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EU – Japan Symposium on Future Internet and New Generation Networks

October 22nd, 2010

This entry is cross posted to my TSSG blog.

Directly from finishing my open source session at the 6th Future Networks concertation meeting I headed for the Brussels airport to catch a flight to Tampere, Finland (via Stockholm) for the 3rd EU-Japan Symposium on Future Internet and New Generation Networks.
The flight was easy going, and the stop off in Stockholm was nice as I got to watch some Champions League football and then relax a little in the Starbucks cafe, catching up on some emails.

Tampere is the third largest city in Finland, and the scene for a number of technological innovations, I was told the first test GSM calls were made here. The actual hotel / conference location was set in a picturesque location by a lake.

The event itself started with some high level presentations on EU Digital Policy, the Digital Agenda for Europe and the ICT Paradigm Shift in this decade. I found the presentation Masahiko Tominaga, Vice President, NICT on NwGN R&D Strategy [pdf] the most interesting of these.

On the next break, it was great to get the opportunity to share lunch with Sasi. Now I know Sasi normally only sits a couple of floors away from me, but it’s times like this we really get a chance to discuss at length a whole miriad of topics.

After lunch the event was broken up into sepereate Tracks and I headed for Internet/Network Architectures session. Sasi presented on the emerging generation of symbiotic networks: Federated Communication Systems [pdf] while I took the opportunity to present on RINA, the Recursive Inter Network Architecture, which is based on the work originated by John Day.

RINA: Recursive Inter Network Architecture

View more presentations from Miguel Ponce de Leon @ TSSG / Waterford Institute of Technology.

What I took from the whole session was the interesting work of Takeshi Usui (NICT/KDDI Laboratories) on the Virtual Network Mobility:Advanced Mobility Management over Network Virtualization [pdf] and Nao Kawanishi (ATR) on his vision of An Open Mobile Communication System with All Strata Virtualization [pdf].

I was pleasantly surprised by the symposium and people I meet at this event and the first sign of snow, which made the long trip back, via bus to Helsinki and then plane via London Heathrow and onto Dublin a worthwhile one.

Tags: EU, finland, inter network, japan, rina
Posted in EC, EU, FP7, Future Internet, ICT, Research, Technology | No Comments »

Open source software and FP7 research for future networks

October 20th, 2010

The were a number of items I didn’t manage to record from 2010, so here is a catch up session on the Future Networks 6th FP7 concertation meeting, in Brussels, 18-20 October 2010. As I had recieved an invite to put together a small part of the programme, with a panel session that discussed Open Source & FP7 Research, I just wanted to relay its outcome.
Given that open source software is being recognised as a potential exploitation avenue for the FP7 Future Network programme, there are many projects looking to go this route, but there are clearly many items to consider. I must say I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to open source software relam but thankfullly I had the pleasure sharing the sesion with 4 very experienced people in this space.
Image of Open Source & FP7 Research panel session, kindly provided by Johan Myrberger of the Sailors Inn http://www.sail-project.eu/sailorsinn/author/johan/
Richard Graham of the Bird & Bird Law firm, took the first part of the session and through his presentation [ppt] offered his insight on the legal aspects of OSS in proprietary projects and OSS in open source projects, drawing some parallels to the FP7 project environment and gave an interesting overview of the licenses that are out there.
Now next up was due to be Roberto Galoppini, and I hadn’t meet Roberto before, however just through our online conversations he was super enthusiastic about presenting, however due to personnel circumstances he couldn’t phyiscally make it to Brussels. However he did write an excellent piece with his thoughts on EU-funded Projects and Open Source.
Next up was Marko Boger, CEO of Gentleware and Professor for Software Archtitecture at the University of Applied Science Constance (HTWG Konstanz). I was delighted to see Marko really engage the audience with his presentation on Open Source in Business. He also used the Prezi tool to put his presentation together, it really came out well. One major point he highlighted was software quality, and ways to measure it when it came to FP7 projects. Sonar looked extremely interesting for this.
The final speaker was Dr Diogo Gomes of IT Aveiro, and through his slides [ppt] Diogo highlighted the role of managing open source software in ?an academic environment. He showed how his group developed, supported and integrated open source software into the research programme at IT Aveiro.
Finally to say, my contribution to the session was an overview of my experience of open source software when it came to the 4WARD project. The slide set can be seen below.
All the slides can be seen from the Europa site.
Finally just to prove that this event did actually take place, I found that as I was putting this blog entry together there is an entry by Johan Myrberger at the Sailors Inn which nicely records a summary of the session also.

Open Source Research in FP7 Future Networks

View more presentations from Miguel Ponce de Leon @ TSSG / Waterford Institute of Technology.

Posted in FP7, Technology | No Comments »

A User Centric Always Best Connected Service Business Model for MVNOs

October 15th, 2010

As announced on the Perimeter blog, on October 14th last Anwesh got to present our joint paper on “A User Centric Always Best Connected Service Business Model for MVNOs” during the Mobile Connectivity Platforms session of the Business Models for Mobile Platforms (BMMP 10) workshop.
We’ve taken a good hard look at the current state of the Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) business model, which is mainly based on the concept of reselling minutes (cheaply), and really it seems the long term viability of the MVNO is unclear from the existing telecom industry structure.
But we believe there is a big opportunity for MVNOs in the way they can offer IP-based communication services and we think the model has to change from Value Chain to Value Network.
In our view the vertical integration world of the telecom industry will be unable to satisfy the new range of value added services (VAS) and we’re sure that more collaborative business models based on core competencies are likely to emerge. We think that next generation mobile services will leverage robust access platforms, with the emergence of a dedicated service composer.
Given this view we think MVNOs are in a better position to deliver innovative VAS as more tightly integrated partners with equipment vendors and through our paper we introduce a new MVNO as a Broker (MVNOB) model.
Take a closer look at the slides as we provide an analyses of the characteristics of our conceptual MVNOB model.

A User Centric Always Best Connected Service Business Model for MVNOs ppt presentation

View more presentations from Miguel Ponce de Leon @ TSSG / Waterford Institute of Technology.

The presentation raised some interesting comments and questions from the audience as it was seen to be disruptive to the present mobile communications business model. Most of the presentations at the conference and workshops were heavily in favour of mobile operators while we presented the opportunity for virtual operators in the changing telecommunications landscape.
Some of the questions/comments from the audience which we need to consider are:

Why is MVNOB not a threat to the MNO?
What will happen will MVNOB start creating services themselves to satisfy a unique opportunity in the market?
Nokia-Siemens Networks (equipments vendors) are good candidates for MVNE.
Is this something theoretical or is it something real happening in process?
What is the technology enabler?
What about information flow with regards for missed call, unavailability for example, among various operators and MVNOB?
How tightly or deeply will the MVNOB be integrated with the MNO?
Radio spectrum sensing issues – Broker platform can lead to power shift from the operators to broker and is highly disruptive to the present industry structure.

I must admit I’ll have to take a little to time to address each one of these questions and I wonder do you have any other questions to add?
Update: The paper is now avaialble on IEEE Xplore “A user centric always best connected service business model for MVNOs”

Posted in Research, Technology | No Comments »