The COST of Information and Communication Technologies

Copenhagen.
Following the next09 conference last week, I've now made my way to Copenhagen, to attend the COST298 conference with the somewhat unwieldy title "The Good, the Bad, and the Challenging" - don't hold that against it, though: the actual theme of the conference (and of the COST298 EU research programme) is participation in the broadband society, so it should be interesting. (The two-volume proceedings alone are going to seriously push my luggage weight over the edge on the flight back.) Also, erm, interesting is the choice of location, at Aalborg University's campus in Ballerup on the outskirts of Copenhagen, almost an hour's metro ride out of town - I must say I much preferred the IT University campus, just cross from the city centre, where we held the AoIR conference last year.

We begin today with a presentation by Soulla Louca, who introduces the COST ICT Domain research programme. COST funds large cooperative, networked science and technology research programmes in Europe. Of particular interest perhaps is the COST 2030 Foresight initiative, which aims to explore future scenarios for information and communication technology - including pervasive computing and ubiquitous connectivity, and (for some) the idea of a technological singularity, the combination of a wide range of functionality in a single wearable device.

Loris di Pietrantonio from the European Commission follows on from this, and highlights the societal challenges in what he calls these 'exponential' times - sustainability, population growth, etc. In Europe, in particular, the population is aging, there are renewed risks of poverty (especially in old age), and there are now substantial financial and economic challenges, of course. This creates issues associated with social cohesion and divergence, social care and health care, social and environmental sustainability, economic growth, and doing more for (with?) less. ICT holds some opportunities in each of these areas, by increasing interaction and productivity, and as a growth industry in its own right.

The key challenge, Loris says, is e-inclusion, even in the relatively well-connected Europe. Inclusion leads to connection and social inclusion - and the increasing prevalence of bottom-up innovation is a hopeful sign here. Again, a key focus here are ICTs for aging and accessibility, not least also in mobile contexts. But just as important is also investing in human capital and developing skills in youth - in essence, rediscovering people as social beings.

The final speaker in this opening session is Anders Thomsen from formerly state-owned telecommunications company TDC, who directs our focus to the Danish broadband market. Some 37% of Danes now subscribe to fixed-line broadband, and mobile broadband is also growing rapidly (more than 45% in six months). There is an aim to reach 100% broadband coverage in Denmark by 2010, and Denmark already leads Europe in broadband penetration. Also of interest, and reassuring: bandwidth available to customers is growing substantially faster than actual data traffic per customer. Fibre access is slowly taking over from cable broadband.

Development in Denmark has been mainly market-driven, with substantial focus on industry self-regulation. Government regulation, where it exists, has been technology-neutral - politicians did not intervene by picking a presumptive winning technology (ADSL, fibre, ...) beforehand. At the same time, regulation does come in to manage the market for example for services for the disabled, through a universal service directive; Anders points out, though, that there is virtually no innovation in such non-market-driven areas. He argues strongly in favour of letting the market do what it does best, therefore - at least in areas where there is healthy competition (i.e. not in situations where an incumbent controls bottlenecks for access to networks, for example). A further complication in this context are the European Union's regulatory interventions, of course.

Technorati : COST, COST298, Denmark, Europe, ICT, access, broadband, participation, policy
Del.icio.us : COST, COST298, Denmark, Europe, ICT, access, broadband, participation, policy