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S p e c i a l t o p i c
GUEST CONTRIBUTION
The future of telecommunications
and information technology
Josef Brauner
M
odern information technology has given us an era of far-reaching
changes world-wide. Permanent innovation quickly makes the new
old. Day by day, our market is increasing its speed of development as
a result of the multiplication of knowledge inherent in the system.
Completely new production and value-added chains are developing
from the achievements of the high-tech era. Global networking is
the instigator of new causal chains, hence the driving force behind
growing interactions and dependencies.
kids' room were the winners in
last Christmas's retail trade,
tickets for the journey into the
digital world are being bought
earlier and earlier.
As Mark Twain said, "It is hard to
make predictions, especially about
the future". And if we take a look
at the forecasts made ten or fifteen
years ago, whether in science,
business or politics, we realise
how to define humility. More than
ever, rapid technological and business
change plays a dominant role
in important company decisions.
The future now starts afresh every
day and requires planning with
foresight.
BOUNDLESS GROWTH
The German telecommunications
market is expected to grow from
DM 90 billion in 1996 to DM 154
billion in the year 2002. In 1995
1.9 million Internet users surfed
on the "data highway" in Germany
and it is predicted that in the year
2001 the figure will be 16 million.
Five years ago 10 million people
world-wide used the Internet. The
figure now stands at about 160
million. For the year 2005 forecasters
are assuming that a billion
users will be connected to
each other by the net of nets. On
the basis of continued broadband
cabling more than half the households
in Germany will then communicate
by electronic mail.
New users of the new media come
along every day. The techniques
required in distance-working and
(Fig. Deutsche Telekom)
professional collaboration are
practised every day in private
homes. And the first wave of the
"N generation", the "net-kids" who
literally played their way into the
information age with Gameboys
are now spilling into universities
or taking A-levels. PCs for the
(Fig. Intel)
If knowledge is the capital of the
future and information is the decisive
resource; if, then, applications,
products and services of the
modern information/communication
industries are going to exert
an enormous influence on the entire
production and services sector,
the future without this industry
is no longer conceivable. In
even more concrete terms: multimedia
is the key industry of the
twenty-first century – a market
that market researchers call,
without any intended irony, an
enormous gap waiting to be filled.
MULTIMEDIA PROMISES
The meteoric development in high
technology will have effects on
the socially and economically most
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People Power Partnership