European Union Places Full Internet Access High on its Agenda

As of 20/09/2010, European Commission has adopted couple of complementary measures to facilitate the roll out and take up of fast and and ultra-fast broadband in EU . The aim of the measures is to provide regulatory certainty , to encourage investment in in high and ultra high speed networks and to ensure that spectrum is available for wireless broadband. The measures aim to help the EU realise the commitments in the digital agenda for Europe to give every European access to basic broadband by 2013 and fast and ultrafst broadband by 2020. Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda said "Fast broadband is digital oxygen, essential for Europe's prosperity and well-being. These measures will help to ensure that Europeans get the first-class internet they expect and deserve,so that they can access the content and services they want".
On average, 94% of Europeans had high-speed broadband access by the end of 2009, but that proportion fell to 80% in rural areas.
The Commission believes that fast and ultra-fast broadband could revolutionise people's lives in the same way that railways did 100 years ago, with applications not just for jobs and businesses, but for health and education as well.
This measure is in response of the Asian competition that benefits of much higher speed internet connection and which puts at disadvantage the European Business and customers..
For example, only 1% of consumers in Europe have a high-speed fibre connection in their homes compared to 12% of Japanese and 15% of South Koreans.
The Commission estimates that between €180 and €270 billion of investment is needed in order to meet the 2020 broadband targets.
However, a recent study shows that, assuming a constant adoption rate up to 2015, broadband development will help create around 1 million jobs in Europe and a broadband-related growth of economic activity of € 850 billion between 2006 and 2015.
The impact on European industry is clearly positive: apart from civil work for networks which has a direct impact on local employment, sales of network equipment will also benefit global European suppliers (like Siemens, Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent), as well as telecoms or satellite operators. And areas with advanced broadband connections will see an increase in demand for products and services.

Sources :
http://ec.europa.eu/
http://www.cellular-news.com

The two most distinctive trends in meetings industry: Green Meetings and Mobile Technology. And the future?

There is no doubt that the number of smartphone users has sharply increased. Now, mobile phones are not just a private communication tool, but also a essential working equipment. . According to a survey conducted by M&C in December 2010, 81% among 197 meeting planners said that smartphone is crucial tool for their job.

Meetings industry is one of the earliest adopter in terms of up-to-date technology. More and more meeting planners prepare mobile applications for the meetings that they organize. Attendees can download diverse information about the conference or the exhibition. With smartphone applications for meetings, we can have video chatting, meeting organizing application etc. as well as e-mail, calling, and texting.

Meanwhile, sustainable meeting is another important issue. Meeting planners often offers local foods, green gifts, paperless meeting solutions, and sustainable energy sources for events etc. Also clients’ satisfaction of sustainable meeting solution is growing. It seems that this trend will cut across more sooner or later.

Now, to conclude, let’s synthesize these two trends and make an interesting scenario. One day, if papers are completely disappeared, and if mobile applications replace papers, what will it happen? How can non smartphone users participate to meetings? Of course, there would be other solutions such as USB keys or portable personal computers. Yet the future of meeting industry affected diverse new technologies and green trend is still interesting.

Co-relation of IT and Tourism

This article about the Use of Information technology in the tourism industry is written by Mr Yunus .S Saliu.

The main focus of this article is to explain the growing co-relation of Information technology and the tourism sector. The article highlights the point that I.T has made communication much easier than before. Now it is very easy to access information and equally easy to act on it. It says that due to the acceleration of Information technology growth, age-old ways of searching for tourism options have gone out of fashion. Now people can sit at home and look for information.

This article further goes on to say that information technology is particularly well suited for tourism as tourism is also closely related to exchange of information about new destinations, hotel and airline bookings and so on. Basically what the author is implying is there are various avenues in tourism where information technology is applicable. The author is of also of the opinion that information technology not only helps information exchange and accessibility, but also increases speed of operations, which is a major advantage.

Apart from the easy accessibility of information, information technology also plays a major role in marketing the tourism products to customers. Moreover, it has changed the products itself. According to the author, tourism products have been altered due to the I.T applications and are now more sophisticated in order to cater to a computer literate generation. The use of information technology in the field of marketing is enormous.

The last, but not least part of tourism is the payment. Payment modes have become so easy due to information technology, that there is no complexity at all in the whole tourism experience, from pre-booking to experience to post holiday stage. Online booking has made transactions very fast and also it saves a lot of cost for operator and the customers themselves.

These are some of the key issues addressed in this article.