Aussies and Kiwis sampling Dutch broadband (6)

The program of the Australian and New Zealand trade mission was not completely filled with technical lectures. Mr Jos Huijgen, a former consultant to the Dutch telecom watchdog OPTA and an assistant director of the Department of Economic Affairs had some lessons for the audience:
- Control game of the government is over;
- Promote competition;
- do not focus on infrastructure;
- move away from access now to services;
- invest in public services;
- use local initiatives for scaling of services;
- promote bottom-up initiatives.

Mr Huijgen made it clear that in broadband the time had passed that the government was in control. Competition in broadband has worked. But he did not mince any words in making clear that the services part was weak. The public sector services are too scattered and there is a lack of pilots.

Public private cooperation is key in the services area. The Dutch government stresses four policy areas: mobility, healthcare, safety and education. There are four assigned areas for public private projects. On the local and regional level people involved in initiatives and projects are stimulated to talk to each other. By linking the dots the government looks for best practices. Industry and government have formed an association Netherlands Broadband Country and is bringing parties together in theme areas such as digital life, health, leisure, mobility and nomadic labour, retail and education. Research and development institutes are linked to each other so that they can use broadband more effectively for research and development. In the public sector an action program has been started up between the social sector and ICT.

All these policies take the line that initiatives should come from the bottom-up. You have to start with the end-user. Essential is to use local initiatives for the scaling of services. Too often initiatives have failed as they were stimulated by government and eventually became a bureaucratic organisation hardly yielding any results. (To me, such a project was the heavily subsidised project Kenniswijk, Knowledge Neighbourhood, in Eindhoven, where 84.000 broadband connections were promised and not realised, but which was eventually superseded by a less ambitious and successful broadband project in the neigbouring village of Nuenen).

So the lessons learned are that demand and supply should be linked, bottom-up initiative should be promoted and that scaling up of successful initiatives should be supported.

Blog Posting Number: 697

Tags: broadband, broadband policy

Aussies and Kiwis sampling Dutch broadband (5)

Especially the civil servant in the Aussies and Kiwis trade delegation were eager to hear about the involvement of the government in the pushing of Fibre to the Home (FttH) networks. The first that they arrived they already upset the program set up by Paul Budde and Fred Kappeteijn. While in Amsterdam they wanted to know everything about CityNet and how do you get it off the ground. Also on Tuesday it remained a subject of interest. And when they were in Almere they still were eager to learn how to set up an FttH network and keep it an Open Net.

Of course Amsterdam is the most interesting case as the city has invested 6 million euro and is now under scrutiny of the European Commission. The municipality of Almere has not put any money in it the FttH network, which will be laid from 2007 till 2010. Also the municipality of Nuenen did not put money in the network.

(c) Elaine Sullivan

The Netherlands is not the only country working on FttH networks. IN Japan 300.000 FttH connections per month will be realised by 2008. In Europe the battle for Paris is on. The Iliad network will go after 1 million homes at 1 billion euro. Neuf Cegetel wants to have 250.000 FttH connections at 50Mbps for 29,90! The incumbent France Telecom starts FttH connections at 100/10 Mbps for 44,90 in Paris, Poitiers, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse and Lyon. Noos Numericable puts in a massive investment. In the department Haute-de-Seine 1,5 million household connections are aimed at as well as 100.000 SME connections at 50 to 70 million euro. All in all no less than 100 broadband projects are under way in France. In Cologne in Germany a broadband project is going on as well as in Schwerte, Norderstadt, Hamburg and Gelsenkirche. But there are also projects in Vienna (Austria) and Zurich (Switzerland), while in Denmark an FttH network project has been taken up by an energy company, which will connect 35 percent of the homes and reach 50 percent of all Danish people. In the UK there is a project in Oxfordshire. In the rest of the UK the slogan is: 12/1 Mbps is enough for all and ever. Of course FastWeb in Milan is the most operational project in Europe.

Essential to the Open Net is the three layer model. There is a point to point connection for an unbundled local loop; this provides the largest capacity for future growth. The active layer has active Ethernet. On top of that is the application service layer. Any service provider can use the application service layer against the same conditions.

In Amsterdam the municipality is represented in the board of network. And Amsterdam has invested 6 million euro. Amsterdam claims that it did so under company conditions. In Almere the municipality is also represented in the board, but it will not invest in the network. In fact the municipality does not have to do this as an investor has been found and an operator, most likely KPN, will take care of the operations.

In all cases people ask, why an open network is the option. The answer comes from economics. A closed network will give a return upon investment of 8 percent, while an open network will yield 10 percent return upon investment.

Blog Posting Number: 696

Tags; Open network, FttH

Aussies and Kiwis sampling Dutch broadband (4)

On March 13, 2007 the Australian and New Zealand trade delegation had a day full of lectures. One of the lectures was about the future All-IP network of KPN and the regulatory challenges for the telecom watchdog OPTA.

The Netherlands is on top the listings concerning broadband penetration in the homes. And at a reasonable price due to the competition. Cable networks cover 94 percent of the country, while the telephone network covers 99 percent. The telephone network infrastructure is run by the incumbent KPN telecom company. Some DSL operators have their own networks, but 50 to 70 percent of the DSL operators have to rent local loops. There are 5 million broadband connections in the Netherlands of which 60 percent are DSL connections, of which 10 percent is non KPN, and 40 percent cable connections. There are about 40+ local initiatives with Fibre to the Home (FttH). There are now half a million homes connected with FttH, mostly student houses.

The environment in The Netherlands has grown competitive. KPN lost 0,56 million access lines last year. Voice over broadband overtook the plain old telephone system. Digital television is already in 25 percent o the 6,9 households. Triple play offers are made by the telecom companies like KPN and Tele-2, by the cable companies and by private FttH operators. Unbundling (ULL) has been operative since 2000 based on the principles of access, prices, transparency, non-discrimination, accounting and separation.

So you might think that the Dutch have it all under control. But KPN surprised the telecom, cable and FttH market in 2005 by announcing a national All-IP network. This would entail that the layer of all exchanges, including the rented spaces and equipment of the DSL operators, would be taken out and the fibre network will be linked to 28.000 street cabinets. The bandwidth would be upgraded to 50Mbps and up to 100 Mbps for business. KPN would make an investment of 0,9 billion euro. But the exchanges/MDF locations would give KPN a return of 1 billion euro. The roll out will start in 2007 and the network needs to be finished by 2010. For KPN it means that it can phase out the present technology, which is at the end of its cycle, and start competing with the cable operators.

The challenge for the regulator is of course in the fact that KPN start to dominate the playing field and starts changing the business cases of the DSL and FttH operators. The New Generation Network (NGN) requires another regulatory environment than the good old legacy regulation. Of course the NGN might also move to a duopoly.

The NGN is now under study with the telecom watchdog OPTA. Basic principle is that KPN has the freedom to upgrade the network and terminate the exchanges and MDF model. Replacing the MDF model would be a sub loop unbundling (SLU). But KPN has not yet suggested any rules or prices. OPTA hopes that the draft decisions are available by the second quarter of 2007.

The question was put in by some delegates why KPN would put in an All-IP network. Was it just replacing technology at zero cost or was it to shake up the competition in the telecom and sector? Not a few delegates and visitors were inclined to guess that it was the competition argument.

Blog Posting Number: 695

Tags: New Generation Network, All-IP network, DSL, broadband, Fibre to the Home, cable

Aussies and Kiwis sampling Dutch broadband (3)

The delegates of the Australian and New Zealand trade mission have gone their own way now. A small group visited the broadcast hotspot of Nuenen in the South of the Netherlands. One of the delegates went on to Stockholm; another one went to Manchester in the UK, while other moved on to the CeBIT fair in Germany. And the civil servants in the trade mission went to The Hague to consult with their Dutch counterparts.

(c) Elaine Sullivan

But before they left Almere they went to visit the Hopling company for wireless communications. The company is three years old and employs some 60 people in Almere. It started out as a garage company, where young Ivo van Ling (see photograph) put together his first radio antenna. (The first antenna has been preserved in their company museum). The company has gone through a fast growth curve. It is of course not just the antennas that will sell the service. But it is the basic concept of hardware, software, communications and services like the managed services.

Australia is a very unbalance country demographically. The majority of the inhabitants live in the cities, which are located towards the edges of the continent. One would expect that the wireless services would be interesting to Australia given the size of the country and the amount of sparsely inhabited land. Wireless in the countryside could be an alternative for the costly broadband fixed lines. But so far the efforts have mostly been concentrated on wireless city networks such as Amsterdam and Zoetermeer in The Netherlands and Las Vegas in the USA as well as Abbotsford in Canada.

Hopling got started with KPN Hotspots, which has over 1000 nodes now. After that the networks were installed recreation park, gas stations and soccer stadiums like the Philips stadium in Eindhoven (PSV) and the Arena stadium in Amsterdam (Ajax). In Amsterdam hotspots have been installed, but also two hotzones by The Cloud. All the Dutch islands in The North of The Netherlands (Texel, Ameland, Schiermonnikoog) have been equipped with hotspots for tourists. And the city of Dokkum, where Christianity in The Netherlands was started by saint Boniface, has also been equipped.

Most interesting is of course to see other networks arise like on railway stations. The Dutch railway company has fitted out some 40 stations with hotspots; not just a wireless open Lan for the passengers, but also a secured LAN for their personnel to pass on the latest instructions and check the positions of the trains. For the narrowcasting company ON of Heineken, Hopling designed networks for bars and discos. One of their latest projects is the Streetlight Project of the city of Zoetermeer. The streetlight poles in Zoetermeer have two screens: a small one with a touch-screen streetmap and a larger one higher on the pole for advertising; also a wifi camera for public surveillance is attached. Interesting are also the mobile services provided to railway and bus companies. By gatewaying wireless networks into UMTS and HDSPA wifi access points can be created for using computers in the trains and busses.

Of course the state of art of WIMAX was discussed. Hopling is participating in the standardisation process and preparing itself for it. In the meantime it is expanding worldwide by co-operating with local representatives. The Australian and New Zealand delegates could start negotiating on the spot.

Blog Posting Number: 694

Tags:wifi, wireless, Wimax, broadband

Aussies and Kiwis sampling Dutch broadband (2)

(c) Elaine Sullivan

The trade Australian and New Zealand delegation went to Almere yesterday to hear more about broadband initiatives. Almere is my hometown so I was also eager to hear what is going on.

It was in October 1998 that I organised a review session for the European Commission in Almere. On the wave of internet the municipality had set up a Cyber Centre. But that year also the Institute of Information Engineering of the Amsterdam College was started. The European Union had at that time a programme Information Engineering and it looked a good idea to combine the review with the start of the new department. It gave the review team an opportunity to tell about the European Commission and the programme and it gave the municipality a chance to expose itself. Despite the horrible weather (perpetual rain and heavy winds) the event was success.

But in the meantime the town has moved on. Now the city is about 30 years old and has some 70.000 houses and almost 200.000 inhabitants. And the city still has to grow to 400.000 inhabitants. The space for building houses is there, but the city will have to be less dependent for labour on Amsterdam and Amsterdam Airport. In order to make the city attractive to live and work, there is now a programme Almere Smart City. The programme intends to streamline present situations, attract new high tech companies and make broadband access for business and residents.

The first phase is fully in swing. Computing and broadband activities of public institutes (municipalities, hospitals, health centres and schools) are being streamlined. The computer operation of Almere hospital has been re-designed and now there are two telephone lines instead of 300. And all the 35 health centres are linked to the hospital by broadband. For consultation with colleagues in Amsterdam medical consultants use conference systems, so that no travel is needed. Also in education there was a big change. All schools are now on broadband. There used to be a server park for the primary and secondary schools; this is now centralised and put into the hands of a professional organisation, using UNIX instead of Windows. By centralising, there is less down-time, as all the programs and the content is on a central computer. It saves schools paying for access and takes a lot of computer work out of the hands of teachers. Also the public library and the municipal offices have fibre connections to the backbone.

The key company for thinking up and executing these activities is Unet, a three year old company with 60 employees. They are a broadband company from day one and they demonstrate it. At their offices in the centre of Almere they have arranged a house of the future, fully equipped with all broadband gadgets possible and with Dutch design furniture. Broadband for this house of the future is all Ethernet based.

(c) Elaine Sullivan

Mr Frank Halsema of Almere Smart City explained that ICT was the driving force for Almere. Every four years a new program will be in force. This has been since 2001. The new plan till 2010 is very ambitious. Almere will work in the framework of the Northern Wing, cooperating especially with Amsterdam and Amsterdam Airport, an area with 1 million inhabitants. But as Amsterdam is growing to its limits, Almere can take over some spill functions and start some new initiatives. So it started up an internet exchange ALM-IX next to the AMS-IX. This has been a reason for Sara, the scientific computer centre, to move partly to Almere. But it also has attracted large data centres to the new town such as the European Service Innovation Centre and the Domestic Competence Centre in cooperation with TNO.

The Smart City programme is looking at creating new jobs in Almere. But it is also looking at keeping people from loosing time in traffic jams on their way to and from Amsterdam every day. One of the largest banks, ING, is starting up an ING Telework Centre.

Despite the fact that many new houses are built in Almere, not all new houses have broadband. But before 2010 all 70.000+ houses will have fibre. Presently 1500 houses and 500 companies have fibre connections. This was a pilot from 2003, which required 3,5 million euro. Wiring up all other houses in Almere will take another 80 million euro. An investor has been found to sink 40 percent of the sum in the project. The operator has been selected and the name will be announced in a couple of week; the name of KPN is rumoured.

From 2001 up till now the municipality of Almere has made an investment in broadband developments of 10 million euro. By now it has attracted a 200+ million euro in equity investment. Besides the city has saved itself 5 million euro in 5 years time by centralising the traffic for schools.

Almost 10 years later Almere has grown from a town into a city , but also from an Internet novice into a leader of high technology. And there is still more to come.

========================================
There are three presentations available:
- Amsterdam Internet Exchange;
- Amsterdam CityNet;
- Smart City Almere.
They van be viewed or downloaded from budde.com
=========================================

Blog Posting Number: 693

Tags: broadband

Aussies and Kiwis sampling Dutch broadband (1)

It looked like a piece of perfect timing of the Australian and New-Zealand trade mission to the Netherlands. Yesterday the first subscriber got access to Glass Fibre Net Amsterdam. (GNA) It is the beginning of a roll-out to 40.000 households, institutions and companies in an All-IP Open Network. And that was exactly what the Aussies and Kiwis came for to study: how did the Dutch get into the top league of broadband and how do they stay there.

The visit of the trade delegation of Australians and New Zealand people from March 11 – 14 is a sequel to the successful Netherlands Trade Mission to Australia, which took place in April 2006. Both events occur within the context of the celebrations of the first European landing on Australian shores, by the vessel Duyfken, in 1606. The organisation of the event was in the hands of two old friends and digital media veterans Paul Budde (see photograph) from the telecom consultancy Budde.com in the Australian and Fred Kappetijn from the consultancy KIS in The Netherlands.

Why are they looking in The Netherlands and in Amsterdam in particular? This year Australia will invest A$5 billion in telecoms infrastructure, A$1 billion of which will come from government funds. Furthermore, cities such as Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast are launching their own plans, and they are also interested in expressions of interest from outside Australia.

The opportunities that exist for partnerships between Dutch and Australian companies will be explored during the Mission. Several local councils are participating in the Mission.

New Zealand has recently legislated the operational separation of its incumbent telecom company, Telecom New Zealand, and is looking at All-IP (open) network opportunities. Again, the Netherlands leads the world in this area, and Dutch expertise would be most valuable Down Under.

The Australia-New Zealand-Netherlands Roundtable took place in Amsterdam yesterday and was hosted by Cisco. It was a fully packed event with prominent speakers from the three countries. Besides the speakers there were specialists in the room such as the telecom guru Jaap van Till of Stratix; the managing director of The Netherlands Broadband Country, Mr Piet Spohr and Mr Van Esch, the managing director of the cable operator’s association VECAI. I will be reporting on some of the presentations in the coming days and I will refer to the presentations which will come online

There are always higher ideals behind such meetings like this. In this case Australia is keen to provide the gateway to Asia in the same way as the Netherlands promotes its gateway function into Europe.

Besides the Roundtable the trade delegation visited projects such as CityNet Amsterdam, the Internet exchange AMS-IX and today the trade delegation will visit the Almere Grid in my home town Almere.

Blog Posting Number: 692

Tags: broadband, cable

Levy upon levy: after the MP3 now the USB

Every half year the Dutch consumers are threatened with a new tax on technical gadgets by a body which is not a tax body. Last time it was a tax on MP3 players; and not just a tax but more a heavy fine. This time it is a fifteen eurocents tax on USB sticks. When will all this nonsense end?

A copy levy has to be paid on blank cassette tapes, floppy discs and CD-Rs and DVD-RWs. The money collected is used to compensate artists for their work. This levy is not only for business, but also for consumers and is called home copy levy. These levies are collected by a body, appointed by the ministry of Justice.

The latest gadget to be put a levy on is a USB stick or an SD cards. The collecting body reasons that people put music on it; so there should be a levy. The consumer association has called the claim for a levy bizarre as the sticks and cards are used for private items such as photographs or presentations and increasingly in cars, mobile telephones, digital cameras, household equipment and electronic, photographic frames.

Presently the levy would be a moderate fifteen euro cent. Bust the consumer association foresees that the collecting bodies will raise the levy and bring it in line with the storage capacity. Given that a 1Gb already is normal, the levy could be increased to unacceptable levels.
This is not the first time the collecting society has proposed a levy. The last time it was for the MP3 player. The protest was loud from consumers and politicians. They claimed that people who buy music would pay twice: once for downloading and once for using the MP3. And the protest was heard. The Dutch minister of Justice ordered the collecting body to charge zero euro cents for the levy till January 1, 2008. This sounds impressive, but the threat is still there that the levy might be raised from zero euro cents to some euro. The protest of the parliament was negated so far.

Politicians, who have supported this levy idea since the last change in the copyright, see now that they have given a blank license to collecting societies, which do know what other collecting bodies are doing. So the home copying levy is collected by one body. A company copy levy is collected by another collecting society. A radio licence in a company is collected by yet another body, while again another body comes to collect money for the airing of music or showing television shows in a bar. There is an unlimited packaging of levies.

But within a day the new minister of Justice reacted and said that he would not accept a levy on USB sticks and memory cards.

Blog Posting Number: 691

Tags: copyright, levy, copying

Wegener on its road to foreign management

Last week I had the pleasure to see a forecast partly fulfilled. In 1995 I wrote in the Dutch publication Telecombrief Magazine, that the regional newspaper company Royal Wegener would be acquired by a foreign publisher within 10 years. At that time I supposed that it would be a German newspaper publisher as the circulation area of Wegener boarders with Germany. There was a lot wrong with the forecast. The foreign publishers missed my deadline already for two years. And the participating publisher is not German, but British. But the basic forecast still stands: not for long Wegener will be acquired by a foreign publisher.

Last week David Montgomery's British Mecom Group picked up a 24 percent minority share in Wegener. This had been in the air since a year, when Mecom took over the Limburg Dagblad. The minority share package was in the ownership of newspaper company Telegraaf Media Group. But as this company was not allowed to expand its influence in the newspaper sector, it put the shares in the safe and waited for an offer. Now that De Telegraaf has cashed, the company can invest the money in television and digital media.

Mecom will deploy 108 million GBP for a 24 per cent stake in the Dutch publisher Wegener, which has about 20 per cent of Holland's newspaper market. Mecom and the publicly-listed Wegener will now enter into talks, with Mecom seen as a likely candidate to make an offer for the entire company.

In April 2006 Mecom won the bid for The Media Groep Limburg B.V., Grafisch Bedrijf Media Groep Limburg B.V. and De Trompetter B.V. (freesheets) and paid 200 million euro. The high price was seen as part of a strategic investment. And so it turned out. Now Mecom is after Wegener, which has seven daily paid-for newspapers in the central part of the Netherlands, including De Gelderlander, a title with a daily circulation of 154,000 copies. It is expected that Mecom will need to pay an estimated 550 million euro in order to get the other 76 percent of the shares. If the British company succeeds, the acquisition will shake up the newspaper scene in The Netherlands.

And there was more news from Wegener. Han van den Berg, manager strategy with Wegener, said: Wegener has money for multimedia. Wegener has invested in digital media since 1995, doing foolish investments and some daring ones. In the pioneer years of Internet Wegener started a joint venture with a broadcast company; within half a year this was broken up with a big fight remaining as there was no written agreement from the start. Then came the project City Online, a Web 2.0 project avant la letter with local portals; but the project failed due to a heavy 3D-environment and other technical and ethical problems. Besides the editors-in chief of the regional newspapers wanted to have more influence.

But presently Wegener has built up its digital media around its own newspapers (the digital commons and regional portals) and it has started digital expansions of its classified ads such as Jobtrack and Autotrack. It has also collaborating with the Yellow Directory service iLocal. And the company has taken a 37 percent minority share in the beleaguered housing site Funda.
Wegener presently earns 2 percent in digital media of its total amount of 650 million euro in revenues. Major money maker in digital media is Funda. The other activities do not really contribute yet. The company wants to push its 49 percent joint venture with iLocal.

It is only a matter of time that Wegener will fall into foreign hands.

Blog Posting Number:690

Tags: newspapers

Bytes intensive storage

Three years on and there will be more digital information than we can store. That is one of the conclusions of a report by IDC. The report sought to account for all the ones and zeros that make up photos, videos, e-mails, Web pages, instant messages, phone calls and other digital content cascading through our world today. The researchers assumed that an average digital file gets replicated three times.

IDC determined that the world generated 161 billion gigabytes - 161 exabytes - of digital information last year and forecasts a staggering 988 billion gigabytes – 988 exabytes of digital information created in 2010. It is an amount of information which can not be imagined, not even with stacks of books or iPods. The previous best estimate came from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who totalled the globe's information production at 5 exabytes in 2003. One of the sponsors of the report, data-storage company EMC Corp., commissioned IDC's new look.

Of course there was a fight over the methods immediately. The Berkeley researchers had taken a different trail, as they also counted non-electronic information, such as analogue radio broadcasts or printed office memos, and tallied how much space that would consume if digitized. And they examined original data only, not all the times things got copied. On the other hand, the IDC numbers ballooned with the inclusion of content as it was created and as it was reproduced - for example, as a digital TV file was made and every time it landed on a screen. If IDC tracked original data only, its result would have been 40 exabytes.

But it really does not matter, whatever method you take. The amount increases really fast. When our first grandsons were born I nicknamed them the Tera Kids, boys with a terabyte of digital information by the time that they are eighteen years old. They will have built up a personal file of documents, forms, music, movies and medical scans. This file will be scattered all over the place, from hospital to schools, to computers of their providers. How can they keep track of them and access them?

One of the big problems is also that information gets copied roughly three times. This looks to me a conservative estimate. If you look at many of the newspaper and broadcast services, they copy the news items of wire services like Reuters and AP, often without adding another word or observation. But the news services have to be complete to attract traffic and if they do not attract traffic they will not get any revenues from advertisements. Just linking to the news wire services is not good enough. But a de duplication service would be a solution. Keep only the original source and delete all the copies.

But it is not really the text items which are increasing the digital storage. Music, photographs and video are more bytes-intensive. So we will need compression, storage and distribution tools for them. Undoubtedly people work on these algorithms. But who will come up with an impressive solution and when?

(Some years ago a Dutch electro engineer Jan Sloot claimed to have a solution for video compression. Roel Pieper, former Tandem, Compaq and Philips official, as well as private investor Marcel Boekhoorn – these days owner of the free paper De Pers - believed in the inventions and started to promote it with private equity firms. However before the solution could be demonstrated, the inventor died and took the solution along in his grave. It reads like a book and could be a movie of myth, greediness and deception. A book has been published in Dutch under the title Broncode – Source code - in 2004 ; movie rights have been signed.)

Blog Posting Number: 689

Tags: exabytes, digital information, compression

Non-commercial announcements

**************** Non-commercial announcement ****************
From April 28-30, 2007 the 5th International Symposium of Interactive Media Design will be held in Istanbul (Turkey). The symposium exists of presntations of papers, workshops, a digital art exhibition and a fine art exhibition. Papers can be sent in till March 30th, 2007. For more details have a look at: http://newmedia.yeditepe.edu.tr/ (including proceedings of last year's symposium).
**************** Non-commercial announcement ****************
Cross-media # 2 is an Italian event about the crossing of the media met adventurous and innovative scenarios in communication and entertainment. The second edition of the conference looks at the international panorama. Major cinematic contributions will center around Spiderman and Pirates of the Caribian. But there will also be broadcast contribution of RAI Sat Smash and Nessuno and video game Play Press. Web 2.0 initiative will come from Ferrari, Tiscali and VIP Parioli and Second Life.as well as Satyrnet. The second edition of the Cross-media will be held in Rome on 24 March 2007 at the Link Campus University of Malta. Parla Italiano?
**************** Non-commercial announcement ****************
From March 22-25, 2007 the Akademi Norr in Hemavan (Sweden) will organise CMID 07, the 1st International Conference on Crossmedia Interaction Design. Key note speakers are Professor Liam J. Bannon from the University of Limerick, Ireland and Ms Christy Dena from the university of Sydney. I have also been invited to speak at the conference. For more details: http://www.cmid07.org/ or contact Catarina Noren at catarina.noren@akademinorr.se.

Broadcast changes into audiovisual

Yesterday the EU commissioner Viviane Reding presented the text of the modernised "Television without Frontiers" Directive. The first thing that hits between the reader’s eye is the lack of the word television in the title. The word Television has been replaced by Audiovisual. Now the title is Audiovisual without Frontiers.

Musing over the title there is more than another word. In the first place a noun has been replaced by a pronoun. And the medium television has been replaced by a term for an industrial complex.

The replacement of the noun by a pronoun shows something of a problem. With a noun there is an unequivocal meaning about the word. But a pronoun is used for the lack of a noun. And it is true. With television we know what we are talking about, but the pronoun audiovisual is not an unequivocal word. It can be used for movies, animations, CD-ROMs, DVDs and internet.

The replacement was necessary as television was becoming an old fashioned term. It basically began to indicate the analogue distribution of linked screens at a set time. But with interactive television, ADSL, cable and internet television is in a state of turmoil. After the analogue television, we have now (at least in The Netherlands) digital television. The viewer does not see any difference and still gets his series of linked screens at a set time on his television set. Now internet users can link into the broadcasts at the set time, if they want to. But better they can recall the broadcasts in their own time, while the broadcast remains the same series of linked screen.

Is the replacement of the term essential? The replacement is not surprising. Since the start of the new EU commissioners’ team it was in the air. Viviane Reding started to integrate the Media programme with the digital media research section. And this was needed badly. Television and film have dominated the EU Media programme for years; the term audiovisual was also used in the programme managers, but never given it body. And still there is a problem. The EU Media programme supports television and movie festivals financially, but does not sponsor digital media and content festivals. As such the perspective still has to be broadened beyond linear television.

The modernisation of the "Television without Frontiers" Directive of 1989 was proposed by the Commission on 13 December 2005 (see IP/05/1573 and MEMO/06/208) and since then has made rapid progress in the European Parliament and in the Council of Ministers. The new Directive intends to help Europe's audiovisual industry to become more competitive by allowing all audiovisual media services to profit from the internal market, regardless of the transmission technology used. It also introduces more flexible rules for traditional TV broadcasting to accommodate technological and market developments, and changing viewing habits.
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 consolidated text of the new Directive will now go into a second reading by the European Parliament and Council.

So, the term audiovisual is not a strong term, but it is broader. At least, it leaves the opening to a larger scope.

Blog Posting Number 688

Tags: television, EU, audiovisual

A blook of contention

Commotion has come about a blook, a weblog derivative in book form. On the Dutch language blog Fok.nl a weblog was kept for seven months by Nadine S., who wrote a thread about the love life of a nanny. The weblog was started in 2005 and has now, without a warning to the weblog owner or the audience, been published as a book.

The book has built on the thread about a passionate and secret relationship of a nanny with the father of the children under her care. The blogger confided in the internet audience about her double life and solicited their advice, tips and warnings. The nanny gets into a complicated situation and will have to face the music in the end. But one more time she takes a risk.

Nadine S. was in fact a Dutch author, Karin Overmars. Readers of the blog who contributed with comments, have problems about the publication. They put that the author knew from the beginning that she was going to publish a book and that the author solicited contributions for free. They feel cheated. They wonder about the copyright issue involved.

The publisher claims that he did not know who was behind the blog. The blog describes the exciting life of a nanny, who lives two lives taking care of kids, having a lover on the side and running an own family (Oh my goodness those licentious Dutch).

The regular readers and forum contributors have called upon visitors to bring charges against the blog owner and the publisher for violating copyright. The blog owner of Fok.nl has thought about taking legal steps as he considers the thread an asset of the blog owner. However, he will not take legal steps against the author and publisher. He claims that the thread has partly been re-written. Yet he thinks that it is improper to use a thread on a forum for a novel without informing the Fok visitors and the owner.

It is the first time that in The Netherlands a blook has been published from a thread on a forum. As such there is no jurisprudence. The blog owner can only conclude, that whatever someone puts up on internet, is always retrievable and can be misused.

Blog Posting Number: 687

Tags: copyright, blog, blook

A small budget for a bestseller movie production

It has been fascinating me for days now. The Dutch financial daily FD published a front page article (in Dutch) on an unknown film production company Dynamic Entertainment (DEH) on Monday. This is rare for the FD front-page, which is usually filled with boardroom news and rumours as well as news about losses of millions of euro.

The message was that a Dutch movie company has picked up the movie rights to a novel by the British bestseller author. This is rather surprising as presently Dutch movie companies are chasing after the movie rights on Dutch novels. But the Dutch production company has acquired the movie rights to Philip Pullman’s novel Butterfly Tattoo, previously published as The White Mercedes.

The Butterfly Tattoo tells the tale of two young lovers kept apart by faith, not to be reunited till Jenny is dead in a pool of her own blood due to Chris’s naïve actions. The book features all elements seen in contemporary dramatic films such as Cruel Intentions and the 2004 Romeo and Juliet film. Unreachable love, deceptive antagonists posing as good fellows, subtle violence, and, most importantly a protagonist’s mistakes leading to great tragedy are all featured in this action packed novel that reads like a film.

But another aspect was also fascinating: the amount of capital needed for the movie. You would think that millions would be needed. But the company only asked 200.000 euro. This morning the company sent a message telling that already 160.000 euro had been underwritten.

The fascination remains mainly as to the production and marketing. How are they going to do this? From the information given in the FD article and in the bi-lingual, it becomes clear that the producers play two cards: working with young people, movie amateurs and small independent movie companies; slipstream marketing.

DEH will make room for young people to become part of the production. It will also offer some youngsters a chance to get involved and help with the activities like setting up lights and producing photographs. The aim also is to let other people than the cast and crew share in production.

The movie will be a low budget movie in stark contrast with the movie adaptation of Philip Pullman’s novel The Golden Compass. This movie is being produced by New Line Cinema, owned by Time Warner, and producers of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Golden Compass production has an estimated budget of 150 million US dollar and a marketing budget of 80 million US dollar. This movie will hit the theatres in the 2007 holiday season; two sequels are planned for 2009 and 2011. In comparison to this type of money, a production budget of 200.000 euro is peanuts.

Yet DEH will make use of all the publicity which will surround the launch of The Golden Compass. It will use slipstream marketing, referring to the successful movie, based on the novel of the same bestseller author.

DEH got a fast start financially. But in the end, everything will depend on the reviews and crowds (or lack of it) visiting the movie theatres.

Blog Posting Number: 686

Tags: movie adapation, movie financing

Top in broadband, but no e-voting (yet)

Today in The Netherlands there are elections for regional (provincial) councils. As these councils are the greatest unknown entities in government, less than have of the population who may vote, will vote. And most of the voters will deliver their vote against the background of the new Christian-socialist coalition, which started to govern last week.

The voters will go to the polling stations and vote there using the red pencil or registering their choice by voting machine. Having seen the introduction of voting machines over the last years, this election many voting districts in 35 municipalities have returned to the use of the pencil. A pressure group has demonstrated that the some voting machines are not secure, as they can be scanned from the outside. These machines have been tested, but did not pass the test.

It is not just a Dutch reliability problem. Also in the US there is a controversy about the reliability of voting machines. In fact it is reaching such proportions that the manufacturer Diebold Election Systems wants to sell its activity. Diebold produced some 150.000 machines, which were used in 34 states for the Senate elections in November 2006 last year.

Why should we bother about voting machines? Why not vote via Internet? In the Netherlands we have an experiment going of internet voting. It was used during the general elections last year, but only by Dutch voters abroad and on a voluntary basis. However the general introduction of internet voting has been stalled so far for fear of fraud.

I guess that I would love to live in Estonia for this democratic duty. Estonia has become the first country in the world to allow voters nationwide to vote over the internet for the 4 March 2007 parliamentary election. No less than 27,000 Estonians casted their ballot via the internet during the three-day online voting period which began on Monday 26 February 2007. About 80 percent of Estonian voters already have the necessary electronic ID cards to enable them to vote in this way; they confirm their choice with an e-signature, which requires a separate card reader for the computer. The online voting system was tested in nationwide municipal elections in October 2005, when about 10,000 Estonians voted online.

Oh well, it is time for me to get my shoes on and walk to the polling station to cast my ballot; at least we have a voting machine in Almere, so we are more progressive than Amsterdam as they have to use the red pencil in the polling stations. We might claim the world’s top position with regard to broadband, but forget about e-democracy.

Blog Posting Number: 685

Tags: e-voting, e-democracy, voting machinese-voting, e-democracy, voting machines