NEW INITIATIVES AND BROADBAND SERVICES AT SUMMIT 2003
30 September 2003 - European Institute for Research and Strategic Studies in Telecommunications GmbH (EURESCOM)

He explained that the already undertaken technical, legal, and regulatory approaches to protect digital content have not worked, because they are based on the belief that technology or law alone could do the job. His proposal called 'Digital Media Manifesto' includes an action plan for overcoming the stalemate in the use of digital media. The goal of his initiative is to find a solution, which satisfies rights holders, end-users, and value-chain players. 'Today, you can have a great digital media experience based on the latest information and communication technologies, but very often it is illegitimate. The goal is to provide a great user experience, which is respecting the rights of content owners.' In this context, he criticised advertisements by telcos which implicitly suggest the use of DSL for legally dubious media downloads from the Internet. 'Telcos should push for real broadband access,' he added. What broadband really meant, was also the topic of another keynote by Spyros Konidaris, special adviser in the Directorate-General Information Society of the European Commission. 'Broadband means empowerment for the user in the information age,' he said. 'In his view, broadband is a resource for 'unlimited creativity'. Users should be active creators rather than passive consumers in the information society: 'The user is the most important source of content.' With the EU research programmes GRID and GÉANT, the EU would heavily invest in broadband to achieve the vision of the Lisbon Summit 2001 that Europe should provide widespread access to broadband and become the best knowledge-based economy by 2010.

Today, over 60 million users have broadband access worldwide. Two technical presentations showed how new broadband services could enrich the user's life. In the first, Dr. Josef Noll from Telenor R&D presented the results of a recent Eurescom project on a new service called Mobile Instant Messenger, which combines the advantages of the already available instant messaging on the Internet and mobile presence technologies. Selected friends, relatives, and colleagues on the 'Buddy' list of your mobile phone will know where and in which work or leisure context you are. Thus, they will be able to send an instant message to you and others for instantaneous planning of meetings and other private or business purposes. Dr. Noll predicted that Mobile Instant Messaging has the potential to replace a large percentage of SMS traffic in the next few years. Mario Becker from Fraunhofer IGD demonstrated results from EU project ARIS on the use of Augmented Reality in e-commerce. On a Pocket PC with a camera extension, you can take a picture of your living room and add a 3-D picture of a sofa or other furniture for planning your interior design. What is new compared to other Augmented-Reality demonstrators is the perfect simulation of light and shadows, which gives an extremely realistic impression of the whole room including the added 3-D object. The projected is cooperating with IKEA Greece to explore the e-commerce aspects. Mr Becker estimates that the service could be commercially available within two years.

http://www.eurescom.de

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