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2nd Public Econ@Tel Workshop


Budapest, Hungary, September 22, 2011



The program of the Public Workshop's can be accessed below. The PDF of the final program and location information is available here.

Program (Draft - Subject to Change)

[slides] 9.00 – 9.15 Registration

9.15 – 9.30 Welcome: Zsuzsanna Kósa, Burkhard Stiller

9.30 – 11.00 Session 1 – Investment into Telecommunications
        Session Chair: Burkhard Stiller


11.00 – 11.30 Coffee Break

11.30 – 13.00 Session 2 – Content for the Users
        Session Chair: Sergio Ramos

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch Break

14.00 – 16.00 Session 3 – Communications for the Needy
        Session Chair: Louis-Francois Pau

16.00 – 16.30 Coffee Break
16.30 – 18.00 Session 4 – Regulation for Development
        Session Chair: Zsuzsanna Kósa

18.00 End


COST ISO605 Econ@Tel 2nd Public Workshop, List of Abstracts

(Budapest, Hungary 22 September 2011)

Session 1 – Investment into Telecommunications Chair: Burkhard Stiller

(1/1) Sandro Mendonca (Portugal): Telecommunications in the Lens of a New Indicator: Trademarks as an Indicator of Innovation and Competitive Advantage Telecommunications are a rapidly evolving branch of trade and technology. In order to study the phenomenon, in its economic and innovation aspects, more work should be committed to the development of the appropriate metrics for better understand it, manage it and regulate it. Our proposal is to discuss and apply a new indicator of industrial and technical change: trademarks. Trademarks have similar characteristics to R&D and patent data as well as some distinct advantages, such as a better coverage of service innovation and of small and medium size firms. We draw on a unique database of community trademarks to show how the potential of this new empirical approach might be realised for the purposes of analysis and policy advice.

(1/2) Jan Van Ootegheim, Sofie Verbugg (Belgium): Drivers and barriers for potential city network deployment We will highlight different characteristics of city network deployment projects, from a technical, business and legal perspective. A practical methodology will be given in order to analyze these network deployment cases techno-economically. By doing so, cost reductions both in infrastructure and operations will be made visible. Potential synergies and the impact of competition between the different actors involved in such a deployment project will be indicated. Evidence from both fixed and wireless network case will be given.

(1/3) David Jorjoliani, Zviad Kirtava (Georgia): Products Distribution Network m-management – Business Application Model for Mobile Phones Problem: In Georgia most of the businesses operate as product distribution networks. Large brand name international companies (e.g. Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Marlboro, Nestle, Mars, etc.) as well as domestic ones, have distributors which periodically bring products in numerous different points of sales(PoS)/shops of “their” regions/districts/cities. As the PoS/shops are not related to each other, there is no universal management, which makes distribution planning rather complicated. Distributor receives request, then brings requests from all “his” network PoS/shop, transfers it to stock management, which disburses products after 1-3 days, usually. However, sometimes, bringing the previously agreed amount, distributor finds out that competitive product was procured just few hours ago by shop manager and therefore his product is turned down or delay of procurement is requested. The problem became specially aggravated with financial crisis and consumers decreased confidence limiting shops ability to accumulate substantial stock of products.
Solution: The only appropriate solution is real-time information gathering in the central distributing office - which product is required (or – not anymore) and where, making product procurement timelier. However, as most of the shops do not have computers and stock e-management software, the feasible solution is suggested – to develop simple product distribution m-management software and use distributors mobile phones for timely information provision. Solution will work with any platform (Windows Mobile, Symbian, Blackberry, Android), even WAP and SMS only could be used, and allow distributors to register/view product data into company's main database. Alternatively, shop owners would also be able to provide request to distributors by special request form by WAP/SMS, which could be regarded as official invoice document. Expected outcome: The proposed model will result in:
a) better and more efficient stock management;
b) expansion of service distribution areas;
c) decrease of distributor’s repeated trips to shops due to corrected information;
d) decrease of number of distributors;
e) profit increase thanks to all above-mentioned.

Session 2 – Content for the Users, Chair: Sergio Ramos

(2/1) Daphna Shwarts-Asher (Israel): Social Communication Behaviors of Virtual Leaders More and more organizations are adapting the solution of e-teams - teams that can span distances and times to take on challenges that most local and global organizations must address. This experimental study examined leadership in the context of traditional teams using face-to-face communication and virtual teams using computer-mediated communication. The research question is which leadership functions are necessary to promote virtual team performance. A model, suggesting that leader communication behaviors mediate the relationship between, virtuallity and team's outputs will be presented, and a methodology to examine this model will be illustrated. The findings show that face-to-face team's output is partially superior to a virtual team's output, and that social communication behaviors of face-to-face leaders are positive than social communication behaviors of virtual leaders. Virtual team is a common way of working, and will expand in the future. Thus, the importance of the theoretical and practical implementation of the virtual leadership will be discussed.

(2/2) Bruno Tuffin (France): Budget-limited Advertising Game on Sponsored Search Engines in Competition. Impact on Engine Ranking. Authors: Patrick Maillé and Bruno Tuffin Advertising on the Internet has become a major stake. We study during this talk the important case of sponsored search auctions in competition where bidders (advertisers) have a limited budget and therefore have to strategically choose on which auctions to participate. Using two game-theoretical models, we describe advertisers equilibrium strategies, and illustrate the impact of attractiveness to customers for search engines on their revenues. For one game, we also describe a higher-level game on ranking strategies of search engines, which could explain Yahoo!’s move to switch from bid-based to revenue-based ranking to follow Google’s strategy.

(2/3) Sergio Ramos (Spain): Social Media and User Behaviour: Preliminary Results from the Facebook Context Mass media digitalization, social networks adoption, full interactive communications, extensive offer and variety of products, services and applications, have drawn a new panorama in which consumers behave in many different ways. Given this new paradigm for communication, firms need to address innovative ways of communication to build their brands through understanding users behaviour and providing them solutions to their needs. In this context, the project Social Media (funded by Spanish R+D public funds) explores the key elements of communication between brands and consumers. This presentation, as part of the Social Media project, will be focused on a particular aspect: the connections between the dinamics of a social movement and Facebook profiles engagement, as part of a wider objective of understanding the evolution of brands presence in the context of social networks.

Session 3 – Communications for the Needy Chair: Louis-Francois Pau

(3/1) Gill Whitney (UK), “The social and economic benefits of accessible and usable information and communication technology” (Invited presentation) The ageing of the population and the increased use of technology for work, daily life and fun means that there is a continued and increasing need for accessible technology to help include older and disabled people to remain active participants in society. It is needed both to enable people to remain in work and to assist with supporting their social inclusion. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are crucial both to improving the competitiveness of European industry and to meet the demands of its society. But a number of people for a wide range of reasons (affordability, motivation and attitudes, skills, usage, and others are being left behind the digital divide. One factor that will assist with the breaking of the digital divide is the creation of useable and accessible technologies which are based on an accurate representation of the user’s needs. The aim of this talk is to discuss the way in which industry and higher education have responded to the need for future ICT professionals to be trained to meet the changing demographics of society and of the workforce. It will link these practical elements to the political aspirations for Europe’s Digital Future.

(3/2) L-F Pau (Denmark / NL) “Progress on social mobile communications tariffs analysis and impact in society” After having defined the categories included in, and affected by, communications for the needy, are presented the data collected in 5 COST 605 countries (F, POR, NL, UK, DK) on: social parameters , demographics / employment:/income of needy/poor people, and measured or assumed mobile service usage and spending. Progress is also reported on the regulated or operator-initiated actions to deploy social tariffs for the needy. When available, impact is assessed from recent interactions with social agencies and NGO’s.

(3/3)Z. Kirtava (Georgia) , “Mobile Telecommunication Tariffs in Georgia - overview and Needy prospective” Mobile communication has been rapidly expanding in Georgia since its introduction in 1996. Number of mobile subscriptions has overgrown fixed line subscriptions in 2003. Annual growth rate of mobile subscriptions was very impressive during 2000-2007 (118-167% growth annually), but have slowed down a bit since 2008 Russian-Georgian war and financial crisis (103-113% during 2008-2010), reaching penetration rate 73,4% for 2010 (ITU). Mobile communication revenues also have became major source in communication business since 2002, reaching 886 mln GEL in 2008, but since then slightly declined. However, despite of business growth, rates for mobile communication in Georgia remained nearly the same during 1996-2010. With basic rate 0.288 GEL/min(=0.12 €; 1€=2.4 GEL) INFORMA Telecoms & Media and World Development Business indicators “awarded” 3rd place to Georgia for having one of the most expensive mobile rates in the world (Jan 2010). Since then Georgian National Communication Commission (GNCC) has made several legislative changes which have changed the situation: interconnection rates between mobile operators (MO) have been diminished twice – from 0.188 GEL to 0.148 GEL in 2010 and then to 0.08 GEL (2011). The latter change affected only major market share MOs – Geocell (currently 44%) and MagtiCom (41%), whilst they still pay 0.148 GEL for interconnection to minor MO - MobiTel; 10% Access fee has been introduced on mobile communication (2010); Maximum rate of 0.24 per minute has been established (2011); mobile phone numbers portability has been allowed (2011). These resulted in reduction of external (out-of-network) outgoing call rates from 0.288 to 0.257 GEL in 2010, and - to 0.222 GEL for 2011. Due to increased competition MOs had to introduce attractive rates, especially inner-network rates, which sometimes are 5-7 times lower then external (out of network rates). Besides, special low rate brands (Bali and Bani by MagtiCom and Lai-Lai by Geocell) provide 65%-125% lower tariffs than major brand, and serve as an attractive option for needy population. Some of them provide “nearly 0” (0.01 GEL=0.0045 €) or even ”0” rate after 1st initiation minute, which is a special benefit for elderly population and youngsters. Although major SMS rates are still higher (0.06 GEL per SMS = 0.028 €) than in EU, there are beneficial packages which allow to send SMS for as low as 0.01 GEL. ARPU is constantly declining since 2005 and nearly halved in 2010, reaching 11.5 GEL. Average amount of mobile minutes per GDP PPP nearly doubled and “main product basket” indices in mobile minutes have also increased significantly – over 220% for last two years. Although, that partially is a result of substantial inflation in 2011 (around 14-15%, on some products - even 20%-80%) and that of course means needy population may have less money left to pay for mobile communication.

(3/4) M. Ovando Chico (Spain) “Techno-economic assessment of providing universal service with LTE” Since the incorporation of the Europe 2020 initiative of providing 100% broadband coverage by 2013, and to increase coverage bandwidth by 2020, for all European households, most European States are working in order to know how much does this service will cost. The presentation presents a methodology to estimate the cost of the network to provide this service using LTE emphasizing the Spanish situation.

Session 4 – Regulation for Development, Chair: Zsuzsanna Kosa

(4/1) Antonis Hadjiantonis (CY): Policy Control for LTE/FI Policy Management and Control receive intense interest from mobile network operators (MNOs) and Internet service providers alike (ISP), enforced by the explosion in mobile data demand and the strain placed on scarce resources. At the same time, convergence of fixed and mobile networks adds new requirements for efficient unified management. In this context, the concepts of autonomic networking (AN) and policy-based management (PBM) are examined as tangible solutions to the increasing complexity of ICT systems and services, focusing on their technical applicability and business potential for LTE/4G networks and the Future Internet.

(4/2) Claudio Feijoo (Spain): Ultra-broadband Services of the Future The presentation examines the situation and perspectives of the services that are supposed to fill up next generation of telecommunication infrastructures. With this aim, first it is briefly reviewed what we know today about the middle-term future of both supply and demand, and the tools that are currently used for calculations and forecasts. Next, each of the main ultra-broadband services that have been proposed is briefly discussed in terms of broadband and quality requisites. The presentation is closed with some remarks about future lines of research in this domain."

(4/3) Zsuzsanna Kosa (Hungary): Future of the Regulation in ICT Regulation is a tool to enforce the interests of the society regarding an industry or any kind of behavior. Regulation is a state- or community-based intervention, and should be enforceable. Regulation should compromise the short term and long term interests of many stakeholders and the community, and not to hinder innovation processes. Regulation is expected to have clear value-based approach, to handle asymmetric situations and dependency. How can be these features achieved in the future, this is the main topic in information era.

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