Mr Miltiadis Vidalis, from VODAFONE, guest speaker at the eBusiness Course

The students of the eBusiness course of the ALBA P-MBA and MBA programs will have the opportunity to meet - and learn from the invaluable experience of - Mr Militadis Vidalis, Group Product Development Manager of VODAFONE HELLAS. Mr Vidalis has been invited by Dr Nikos Mylonopoulos, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, ALBA.

In the aftermath of the excessive license fees for 3rd Generation mobile networks and after a couple of false starts, mobile operators in Europe are in a race to launch the new services that are expected to make the vision of a mobile internet (or mobile commerce, or mobile business) a reality. This entails a multitude of complementary and substitute technologies (network standards, portable devices, software applications, etc) and numerous market players (network operators, content providers, financial institutions, regulators, etc). It is a complex industry going through highly uncertain, but exciting, times. What applications are suitable for 'mobile users'? How are we going to pay for goods and services over mobile networks? How do markets respond to recent service launches such as MMS?  How does Europe compare to Japan (where iMode has been a huge success since 1999) and to the US (where mobile phones have low penetration but cheap broadband access supports the proliferation of wireless local area networks)? How does Vodafone position itself against these challenges? What should we expect for the next few months or years? These are some of the issues that Mr. Vidalis will address. Note that Vodafone Hellas is one of the leaders among the other Vodafone operators all over the world, in terms of innovating, implementing new practices and launching new services.