Monkeys, typewriters and networks: the internet in the light of the theory of accidental excellence

Viewed in the light of the theory of accidental excellence, there is much to suggest that the success of the Internet and its various protocols derives from a communications technology accident, or better, a series of accidents. In the early 1990s, many experts still saw the Internet as an academic toy that would soon vanish into thin air again. The Internet probably gained its reputation as an academic toy largely because it violated the basic principles of traditional communications networks. The quarrel about paradigms that erupted in the 1970s between the telephony world and the newly emerging Internet community was not, however, only about transmission technology doctrines. It was also about the question – still unresolved today – as to who actually governs the flow of information: the operators or the users of the network? The paper first describes various network architectures in relation to the communication cultures expressed in their make-up. It then examines the creative environment found at the nodes of the network, whose coincidental importance for the Internet boom must not be forgotten. Finally, the example of Usenet is taken to look at the kind of regulatory practices that have emerged in the communications services provided within the framework of a decentralised network architecture. --

Monkeys, typewriters and networks: the internet in the light of the theory of accidental excellence

"Viewed in the light of the theory of accidental excellence, there is much to suggest that the success of the Internet and its various protocols derives from a communications technology accident, or better, a series of accidents. In the early 1990s, many experts still saw the Internet as an academic toy that would soon vanish into thin air again. The Internet probably gained its reputation as an academic toy largely because it violated the basic principles of traditional communications networks. The quarrel about paradigms that erupted in the 1970s between the telephony world and the newly emerging Internet community was not, however, only about transmission technology doctrines. It was also about the question - still unresolved today - as to who actually governs the flow of information: the operators or the users of the network? The paper first describes various network architectures in relation to the communication cultures expressed in their make-up. It then examines the creative environment found at the nodes of the network, whose coincidental importance for the Internet boom must not be forgotten. Finally, the example of Usenet is taken to look at the kind of regulatory practices that have emerged in the communications services provided within the framework of a decentralised network architecture." (author's abstract)"Aus der Perspektive der Theorie von der zufälligen Entstehung herausragender Leistungen spricht vieles dafür, daß sich der Erfolg des Internet und der ihm zugrundeliegenden technischen Standards einer Reihe von kommunikationstechnischen Zufällen verdankt. Noch in den frühen 1990er Jahren galt das Internet in den Augen vieler Experten als akademisches Spielzeug ohne große Zukunft, denn es widersprach allen Konstruktionslehren herkömmlicher Telekommunikationsnetze. Der Paradigmenstreit, der in den 1970er Jahren zwischen der Telefonwelt und der sich herausbildenden Internetgemeinde ausbrach, drehte sich nicht nur um die 'rechte' Art von Übertragungstechnik. Es ging dabei auch um die - bis heute unentschiedene - Frage, wer über den Kommunikationsfluß herrscht: die Betreiber oder die Nutzer des Netzes? Der Aufsatz beschreibt zunächst unterschiedliche Netzarchitekturen und setzt diese in Beziehung zu den jeweiligen Kommunikationskulturen, die sich in ihre Gestalt eingeschrieben haben. Anschließend wird die an den Netzknoten beheimatete, kreative Umgebung dargestellt, deren Bedeutung für die rasche Ausbreitung des Internet nicht unterschätzt werden sollte. Am Beispiel des Usenet wird schließlich auf die regulativen Praktiken eingegangen, die sich im Rahmen der dezentralen Internetarchitektur bei den Kommunikationsdiensten gebildet haben." (Autorenreferat

The digital challenge for multinational mobile network operators. More marginalization or rejuvenation?

Multinational mobile network operators (MNOs) rapidly emerged in the early 1990s and for a decade and a half were the dominant actors in their industry. We analyze the development and competitiveness of a typical MNO, Telenor. With the introduction of 4G in 2010, we show that Telenor, like other MNOs largely failed to respond to the opportunity that connectivity provided to develop digital services. Instead, these were developed by technology platform companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Telenor became a marginalized supplier of standardized internet connectivity. We argue that the ‘decade of lost opportunity’ (2010-2020) for Telenor was a product of a lack of ‘recombinant firm-specific advantages’ (FSARs). With the launch of 5G, an emerging global digital infrastructure, this sidelining is set to intensify unless Telenor responds to this new opportunity by developing B2B digital services. We analyze the FSARs that are necessary for a successful transition of capturing the value that 5G provides and the degree to which they are present, or potentially present, in Telenor

HADOOPING THE MARKETING GAME

Big data allows marketers to define and describe their customers at a more detailed and precise level than it was even considered possible just a couple of years ago. With the speed this field is evolving, big data is becoming increasingly important in the marketing domain. While it is not a problem to collect the data, the problem remains to leverage these vast amounts of data, coming from different sources, in an efficient manner. Most marketing departments use many marketing applications, causing data fragmentation problems. This paper describes a different, data-driven approach that refers to this problem by using the Data Lake concept allowing the marketers to leverage data as their biggest and most valuable resource in a more agile and flexible manner. The goal is to collect the data, across all applications and channels, consolidate it and analyze all at once, regardless of source and type, which will enable a more complete picture of customer behavior than ever before, answer questions that were previously unanswerable, give rise to many other possibilities, and by extension – lead to more profit. We describe in detail the strategy and its benefits, give an overview of technologies in terms of functionalities inside the Data Lake architecture, and finally, we elaborate the advantages of this concept, in comparison to traditional marketing techniques, through some of the many use cases that show how this approach can respond to the challenges of marketing today and in the future

HADOOPING THE MARKETING GAME

Big data allows marketers to define and describe their customers at a more detailed and precise level than it was even considered possible just a couple of years ago. With the speed this field is evolving, big data is becoming increasingly important in the marketing domain. While it is not a problem to collect the data, the problem remains to leverage these vast amounts of data, coming from different sources, in an efficient manner. Most marketing departments use many marketing applications, causing data fragmentation problems. This paper describes a different, data-driven approach that refers to this problem by using the Data Lake concept allowing the marketers to leverage data as their biggest and most valuable resource in a more agile and flexible manner. The goal is to collect the data, across all applications and channels, consolidate it and analyze all at once, regardless of source and type, which will enable a more complete picture of customer behavior than ever before, answer questions that were previously unanswerable, give rise to many other possibilities, and by extension – lead to more profit. We describe in detail the strategy and its benefits, give an overview of technologies in terms of functionalities inside the Data Lake architecture, and finally, we elaborate the advantages of this concept, in comparison to traditional marketing techniques, through some of the many use cases that show how this approach can respond to the challenges of marketing today and in the future

Strategies of launching Swedish automobiles - SAAB into Indian market

Abstract   As domestic markets have become saturated, multinational corporations (MNC) are turning their attention to international markets to increase their market share, revenues and their profits. MNCs activities have become increasingly global in scope, whereby going abroad is crucial if they are to succeed. This process is a challenge because the MNCs needs to overcome the barriers which hinder their entry into the targeted markets. They have to map outan entry strategy and choose the right entry mode. The focus of this paper is on how General Motors (GM) as a MNC can launch the Swedish SAAB brand of cars into India. Our analyses, which cover the period up to 2010,suggest that the best way to penetrate the Indian car market was by choosing the mix between exporting and local assembly as their entry mode. This helped GM to successfully penetrate its products, control investments and increase its competitive strength against domestic and foreign firms within the Indian market. Although recently the SAAB is in difficulty and almost bakrupt, the importance of this paper rests on the lesson how car manufacturers can enter foreign markets, especially in India.  Keywords:car industry, SAAB, indian market, entry mode, barriers JEL: D24, L11, M3

COIN : a customisable, incentive driven video on demand framework for low-cost IPTV services

There has been a significant rise in the provision of television and video services over IP (IPTV) in recent years. Increasing network capacity and falling bandwidth costs have made it both technically and economically feasible for service providers to deliver IPTV services. Several telecommunications (telco) operators worldwide are rolling out IPTV solutions and view IPTV as a major service differentiator and alternative revenue source. The main challenge that IPTV providers currently face, however, is the increasingly congested television service provider market, which also includes Internet Television. IPTV solutions therefore need strong service differentiators to succeed. IPTV solutions can doubtlessly sell much faster if they are more affordable or low-cost. Advertising has already been used in many service sectors to help lower service costs, including traditional broadcast television. This thesis therefore explores the role that advertising can play in helping to lower the cost of IPTV services and to incentivise IPTV billing. Another approach that IPTV providers can use to help sell their product is by addressing the growing need for control by today's multimedia users. This thesis will therefore explore the varied approaches that can be used to achieve viewer focused IPTV implementations. To further lower the cost of IPTV services, telcos can also turn to low-cost, open source platforms for service delivery. The adoption of low-cost infrastructure by telcos can lead to reduced Capital Expenditure (CAPEX), which in turn can lead to lower service fees, and ultimately to higher subscriptions and revenue. Therefore, in this thesis, the author proposes a CustOmisable, INcentive (COIN) driven Video on Demand (VoD) framework to be developed and deployed using the Mobicents Communication Platform, an open source service creation and execution platform. The COIN framework aims to provide a viewer focused, economically competitive service that combines the potential cost savings of using free and open source software (FOSS), with an innovative, incentive-driven billing approach. This project will also aim to evaluate whether the Mobicents Platform is a suitable service creation and execution platform for the proposed framework. Additionally, the proposed implementation aims to be interoperable with other IPTV implementations, hence shall follow current IPTV standardisation architectures and trends. The service testbed and its implementation are described in detail and only free and open source software is used; this is to enable its easy duplication and extension for future research.TeX output 2012.03.02:1241Adobe Acrobat 9.2 Paper Capture Plug-i

ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education

In This Issue Points to Ponder When a CLEC Comes Calling ELECs, CLECs: New Opportunities for Your Campus? Washington Writes (and Rewrites) the Rules The Virtual Campus: Reality Check for the 21st Century Coping with Unauthorized Charges Cable Management: Control Over Chaos Institutional Excellence Award: TeleCommunity Center at Central Methodist College Interview Column

Study on Human-Computer Interaction Design for Organizational Knowledge Management Portal

Knowledge has been identified as the most crucial commodity in many organizations. To achieve competitive advantage among its competitors in the industries, an organization should take further step ahead to nurture strategies on how to manage knowledge assets as effective and as efficient as possible. However, though the knowledge management system is exist in an organization, it is not fully utilized by the end users due to many reasons like corporate culture, lack of motivation, technology issues, lack of user-friendly layout, etc. The aim of this project is to study the relationship between human-computer interaction and knowledge management system and how these two major elements work together to achieve knowledge management system objectives in a corporate environment. It explores the importance to satisfy user requirements to grant the success of knowledge management system. In addition, the aim is to obtain and shares the efficient and effective strategies on how to build the interactive and friendly user interface for the organizational knowledge management system

Telecommunication data monetization

The aim of the study was to find out what kind of telecommunication data monetization models are interesting and potential. The focus was on finding out what kind of business model trends there are already, how telco data can be collected and monetized, how mature telco data monetization is and how telco data monetization can be advanced by adopting already existing models or creating innovative ways to do business from scratch. Empirical part consisted of theme interviews and workshops on the topics. The study indicates that internal telco data monetization is quite mature and it has been developed for a long time but many of the external telco data monetization projects are in piloting and testing phase. Telecommunication data monetization is quite similar with other data monetization processes, so already existing effective and profitable models can be adopted and clear need for creating totally new business models was not found. Location telco data based insight was seen as the most valuable way to do external monetization while also IoT and sensor telco data as a value were seen potential in the future. In telco data monetization projects, one of the biggest key activities is to fulfill data privacy regulations and still keep the business profitable