14th International Telecom Conference InfoComWorld

«It’s a Connected World – Connecting business & opportunities»

The 14th International Telecom Conference InfoCom World (www.info-com.gr) will take place on Tuesday, October 30 2012 at Divani Caravel Hotel, in Athens, under the auspices of the Ministry of Development, Competivity, Infrastructure, Transportation & Networks, the Hellenic Telecommunications & Post Commission (EETT), the Association of Mobile Telephony Companies (EEKT), the Hellenic Association of Mobile Application Companies (ΣΕΚΕΕ), the e-TEE, the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Global Suppliers Mobile Association (GSA).

InfoCom World is organized by Smart Press SA, a major Greek specialized publishing house focusing on digital technologies. It is the most prominent conference of its kind in SE Europe, accurately depicting the rapid advances in digital technology due to high speed broadband and the convergence of ICT and Media.

Focusing on the users’ needs, the markets’ anxieties as well as the challenges posed by the effect of the economic crisis all over the world, the organizing committee of the 14th InfoCom World has selected…

«It’s Connected World: Connecting business & opportunities»

as the motto of this year’s conference, firmly believing that “anytime, anywhere, any device” is not only a technical problem we have to solve, but also a social one.

During the last 12 months, the crisis became more and more intense! Yet, in spite of the negative economic environment, we are witnessing a long-due psychological turn from part of the users, that lays the foundations of a necessary and quite conscious reaction: the society itself searches for equivalent measures that embrace primary production and contribute to the revival of investment.

More than ever before, Information & Communication Technologies are nowadays at the spearhead of the efforts towards the re-organization of the country, because they are a basic part of new entrepreneurship and innovation: no activity or operation of any kind may take place without their support.

On the other hand, the State already knows and understands very well the great help that ICT may offer towards the restriction of the government operational cost. Nobody denies that the State mechanics would be more just, transparent and effective, if only the suitable interoperability standards were used in the communication between new and legacy information systems.

Of course, the resuscitation of the country will not come in a matter of days… Yet, all the data concerning ICT lead to the conclusion that during the next 12 months there will be a diminution of more than 50% at the rate of depression, in comparison with the current year.

After many years of delay, the legal framework concerning telecommunications has been finalized during 2012, offering a much more stable base for the operation of telecom networks. Yet, there is still much to be done on the regulatory and regulative framework.

Another, equally important piece of news was the supply of new bands of the frequency spectrum to the wireless network providers, to serve as the “home” for new services and technologies in the future. In addition to voice, which more and more tends to be just another application, data –from the quite simple e-mail to the rather demanding live video streaming- will run in new communication “highways”, hoping that the spectrum re-distribution will cover sufficiently their increased “appetite”…

Similar are the trends in fixed networks, struggling in order to pass successfully from the copper to the optical fiber era and open a brand new chapter in their history. At the same time, new services are being developed, based on the cloud computing technology.

The recent declaration by the Minister about “the need for a National Broadband Strategy” is –without doubt- a step towards the right direction, but the road ahead is still long and foggy…

Many are the subjects seeking a solution – the 14th InfoCom World Conference sole aspiration is to help promote a fruitful dialogue and become the catalyst for evolution.

1st session

Infrastructure: BYOD – Bring Your Own Data

Our future is digitally connected to the present through many various networks that all speak the same “language”. There are no winners or losers, primary or secondary roles. Everyone has its own part in this “game” of seamless distribution and communication of the information, through various networks based on different technologies: fixed, wireless, optical fiber to the home or to the office.

In our days, the road is steep and difficult. In most cases the decisions to be taken are based more often on economics, than on specifications or “exotic” technologies. Numbers are more implacable than ever before and there is no place left for visionaries, even if that means delaying the realistic plans for LTE deployment…

Solutions that provide high cost/performance ratio may at the end be the only ones to overcome the reservation barriers and turn business plans into great scale projects. What are these solutions? What are the needs they try to fulfill? What are the opportunities in store for us and what are the realistic limits that we must not dare cross? This session will try to find the proper answers to all these questions.

2nd session: All in the Cloud: Everything as a Service!

Smart Grids, M2M, NFC, e-Health, Fleet management, Smart Home, EaaS… Whatever may be expressed as data, it may as well become a service and whatever is a service, it may fetch money. Yet, if we want this broad spectrum of services to be activated, it needs first to be attractive and second, fulfill certain needs of the users.

The nature and special characteristics that make a service attractive will be explored in this session, regarding not only the consumer, but also the integrator behind it. Innovation, ease of use, Return on Investment, amortization of the primary investment and prospects of every project are just a few of the parameters that will be discussed here.

3rd session: Entrepreneurial environment – Innovation and extroversion

Every project, infrastructure, small or big plan –whatever its specific technical and economic characteristics- must conform to the country’s entrepreneurial, taxation and legislative framework, which is rather “unfriendly” towards the existing enterprises as well as reluctant to embrace new efforts.

The guests of this session will analyze –each one from its own point of view- all the major parameters, the restraining factors and the emerging opportunities that shape the entrepreneurial and investment climate in Greece. Special emphasis will be placed on extroversion, on the efforts by young entrepreneurs and the various forms of primary funding available for hi-tech enterprises. Investment funds’ representatives will take part in this session, where innovative case studies will also be presented.

CEOs Summit – Economy & telecoms: operating at the limit!

The CEOs of the most important Telecommunications companies in Greece will take part in the final and most interesting session of the Conference, in order to present their personal views about the future of the Telecommunications sector.

In spite of the generally unstable economic environment in this country and abroad, there is a much more stable base in many areas, two “pillars” of which are the new legislative framework about Telecommunications and the successful completion of the frequency spectrum auction.

The heads of the Telecommunications companies in Greece have to reposition themselves on fundamental issues, now, regarding their operation – for example, the continuing diminution of liquidity, the labor problems, the decrease of the termination (????) and roaming charges, the building of high-speed networks etc.

At the same time, they still need to handle the full integration of ICT services using Cloud technologies and take advantage of the various synergies, placed quite high in the list of priorities for all of them. Top-echelon representatives from the Government and the Regulator have also been invited to take part in this session, in the hope that the fruitful dialogue will help towards better understanding and finding solutions to the chronic problems in the market.

Parallel sessions

 Social Business 3.0: The power of “click”

The exploitation of new technologies is an almost obligatory precondition in every enterprise seeking to improve its quality characteristics in two main ways:

  • Better structure and operation of the enterprise itself, through the use of new methods to manage time in a better way, minimize the presence of people and improve coordination…
  • Exploitation of Internet through social media and e-business in order to increase sales and have a presence in other countries.

By the way, the “word-of-mouth” in real society perhaps has its digital equivalent in the “word-of-click” – in order to win more and more such “clicks”, hundreds of large and small enterprises are struggling against each other every day, in the field of social-business.

Some of the questions that the guests in this session will try to answer are…

  • What are the new shapes of enterprise structure? Is it possible to survive without adopting them?
  • Is it possible for the small e-business enterprise to compete against the giants of a sector?
  • Is it possible for any enterprise to become “e-” and “m-“?
  • How long is the distance between “like” and “want”?
  • Do the customers know and recognize an enterprise without a site and/or presence in social media?

Digital TV

TV Everywhere: the multi-screen theorem!

There is no doubt that television -the “black box” of the past- has long lost its “traditional” place in the living-room, as it converges more and more with digital technology and the Internet. This trend has risen now to a higher level in Greece because of the recent transition to digital terrestrial TV that brings along new expectations in spite of the economic crisis.

The distribution of television content through Internet and IP networks is quite wide-spread nowadays and the target is the creation of economies of scale that will make the final products (i.e. the necessary equipment) and services cheaper, in order to be accessible to the average user. The final result will be “TV everywhere”, i.e. television anywhere, anytime and in any device (Smart TV, mobile TV, IPTV, Satellite TV, 3D TV, HDTV etc.), without the restrictions imposed by space and time, as long as it satisfies the needs and desires of the user. Smart TVs are regarded today as the biggest challenge for the manufacturers (i.e. Samsung, Sony, Philips, LG, Panasonic etc.)

It is also noteworthy that the decision of giant companies, like Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. to invest in the TV – Internet convergence, targets the content as the “next big thing”… While the “traditional” TV providers will try, from their part, to bundle their basic subscriber services with the offer of extra ones.

Will the free channels be allowed to create and offer subscriber services? Shall we witness some kind of synergies? Will both subscriber models survive? How the TV of the future will be? Who will be the main competitors? What is the role that content plays?

These are only some of the questions that wait for an answer in a session that seems to be quite exciting, to say the least!