D1

OTC-WP3-CR-002b: user requirements

This deliverable presents early user requirements. These will be captured from the four municipalities and OTEC using specific questionnaires that will be compiled very early in the project. The questionnaires will include a set of high level and generic questions for the users for the foreseen services along with more detailed questions for what the user expect from such services. The first will justify and possibly modify the proposed services while the latter will be used to draw detailed requirements for the practices, the equipment and peripheral devices to be used in the trials along with user expectation for quality of service.

D1 will be focused on the formal ways to capture requirements that are high-level questionnaires common for all trials and specific and rather more detailed ones per site. D1 is very important in order to establish the right basis for the project work, address correctly the user needs and collect the input for the definition of the entire work and target measures of success.

OTC-WP3-CR-002c: user requirements

The main goal of this document is to specify the VisionAIR early user requirements. These are captured from the requirements of the four municipalities (Maroussi, Bari, Bremen, TUE/Kenniswijk) and TEMAGON using specific questionnaires that were targeted to the identified target groups and were compiled very early in the project.

Chapter 2 – “Justification of the VisionAIR Rational” - presents an initial market definition, shows the challenges and the drawbacks of Municipalities as operators and the benefits that the Municipalities will gain from the adoption of VisionAIR service platform. This chapter also exhibits the basic residential user demands and the market drivers that will lead the Residential Broadband Market. This chapter concludes with the basic elements of the network and the basic network architecture that is going to be used.

Three main target groups were identified – the municipalities, the end users and the stakeholders – and described in details in the Chapter 3 – “Definition of Target Groups”. The end users form the most important target group since the success of the VisionAIR project is directly depending on the ability to satisfy their requirements and needs. The end user requirements are the most important source for forming the ideas for the formulation of “Platform requirements and specifications”. The stakeholders’ requirements are actually expectations of the business units sharing the interest in the VisionAIR service platform.

Chapter 4 – “User Requirements Capture and analysis” - describes the generic methodology that the VisionAIR uses in order to capture the user requirements. Also presents the segments that each questionnaire – end user, municipalities and stakeholders – consists of.

Chapter 5 – “High level requirements of municipalities” - presents the main outcomes of the discussions and the analysis of the questionnaire answers of the Municipal partners and their requirements regarding the services -under the VisionAIR proposed full service umbrella - that they want to offer to the citizens.

Chapter 6 – “User Requirements Analysis” - presents the results that were gathered from the collection of the End-Users’ and Stakeholders’ questionnaires.

D2

The main goal of this document is to define, as precisely as possible, the conditions of the four different trials. The users requirements may express some wishes that are not possible to satisfy, taking into account the reality of the existing (or foreseen) network. Furthermore, the platform has to be developed as generic as possible, and some requirements have to be harmonized with their equivalent in the other trials.

So, D2 finalises the user requirements capture and analyses the user desires. Comparison among the different trial sites is performed to check for different approach and opinion among the user communities and smaller groups within the cities. The fact that the four sites are quite spread is very important for compiling a comprehensive picture for the entire Europe.

D2 is based on D1 and on the infrastructure and technology available and/or foreseen per site. In this deliverable the consortium presents and documents the platform (network infrastructure, equipment and service management frameworks) to be used per trial and how the platform infrastructure can support the user desires. Of special mention is also the documentation on the ways to use the platform so as to introduce new services after the normal duration of the project, with emphasis on the high-layer entry points and handles to the functionality substrates.

D2 documents also how each trial infrastructure will support user requirements and what metrics are planned for quality of service measurement and evaluation.

D3

This document is deliverable number 3 (D3) of the VisionAIR project. It presents the VisionAIR Service and Trials specification following a two-fold structure:

In the first main chapter the common platform of the VisionAIR project is described. This is a set of hardware, software and protocols which forms the shared basis for the project trials by providing services of a technical nature like Video on Demand, Voice over IP etc. From these abilities, value-added services of a more complex nature are derived, e. g. health-care related or citizen information services, which vary for every trial site. The following survey of products and associated cost elements depicts a whole variety of hardware and software components, protocols and third-party services converging into a complete solution of the envisioned service delivery.

The second half of the document specifies the organisation and deployment of the four trials; the respective user groups are described and operation and use scenarios are given. Further on, service monitoring and availability aspects are discussed in the awareness for Quality of Service (QoS) as a central aspect, so that the new concepts and offerings are accepted by the users in a massive deployment.

D4

The current document reports on service deployment issues for the foreseen project trials, presenting also an overview of the current broadband network market and next generation network deployments, and the project exploitable results. The dominant service and respective business models foreseen to be used in such service deployments are presented and the trial sites report on feedback based on these service and respective business models. For this, a structured questionnaire has been prepared to capture the foreseen involvement in broadband service deployment of the trial participating local government organizations.

The project exploitable results are identified in the present document as the VisionAIR common platform, the service portfolio and the associated business cases per trial. The VisionAIR Common Platform is one of the major project results and enables the provision of data, voice & video services over IP networks, as a set of basic functionality, bearer services, that allow the synthesis of complex service offerings as well as interfaces to 3rd party service and content providers. The VisionAIR Service Portfolio is built as sets of value added services, to be provided in the VisionAIR trials. These sets will be used as paradigms for future exploitation of VisionAIR results. A summary of the service bundles available to users target groups are also included. Business case studies per trial are presented having as a goal to provide a number of conclusions regarding the sustainability / viability of the VisionAIR business concepts as applied to the 4 pilots. Service deployment issues are discussed. The broadband market status with focus on the European countries, where the trials will be performed is analyzed along with a detailed analysis of the drivers of this market. The service offerings are described in detail, addressing market needs, commercial aspects with respect to the trial sites in which the services will be offered and concludes with the positioning of the foreseen services to market segments.

Business models associated with broadband network services are presented along with the business modeling practices and methodology on which the derivation of the business models is based. Three models for service provision are included, namely the open service, the walled garden and the semi-walled garden. The business models for each entity in the VisionAIR value web are presented and a description of the roles and relationships of each organization are also provided. Conclusions about the models and practices that can potentially be adopted by the municipalities in order to assist large-scale deployment are included.

As far as service models are concerned, the “semi-walled garden” model seems to be the most appropriate one for adoption by the municipalities in the VisionAIR framework. It allows network operators a certain investment assurance in order to team with municipalities, while it is also for the benefit of the end user since it stimulates competition between service providers. However, it is heavily dependent on the implementation of the platform in terms of appealing features and actual participation requirements posed to 3rd party providers.

D5

The VisionAIR work plan is split in several work packages, of which WP4 deals with the services integration and lab tests. This deliverable D5 is one of the deliverables within WP4. Although the title of this document only refers to telephony services, this deliverable also reports on the lab tests and integration work done for the videoconferencing services that are deployed as part of the VisionAIR platform. The reason for this is that both sets of services rely on the same underlying technology for transferring real-time human intercommunication content (voice, video and shared information) over IP-based networks. During the definition of the VisionAIR platform, it was decided that the H.323 protocol suite would form the main technology for delivering VoIP telephony and IP videoconferencing services in VisionAIR. The justification for this was that at that time the RG had already been successfully tested for H.323 support. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) would be examined only marginally during WP4 in order to assess how it could be adopted in a future version of the VisionAIR platform. The lab test and integration effort has been split into various tasks, each with a low, medium or high priority. The basic components and functionality (like the H.323 gatekeeper and authentication) received the highest priority, whereas the more experimental and enhanced features (e.g. SIP support) received a lower priority.

D6

The VisionAIR work plan is split in several work packages, of which WP4 deals with the services integration and lab tests. This deliverable D6 is one of the deliverables within WP4. It deals with the data and Internet access services and the network-focused parts of the VisionAIR platform. The lab test and integration effort has been split into various tasks, each with a low, medium or high priority. The basic components and functionality (like the authentication and accounting backend and multicast) received the highest priority, whereas the more experimental and enhanced features (e.g. billing and the Network Management System) received a lower priority.

D7

The main scope of this deliverable is to report on the test and integration of video services into the VisionAIR platform. Being those services Live TV, which uses multicast to distribute TV channels over the network, and Video-On-Demand, which sends unicast streams to the user enabling the possibility to interact with the stream (pause, skip forward and backward, etc.). The document details the installation and configuration procedure of both the data center (including Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) and the CPE so that the services can be implemented in every trial location.

D8

The VisionAIR work plan is split in several work packages, of which WP4 deals with the services integration and lab tests. D8 is one of the deliverables within WP4, and deals with Home Control services. These services are based on the Konnex standard, which is a European standard that has been developed based on the communication stack of EIB (European Installation Bus) but enlarged with the physical layers, configuration modes, and application experience of BatiBUS and EHS (European Home System). The document describes the installation and configuration of the KNX modules and how added value services can be built with the use of an IP Gateway.

D14

This report considered the user requirements (in D1) and expectations related to the services to be supported by the services platform as suggested by VisionAIR (in D2) and the specification of the services (in D3) and trials (in D4) and defines a global validation plan for the project. A multicriteria assessment approach is proposed including end-user acceptance, socioeconomic evaluation (considering stake-holders views) and technical adequacy evaluation.

The primary task of a multi-criteria analysis is the selection of an optimal realization scenario for a specific problem (e.g. in case of VisionAIR, to conclude which should be the elements of the VisionAIR platform (ViPL) to be implemented and business model to be adopted by a given municipality or municipality own enterprise based on a given set of services, end-user group size (population in the municipality) and requirements and infrastructure costs. The selection of a scenario should ensure that the needs and realistic expectations of all parties (end-users and stakeholders) are met.

D26

This Deliverable provides the dissemination of knowledge acquired during the project to the external sector so as to influence the standards, and the specification and development of products towards exploitable results for the VisionAIR project consortium.

Exploitable results are essential parts linked with the life cycle of the VisionAIR project. The approach adopted also leads the consortium into the final Deliverable and the Technical Implementation Plan (TIP), in fulfilling their contractual obligations.

The present statement does not indicate any commitment of the planned exploitation plan, but it represents the current thinking of researchers involved based on expectations.