Surfing the World Wide Waves (WWW)

Telecom 2003 summary

During the last Telecom show in 1999 the Telecom's industry was in full expansion because of excitement which had been created by the idea that the World Wide Web and the Internet could be used as a good means of making money. During this honeymoon phase of expansion billions of dollars were invested in servers, infrasctructure and more without much co-operation between businesses. The infrascrtucture which was created soon found that it was useless because the amount of data being transferred was less than the capacity made available to the content providers. As a result of this many companies which had borrowed vast amounts of money went bankrupt.

During this period of time many of the content providers decided to merge and become gigantic mega-corporations because this was seen as a great way to increase the amount of content available. The amount which went into aquisitions was an over-investment resulting in huge amounts of debt. for the companies. As they imploded a major panick ensued within which people began to distrust the World Wide Web and the Internet's possibilities.

The importance of Telecom 2003 was the lessons learned by the various companies which are exhibiting. Instead of concentrating on offering cable services from everywhere to everywhere money is invested more wisely in projects such as that by Voisin Voisine, a fiber to the home project by the Service Industriel de Genève. This project is aiming to provide 10Mb/s to a group of flats in Charmilles to see how well it is taken up. Also taking place is the creation of at least 300 hotspots in Switzerland for WI-FI communications so that the web can be accessed from a variety of locations.

At Telecom 2003 two of the main concepts were outsourcing and convergance. With servers and staff costing a lot of money for individual organisations to create a good online environment it is better to get various smaller companies to specialise in what they offer. In so doing money is spent far more wisely and a stable working environment is being formed for people working in telecommunications.

In Conclusion one of the most important points is that whilst a lot of excitement was around during the 1999 Telecom show in 2003 people understand the medium much better and are now creating valid and effective frameworks by which to create an internet based money making environment.

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Articles by Richard Azia unless otherwise indicated.