Tous Actualités
Suivre
Abonner SWICO

SWICO

SWICO launches campaign for harmonising wireless LAN services

Zurich (ots)

On the fringe of the 2003 ITU World Telecom
exhibition the Swiss ICT/CE association SWICO launched a campaign in
Geneva on 15th October with the aim of accelerating the harmonisation
of WLAN services in Switzerland, and through EU associations in the
rest of Europe as well. All activities are to be taken up or
encouraged that could lead to the rapid, sustainable, and open growth
of the WLAN market in Switzerland and the rest of Europe. More than
thirty well known service-providers from the segments of  WLAN, ISP,
WISP, fixed networks, and mobile telephony took part in the kick-off
workshop in Geneva as well as other companies, associations, and
authorities.
As Paolo Fanuli, the General Manager of SWICO, explained, his
organisation intends to make a contribution to enabling the market
for public hotspots and WLAN services in Switzerland and the rest of
Europe to develop in a way that brings the greatest advantage to
customers and suppliers alike. SWICO also aims to ensure that an open
situation of competition is created in wireless ISP (WISP) so that
the rules of the free market can have full play. This young but
rapidly growing market opens up many market opportunities to
suppliers of broadband Internet access and content services. WLAN has
the potential for contributing crucially to economic growth in the
next ten years. To give the customers the easiest possible access to
WLAN services, however, according to SWICO it is necessary to offer a
defined minimum quality standard with minimal, jointly defined,
access and accounting standards. Part of this is that the customers
should be given clear information at all times on the service levels
that are available to them and at what prices. Although it is very
easy to set up a hotspot, the devil is once again in the detail. All
according to the use and content of the information, the customer
will require a higher or lower level of security in access to
services and in the encryption of information. For SWICO it would be
desirable for major services to be able to use every hotspot
regardless of which operator or WISP was actually operating it. The
association also believes that it is only a simple pricing structure
and the possibility of roaming between different service-providers
that can contribute to the services being used without any technical
or administrative hurdles. As WLAN services are not regulated by the
authorities, the danger exists that it will grow wildly and
uncontrollably. Regulation, on the other hand, would unnecessarily
delay the development of valuable services. With this campaign,
therefore, SWICO is aiming to make a contribution to enabling the
industry to define its own quality standard voluntarily that will
bring benefits to all participants in the market, adopting the
existing and sensible international standards in the process. As a
leading Swiss industrial association for ICT/CE providers, SWICO is
in a position to mobilise all the main companies under an independent
"umbrella".
At the kick-off workshop in Geneva, after a day of intensive and also
controversial discussions agreement was quickly reached that this
campaign meets a genuine need on the part of the customers and the
suppliers. All the same, the participants stated clearly that
consensus will still have to be reached on the exact targets. The
targets that the association had set in this context merely
represented a suggestion on the basis of which a broad consensus can
be reached. To enable as many of the suppliers as possible to
participate who are interested in and affected by this issue, SWICO
is expressly calling on all other interested parties to take an
active part in defining the targets and implementing them as part of
this campaign.

Contact:

Rolf Meier, SWICO
Tel. direkt +41/1/445'38'05