ESIS extension / Key Person Contacts and Organisations / Czech Republic / Update Memo 3

The following text complements and respectively updates the latest version of the KPCO report, concerning the organisations and persons who are playing a key role in the development of the Information society in the Czech Republic. It is divided into sections, which describe the governmental organisations, associations and professional associations as well as the most important activities within the commercial sector.

The Ministry of Interior, which operates the most visited state administration WWW server, has started a unique service above the Police database "Motor vehicles search". The trial operation is taking place and the data is updated off-line. The database contains more than 50 000 cars, the theft of which has been reported to the Police of the Czech Republic within the last three years. In order to search for a vehicle, the licence plate number, car ID number or engine number of the respective car must be entered. If the car is contained on the stolen car database, the reply always contains other items as well as the vehicle type and its colour. The database in most cases does not contain cars stolen abroad.

The Interior Minister has ordered the preparation of a complex analysis of the current situation and the development trends in criminal activities in the sphere of information technologies and the Internet, including suggested solutions. The text, prepared by Vladimir Smejkal, will be subject to public debate until January 15, 2000.

The government has approved the proposed measure, supporting the electronic commerce in the Czech Republic, prepared by the State Information System Office (USIS). The USIS has also prepared its own draft of the act on electronic signatures.

The Governmental Council for State Information Policy has extended the deadline for the submission of the Action Plan until the end of February. The Action Plan is to be implemented mostly in 2001.

The Czech Information Forum (an advisory body of the Governmental Council, consisting of 57 representatives of the relevant parts of the society) is supposed to start its work in 2000.

The most important providers, associated in the Association of the Internet Providers (NIX), have agreed with the Cesky Telecom company on the level of commission from their revenues, generated from their customers. Calculation of the amount of such commission is rather complicated and it depends, among other aspects, on the number of the access points (the so-called PoPs) and on the traffic volume. The total commission should be between 5 – 25% of the amount, which the end users pay in their phone bills for the connection.

The GEMMA IX project, which was to become the alternative to the NIX in the field of peering of the individual providers, was terminated due to lack of providers interested.

Consortium for Information Society (SPIS) has submitted its draft of the Electronic signature Act in the form of the MP’s initiative of representatives of four different political parties (Vladimir Mlynar, Ivan Langer, Stanislav Gross a Cyril Svoboda). The SPIS president, Zbysek Bahensky, has become a member of the preparatory committee of the Czech Information Forum.

Over 60 experts, dealing with the development of the information economy, have joined the VIP Forum E-conference, which is run by the Center for Electronic Commerce (CEO) in co-operation with the Virtual Information Park (VIP). Apart from continuing co-operation with VUT in implementation of the ESIS project, the CEO has been preparing a meeting of representatives of the foreign E-commerce centres in Brno in March.

The public telecommunication operator, SPT Telecom, has changed its name to Cesky Telecom as of January 1, 2000. Its monopoly for providing long-distance and international voice telephony services ends on January 1, 2001. In December, the government decided to begin the process of privatising its 51% state stake. The advisor is to be selected first, that will propose a concrete way of privatisation. The expected time of the privatisation is the middle of the next year, when enactment of the new law on telecommunications is expected. The new Internet connection tariff brings termination of the first impulse charge and unified telephone number. The data connection will be slightly cheaper then the regular tariff (or the same price) for calls of any duration.

The licence for operating the third mobile network in the Czech Republic has been awarded to Cesky Mobil. The majority shareholder in this company is Canadian company Telesystem Wireless International and other shareholders are Investicni a postovni banka and Priority Telecom. The key jobs, connected with constructing of the network, have been awarded to the Siemens and Ericsson companies. The Orange and Gity consortium finished second in the tender.

International voice telephony via the Internet will be offered, apart from the two mobile operators, also by the Contactel company (in co-operation with Ceske radiokomunikace). The Voice Direct service has had a limited character so far and it is suitable mostly for larger companies.

The EUnet Czechia-KPNQwest company has accomplished its successful entry to the NASDAQ stock exchange and it has published information about the pan-European optical data network. The Czech Republic will thus become the first of the EU-candidate countries, that will have full access to the high-speed pan-European network (one of the junctions of the last, sixth Euroring circuit will be, apart from Vienna, also Prague).

The Expandia Banka, pioneer of the electronic commerce and Internet banking in the Czech Republic, which has acquired 20 000 clients within 18 months of its existence, has recently selected a strategic partner. The majority stake will be acquired by Ceska pojistovna (insurance company with a dominant position on the Czech insurance market).

The second phase of the eCity project has begun in October 1999 (eCity is operated by Expandia Banka, Radiomobil and Internet On Line). Real goods can be traded for real money in the eCity. What is new in the eCity is particularly the safety of purchases thanks to the so-called guaranteed commercial zone. The ordered goods are distributed from the eCity central warehouse, within 2 working days. A three-day period for checking (and possible return) of goods follows and only then the money transfer of the customer’s money to the seller’s account takes place. Currently, there are 37 companies offering their goods in the eCity, with a minimum warranty period of 6 months.

Sun Microsystems has acquired the Czech software company NetBeans, an integrated development environment of the Java language developer (written in Java for Solaris, Linux and Windows platforms). The basic version can be downloaded from the Web free of charge. The NetBeans company has so far been the most successful example of the innovative venture in the field of the Internet. Roman Stanek, former director of the Czech office of the Sybase company, has been the founder and director of NetBeans.

A strategic partner from Sweden will acquire a 30% stake in the Seznam company (the most visited portal and operator of the Seznam and Kompas search engines, Noviny news service, and on-line maps). The details will be announced in January.

The third largest portal in the Czech Republic (after Seznam and Atlas) is the Centrum server farm, operated by the NetCentrum company. It offers, among other services, also comparison of prices of goods in the Czech Internet shops. The Atlas portal has come up with the same service shortly after Centrum and it has also become the local operator of the Microsoft Network (MSN) in the Czech Republic. This is the first instance, when Microsoft has let another company operate the national MSN portal.

Taylor Nelson Sofres Media and DCCI have combined their efforts in a project of auditing the WWW servers attendance in the Czech Republic.

The updated plan of events for the March – the Internet Month campaign has been published by BMI, the organisation that organises the event. The agenda includes conferences, seminars, surveys and contests.

The important academic entities participating in the Information Society development are the Masaryk University of Brno (the current Rector of the university, Prof. Jiri Zlatuska, is a member of the Governmental Council for Science and Research and a renowned expert) and the Czech Technical University in Prague (Karel Kveton, member of the preparatory committee of the Czech Information Forum).

FEMIRC-CZ, the national contact point for the 5^th framework EU programme, has published Czech Republic Information Society Technology Contacts 1999 (in co-operation with the Information and Automation Theory Institute of the Academy of Sciences). The data is available also on WWW where they can be searched using key words. It has been realized under the IDEALIST-EAST project supported by the Ministry of Education. The contact person is Ms. Eva Hillerova.

Please note that this report has been prepared under the sole responsibility of the ESIS II contractors.
It does not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission, nor does the Commission accept responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of information contained herein.
The ESIS Team of contractors welcomes any additional information or corrections.