FYI France: Network Ideas from Europe -- Italy (pt.1/3)

[Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.SF.CA.US>]

FYI France: Network Ideas from Europe -- Italy (pt.1/3)

The Italian networking scene is as different from the European
Communities' approach, outlined by Alan Reekie last month, as Brussels
is from Naples. Yet they both are aimed in the same European direction,
which makes the differences fascinating to a non-European observer. The
one begins everything with unifying standards, the other may be one of
the strongest forces for unifying standards in a country which recently
has had troubles finding unity.

Ettore Paolillo and Pieraugusto Pozzi present here a good overview of
networking, and in following installments they list and describe a few
of the larger recent Italian efforts. Those interested might also look
at the gopher at the University of Turin -- itocsvm.csi.it -- and at
the many other gophers popping up regularly now in Italy.


Jack Kessler

kessler@well.sf.ca.us

_________________________


NETWORKED INFORMATION IN EUROPE: The Italian Scenario

by:
Ettore Paolillo, COSI s.r.l. - Tecnologie per l'OSI ed i Sistemi Aperti
Pieraugusto Pozzi, FTI - Forum Telematico Italiano

1 .  Background

No meaningful assessment of the Italian scenario with regard to the
availability of advanced information services could be done without
considering the following trends:

a)      The strategic role of information.
Today business, and economy in general, is increasingly dominated by
the need for information: its availability in the right form, at the
right time, at the right place can provide economic operators with
important competitive advantages in nearly every sector and,
frequently, can even influence their capacity to survive.  Since almost
no economic enterprise has within itself all information needed to
perform and expand its business or to undertake new ones, access to
several external information sources is vital and has to be provided in
the most effective way.  An "information network" has to be built and
maintained with a variety of suppliers and, most importantly, suitable
means have to be provided to access information only according to
pre-determined user requirements (profiles) in order to avoid
"information overloads".

b)      The internationalisation of the information market.
Following the same pattern of globalisation of economy in almost all
sectors, the information market is more and more becoming a "global
information village". The information industry is rapidly evolving
towards an information offer which exceeds national limits.

c)      The role played by Information Technology and
Telecommunications (IT&T) in the transition from paper-based
information flows to electronic information dissemination.
The evolution from a centralized to a distributed approach in the
information market made possible by Information Technology and
Telecommunications (IT&T) has been particularly evident in the area of
the distribution of information.  With on-line Database access, in
fact, the traditional pattern of the information offer to end-users is
reverted. Users no longer need to move to the information source
directly but can, on the contrary, have information delivered directly
at their premises (both domestic and business).  However, the
distributed approach is gaining momentum as well in the area of the
build-up and maintenance of the information sources. Also databases, in
fact, no longer need to be physically resident in one place only.
On-line access and the provision of suitable "directory services" allow
for database creation and maintenance wherever it is more appropriate
and convenient in terms of the information content.

Notably, the last two considerations are of importance in assessing,
respectively, what is available today to a network user in Italy and
what kind of evolution can be expected in the medium/long term with
regard to the networked information market.  Generally speaking,
however, the existence of a networked information market implies that
whatever is available to a network user on a public network in any
country of Europe (the world) should, in principle, be as well
available to any user in any other country. This general statement is
supported by the ever increasing and almost complete coverage of Europe
by Public Switched Data Networks (PSDN) based on X.25.  In this report
the major emphasis will of course be put on the on-line databases
information market.


2 .  On-LINE DATABASE information TAXONOMY

Generally speaking, the information contained in the databases can be
classified into two different categories:

a)      "Primary" Information that are full text documents,
statistical, scientific or technical figures, formulas, reference data,
economic indicators, marketing information about products, etc.;

b)      "Secondary" Information that are abstracts or pointers to
primary information such as bibliographic information.

Databases can accordingly be categorized as primary, secondary or mixed
depending on the information content in them. In the following the
above taxonomy will be used.


3 .  The actors

Five categories of actors have to be considered in describing the
Italian networked information market:

y       End-users. These, of course, represent the final destination of
the information but, frequently, are also the active subjects
addressing different information sources and guiding the search either
directly or indirectly.

y       Network Operators represent public or private organizations
providing basic regulated communication services used to convey
information to end- users.

y       Service Providers (also called Value Added Services or VAS
Providers) are private or public organizations providing additional,
non regulated, communication services which are frequently built upon
basic telecom services provided by the public network operator.
Services provided usually include electronic messaging facilities.

y       Information Providers are the owners of somehow structured
information. These can either be commercial or non-commercial
organizations which create and maintain periodically an information
repository which is then made available to third parties under a user
agreement.

y       Information Brokers. This category of actors represent
companies which usually operate as a trait d'union between end-users
and information providers. Their offer usually consists in the
possibility for an end-user to access a vast number of information
sources of a different nature and from different providers with a
one-stop-shopping approach also from a contractual point of view.
Information brokers can also coincide with Service Providers.

According to the above categorisation, the present Italian market of
networked information will be considered in some detail in the
following chapters.

3.1 .  End-Users

Present users of networked information services are of a very different
nature:

y       Researchers/scientists in public or private organizations
accessing bibliographic information sources of a specialized nature.
y       Professionals looking for up-to-date information in different
sectors such as: economy, law, health, medicine, pharmacology etc.
y       Journalists/economic operators accessing specialized news
information services (REUTERS, ANSA, RADIOCOR, etc.)
y       Companies or public administration officers monitoring
real-time economic indicators, prices of raw materials (oil, steel,
gold, etc.), currency exchange rates, stock exchange rates,
y       Users of E-mail/messaging services
y       Registered users (both domestic and business) of electronic
bulletin- board/conferencing systems on specific issues.
y       Domestic users of general-purpose information services accessed
through low-cost network facilities such as TELETEXT provided by the TV
broadcasters and VIDEOTEXT and AUDIOTEXT services (whose commercial
names in the offer by the Italian public network operator SIP are,
respectively, VIDEOTEL and AUDIOTEL).

3.2 .  Public Network Operators

Year 1992 has marked the beginning of an impressive evolution of the
public telecommunications sector in Italy. A new law re-organizing the
whole sector was emanated in January 1992 bringing to an end a very
long period during which no clear-cut separation had existed between
operational, regulatory and control functions. This new law, beside its
additional intents of rationalisation, intended to amend this anomaly
and align the Italian situation to the views of the CEC for a complete
separation between the regulatory responsibilities of the national TLC
Administrations and the operational functions. (1) Only regulatory and
control functions are now delegated to the Italian Ministry of Post and
Telecommunications. Operational responsibilities formerly pertaining to
its two directly controlled agencies, namely A.S.S.T. and
Amministrazione P.T., have been transferred, effective 1st of January
1993, to IRITEL, a newly formed company of the state participated
I.R.I. group. On the same date A.S.S.T. ceased to exist.

With only minor exceptions (2), I.R.I. - STET now holds responsibility
for the operations of the whole public telecommunications sector
through its concessionaire companies: SIP (basic telephony and data
transmission services), ITALCABLE (international and sub-marine cable
telephony), TELESPAZIO (satellite communications) and, of course,
IRITEL.  This scenario is still far too complex, however, and I.R.I. -
STET is in turn expected to provide a complete re-structuring of the
organization of the concessionary companies. Very likely, this will
turn out in a greatly decreased number of concessionaires if not in the
unification into a single concessionaire. At the time of this writing
(March 1993), however, the re- organization is in process and few clues
can be anticipated as to the who, how and when.

It is worth noting that, today, exclusive concessions to the above
companies have been granted only for the provision of "basic" TLC
services and for equipment in the public network. In fact, as a
consequence of an on-going deregulation process, provision of all
additional services and all kind of equipment at the customer premises
is now liberalized and open to competition by companies in the private
sector.  For the time being, the only condition for the commercial
offer of value-added communication services is that the public network
infrastructure is used for the transport of information.

It has already been said that basic telecommunications services are
still operated under a monopoly condition by the public network
operator (or its concessionary companies). Interestingly enough,
however, recent years have seen a steady increase in the establishment
of Italian subsidiaries of foreign network operators (e.g. British
Telecom, France Telecom, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, TRANSPAC, etc.). Could
this be considered as an expectation that soon, following the example
of other European countries (i.e. UK), liberalisation could be extended
to basic TLC services?

(Next: some Italian network service providers.)

ISSN 1071-5916