonteijn is lawyer and he will have to pilot OPTA into a new area with VoIP and triple play.

Philips starts broadband heart patient service

Philips has announced that it will start a service for heart patients by broadband. No less than 630 patients will be connected to the Service centre of the insurance company. They will have a set-top box which is connected to a computer and modem by Wi-Fi. Identification of the patients will be done by biometrics. It is the first pilot with ADSL in Europe. Philips did the experiment in the States with Comcast through a cable connection.

Sanoma has big plans

The Dutch magazine division of the Finnish company Sanoma will expand to internet radio and television instead of acquiring a radio frequency. Sanoma will look at the magazine titles as brands and provide a range of services around the brand . Sanoma already is successful on Internet. It acquired the Ilse Internet company and already has many titles online, titles for children and titles for young mothers. The division director of Sanoma was put on leave this week and will not return.