eWORK 2000 - European Telework Week

New Ways to Work 2000European TeleworkTechnological Platform: trends and usageMost economic analysts and technology planners are suffering the lack of precise parameters that may enableto build more accurate forecasts regarding technology trends.A good example of it is carrying studies about the dissemination of e-mail in a given environment , where thepopulation sample has to be segmented between those who have access and those who have not, between thosewho are qualified and those who are not, those who have the need and those who hasn’t, etc.; while theavailable data do not even allow to know how many and in which domains have people registered their e-mailaddresses. A similar situation appears when one needs to calculate the level of penetration of ICT in theworkplace.To make it even more complicated to navigate in this scenario, already full of surveys and statisticalchemistry, is the fact that we still living under a “technology push” environment where some products need tobe put into the market at an early stage of their life in order to achieve a critical mass that justifies futuredevelopments and corresponding R & D investment.However, this situation risks producing a negative effect among new entrants into the Information Society, notonly because the entrance barrier is still fixed at a $1,000 US. Dlls for a desk top computer and at double theprice for a portable unit; but because there is still a compromise between the performance of the technologyand the time required to adapt to it.Today, before one can dictate to a machine at normal speaking speed and personal accent, one has to adapt tothe speed and accent recognition of the machine. Desk top videoconferencing is not yet accessible toeverybody, as one has to know how many frames per second can our camera take and if we have enoughbandwidth for a full motion effect.The old principle that “small is beautiful and simple even better” is proving to adapt well to the Italian userneeds. During 1999 the number of mobile subscribers has overtaken the number of fixed line subscribers witha penetration rate over 50% of the country total population, while the PC’s penetration ratio has remained ataround 11% and internet access at 7.9%.Mobile Telephony in Italy1995 1996 1997 1998 1999Total N° of subscribers 3,915,000 8,415,000 11,739,000 20,500,000 28,500,000Source: CENSISWhile it still make take some time before there is a wide availability of ADSL bandwidth across the country orCable Modem services; in the short term the answer to a quick deployment of the Information Society andcatch-up of Italy into this centuries growth, most probably will come out from the enhancement of WAPmobile servicesPC Penetration 1998 Internet PenetrationN° of PC's Pro Capita N° of Users As % of pop.USA 107 39.6% 106 39.3%Japan 25.1 19.9% 18 14.4%France 11 18.6% 6.2 12.8%Germany 15.5 18.6% 8.4 10.0%Italy 6.6 11.6% 5 7.9%Spain 3.5 9.0% 3.1 8.7%U.K. 15.6 26.4% 10.6 18.0%Source: Censis, CNEL - FTI- 82 -