Dot.eu

In 1999 the European Council began discussing a single top-level domain for Europe. After several years of consideration, the European Commission appointed EURid as the operator of the .eu registry in 2003 and the general registration for the domain began in April 2006. Five years after its establishment, “dot.eu” internet domain name has more than 3.4 million registrations and has become the 9^th biggest top-level domain on the Internet and ranks in 4^th place in Europe.

This is an EU policy in action that has particularly benefited small and medium enterprises, which top the registrations. It can add value to rural businesses as it raises their profile on European markets by providing them with a pan-European identity on the internet. An “.eu” web presence is instantly recognized by customers who may otherwise be suspicious of a country domain name they do not recognize. A study of the brand strength of the “.eu” done in 2009-2010 found that “.com” had the strongest brand, but among the recent domain names .eu was most recognized (70%).

An additional benefit for rural businesses across Europe is that “.eu” in any of the 23 official languages of the EU and so does not require good knowledge of English for registration and for managing problems. It also allows the use of special letters such as "é", "ö", "ç" or "č" as well as non-Latin scripts such as the Cyrillic "ю", "ф", "ж", "й" or the Greek "ε", "ω", "μ", "φ" to the left of the ".eu" web-address, which is especially good news for Bulgaria.

The domain is most popular in Germany, where it has more than 1 million registrations, followed by the Netherlands with almost half a million, UK and France. In Bulgaria there are only 20,000 .eu registrations. However, in 2010 the increase in .eu registrations was driven by dramatic growth in Bulgaria (43%) and Estonia (39%).

Broadband access cost, speed and bundling

I came across interesting findings in the Broadband Access Cost study done for the European Commission. The study covers all EU countries, the EEA countries and some non-European countries for the period 2007-2009.

In terms of technologies used for providing broadband in the EU the xDSL offers are declining steadily since 2007, while the cable offers have the highest increase, followed by the fibre to home (FTTx) offers.

There is a steady decrease in the offers, which provide internet access only. Increasingly providers are bundling internet with telephone and television, with more than half of all broadband Internet access packages containing multiple services. This trend to bundle offers is to be observed for nearly all countries. Within the bundle market, Internet Access + Telephone offers are still predominant (24.6%) , but triple play (combining internet, telephone and TV) offers have become more important. Triple play is what we are using at home and I consider it a good option, although the speed is not very high (1MBPS). However, when we lived in Brussels, we were forced to use triple play, although we didn’t use neither the TV nor the telephone, simply because the triple play offer was cheaper than internet only access.

Our big surprise in Belgium was that all providers we checked had only metered offers, limiting the downloadable volume per month (we had 30 GB limit), something which is not done in Bulgaria for years. It turns out that apart from Belgium, Canada, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland and the UK, are also still having some metered offers in terms of limited number of hours per month or limited downloadable volume. The great majority of providers throughout EU, however, are offering unmetered internet access.

The study considers broadband access ranging from 144KBPS to 20+MBPS. The conclusions are that overall the prices decreased since 2007, with prices for lower speeds slightly increasing and prices for higher speeds decreasing. The decrease in prices is more significant in new member states (NMS). In general, within one country, the offers with higher bit-rates tend to be more expensive offers.

There are some countries, including Bulgaria, and also Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia, which offer all the different speed segments from slowest to fastest internet.

When comparing the average Broadband Internet Access Cost (based on the least expensive offers per country and expressed in EUR/PPP) in the New Member States (NMS) with the average in the EU15, prices in the former are higher in 2 of the 7 baskets. In October 2009, the average cost in the NMS is lower in the following baskets: 144-512 kbps incl., 512-1024 kbps incl., 1024-2048 kbps incl., 4096-8192kbps incl. and 8192-20Mbps incl.

The comparison over time of the Broadband Internet Access Cost in the New Member States (NMS) indicates a further decrease of costs, already observed in April 2009, in the baskets 4096 kbps - 8192 kbps incl., 8192 kbps-20 Mbps incl. and 20+ Mbps. This could possibly be stimulating consumers in the NMS into migrating to higher speeds.

This study provides some good news for rural and mountainous areas. The general tendency of decrasing prices makes the internet more accessible, especially in NMS where the prices are decreasing most rapidly. For the countries, which offer a wide range of broadband services with different speeds, rural and mountainous areas benefit of being able to choose different packages, including lower-speed packages at lower prices. The study mentions certain packagesm, which are not offered in all regions of a country, but they mainly include higher speed packages. The tendency to offer bundled packages including internet, telephone and TV also will add value to the service in rural areas.

ITC, Soft Skills and Women

I came across a study of managing organization and business readiness towards information technologies and information society implementation. The study quotes evidence from different authors that despite the huge investment in IT/IS (e.g. in US IT capital investment has reached 50% of business capital spending), the return on investment and the take up by industries has been disappointing. The authors argue that the main reason is that too much focus has been given to “hard issues” of IT/IS implementation, while the “soft issues” which underpin the capability of the organization to successfully implement IT into its work practices have been left behind. They argue that e-readiness capability assessment is essential to reduce the pitfalls and yield positive outcomes.

It seems that in addition to the hardware, broadband, internet speed and quality, the soft issues of people, their skills and their readiness to participate in the information society are equally important for e-inclusion and bridging the digital divide.

To me it is particularly interesting how women are acquiring IT skills and why they are so underrepresented in the IT and engineering occupations.

Commissioner Neelie Kroes in a speech on the EU initiative to get every woman digital is asking: “Can anyone name a woman who set up and run their own huge ICT company? In that hall of fame, the names you think of are Jobs, Gates, the Google guys, the Skype guys, Zuckerberg and his friends. It’s time we saw a woman on that list.”

I found a study trying to explain why there are so few women in technology and science (e.g. in US in 2008 only 20% of computer programmers and engineers were women, and only 7% of mechanical and electronics engineers were women). The study found that social and environmental factors clearly contribute to the underrepresentation of women in technology and science.

Negative stereotypes about girls’ and women’s abilities in engineering and science persist and can adversely affect their performance in these fields. The research shows that not only do most people associate math and science with “male,” they often hold negative opinions of women in “masculine” jobs or positions, like scientists or engineers.

Research by Mahzarin Banaji, a former AAUW fellow, and her colleagues at Harvard University shows that even individuals who consciously reject negative stereotypes about women in science often still believe that science is better suited to men at an unconscious level. These unconscious beliefs or implicit biases may be more powerful than explicitly held beliefs and values simply because we are not aware of them. A test has been developed to see people’s unconscious believes in this field. I took the test and to my surprise the result was that I have very strong unconscious bias against women participating in science and engineering.

It seems that in the information age we need to not only develop infrastructure and hardware and train and prepare people, but to overcome our biases from the past.