eco Congress 2009 – Sharpening the image

Cologne, 30.09.2009 – More than 300 experts gathered in Cologne from 29 – 30 September to participate in the industry’s most important event, the eco congress 2009, under the name “Sharpening the image”. The first day was dedicated to broadband, a topic as critical as ever with Germany still far from full ADSL and VDSL coverage and the situation looking unlikely to change anytime soon.

As Dr. Josef Schäfer of Vodafone noted, “The federal Government has abandoned its benchmark of giving every household a 50Mbit/s line by 2014. They would be content with 75 percent now.” Dr. Iris Henseler-Unger, of the German Federal Network Agency, pointed out that there are new partnerships emerging, with Deutsche Telekom forging alliances with other telco providers. The panel “Names & Numbers” saw a lively debate on the merits of new Top-Level Domains (TLD) for cities, with Stéphane Van Gelder, of INDOM, arguing the importance of, for example, a Paris TLD. Matthias Meyer-Schönherr, of Sedo, still saw most demand steering towards classic domains.

The panel on the Digital Dividend discussed the question “How liberal must we be in assigning new frequencies?” The panel on Unified Communications dealt with the necessity of presence amongst other vital questions in that emerging field. Microsoft’s Sven Thimm estimated that employees lose up to 20 hours per week through sub-standard communication processes. He sees big opportunities for solutions that show users which colleagues or clients are currently available – and how to best get a hold of them.

The second day of eco’s congress brought the panel on mobile technologies, presenting several approaches on how to close the digital divide, with diverging opinions on the future costs of mobile computing. John Strand, of Strand Consult, thought that Germany could evolve from one of Europe’s most expensive countries for mobile computing to become one of the cheapest.

The panel on data centers focused on energy efficiency. A consensus emerged that virtualisation was one of the most promising methods of increasing efficiency. Discussions on Cloud Computing indicated that there has been a dramatic increase on the demand side.

The presentations are available for download