P1047

Personal Nets - defining the concept

closed

Forming Question
The question this Study will address is: Is the generic concept of Personal Nets technically feasible, and are they in the foreseeable future commercially achievable and acceptable from a customer point of view, and if so what activities could EURESCOM undertake to push those developments forward?

Rationale
Personal Nets are a generic concept for providing an individualised, user-centric solution to the longer-term integration of all communication and information services. They have been proposed on many occasions over the last few years. More recently the concept appeared in a variety of forms at EURESCOM’s FDW2000 workshop. The concept was explored at EURESCOM in P703 (Key Requirements on the Global/European Information Infrastructure) and is currently a topic of study in EURESCOM in P926 CASPIAN.
Many Shareholders have some realisation of this concept within their technology visions. The term Personal Nets is used here in a generic sense to include similar concepts such as advanced IP VPN Services, Virtual Nets, Personal Virtual Environments and MyOwnNets. A key element of these concepts and visions is that Personal Nets maybe destined to become a ubiquitous mass-market phenomenon.
This is a feasibility Study, which is about testing the concept of Personal Nets. Depending upon the results and recommendations of this Study there is the possibilities for follow through activities leading to the development of a Personal Net demonstrator or test bed.

Objectives
The main objectives of this Study are to:

• identify and clarify from a customer point of view, the technical and business models and concepts of Personal Nets bearing the changing paradigm of the digital economy in mind (i.e. different models for co-operation in service provisioning)
• prepare and facilitate a cross disciplinary workshop of people to investigate the underlying technologies, likely services and applications, and the business model of the Personal Net concept
• use the workshop output to determine collaborative activities that could be undertaken at EURESCOM
• establish a EURESCOM based online forum to support a European wide Personal Net programme

Project clients and intended exploitation of results
The clients for the results of this Study are business unit and research managers at Shareholders organizations with responsibility for exploring new market opportunities arising from new technology applications.

The results of the Study may be exploited individually within each Shareholder organisations. It is anticipate that the results of the Study will influence the understanding of user needs and behavior, stimulate ideas for potentially new markets, guide thinking on alternative business models and suggest new in house or collaborative R&D activities.

D2 Abstract:
This study has taken the first steps towards understanding what future users might require of a ubiquitous communication and computing environment, and how future technology capabilities might be shaped to their individual needs. This study proposes that users will have their own ‘personalised place’ in cyberspace, a concept called a ‘Personal Net’.

Although built with technology, the Personal Net is not solely a technology-based concept. At the structural level the Personal Net can be thought of as a collection, or web, of relationships we have with others around us, with the ecologies we live and work in, the businesses we deal with, the objects and devices we employ, with the information we use, and the knowledge we generate. This network of relationships is rich, dynamic and purposeful; it is also unique for each individual. Collectively these relationships are the building blocks for all the applications a user might require, now and in the future.

The Study Team appreciates that they have only made initial investigations into this topic and suggests next steps to EURESCOM and its shareholders.

D2 Suggested Readers:
Business, marketing and technology strategists interested in understanding the wider issues of providing advanced user centred networked applications and services in a converged media environment.