Telecom workshop seminar @ IST - Jump to the pictures | jump to book

IST/IN+ is promoting a workshop seminar on "Telecom challenges and (business) opportunities", from 2003-03-14 to 2003-03-28.

It all started with "starting-up and financing new ventures in the telecom sector", by Dr. Burkhard Schrage, Post-Doctoral Fellow, IN+, Instituto Superior Técnico. On this session, participants learned elements of telecom finance and strategy.

On 2003-03-14 and 2003-03-15, Professors Manuel Heitor and Burkhard, hosted sessions on "Internet telephony and associated business models". On the first day, participants learned about 2G, GPRS, UMTS, and Ultra-wide Band; and business models for telecom carriers. There were also some introductory presentations on misc telecom related subjects, by students of IST/IN+'s MsC on Engineering Policy and Management of Technology.

Professor Paul Vaaler - Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, USA - handled most of the mornings on 2003-03-14 and 2003-03-15.

Professor Lee McKnight - School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, USA - starred on 2003-03-14's early afternoon, in perfect time sync with is his laptop's battery.

Later that same friday, I was one of the terrified students having to do an english spoken terrifying presentation in front of some very terrifying never before seen persons.

I did a presentation titled "Can broadband be evil?", on how to (roughly) estimate the potential impact of some broadband services on the legit commerce of digital media.

I mentioned piracy via newsgroups, ftp and peer-to-peer file sharing networks, and showed that, in some cases, it is possible to assess the number of users, the amount of shared data, and the exact media being shared.

My study focuses on Portuguese broadband products/ISPs, like Netcabo and Sapo, so I showed that their users have a predictable behavior, since they are "forced" to use specific services, when doing file piracy. This makes it less impossible for me to estimate what is being distributed over domestic broadband services.

The seminar goes on 2003-03-28, on the subject "Quality of service (QoS) and the economics of the Internet", with Professor Marvin Sirbu, Engineering and Public Policy Department and Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

You might want to visit the 2003-03-28 update, also about this Telecom seminar.