Global Communications Industry Leaders Challenge Thinking on Winning Strategies for the Consumer Broadband Revolution

BROADBAND WORLD FORUM, Venice - September 21, 2004 - A new book exploring the issues challenging the service provider industry is being previewed at the Broadband World Forum by Cisco Systems. The publication examines industry-defining topics including the profitability of Voice over IP, the role governments play in influencing the information society, the broadband home of the future and the content versus communication debate.

Connected Homes brings together 17 wide-ranging essays written by leading thinkers and senior executives in the communications and media industries from around the globe*, providing a unique, up-to-the-minute view of the consumer broadband market.

Silvio Scaglia, Chairman and CEO of e.Biscom calls for national governments to take more risks: "In order to see a better exploitation of technology, Governments should pay more attention to promoting innovation, choosing the most breakthrough technologies available. The more innovative and demanding customers are, and Governments are big spenders, the more the industry will be motivated to deliver outstanding and competitive solutions, thus inducing a positive effect."

David Hulbert, President, Walt Disney Television International, doesn't consider broadband as revolutionary as some people think - just another opportunity to re-purpose content to consumers: "People have got access to the best so they'll watch the best and only the best. And the best often happens to be a tried and trusted 'old' style of content."

Ashley Highfield, Director, BBC New Media and Technology, believes the next phase of digital TV will see public sector services playing a far greater role: "As the creative R&D for the British nation, the BBC has a distinctive role to play in creating the content, services and tools which audiences want for this future TV world and which the market at the moment cannot risk providing."

Several authors create compelling images of the home of the future. Bill Bodin, Chief Technology Officer, Internet Home Alliance and Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM explains how technology can create seamless synchronisation, seamless usage and seamless access around the home - creating, for example, an intelligent garden sprinkler system that has networked access to weather reports.

Aldo Olivari, Director and Chief Executive, Telecom Italia Lab predicts that by 2020 we may have tracking devices woven into our clothes, absorbing whatever we do and the environment around us, with the information being stored as we step back inside the house. A Personal Area Network will connect all the devices on us with our Home Area Network, triggering devices into action and storing crucial information.

Other essayist include Paul Liao, Vice President and CTO Matsushita Electric Corporation of America and President, Panasonic Technologies, Johannes Mohn Executive Vice President, Media Technology, Bertelsmann AG, Pierre Danon, CEO, BT Retail, Zhang Jia Hua, Managing Director, Product Development Division, China Telecom and Sanghoon Lee, Executive, Korea Telecom.

"Virtually every service provider is attempting to capture this embryonic, but exploding market," explains Fernando Gil de Bernabé, editor of Connected Homes and managing director of Cisco's Service Providers Internet Business Solutions Group in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, "But companies will have to make hard choices about which segments to target, which services to offer first and how to evolve a profitable business model. This book is the first to address these issues and give practical advice from organisations that are grappling with the challenges. Those that make the correct choices will prosper, while those that make the wrong one may fail, for good."

Connected Homes is fourth in a series of books produced by Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group which give up-to-the-minute analysis on private and public sectors by international visionaries. Books already published are Connected Health, Connected Cities and Connected Schools. Connected Homes is available from http://www.cisco.com/en/US/about/ac79/wp/ctd/index.html priced €15, £9.99 or $19.

Note for Editors: Complimentary press copies of Connected Homes are available from Cisco Systems at Broadband World Forum, Palazzo del Casino and Cinema, Venice Lido - Stand #2000, or through Cisco Press Contacts.