Yesterday, European Court of Justice (EJC) added the latest chapter in the surreal dispute [1] between DT and german regulator on the one side and the European Commission on the other about the effective grant of regulation holidays to the german incumbent.

It all started back in the 2006 when the german watchdog took the bold, off-the-charts decision (if you consider the EU related legislation and strategic guidelines) to relaxe regulation to encourage incumbent’s investments in next genreation networks. EC responded to that by requiring from the german state to not endorse in preferential treatment rulings and that any decision made be supported by detailed and thorough market analysis.

The decision of the European Court of Justice stands in favor to EC claims and asks the german government to comply. You can read more at EurActiv.com.

I am really keen to know if as of now the german regulator’s decision has effectively encouraged large scale investments by DT and at what extent it may have increased coverage and take-up of high-speed broadband in the country. If anyone cares to share the know and how is more than welcome to do so!

[1] Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur.

Minister of Infrastructures & Networks Dimitris Reppas officially confirmed recent rumors and executives sayings that the national FTTH plan will be postponed for one year.

It is worth noting that the FTTH plan is one of the few projects of the previous government that the Socialists intend to carry on forward. The largest and most ambitious ICT project of the country is kept in high priority by the ministry, however, according to the high-rank official, the tender for the FTTH project will be issued in 2011. In the first half of 2010 a group of experts (which is currently being formed) will prepare the tender for a) a techno-economic study and b) the legislative framework for the project and the corresponding public consultation.

The file submission for approval to European Commission is planned for the second half of 2010.

If you speak Greek read more here.

I was on my way to an appointment figuring out new view-points and reasons why we must consider seriously the option to allow sharing of the NGN physical infrastructures (e.g. open access, unbundling and the like) and not simply let/allow/encourage/facilitate anyone to digg at will, when there before my eyes saw the hardest evidence I could ever record on camera! This picture depicts Mavromichali Str. (few blocks south of Alexandras ave.), a street in Athens, relatively close to the center. The street is approximately 4-5 meters wide and as it seems very popular to telecom operators! 4 fiber networks and 3 public utility networks run underneath it. That’s 7 networks in total,. We have no FTTH in the city (these are metro networks or FTTBusiness connections) and the underground is already overcrowded.

Imagine what this means in terms of costs and time to maintain/upgrade the water or sewage pipes for example, or imagine the chances to not hit anything if someone decides to dig vertically across the street!

I have reservations [Infrastructure-based Competition in NGA: The Best Way Forward? - Facilities-based Competition vs. Open Access Networks] regarding the applicability of infrastructure based competition in all cases (as recommended in EC policy documents). No doubt, geographical economies will benefit from competing alternatives. Even better, the biggest the independence between these alternatives the higher are the incentives for differentiation, thus innovation.

However, I tend to conclude that the marshallian social welfare is not positively correlated with the existence of redundant physical infrastructure in our cities. If we let the market alone to decide the when the how and the where of physical broadband infrastructures we risk the depletion of the street’s underground capacity. The regulators and the Governments need to realize that the street’s underground capacity is not abundant and it must be exploited with care[1].

My point boils down to this: Excluding US with the widest ever streets, Paris with the widest sewers  system  ever constructed, and possibly a few more cases, for the remaining of us letting anyone with a trencher and a license to dig without a long-term plan may not be such a good idea after all!

[1] Don’t think this as an exaggeration. Imagine the fate of other commons (such as air, forests, sea water, potable water, fisheries etc) and reflect upon the consequences (quality, availability) of the unconditional exploration of a public resource by the free market.

Last week the regulators of the world united (sic) in a 3 days compound event [the 1-day Global Industry Leaders’ Forum (GILF) and the 2-day annual Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR)] and discussed contemporary topics of telecommunications regulation such as facilitating ICT investments, Universal Service Plans and Next-Generation Networks.

Fellow fiber-ring member Rudolf van der Berg has the detailed coverage on the conference which is nicely indexed by Benoit.

I plan to blog a bit more about it in a future but until I do so, here’s a couple convenient links for your reference:

NEWSROOM: GSR 2009 - with more information than you can eat regarding the two events.

PRESS RELEASE (Available at http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2009/53.html):

Beirut, 12 November 2009 — Delegates to ITU’s 9^th Global Symposium for Regulators (10-12 November) spoke of the pressing need for governments to open markets to greater competition and use incentives to stimulate investment in the broadband networks that are fast becoming the lifeblood of the Knowledge Economy.

The meeting, which welcomed a total of 648 participants from 89 countries, sought to forge a shared vision and understanding of the many challenges now facing ICT regulators in increasingly complex converged markets.

“This GSR has been our most successful ever, in terms of the number of participants and the quality and relevance of the discussions we’ve heard over the course of the event. This testifies to the critical role regulators are now playing in defining the future shape of markets characterized by fast-changing technologies and a rapidly evolving, increasingly complex competitive landscape,” said ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré.

With the tough current economic climate prompting some operators to rein-in network development plans, the meeting placed special emphasis on the need for the public and private sectors to better understand one another’s needs and work more cooperatively to support demand for ICT services.

The ICT industry played a central role in the one-day Global Industry Leaders Forum (GILF), held on Monday 9 November, just ahead of the opening of the GSR. Chaired by Dr Saad Al Barrak, CEO of the Zain Group, the forum encouraged frank, interactive discussion among participants representing operators, ICT manufacturers and application developers, service providers, infrastructure specialists and consultancies. Those discussions went on to form the core of the GILF Chairman’s report, which was presented to the GSR at its opening session on Tuesday 10 November, for in-depth consideration by delegates representing the global ICT regulatory community.

GILF participants stressed the need for predictable, stable regulation, improved regional harmonization of regulatory frameworks, more efficient management of radiofrequency spectrum, and a ‘light touch’ by regulators to allow markets to evolve naturally. They also advocated technology-neutral regulation, and urged regulators to make provision for the ongoing development of converged services by ensuring sufficient spectrum is available to support future growth. ITU, which plays a critical role in global spectrum allocation through its Radiocommunication Sector, was asked to continue to work actively to help companies and governments alike create an enabling environment to support new services, cheaper pricing, and faster network roll-out to underserved areas.

In his opening address to the GSR on Tuesday 10 November, the Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT), Mr Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid, noted that mobile penetration will reach 67% of the global population in 2009, representing 4.6 billion mobile subscriptions. ITU figures also show that over one quarter of the world’s population is now using the Internet. “If we are to build on this success, finding common ground among ICT stakeholders will be critical to stimulating growth in a converged environment. ICT regulators and policy makers need to keep pace with a fast changing environment and carry out a delicate balancing act between a hands-on or hands-off approach. This is a challenge for all countries, and we are all here to tackle these challenges together,” he said.

[...]

I really enjoyed this year’s Greek ICT Forum. It was an interesting two-days forum with exceptional speakers and a few unique take-outs which I provide here for you. They really worth being noted and quoted:

Theodoros Karounos, Prime Minister’s Advisor:

- apps.gov.gr (reflections on apps.google.com)

- Let us dare to create new best practices and not only copy them

- If $10M that was the initial investment for the development of UBUNTU could help transform IT industry, imagine what we could do if we carefully invested a few hundrend of millions.

- In the future, projects should be funded only if they are financially self-sustainable (except in outstanding cases of education and culture).

Costas Doukas, President Information Society S.A.:

- Efficiency improvement and the experience and know-how gained during the last years can help the country in the next round of financing to further enhance results.

Panagioris Tsanakas, Professor, NTUA:

- When discussing VDSL vs. FTTH we must make sure that we don’t compare apples with oranges. A VDSL investment plan can only have an horizon of maximum 3 years before it is surpassed by the market demand while it can inflict  damages to the long-term national broadband plan. On the other hand, FTTH is a 30 years investment with clear committment expressed by the Government and significant socio-economic benefits.

Themis Papaioannou, Consultant:

- The low marginal cost of the next Mbit in high-speed access networks brings new opportunities for innovative business models (e.g. bandwidth on demand – being efficient to provide peak demand for a limited amount of time).

Ilias Koukouvinos, Vice President, Optronics S.A.:

- The cost of FTTH deployment in the city of Karditsa went eventually below the European average, and is much lower than the assumptions of the business plan for the national FTTH network.

Christos Bouras, Professor, University of Patras:

- We must build national, public infrastructures with long-term planning and not for addressing the immediate, contemporary socio-economic needs. This is precisely the reason why we still count bodies in our national highways.  (ed. implicating low safety and construction standards of highways for the number of fatal car accidents)

photo by infomaniac

Prime Minister George Papandreou addressed the 11th Greek ICT Forum and presented in brief the digital plan of his new government. While the prime Minister sets the green economic growth at the center of the governmnental efforts, he places the public digital strategy on 4 supporting pillars:

1. The widening of the right and the ability to access high speed networks for all the citizens and businesses in the country
2. The return of all public data and information to the society via an open internet platform
3. The transition to an IT empowered digital public administration and the adoption of open software for the public administration and national education
4. Reverse the trend of public procurements from buying hardware and software to receiving services.

These plans attempt a substantial turn in direction of the public digital policy and are expected if/when realized to change dramatically the telecommunications and IT setting.

FIBER-TO-THE-PEOPLE: The first intervention clearly implies the widening of scope of the national FTTH plans to include a larger portion of the population under the national broadband care, something that I have blogged [1] and talked [2] about in a number of occasions in the past.

GLASNOST!: The second intervention comes to underline the gravity of IT and telecoms technology in applying transparency in public administration processes and decision making. Transparency was the cornerstone of the socialists pre-election proclamations.

OPEN SOURCE/SERVICE ECONOMY: The last two interventions which I find closely interrelated provide a unique opportunity for the development of the domestic IT/sowftware work force by 1) attempting to relieve the dependency of the state (and in the long-term the economy) from the incumbent software houses and 2) facilitating the involvement of the domestic industry in open software.

I definately look forward to see how these plans will materialize and how soon will they do.

I was thinking of a way to celebrate One Web Day. A couple suggestions for a collaborative activity failed thunderously (lack of time and bad schedule), so I decided to go after a friend’s suggestion to put together a short note arguing why a government (in our case the Greek government) should invest/fund in FTTH infrastructure.

The interesting part is that there is this social collaboration platform called wikipolitics.gr. The guys at wikipolitics have created a topic called “100 days” that will gather citizens’ suggestions for the priorities of the government which will be elected in the coming elections and will distribute a summary by popularity/users preference. So I submitted the suggestion there and I look forward to see how collective participation will treat such an idea!

If you like it and wanna help visit this page and then click on the green arrow pointing up to give it a thumbs up!

Happy One Web Day!

—

The government elect must quickly advance the construction of a public fiber open access network (FTTH) and expedite procedures accordingly to ensure Greek citizens’ open access to all electronic sources of knowledge, information, culture and innovation.

The issue whether and when to build an FTTH access network should be put in the correct perspective and the socio-economic impact of a national, open access FTTH infrastructure must be clearly identified (although measuring it can  be much much harder). The problem here is not if we need the service or not, or if we should require a particular maximum speed to address the immediate/short-term needs of the end-users/citizens. The crucial pointis that other national economies have already developed, are developing or planning (in various mixes of public/private participation) for analogous fiber access networks. In the new global economy of knowledge and information where ever more (business and other types of) activities are being constantly replaced by their electronic alternatives, only the national economies equiped with integrated telecommunications infrastructure will be able to assume a leading role within the global electronic (yet also industrial) markets.

Optical access must be available throughout the entire Greek territory. Although this may not sound very feasible at first, long-term planning (oriented on the social dimensions of digital convergence) should include the gradual expansion of the network to all (more or less remote) areas of the country instead of simply serving the larger cities.

The feasibility study and sustainability assessment (at a national level) must not account only for the direct (albeit extremely important) benefits, for instance attracting immediate private investments or new jobs creation in an era of a significant economic downturn. Short-term benefits for the Greek economy pale before the medium to long term benefits stemming from a) the increasing international competitiveness of the country, b) the free access of the public to knowledge and information, c) the increased citizens’ participation, d) the innovation dynamics, and finally e) the true regional development that will reverse the stream of wealth towards the metropolitan centers and will attract new businesses and higher-paying jobs and occupations in the periphery etc.

There is absolutely no doubt that the development of FTTH infrastructure will play a key role in the development of the national economy compared to other initiatives aiming to channel money into consumer goods and imports without development impetus for the country. The FTTH infrastructure can synchronize with other projects (perhaps smaller in scale and targeting other sectors of the economy – not necessarily in ICT industry) that could promote new  innovative models of sustainable (in economic, social and environmental terms) growth.

Last weekend I saw the national FTTH project making it to the weekly mainstream newspaper covers. This often indicates that the big thing is at the gates!

Today, Mr. Stylianides, the minister of communications, gave a press conference about the project. The ministry released, in writing, a series of details about the project, the most important you already know if you read this blog. The new thing is this picture:

The picture depicts the 3 zones that Greece will be divided to. This may as well change since public consultation is about (the thing at the gates I was talking earlier), but gives you the general idea. The press release says that the public consultation _is_ available at www.yme.gr but it’s not so, I assume it will be online in the coming… hours (?). I will tweet the URL as soon as I know about it and hopefully blog about it too.

To access the press release visit the ministry’s web site.

The good guys in Japan are driving the rest of us mad with their bold ambitious plans about their country’s digital future.

The current situation in the country is fairly simple. 1Gbps connections are already offered enabling users to download a movie faster than it would take you to ma ke a frappé . And of course, when you get used to it you think it’s normal! More and more Japanese think that “it’s worth having a 1GBPs network for a couple of thousand yen more than Japan’s more common 100 Mbps ADSL service, even if it’s only for displaying web pages 0.1 seconds faster.”

However, what worries the Japanese Government is that broadband access is only 23.6%, a fairly small percentage given the country’s broadband achievements. This is why the government issued a new policy plan called “Zero Broadband Areas Elimination” aiming at 100% broadband penetration by 2011. No, this is not a typo. They aim at 100% penetration in two years time. Most importantly, they plan it with no clear indication of what to do with all the bandwidth available, in the belief that the digital markets will revolutionize their economy given the serious decline of manufacturing.

Read more at BBC News . I have to split now; Barcelona already leads by 1-0 and I have to see the rest of the match . In my favorite good old analogue TV of course.

It seems that the French plans for the infamous law to enforce telcos to disconnect users from the Internet when they are caught distributing/downloading copyrighted material after having been warned twice about, did some good for the telecom reform in the continent after all.

EU assembly has initially compromised for a softer understanding of user rights that changed the respective clause from “no restrictions may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end users without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities” to “the right to a judgment by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law and acting in respect of due process“.

However, after France’s tough approach (informally called the HADOPI law) legislators in the parliament returned to their initial strong stance against the (un)intentional abuse of user Internet rights. This led the negotiations regarding the Telecoms Package to a deadend and eventual block.

This has significant implications to the NGN recommendation by the European Commission as the wider telecommunications reform and the NGN recommendation to spur investments in next-generation networks are linked. As a result, the final version of the NGN recommendation is rescheduled for next year.

Having said that, here’s the billion-euros question: What should the member states do; Carry on with their NGN/NGA plans or wait for the EU’s recommendation?