Update November 2000: Czech Republic

The number, extent and scope of activities in the field of promotion of development of the Information Society in the Czech Republic in the third quarter of 2000 have into the large extent been influenced by the fact that July and August are traditionally the months of school holidays and family vacations.

The promotional activities have been largely revived in September, both in the sphere of the state administration, the main issue for which is the preparation of the budget for the next year, and in the commercial sphere, which enters the autumn sales season. More and more intense are also preparations for the traditional peak of all the autumn promotional activities, the computer and telecommunications trade fair INVEX, which will take place in mid-October.

1. Governmental organisations and their activities

The activities of the state bodies and institutions of the Czech Republic, the aim of which has been the support of the development of the Information Society, have been started by two key events during the third quarter of 2000.

The first one was the definite accomplishing of the approval process of the Electronic Signature Act, which has been signed by the President of the Czech Republic, Mr. Václav Havel, on July 10, 2000, and which will come into effect when published in the Collection of Laws of the Czech Republic, probably in October 2000. The Czech Republic has thus become the first country of the Central and Eastern Europe, which will have such a law in force.

The other important event in the field of promotion of the idea of Information Society by the Czech state administration, has been the public presentation of activities of the new Minister without portfolio, Ing. Karel Brezina, the former head of the Governmental Office, who has been appointed to his office on March 23, 2000 (http://www.vlada.cz/_AUTOCHARSET/vláda/sekmivl/html/zivotopis_frm.htm). After becoming Minister, Karel Brezina has also become the chairman of the Governmental Council for the State Information Policy (see http://www.vlada.cz/rady/sip/sip.win.htm). Minister Brezina appeared in press conferences on July 17 and also July 25, 2000, where he presented the start of a new governmental activity: “Realisation of involving of the private sector in the state information policy" (or "Public Private Partnership"), through which the Government of the Czech Republic turns to the private sector with invitation for active co-operation in support of development of the Information Society in the Czech Republic.

Another activity of the government, which was received well by the media, has been the decision of the Czech Government from July 26, 2000, in which the government proposed changes in law amendments, submitted by MPs, which are supposed to provide taxation relief for citizens when buying a computer. Based on generally constructive reaction by the Czech Government, it can be expected that properly adjusted draft is likely to receive support also in the Czech Parliament. Czech citizens could thus make use of the respective taxation relief also during the pre-Christmas period of 2000.

Less than three months after the Personal Data Protection Act became effective on June 1, 2000 (http://www.usiscr.cz/cz/dokumenty/diskuse/ochrana_vladni_navrh.html), Mr. Karel Neuwirt, the former Director of the Department of Protection of Personal Data of the State Information System Office, has been appointed the Director of the newly established Personal Data Protection Office. This step, which was received well by the media, meant practical beginning of enforcement of the Personal Data Protection Act in the Czech Republic.

The activities of the government in the area of practical support of the development of the Information Society and its promotion in the third quarter of 2000 culminated particularly with the changes in the second draft of the budget of the Czech Republic for 2001, which the Czech Government discussed during its session on September 6, 2000 and in which, according to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, Mr. Pavel Mertlík, includes also increased budget for the expenses, incurred in connection with implementation of the State Information Policy action plan in 2001, by the total of CZK 1 billion (i.e. approx. EURO 30 min)(http://www.vlada.cz/1250/tiskove/tiskkonf/rok00/tisk0906.htm). This increase, together with the expected increase of funds for the education system, should be, according to the Czech Government, compensated by including of the revenue from sale of licenses for operating of the UMTS mobile network (the sale of which in 2001 is expected to bring CZK 20 billion) to the state budget revenues.

It was these preparations for sale of the UMTS licenses, together with the ending tender for FWA wireless network licenses (which, according to the results, published by the Czech Telecommunication Office on September 10, 2000, were won by companies and/or consortiums Broadnet, GiTy/STAR ONE a Nextra), which attracted great attention of the media as another important activities of the state bodies and institutions.

2. Non-governmental organisations and their activities

While the bodies of state administration of the Czech Republic started to take concrete steps towards actual support of development of the Information Society in the Czech Republic only in the recent months, non-governmental branch-focused and expert-focused organisations continued and increased their efforts in their extensive long-term activities.

The Association for Information Society, members of which come particularly from the influential and economically very well situated entities from among the providers of information and telecommunication technologies and services, which has substantially contributed to the above-mentioned approval of the Electronic Signature Act and, when the act was approved on July 13, 2000, the association organised a social event called " eSignature Construction Happening 2000", which was participated by number of key persons from the Czech political and IT scene, despite the fact that July is a holiday time.

The Center for Electronic Commerce (CEO) continued its activities also during the third quarter of 2000, particularly through its expert patronage over further regular meetings of the Czech "netbusiness people" with the potential private investors, within the framework of the First Tuesday project, which meetings have been taking place regularly from October 1999, every first Tuesday of each calendar month in Prague, and which have been complemented with a similar meeting, called Wireless Wednesday, on September 20, 2000.

In the late August 2000, specialised Association for Internet Advertising (http://www.spir.cz) has been founded. Its focus and membership base placed it among the earlier founded Association of Internet Content Providers (http://www.apo.cz), which has not carried out any activities so far this year, and the Association for Electronic Commerce, activities of which have also been rather minute in the third quarter of 2000.

3. Media and advisory companies

The issue of development of the Information Society attracted relatively great attention in the Czech Republic not only from the governmental institutions and branch or expert associations, but also from the Czech media and consulting companies in the third quarter of 2000.

Considerable attention of the media in the third quarter of 2000 received the results of the research of the Czech Internet shops, published on July 28, 2000 by the Czech office of the international advisory company Deloitte & Touche, which showed that turnover of a selected group of Internet shops has grown by 497% year-to-year to CZK 30 min (i.e. less than ECU 1 min).

A non-negligible attention of the media in late August 2000 received the news of the Czech Press Agency (http://www.ceskenoviny.cz), according to which there have been more than 3 million mobile phones in use in the Czech Republic in mid-August, which means that the total penetration of this technology has approached 30% of the population.

Apart from the above-mentioned indicators, the Czech media, during the third quarter of 2000, published also other information about the current state and further development of some of the key indicator of development of the Information Society in the Czech Republic, such as continuous publishing of the results of periodical mapping of the current state and trends in utilisation of information technologies in the individual segment of the Czech economy, which mapping has been carried out by the Czech consulting company EISF (see http://www.eisf.cz) in co-operation with the INSIDE monthly, or results of the fifth round of the Internet Users Research (http://www.park.cz/pruzkum), which have been released in early September 2000.

During early September, a TV advertising campaign took place, through which the Czech Seznam company promoted the Internet as the inexhaustible source of information for the general public, with the aim of promoting the extent of its portal www.seznam.cz, which is one of the most visited existing Czech-language Internet portals.

4. Fairs exhibitions, conferences and seminars

Since the months of July and August have traditionally been the months of school vacations and holidays in the Czech Republic, the first important expert conferences and seminars of the third quarter of 2000 took place only in September.

On September 5 – 7, 2000 the Technical University in Brno, together with the Masaryk University in Brno, organised another annual conference RUFIS, which deals with the role of universities in the Information Society.

During the traditional International Engineering Fair in Brno, the S-COMP Centre company organised a seminar on September 19 in the morning, called „E-Commerce 2000 – the current state and the future." The visitors of the International Engineering Fair had the opportunity of taking part in the seminar called "The Possibilities of Participation of Czech Companies in the Projects of the World Bank and in the Internet B2B-trade" , which has been organised in the afternoon of the same day by the Czech Trade agency.

5. Commercial activities, impact of which considerably exceeds their commercial framework

Similarly to the previous quarter, the effect of the above-mentioned activities, which contributed to promotion of the development of the Information Society during the third quarter, has been strengthened by side effects of partial commercial and non-commercial activities, the total effect of which exceeds their original framework.

Other activities, which have contributed significantly to promotion of the development of the Information Society in the Czech Republic in the third quarter of 2000, have been massive media campaigns of the Czech telecommunication operators. The EuroTel company and RadioMobil company continued their reaction to the recent commercial start up of the third Czech mobile operator, the Ceský Mobil company, with their massive advertising campaigns. These campaigns have also focused not only on promoting the possibilities and advantages of the direct access to the Internet with mobile phones, using the Wireless Access Protocol (abbreviated WAP) technology but, in case of the EuroTel campaign, also on promoting of the possibilities and advantages, the mobile phone users, accessing the Internet, receive from the new high-speed HSCSD transmission technology, combined with the new, substantially more favourable tariff policy.

A massive advertising campaign, contributing to the development of general awareness of the possibilities of communication in the Information Society, has been launched during the third quarter of 2000 by the Ceský Telecom company, which has a guaranteed monopoly for providing of fixed voice telecommunication services until January 1, 2001. While in July and August 2000 the TV and press advertising campaign of this company had been focused particularly on cut in the prices of the euroISDN service, which took place on July 1, 2000, from September 1, the base of the campaign has shifted to cuts in prices, the company charges for the commuted connection to the Internet network after 7 PM and on weekends, which have been decreased to CZK 15.60 per hour (i.e. approx. EURO 0.5 per hour).

6. The likely development in the coming period

The above mentioned facts show that after a certain stagnation in the dynamics of development of the promotional activities and initiatives, focused on development of the Information Society, in the third quarter of 2000, which is typical for the period of vacations and family holidays, dramatic acceleration of further development of these activities can be expected in the Czech Republic during the fourth quarter – not only in the commercial and non-profit sector but also in the state sector.

Another substantial growth in the direct and indirect promotion of the Information Society will be started in early October 2000, when the traditional Brno INVEX fair will take place. Further development in promotional activities in the business as well as household sphere will accelerate during the traditional pre-Christmas “shopping fever” as well as the approaching end of the monopoly of the Ceský Telecom company for providing of the fixed voice services. Last but not least, operators of the FWA wireless networks are expected to join the pre-Christmas market of data communication services, with the target customer group of small and medium-sized businesses.

Another impulse, which could lead to a substantial acceleration in the development of the Information Society in the Czech Republic, also on the level of individual households, could be the considered limited period of time before Christmas 2000, when time limited taxation relief might be introduced for purchases of computers for non-commercial purposes.