Nino Patané interviewed by ICT Trade Magazine on Storage Market

ITM ICT Trade Magazine  interviewed the companies that they consider the leading players in the storage market in Italy: Buffalo Technologies, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Hp, Ibm, Imation, Iomega, NetApp Italia. Buffalo has been presented through the interview with Nino Patané. Nino Patanè has laucnhed Bufallo Technology’s operations in Italy.

Click here to see the article.

Major news on Wi-Max in ITALY – Competitive tender for licenses allocation

On 26^th September 2007, the Broadband Business Forum and Von Italy took place in Rome. During the session, dedicated to the new BWA technologies, the Minister of Communications, Mr Gentiloni, officially stated that the competitive tender for the WiMax license allocation is to be held in the next few days. Later, in the section dedicated to Questions and Answers, Mr Vimercati, Communications deputy Minister, assured that the possibility to choose between the standard 802.16d (the 2004) and version 802.16e will be granted to the winners of the tender. Having been asked on the same subject, Mr Decina, Professor of Telecommunications Faculty at Politecnico of Milan and President of Ugo Bordoni Foundation, confirmed that the option to choose freely between the two standards will be left to the winners.

WiMax Italy – Guidelines are now officially released

As previously stated, during the Broadband Access Forum Meeting held in Naples, on 16th January 2007, AGCOM (the Communications Regulatory Authority - Agcom - is an independent Italian authority, established by Law n. 249 of 31 July 1997) declared their intention to define during June the guidelines for the allocation of rights for users of broadband wireless frequencies operating at 3.5 Mhz.

It actually happened and had its maximum expression in the drawing up of Resolution n. 209/07/CONS. This resolution plays a key role and the way that led to it’s drawing up has been long and tortuous: first of all, some frequencies that previously belonged to the Defense Ministry had to be set free, then AGCOM had to analyze the approximately 70 inquiries sent by Operators belonging to that field. In Italy, Wi-Max aroused a growing interest because it is expected to solve the hoary issue of digital divide, and also because a relevant number of operators had already declared an interest to enter this market, which looks like a great opportunity, at least on all appearances.

In a context like the Italian one, where the telecommunication market competition is strictly controlled by regulations, a call for bids to allocate the rights of users is unavoidable, or at least advisable: “The number of interest displays”, quotes the Resolution, ”widely exceeds the band availability “.

From a technical point of view, the Ministry of Telecommunications, in the 27 March 2007 note, reported to the Authority that, thanks to the agreement signed up with Ministry of Defense, a band of total amplitude of 150 MHz, situated inside the 3,4-3,6 GHz band, can be split in two blocks of MHz 75 since the beginning of the procedures of selection. This band can be free enough from interferences to be destined to civil use, provided that in some geographical areas this band of 150 MHz can be set progressively free from interferences deriving from the last Ministerial usage. In addition, the Ministry makes available 2×75 MHz of 3.5 GHz. Band for public services.

To define the number of rights for users that can be granted according to availability, the Authority, in the first place, asserts that a right of a user of at least 2×21 MHz is the essential requirement to provide high quality services. Public calls for bids should have begun in July 2007, but it seems to have been delayed once again. As it already happened for other calls for frequencies allocation, the possession time will be determined in 15 years in order to allow Operators an adequate return on the investment. The call criterion will be based on the best economic offer. One of the risks of a similar procedure, as already underlined, is the fact that existing operators can buy up all available frequencies and delay the realization of alternatives broadband networks. For this reason, the Authority suggests “to reserve a preferential treatment to the operators that do not have other spectral resources to offer broadband services comparable to BWA. The aim is to develop new networks of access to broadband and to improve the number of operators deeply- routed on the territory, maybe on a regional base, so that they can offer a variety of services more aimed at the citizens’ local requirements”.

In the past months, one of the most discussed topics was the settlement of geographical areas. The hypothesis of “creating small homogenous geographical areas or provincial allotments” was rejected because “in some areas of the country the call could have failed due to a reduced business interest and therefore force the Administration to repeat the allocation procedures”. The final decision is to proceed on a macro-regional base “by putting together only regions that are territorially adjacent and by stating a minimum number of two and maximum number of four regions that can be grouped together. The Italian islands are not bound to this aggregation rule”.

To sum up, a report that underlines the Authority’s farsightedness establishes that “if after 30 months from the release of the rights for users, the assignee (or person to whom the frequency has been adjudged) does not demonstrate concrete possibilities of direct or indirect use of the frequencies to provide services of broadband wireless access, than every reasonable demand for access to the same frequencies in different areas from those indicated in the initial cover plans will be satisfied on the basis of business negotiation and fair non-discriminating terms. Such restriction can be justified by the necessity to guarantee an efficient use of the frequencies for the aims they were intended for, in case of shortage of accesses to broadband networks”.

WiMax update for Italy

Some public examinations announced by the Ministry of Communications – involving trade associations like Assoprovider (AIIP), manufacturing industries, fix, mobile and WLL operators, and consumers’ associations and preliminary to the technological experimentation phase took place in October 2004.

From these examinations a strong interest towards the fixed WiMax technology became clear: the entirety of the sector’s operators expectations were addressed to the use of WiMax in the frequency band of 3,4-3,6 GHz rather than in the shared band used in the rest of Europe. We have to underline that, when the public examinations took place, the so called “WiFi decree” dated 4th October 2005 had not been issued and the concept of “WiFi range ” had to be read as the overcoming of the restriction of the laws in use.

During the WiFi Forum the use of 2,3-2,7 GHz (licensed band) and 5,725-5,85 GHz (not-licensed band) in addition to the already mentioned 3,4-3,6 GHz band and its extensions 3,3-3,4 GHz e 3,6-3,8 GHz had been proposed. Basically the destination use for these frequencies bands in Italy, as established by the National Plan of frequencies distribution approved by the Ministry of Communications, followed the expectations.

In particular, in picture we see that the band 2,5-2,690 GHz (destined, according to the WiMax Forum indications, to the mobile WiMax) has to be destined, from January 2008, to the IMT2000/UMTS services (see notes 163A, 163B and 164 from the National Plan of frequencies distribution, dated 5^th July 2005). It shows that the frequencies which will be proposed to the fixed WiMax, are, at the moment, used by radiolocation services and are now managed by the Ministry of Defence. This Ministry, in the already mentioned technological experimentation, allowed, in some areas of Italy, the use of some parts of the frequency band 3,4-3,6 GHz.

The activities carried out induced the Authority for the Communication Warranties (“Garante delle Telcomunicazioni”) to call a 60 days public consultation, in November 2006, aiming “to obtain information and documentation elements” useful to regulation purposes and to evaluate the interest towards the above mentioned band in order to justify “ its limits at the services and networks characteristics”.

After that, in December 2006, the Ministry of Defence issued a press release announcing the start of a table of negatition with the Ministry of Communications to the progressive transfer in frequency of their 3,5 GHz band radar and telecommunication services, requested for the development of the services supported by the WiMax technology in the territory”.

Thanks to these negotiations, 35+35 MHz in the 3.4÷3.6 GHz band – divisible even in more than one national macro areas – will be available from June 2007.

As heard in the last Broadband Access Forum meeting held in Naples, in 16th January 2007, the Italian Ministry of Communications will make a public tender of the frequencies for WiMax next June 2007. It will be interesting to see if incumbents will create speculations, buying licenses they will never use, as happened with WLL in 2002!!

For more information on WiMax in Italy, please feel free to contact Nino Patane’: info@trendeurope.com

Linking and being linked? Does it make sense? – Reciprocal linking

Does it make sense to link websites and being linked by others? Nowadays most of the links are created via software i.e. you can be linked even if your website has never been visited once. Many links are provided “automatically” but they are of a very poor quality. Webmasters initially wanted to provide links to visitors as a resource, advising on good websites to visit next. Today, in many cases thousands and thousands of websites are online just to get money from Google Adsense, Zanox, Tradedoubler, Yahoo Ouverture, and other similar advertising affiliation resources. Another reason to look for being linked or doing “link exchange” is to get an high “PageRank” from search engines. Link exchange could be very useful as resource for both sites if they have a correlation, however more and more frequently reciprocal links are useless since they frequently are not adding value to the visitors of both linked websites. But search engines while consider of low value the reciprocal linking, consider higher the one-way links instead. For this reason who is looking for getting an high grade and high rank on search engines use sometime a triangle links method that means that Web-A links Web-B that links Web-C that links Web, or other similar schemes that are a little more complex. Does it make sense to link websites and being linked by others by reciprocal linking or similar methods? Every time a search engines expert find a way to trick a search engines, there is a search engines guru that finds a way to eliminate the effect of the trick. The google dance. How to increase the popularity, the page rank then? I would suggest to forget of all the tricky techniques that are never giving a real advantage. I strongly suggest to work and focus on the website content to provide a good content that makes your website linked by others because of the value of the content. Good and valuable website content and good online reputation will make your website linked on a long term perspective and will consistently increase your page rank and web popularity.

Ecommerce in Italy B2C – Status mid year 2006

Ecommerce in Italy B2c (IT, PC, Consumer Electronics) – Status mid year 2006 online sales – IT and consumer electronics online sales B2c, which in 2005 accounted for approximately 310 millions €, would close in 2006 with a growth of 40% a little more of 430 Millions Euro, being in Italy at the second position (in online sales revenue) after the Tourism, that is the leading component of the eCommerce B2C in Italy: almost 11% of the whole market is represented by B2c IT and CE.

The penetration rate, compared to the total retail sales, is equivalent to 3% and offers considerable opportunity of growth especially if comparing with international levels. In 2006 almost 2,5 million of online orders will be executed by ecommerce websites for IT and CE products. The average “cash slip” (average sales value per order) will be slightly higher of 180€, a drop of 15% compared to 2005 also due to the rise of the “E-bay computer shops”, which average sales is much lower to other online sales companies and due to the rise, in sales, of consumables and accessories.

In 2006 the major part of the market stays concentrated on the hands of the “dot com pure players” companies, running the business according to the “virtual reseller” model and of the few operators of the major retail distribution who invested in online channel.

During 2005 “Monclick” entered the market as the first operator “pure player” but not “dot com”, having the support of the leader of IT and CE distribution in Italy (the distributor Esprinet who owns Monclick at 100%).

In the “virtual resellers” category, the dominant companies, have an aggreagetd market share that is the lowest between all principal sectors of the online sales in general (when considering the market share of the major players). The online sales business is NOT concentred yet. For the major virtual resellers, is more and more difficult to keep a sufficient margin. Only the few initiatives with a dominant market position, e.g. MrPrice and ePrice are able to reach a volume which allows them to have, even if low, a contractual power in front of the suppliers (vendors and distributors).

There are at least three the development directions on facing this phenomenon:

• don’t rely completely on a pure reseller virtual model but try, as much as possible to operate following a mixed logic, accepting to not purchase only after the order has been taken from the final customer, but taking purchasing opportunities with interesting margin;
• extending the range to the product categories not strictly linked to IT, PC and consumer electronic, e.g. the sport and spare time products, bricolage, health, beauty, jewellery, which could grant margin profit definitely higher;
• more focus on “margins generators” cross & up selling (like foreign companies – e.g Pixmania – which are more advanced in this area does.

Major retail organization, even if they can count on better deals and margins, are still struggling to get success in the online sales with the exception of MediaWolrd (Mediamarket) that is already well established.

Until now the competition in online sales has been mainly on price. As consequence the role of “comparators” website (Kelkoo, Trovaprezzi, Costameno, etc.) has been critical to get orders but also further compressing the margins. The competition and success in the coming years will be driven instead by the overall service provided to the customers. And a lot of effort is being placed in this direction by the major players.

Italy ecommerce major players: click here to read the document “ecommerce_Italy.pdf (1 page in english – pdf, 7 KB)”

For more information on Italian and European markets write an email to TrendEurope (European IT Sales and Marketing Agency) info@trendeurope.com and see www.trendeurope.com

Source: Osservatorio B2c Politecnico di Milano Click here to download the full doc (51 pages in Italian – pdf, 2 MB)

The search engine’s dancing world

Obtaining top ranking is an art. Web marketing experts discover every day new ways and new technical strategies to get top ranking, while search engines algorithms evolve every day …and create the conditions to find further ways and further technical strategies to get a top ranking. It’s a cycle. It works like this since the early days of webmarketing and search engines marketing. Will change? May be, but for the time being this is the dance of the search engine marketing. The google dance.