ebusinessforum

And yes, digital TV will arrive slowly to Greece, since the EU has announced the full transition to the digital world by 2015. Advanced countries will do that much faster, following the US that is a few hundred days away based on Shelly.
On the other hand FCC recently OKs unlicensed access to vacant TV airwaves. That U.S. regulator's decision seen as a victory for Google, Microsoft, Moto and others, against broadcasters.

But Europe is getting there. Being part of the ebusiness forum public consultation's team, I got the feeling that people will get there sooner or later, since some piolot digital broadvasting has already started from the government channel. however there is still lots of discussion and consultation on the future available TV bands, the upcoming digital services, the benefits and drawbacks. The ebusiness forum always puts effort into new things and is really exciting the fact that we will draw some new actions to promote digital TV with perhaps some EU financial support.

Digital TV in Greece is not a Sci-Fi project any more and I am confident that will soon happen even with some international support and guideline. People are really excited and love the opportunity of the new TV, either that is digital broadcasting or even IPTV, altough it is really early for Greece right now. The Telcos are still wondering, but they should definetely keep a very close look to our tema's progress and future plans, since our coordinator is the ministry of transportation and communication.

P2PTV

..well, thats nothing new, but check out the content growth and what can happen with the almost real time option that P2PTV supports. It has some delay as the peers retransmit the data, thus usually a live soccer game is lagging behind from the reality. Particurarlly, a few days ago was watching a champions league soccer game from a P2P agent, since the regular TV was not covering the game and the same time from a sport's Web site Live Center that was posting the score, refreshing continuously - also 'real time'. Well, these two sources had a 2-3 minutes difference..when the one team was scoring as the Live Center was posting, then was waiting for 2-3 minutes to watch the goal on P2PTV - almost real time!


No matter that real time weakness, I am really impressed with the P2PTV. Not only its free. but in many cases can work as cable TV with good quality and resolution, In one of the agents, that are so many, was watching the "National Georgaphic" channel with Chinese subtitles, true! But the other cool thing is that you can add your own server and start streaming, if you really want to feel the excitement of a TV producer. Back in time people used to broadcast with Antennas and in some cases illegally without registering their channels, usually called TV piracy; today you can do that legally if you master the video streaming technology and have some content. The good news is that the P2P agents are under human supervision restricitng in most of the cases porn and similar inappropriate content


Do the people like it? Sure they do, especially the sports fans, thousands and thousands of people are watching and all you need is broadband i.e ADSL or cable connection or even WiMAX, that simple! People love variety, international content, looking up all these different channels that offer more than you can imagine overrriding a stereotype TV channel with certain content that could be easily boring.


Some P2P agents to check Sopcast, JustinTV and more, keep searching, its a really exciting live media world. Folks, lets deliver our media to the world!

In-Building Summit Middle East 2008

The event will bring together operators, industry expert and solution providers from across the region and beyond to address current as well as future in-building coverage challenges faced by operators throughout the Middle East.


The conference programme will answer key issues surrounding the design, implementation, upgrade and optimisation of in-building solutions to achieve optimal and cost-efficent indoor coverage and capacity.

My presentation "Examining The 4G Evolution For In-Building Services And Products" takes place the 2nd day of the conference. It is expected to interact with various operators and executives mainly from Middle-East, but also global such as Motorola and ipAccess

You are all welcome to the warm Dubai:))

Is there an operator's reaction?

...thats the big question these days, when your competitor is offering the iPhone, do you see your churn to increase? Do you feel like you cannot be that competitive any more? Today the iPhone sales are beyond 9 million, which is a number that not even Google's G1 might reach. Will a new plan compete against iPhone's empire? Had an interesting conversations the other days with a senior associate from Booz Allen Hamilton and realized how complicated the future will be in telecom that will end up in a 'high connectivity ecosystem', something similar to what Google is trying to do.

Gartner claims that the operators shouldnt worry that much, since Blackberry is still very competitive, but my personal feeling is that more and more the bz warriors are carrying iPhone, cause its the 'trend', all these updates all the time. Its a never ending battle that will force people to carry both Blackberry which is superior, when it comes to heavy duty business functions and iPhone with its cool mutli-media functions. And somewhere there in-between is where the G1 grows and will serve as mover and shaker, as it is expected to steal some of the glory and make people wonder. It will end up as a debate of Apple fans vs. Google fans. Overall the Telecom today, doesnt looks like an operators' and new services battle, but rather a cell vendor's battle, extended to operators. The operator's role right now is to run after them, build the alliance and get the competitive advantage, offering the best platform and experience to the subscibers.

Hence, its a paltform-based battle, with operators-cell vendors alliances and ofcourse media companies fueling these platforms with content, adding significantly to the paltform's value and services.

The Greek Telecom paradox

Although Greece is in the bottom of the list in broadband penetration, it offers free Internet access within the airport. The speed is really good and you can easily and quickly get on any workstation that are nicely spread all over the airport main terminals. It is obvious that the tourists are surprised, but really appreciate the free service as of now. As I was coming the other days from Frankfurt's airport, I saw that the Internet service's cost was 21 euros/hour, which is definetely overpriced, but normal, since everything including the food is so expensive. Besides that Athens airport is running for the Golden Pillow Award in the European region, which is a really cool achievement, since it holds the 2nd position in the list...go and vote