6^th InfoCom Albanian Telecom Forum

6th Infocom Albania – Telecom Forum

 Time for business!

Albania as a strong developing country, must change the structure of its economy, in order to become more open and competitive, creating a convergence path with the EU. To achieve this convergence, citizens need to have full access to the interconnection that internet offers and become part of the European Information society. Apart from access to information community for people, Information and Communication technologies are the highway that leads businesses to an outward orientation, providing access into the European market. Because eventually, every business is Digital Business.

For sure the digital business transformation, should be achieved not by steps, but with jumps. And for this reason, fundamental changes in both regulatory and institutional level are needed. Communication technologies, have a major role to play in this transformation process, and in order to meet the demand, available resources, such as radio spectrum, should be reallocated according the near future exponential need.

It’s all about connectivity

A key problem, but also an opportunity for the Telecommunications business, is to develop infrastructures to bridge the digital divide between citizens and reach every corner of the country, opening up communication routes.

At this point, a discussion starts about the structure that access networks should have.

Should they be based on wireless / satellite access -where the cost for installation of physical infrastructure is not a big problem-or wired (copper or fiber optic) which offer significantly higher bandwidth and speed but with significantly higher installation cost?

Of course, hybrid or cooperative proposals, are gaining ground, indicating that wireless and fixed access could deployed complementary and not competitive.

The participants at this session will develop the possibilities for the evolution of the available infrastructure and the conjunction with new modules that can multiply their capabilities.

What are the new technologies which attract CTO’s attention and what operating models can be applied?

Do they expect collaborative models for providing voice, internet and TV content under common platforms?

In cloud we trust

Of course the need for connection, resulting from the fact that current developments in IT enable companies to gain access to a huge variety of software tools that, until now, was absolutely unprofitable to host them in their own premises, and also too difficult and costly to develop from scratch.

Nowadays, a huge toolbox of virtual infrastructure allows increasing enterprise productivity and exponential awareness of products and services, freeing business from local installation restrictions, maintenance and development costs.

All these, are not limited to a local product level, but open new markets and customer needs, by creating new ecosystems with their own development models. M2M, Smart Grids, Fleet Management, Education and Health, most of the definition Everything as a Service.  Anything that can be transformed to information is a potential service.

In this section participants will present the available solutions and suggestions for business cloud operation model and the advantages that enterprises can obtain by adopting it.

Leaders Summit

The round table with the participation of the Leaders of the Albanian ICT market, is to find the right balance between investment and profits, liberalization and regulation.

The investment, the need for transparent and stable institutional arrangements, the initiatives on regulatory issues, the introduction of modern connectivity framework, the next steps in mobile broadband towards 4G, are the main concerns of the CEO’s.

This is also opens the debate about digital television, releasing new spectral regions and natural synergies as multipliers, in order to enable providers to offer a variety of services to consumers.