Last week EPOE, a copyright protection authority pressed charges against the administrators of a Greek owned torrent site (greek-fun.com). After the police arrested one of the owners most of the torrent sites with Greek owners, voluntarily, shutdown (temporarily as it is rumored in the underground scene) resulting in an almost 70% slash to the average GR IX traffic. See below:

Fore the rest of the statistics visit http://www.gr-ix.gr/services/statistics/grix-aix-total/

This is the first time that a torrent site administrator is arrested in the country. A funny background of the story is that this guy was arrested because he was boasting on his facebook account of actually being the owner of the site… (which I think proves the high level of amateurism in the scene). If you speak Greek visit this link or read the google translated version.

Last Sunday I watched the “el classico” of the Greek footbal via a High Definition broadcast from SKAI.gr, a pioneer radio/TV station of the country. With a 720p resolution and a relatively low bit rate (around 700Kbps) the broadcast made a decent watch. The thing is that it would not be possible to watch the match at a bit rate higher than this. And even its actual rate could not be sustained for a long continuous period (i.e. 90 minutes) by the network. Hickups and stalls happened all too often.

Maybe, those who argue that ADSL in Greece is enough to meet the service demand in the country should reconsider!

On a different tone this broadcast has many firsts for Greece. It was the first real-time HD emission over the Internet and it was also the first internet broadcasting whose analog rights were owned by another broadcasting station. By the way, SKAI was (if not) the first station that went live in the Internet and now broadcasts its entire program over the net.

If you follow the Greek broadcasting market it wouldn’t be a bad idea to watch out for news from SKAI.

Minister of Infrastructures & Networks Dimitris Reppas officially confirmed recent rumors and executives sayings that the national FTTH plan will be postponed for one year.

It is worth noting that the FTTH plan is one of the few projects of the previous government that the Socialists intend to carry on forward. The largest and most ambitious ICT project of the country is kept in high priority by the ministry, however, according to the high-rank official, the tender for the FTTH project will be issued in 2011. In the first half of 2010 a group of experts (which is currently being formed) will prepare the tender for a) a techno-economic study and b) the legislative framework for the project and the corresponding public consultation.

The file submission for approval to European Commission is planned for the second half of 2010.

If you speak Greek read more here.

I really enjoyed this year’s Greek ICT Forum. It was an interesting two-days forum with exceptional speakers and a few unique take-outs which I provide here for you. They really worth being noted and quoted:

Theodoros Karounos, Prime Minister’s Advisor:

- apps.gov.gr (reflections on apps.google.com)

- Let us dare to create new best practices and not only copy them

- If $10M that was the initial investment for the development of UBUNTU could help transform IT industry, imagine what we could do if we carefully invested a few hundrend of millions.

- In the future, projects should be funded only if they are financially self-sustainable (except in outstanding cases of education and culture).

Costas Doukas, President Information Society S.A.:

- Efficiency improvement and the experience and know-how gained during the last years can help the country in the next round of financing to further enhance results.

Panagioris Tsanakas, Professor, NTUA:

- When discussing VDSL vs. FTTH we must make sure that we don’t compare apples with oranges. A VDSL investment plan can only have an horizon of maximum 3 years before it is surpassed by the market demand while it can inflict  damages to the long-term national broadband plan. On the other hand, FTTH is a 30 years investment with clear committment expressed by the Government and significant socio-economic benefits.

Themis Papaioannou, Consultant:

- The low marginal cost of the next Mbit in high-speed access networks brings new opportunities for innovative business models (e.g. bandwidth on demand – being efficient to provide peak demand for a limited amount of time).

Ilias Koukouvinos, Vice President, Optronics S.A.:

- The cost of FTTH deployment in the city of Karditsa went eventually below the European average, and is much lower than the assumptions of the business plan for the national FTTH network.

Christos Bouras, Professor, University of Patras:

- We must build national, public infrastructures with long-term planning and not for addressing the immediate, contemporary socio-economic needs. This is precisely the reason why we still count bodies in our national highways.  (ed. implicating low safety and construction standards of highways for the number of fatal car accidents)

photo by infomaniac

I will be addressing this year’s 11th Greek ICT Forum this Thursday 5/11/2009 during the morning session “From the Bronze Age to the Fiber Optics” (bronze aka. copper). The panel I take part in is full with market executives and policy makers and I will take on the occasion to discuss the inclusion of existing public infrastructures in the national broadband strategy for the benefits of the market and the society.

I plan to write more about the conference later this week and I also plan to tweet about it (ta-dah! this is a first, and I hope it turns out well. Tune in at ktroulos for more).

In any case, the 2,500 visitors that attended the conference last year give a good indication of the unique opportunity for debate and networking during the event. So, I guess we’ll all meet there (like we did last year!).

Don’t have the program? Get it here.

P.S. The axehead in the picture dates back to the real Bronze Age. It was found by Alan.

A few days ago the Observatory for Information Society in Greece released its mid-2009 report on broadband. For those not familiar with this publication, it is a biannual report on broadband developments in the country.

According to the report, Greece had, the 1st of July, 15,63 % broadband penetration (connections/100 inhabitants), which in absolute figures means something less than 1.8M connections. Following the trend, the broadband take-up rates are estimated to reach EU27 average by late 2010. Not that bad after all, considering that Greece ranked at the bottom a few years ago.

A change worth noting is that the speed attributes of retail product categories (basic, average, high) have changed. Basic access includes offerings up to 2Mbps, and accordingly average and high access products include offerings up to 8Mbps and 24Mbps. Last year, the categorization separated products in 1,2 and 4Mbps speed levels. Well, for a country that plans a country-wide FTTH network, I guess that considering 24Mbps as a high access product makes definitely more sense!

The last important observation is that active wholesale offerings by the incumbent (i.e. bitstream) is decreasing rapidly (bitstream market share decreases by 5% on a monthly basis) with LLU increasing 5 fold compared to bitsteam connections.

Overall, the market is clearly matured with adequate electronic infrastructures in place to leverage on incumbent’s copper. I only hope it will not take that long to reach the same level of maturity when fiber comes along, and that all involved parties will learn from past experience.

Finally, the current 1.8M broadband connections makes the governmental FTTH plan of 2M homes passed absolutely reasonable (some could – maybe rightfully – argue that it should have gone even bolder) despite what has been said so far by many about the necessity of such an investment in terms of scale and scope.

Post Scriptum: It would be nice if the next report started reporting some quality metrics. The success of national markets is not only measured by the number of connections but also by the level of customer satisfaction.

You can get the full report here.

Last weekend I saw the national FTTH project making it to the weekly mainstream newspaper covers. This often indicates that the big thing is at the gates!

Today, Mr. Stylianides, the minister of communications, gave a press conference about the project. The ministry released, in writing, a series of details about the project, the most important you already know if you read this blog. The new thing is this picture:

The picture depicts the 3 zones that Greece will be divided to. This may as well change since public consultation is about (the thing at the gates I was talking earlier), but gives you the general idea. The press release says that the public consultation _is_ available at www.yme.gr but it’s not so, I assume it will be online in the coming… hours (?). I will tweet the URL as soon as I know about it and hopefully blog about it too.

To access the press release visit the ministry’s web site.

OTE’s CEO Panagis Vourloumis announced this Friday (10/7/2009) that the organization decided to set in motion its VDSL roll-out plans “as soon as possible”. According to organization’s top executive, national FTTH plans face bureaucratic delays and OTE “can’t wait any longer” [Check Reuters and Adslgr.com].

OTE has been testing VDSL for a long time. And while the organization is investing hard money in its IPTV platform (content: NBC UNIVERSAL GLOBAL NETWORKS, security: SecureMedia, etc), its ADSL2+ network delivers average video quality, (slightly) inferior to standard analogue TV (Read: Video on Demand by OTE. But When?). No one objects that OTE’s VDSL roll-out to monetize its IPTV investment is a fair marketing practice and in fact it was long anticipated.

The interesting part is the timing of the announcement. It was made a one (1) day after the parliament’s majority,  stressed by the country’s not-so-good financial situation, voted in favor for an additional 5% shares sell to DT (Report in Greek). Shares will be sold at €27,50 when their listed price is €10,66. That’s an additional (as in “extra”) 413 millions for the seller (not a bad deal at all). So, DT (at a substantial expense) will soon own 30% leaving 20% to the Government making it much harder for the public sector to oppose the plan (assuming that they would want to).

But, there’s more: The announcement complicates Greece’s application for EU funding and (most importantly) project approval by the Competition Commission. Herman Wagter made an excellent remark a few weeks ago commenting on European Commission’s draft “Guidelines for the application of State Aid rules in relation to the rapid deployment of broadband networks“:

The EC takes the opposite approach, creating an impossible burden of proof on governments where companies do not have to proof an intention to roll out to create a blockade. If an operator claims a roll-out in the next 5 years (on paper) it blocks any initiative from a (local) government. If after 2-3 years “unforeseen” circumstances appear which “force the operator to delay investments” the cycle starts again: the government has to prove that the operator will not roll out in 5 years FROM THAT MOMENT ON, which the operator can easily claim on paper that he will do.

This is effectively a free (no obligation, no costs, no commitment) blocking trigger which can be used by any operator almost indefinitely to block any initiative from a municipality or government. Very lopsided. A enforceable burden/commitment of the operator to roll out if they want to excercise the blockade would have been more balanced.

That’s a puzzle for strong players and a tough enigma for national and European regulators. How will public policy makers respond? And how will Greece’s national broadband strategy be defended?  Let’s see if the underdogs can play again serious ball!

(*) photo by xamad

In late 2008, the e-inclusion awards were established for the first time by the European Commision to recognise excellence and good practice in using ICT and digital technology to tackle social and digital exclusion across Europe.

The Greeks got home with the Inclusive Public Services Award for a pilot e-health project run by Sotiria Hospital. The project enables doctors and practitioners to monitor the patients’ condition remotely. The results so far indicate:

• 28% of patients have reported a far better quality of life
• Hospital readmission rates and lengths of stay have fallen by more than 60%
• Emergency room visits have been reduced by 40%
• 60% savings have been achieved through fewer hospitalisations.

The people involved are planning ways to scale the pilot on a national scale. This is quite impressive and received moderate promotion even by the local media. Europa.eu has recently published a video about the project that you can watch here.

Here’s a nice clip by EETT (the Greek NRA) showing a sneak preview of a converged connected world. It’s in Greek but it’s not hard for non-Greek speaking visitors to watch it too.