October 15, 1993 FYI France: Network Ideas from Europe -- Italy (pt.1/3) edited by: Jack Kessler kessler@well.sf.ca.us The Italian networking scene is as different from the European Communities' approach, outlined by Alan Reekie last month, as Brussels is from Naples. Yet they both are aimed in the same European direction, which makes the differences fascinating to a non-European observer. The one begins everything with unifying standards, the other may be one of the strongest forces for unifying standards in a country which recently has had troubles finding unity. Ettore Paolillo and Pieraugusto Pozzi present here a good overview of networking, and in following installments they list and describe a few of the larger recent Italian efforts. Those interested might also look at the gopher at the University of Turin -- itocsvm.csi.it -- and at the many other gophers popping up regularly now in Italy. Jack Kessler kessler@well.sf.ca.us *** NETWORKED INFORMATION IN EUROPE: The Italian Scenario by: Ettore Paolillo, COSI s.r.l. - Tecnologie per l'OSI ed i Sistemi Aperti Pieraugusto Pozzi, FTI - Forum Telematico Italiano 1 . Background No meaningful assessment of the Italian scenario with regard to the availability of advanced information services could be done without considering the following trends: a) The strategic role of information. Today business, and economy in general, is increasingly dominated by the need for information: its availability in the right form, at the right time, at the right place can provide economic operators with important competitive advantages in nearly every sector and, frequently, can even influence their capacity to survive. Since almost no economic enterprise has within itself all information needed to perform and expand its business or to undertake new ones, access to several external information sources is vital and has to be provided in the most effective way. An "information network" has to be built and maintained with a variety of suppliers and, most importantly, suitable means have to be provided to access information only according to pre-determined user requirements (profiles) in order to avoid "information overloads". b) The internationalisation of the information market. Following the same pattern of globalisation of economy in almost all sectors, the information market is more and more becoming a "global information village". The information industry is rapidly evolving towards an information offer which exceeds national limits. c) The role played by Information Technology and Telecommunications (IT&T) in the transition from paper-based information flows to electronic information dissemination. The evolution from a centralized to a distributed approach in the information market made possible by Information Technology and Telecommunications (IT&T) has been particularly evident in the area of the distribution of information. With on-line Database access, in fact, the traditional pattern of the information offer to end-users is reverted. Users no longer need to move to the information source directly but can, on the contrary, have information delivered directly at their premises (both domestic and business). However, the distributed approach is gaining momentum as well in the area of the build-up and maintenance of the information sources. Also databases, in fact, no longer need to be physically resident in one place only. On-line access and the provision of suitable "directory services" allow for database creation and maintenance wherever it is more appropriate and convenient in terms of the information content. Notably, the last two considerations are of importance in assessing, respectively, what is available today to a network user in Italy and what kind of evolution can be expected in the medium/long term with regard to the networked information market. Generally speaking, however, the existence of a networked information market implies that whatever is available to a network user on a public network in any country of Europe (the world) should, in principle, be as well available to any user in any other country. This general statement is supported by the ever increasing and almost complete coverage of Europe by Public Switched Data Networks (PSDN) based on X.25. In this report the major emphasis will of course be put on the on-line databases information market. 2 . On-LINE DATABASE information TAXONOMY Generally speaking, the information contained in the databases can be classified into two different categories: a) "Primary" Information that are full text documents, statistical, scientific or technical figures, formulas, reference data, economic indicators, marketing information about products, etc.; b) "Secondary" Information that are abstracts or pointers to primary information such as bibliographic information. Databases can accordingly be categorized as primary, secondary or mixed depending on the information content in them. In the following the above taxonomy will be used. 3 . The actors Five categories of actors have to be considered in describing the Italian networked information market: y End-users. These, of course, represent the final destination of the information but, frequently, are also the active subjects addressing different information sources and guiding the search either directly or indirectly. y Network Operators represent public or private organizations providing basic regulated communication services used to convey information to end- users. y Service Providers (also called Value Added Services or VAS Providers) are private or public organizations providing additional, non regulated, communication services which are frequently built upon basic telecom services provided by the public network operator. Services provided usually include electronic messaging facilities. y Information Providers are the owners of somehow structured information. These can either be commercial or non-commercial organizations which create and maintain periodically an information repository which is then made available to third parties under a user agreement. y Information Brokers. This category of actors represent companies which usually operate as a trait d'union between end-users and information providers. Their offer usually consists in the possibility for an end-user to access a vast number of information sources of a different nature and from different providers with a one-stop-shopping approach also from a contractual point of view. Information brokers can also coincide with Service Providers. According to the above categorisation, the present Italian market of networked information will be considered in some detail in the following chapters. 3.1 . End-Users Present users of networked information services are of a very different nature: y Researchers/scientists in public or private organizations accessing bibliographic information sources of a specialized nature. y Professionals looking for up-to-date information in different sectors such as: economy, law, health, medicine, pharmacology etc. y Journalists/economic operators accessing specialized news information services (REUTERS, ANSA, RADIOCOR, etc.) y Companies or public administration officers monitoring real-time economic indicators, prices of raw materials (oil, steel, gold, etc.), currency exchange rates, stock exchange rates, y Users of E-mail/messaging services y Registered users (both domestic and business) of electronic bulletin- board/conferencing systems on specific issues. y Domestic users of general-purpose information services accessed through low-cost network facilities such as TELETEXT provided by the TV broadcasters and VIDEOTEXT and AUDIOTEXT services (whose commercial names in the offer by the Italian public network operator SIP are, respectively, VIDEOTEL and AUDIOTEL). 3.2 . Public Network Operators Year 1992 has marked the beginning of an impressive evolution of the public telecommunications sector in Italy. A new law re-organizing the whole sector was emanated in January 1992 bringing to an end a very long period during which no clear-cut separation had existed between operational, regulatory and control functions. This new law, beside its additional intents of rationalisation, intended to amend this anomaly and align the Italian situation to the views of the CEC for a complete separation between the regulatory responsibilities of the national TLC Administrations and the operational functions. (1) Only regulatory and control functions are now delegated to the Italian Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. Operational responsibilities formerly pertaining to its two directly controlled agencies, namely A.S.S.T. and Amministrazione P.T., have been transferred, effective 1st of January 1993, to IRITEL, a newly formed company of the state participated I.R.I. group. On the same date A.S.S.T. ceased to exist. With only minor exceptions (2), I.R.I. - STET now holds responsibility for the operations of the whole public telecommunications sector through its concessionaire companies: SIP (basic telephony and data transmission services), ITALCABLE (international and sub-marine cable telephony), TELESPAZIO (satellite communications) and, of course, IRITEL. This scenario is still far too complex, however, and I.R.I. - STET is in turn expected to provide a complete re-structuring of the organization of the concessionary companies. Very likely, this will turn out in a greatly decreased number of concessionaires if not in the unification into a single concessionaire. At the time of this writing (March 1993), however, the re- organization is in process and few clues can be anticipated as to the who, how and when. It is worth noting that, today, exclusive concessions to the above companies have been granted only for the provision of "basic" TLC services and for equipment in the public network. In fact, as a consequence of an on-going deregulation process, provision of all additional services and all kind of equipment at the customer premises is now liberalized and open to competition by companies in the private sector. For the time being, the only condition for the commercial offer of value-added communication services is that the public network infrastructure is used for the transport of information. It has already been said that basic telecommunications services are still operated under a monopoly condition by the public network operator (or its concessionary companies). Interestingly enough, however, recent years have seen a steady increase in the establishment of Italian subsidiaries of foreign network operators (e.g. British Telecom, France Telecom, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, TRANSPAC, etc.). Could this be considered as an expectation that soon, following the example of other European countries (i.e. UK), liberalisation could be extended to basic TLC services? (Next: some Italian network service providers.) ISSN 1071-5916 *** FYI France: Network Ideas from Europe -- Italy (pt.2/3) In Part 1, Ettore Paolillo and Pieraugusto Pozzi presented their thoughts -- an Italian viewpoint -- on the general structure of the nets, with an overview of the latest arrangements for public network operators in Italy. Here they list leading Italian service and information providers (the book industry, the Supreme Court, others). Jack Kessler kessler@well.sf.ca.us *** (continued) 3.3 . Service Providers The offer of so called value-added services by both private and public operators is presently rather large and varied. It relates to the provision of e- mail services, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) services and products, on-line database access and additional interactive value-added services. After a period of relative turbulence, which has seen the disappearance of some VAN service providers and the merging of others, the following companies are presently active in the Italian market of value-added network services: y AMMINISTRAZIONE P.T. Presently, the offer is limited to the provision of a public X.400 Message Handling Service, called PT POSTEL, which in addition to electronic messaging capabilities includes the provision of Physical Delivery services through Physical Access Units. At the time of this writing (March 1993) the service relies on an X.400 1984 implementation. Plans are to migrate to X.400 1988 version during 1994. The offer will likely be complemented with a public mailbox service based on the implementation of the X.400 (88) Message Store. y EDITER The company is owned by the Italian Confederation of Commerce and Retail companies (CONFCOMMERCIO). Its business objective is to develop and provide value added network services and applications for operators in the distribution and retail areas. The main services provided are EDI, messaging services, and on-line access to databases and bulletin-boards. y GE Information Services GE Information Services s.p.a. was established in 1969 as the Italian affiliate of GE Information Services Company, based in Washington D.C. (USA), a company within the General Electric conglomerate. GEIS mission is to supply Value Added Services on the GE international telematic network. The company manages a private network of 10 nodes in the main Italian cities and the interconnection with the Italian X.25 PDN ITAPAC. Main services provided are E-Mail, EDI and managed network services to more than 2000 major Italian companies. Sales structures are focussed on vertical markets such as banking, electronics, pharmaceuticals, oil and transportation. y INTESA The company is a joint venture between FIAT and IBM. Its main offer regards the provision of network and EDI services to support information exchange in the automotive industry and its related sectors and for financial services between companies and banks. y PITAGORA The company is directly controlled by Istituto Bancario S. Paolo di Torino. Their main offer is the provision of access services to on-line databases for finance and economics and specialized financial services. In this last regard PITAGORA, together with GEIS and INTESA, provides to end-users multi-bank cash management services. y SARITEL s.p.a. SARITEL S.p.A., belonging to the Public Telecommunications Group IRI - STET, operates in the fields of telematic services and systems of the following types: - Communication services (Voice Mail, Electronic Mail, Electronic Data Interchange, File Transfer, Order Entry) - Information services (Data Base Access, Audiotex) - Engineering services and systems (Dta Systems, Voice Systems) - EC Projects (taking part in: ESPRIT, RACE, EUREKA, ENS, IMPACT) Particularly, within the on-line services, SARITEL offers finance, trade, tourism, tenders and client-assurance information. y SEVA s.p.a. Jointly owned by SIP, Olivetti, ENI, and minor other shareholders, SEVA s.p.a. has its main business in the areas of Electronic Fund Transfer management, Electronic Mail Systems, Telesoftware, Remote Learning Systems and Remote Banking. The provision of value added services also includes activities such as: - EDP Facility Management, with a specific focus back-up facilities for network-intensive data processing systems; - marketing consultancy in new sales services (telecom-integrated sale services); - technological audit services in the telecommunication area; - integrated services (network, database, processing). Even now, however, it is a general opinion that too many are contending in a market which, although promising, is still too small and has difficulties in providing all with acceptable levels of revenues. From a recent survey performed by SMAU, the overall value of the VAS market in 1991 was 421 billions of Italian Lira. This figure represents a growth of roughly 10% over the previous year. On the other hand, the introduction of innovative services such as Electronic Data Interchange, which could potentially trigger a steep growth in the demand for network services (including value-added ones), is still hindered by a number of inhibiting factors. One of the most serious is that no real interoperability of VAN services by different operators is still offered to potential customers thereby frustrating their demand for the provision of networking and value-added services on a One-Stop-Shopping (OSS), One-Stop- Billing basis. (3) As of today, the value of EDI related services in 1991 has been estimated in 64 billions of Italian Lira (+ 26% with respect to 1990). 3.4 . Information Providers As already stated, information providers are the actors owning, maintaining and selling the information which is contained in the on-line databases. A recent study, performed by the Istituto di Studi sulla Ricerca e Documentazione Scientifica - ISRDS of C.N.R. (Italian National Research Council) reports that, in 1992, the number of Italian on-line databases amounted to 177. The following table describes the rising trend of this figure in past years: Year 1985 1987 1988 1992 No. of databases 120 132 147 177 With reference to the category of information offered, databases can be classified as "primary", "secondary" or "mixed". Presently, out of a total of 177 Italian on-line databases, the 78 secondary databases offered regard 48 databases containing bibliographic information, 26 with reference data and 4 containing both bibliographic information and reference data. As for the 79 primary databases, 40 are full-text, 21 are exclusively numeric, and 18 are both textual and numeric. Mixed (both primary and secondary) databases are presently 19 and only 1 database contains images. These figures should be compared with the distribution of on-line databases world-wide (source: Cuadra Online Databases Directory): y Primary DBs 2258 y Secondary DBs 1613 y Mixed DBs 461 In the following figure the sharing by type of information of the Italian on-line databases is shown. Research in Progress --> Scholarships --> Telecommunications --> Conferences, meetings --> Marketing --> Building --> Demography ---> Informatic ---> Bibliography ---> Photography ---> Tourism ---> Biomedicine, pharmacology ----> Geology -----> Agriculture, nutrition -----> Press, news ------> Politics -------> Energy, environment ------------> Human sciences --------------------------------> Law ---------------------------------------------> Economy, finance, commerce ---------------------------------------------> 10 20 30 A complete enumeration of the Italian information providers operating in the Italian market could be out of scope in this context. A list of the major ones is however reported in the following together with a short indication of the main information sectors dealt with and the network access: y A.C. NIELSEN ITALIA Sector: impacts on consumers from marketing and goods distribution. Access: ITAPAC, own network y ANSA Sector: economic, financial, daily press, press agencies news; Access: via Saritel y BIBLIOTECA DI DOCUMENTAZIONE PEDAGOGICA Sector: pedagogic sciences and education at all levels of schooling. Access: ITAPAC, PSTN y Camera dei Deputati, Servizio Documentazione Automatica (House of Representatives, Automated Archiving Service) Sector: Reference data on Representatives, Poll results for the House of Representatives, Progression of laws in the two branches of the Parliament, Regional and State Laws, present status of Law Proposals). Access: leased lines y CERVED Sector: CERVED is the service company of the Italian Chambers of Commerce. The on-line databases provide support information for Italian companies operating nationally and abroad, market studies, surveys of commercial opportunities, official budgets of all limited and joint-stock Italian companies, registration data for all companies registered to any Chamber of Commerce, archive of all protests noticed to individuals or companies. Access: ITAPAC, PSTN, leased lines y CINECA Sector: CINECA - Centro Interuniversitario Nord Est per il Calcolo Automatico (inter-University Centre for Automatic Processing), in addition to its institutional activities, offers access to databases of, scientific and reference data for food and drugs. Access: ITAPAC, own network y CONFINDUSTRIA - Sistema Informativo GIANO Sector: Confindustria is the Confederation of .... The information which is made available to the associated companies regards reference data of companies, labour market data and indexes, statistic data on industrial production, wages and salaries, labour contracts for all industrial categories. Access: ITAPAC, Tymnet, Telenet, proprietary network y CORTE SUPREMA DI CASSAZIONE - CED (Supreme Court of Cassation) Sector: The CED (Data Processing Centre) offer access to a large number of databases regarding jurisprudence in several categories of courts and councils, from civil and penal courts to administrative regional courts, the CEC Court of Justice and the European Court of Men's Rights. Access: ITAPAC, PSTN, leased lines y EDITRICE BIBLIOGRAFICA Sector: Book industry and distribution; references are provided for all books and magazines published in Italy and for all publishers and distributors. Access: via CILEA (ITAPAC, PSTN, leased lines) (Next: more Italian sources, brokers, networks, and the Internet.) *** FYI France: Network Ideas from Europe -- Italy (pt.3/3) Ettore Paolillo and Pieraugusto Pozzi here conclude their overview of networking in Italy. Their list of Italian networked information sources, continued from Part 2, is completed. They also show Italian information brokers, some network alternatives, and a bit about the Internet activity which is exploding in Italy as it is everywhere else. Remember to look at the gopher at the University of Turin -- itocsvm.csi.it -- and at the other Italian gophers. Suggestions for explaining the origins of the terms "gopher", "archie", and "veronica" to an Italian audience gratefully accepted. Jack Kessler kessler@well.sf.ca.us *** (continued) y ENEA Sector: Energy in all its aspects: technology, materials, sources, production, reserves, environmental protection, safety, standards. Access: ITAPAC y ENEL Sector: references on electric energy and related technologies. Access: via CILEA or ESA-IRS (ITAPAC, PSTN, leased lines) y ICE - Istituto Nazionale Commercio Estero (Institute for Foreign Commerce) Sector: Complete information support for Italian companies operating abroad: international calls for tenders, bids, auctions, information on foreign countries and commercial operators, sector market studies. Access: ITAPAC, Tymnet y IL SOLE 24 ORE Sector: The main offer is BIG On Line. It is a full text database of all articles since 1984 from a number of economic and financial newspapers and magazines (Il Sole 24 Ore, Mondo Economico, L'Impresa and others) Access: ITAPAC, PSTN, via SEVA, via SARITEL y PITAGORA SPA Sector: Economy and finance: statistic data, historical series, economic indexes and indicators, stocks pay-back. Demography: annual data on demographic variations in all Italian municipalities. Access: own network y SEAT Sector: Laws and regulations governing creation and life of different kind of companies, contractual aspects, Intellectual Property Rights. On line database (AMEDEUS) of all protest noticed and published by the 95 Italian Chambers of Commerce during the last 5 years. On line yellow-page directory of business operators (the service is called PAGINE GIALLE ELETTRONICHE). Travel and tourism information, hotel availability Access: ITAPAC, Videotel, via Saritel y TELEMACO Sector: Fiscal information: databases on all sectors of direct/indirect taxation (the database is BDT Banca Dati Tributari) Access: via SEAT and Saritel 3.5 . Information brokers Several information brokers are presently active in Italy. For the scientific and technical information, CRID (Centro di Riferimento Italiano per DIANE) was established within ISDRS in 1980 aiming at developing training and research activities about on-line information services available all over Europe. Other data processing centres mainly operating in academic and university environments, such as CINECA (in Bologna), CILEA (in Milano), CNUCE (in Pisa), CSATA (in Bari), CRAI (in Cosenza) offer to end-users one- stop-shopping services to access on-line databases connecting them to national and international data networks. In addition to the above public interest information brokers, other operators are providing one-stop-shopping access services to national and international on-line databases on a commercial basis: y ESA ESRIN - IRS is the European Space Agency Information Retrieval Service company, based in Frascati - Roma providing access to more than 200 world-wide databases (primary, secondary and mixed) in a broad range of subjects. They are also providing information search services and user- tailored searches. y GE Information Services offers on-line information services such as access to the DIALOG databases, directories and news sources by Dialog Information Services, Inc. with the possibility of customizing search menus for its clients. In addition to that specialized services are offered such as personalized electronic news clipping services from major business and financial news sources and focused electronic newsletters providing business intelligence in two High-tech fields: telecommunications and microcomputing. y ITALCABLE spa is the concessionary company for international and sub- marine cable telephony. Under a licence agreement with Telebase System, Inc. - Philadelphia, they operate the M.A.G.I.C. ON LINE service. This gives access to about 900 databases (primary, secondary and mixed) in diversified sectors including economy, marketing, medicine, chemistry, computer science, art and literature. y SARITEL s.p.a. SARIN Telematica offer access to a number of on-line information services such as, Italian railways timetables and fares, press news from ANSA, the KOMPASS handbook regarding over 50.000 Italian companies, the Official Airline Guides, Dow Jones News/Retrieval, Dun & Bradstreet, Electronic Yellow Pages on Hotels, Environment, Information Technology and additional on-line services for business and domestic use. 4 . The network alternatives Italian end-users can choose from a range of different network options to access on-line database information. Mainly, network access is offered over public networks (either packet or circuit switched). These different network access alternatives will be described in the following. 4.1 . Packet Switched Data Network (ITAPAC) ITAPAC is the public Italian PSPDN (Packet Switched Public Data Network), which is connected to all other European and international data networks. It can be considered as the most important network infrastructure for accessing remote on-line databases. By the end of year 1991, ITAPAC subscribers were 22.500 (+28% compared to 1990). About half of them access ITAPAC through the public switched telephone network via an X.28 access; the other half are native X.25 subscribers. It is worth noting, however, that many service providers offer their customers a toll-free access to ITAPAC via subscription of a reverse-charging service with the public data network operator. Hence the real number of users of the ITAPAC infrastructure could be largely underestimated by the figures previously reported. 4.2 . Circuit Switched Data Network (RFD) RFD - Rete Fonia Dati (Voice and Data Network) is the digital circuit-switched network. By the end of 1991, users of RFD were 31.500 (+32% compared to 1990). 4.3 . VIDEOTEL VIDEOTEL is the Italian Videotext service. By the end of 1991, the number of VIDEOTEL subscribers was 170.000 and the number of information providers was about 1.000. About 400 of these are connected to the central Videotex system through gateways. 4.4 . The INTERNET Recent years have seen a steady growth in the use of the INTERNET. Not to be confused with the term internet which is used by networking professionals to refer to the generic interconnection of two or more (possibly different) networks, the term INTERNET is generally used with a restrictive meaning to refer to the interconnection of TCP/IP-based networks, i.e. the offsprings of the original ARPA Internet sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. While originally confined to research and academic environments where it has been present also in Italy for almost a decade supporting electronic communications among researchers and university staff involved in not-for- profit or education activities, the INTERNET is today experiencing increasing success also in other economic sectors. Different providers are today offering INTERNET access services on a commercial basis. Among them it is worth mentioning IUNET, a not-for-profit company, managed by I2U the Italian Association of UNIX Users, which provides access services to its European equivalent EUNET and, through it, to the world-wide INTERNET. 5 . Conclusions and future trends The on-line database information market in Italy is today in a phase characterised by a very dynamic growth and a multiplicity of offers by several suppliers. After a long period during which on-line information access and exchange has been almost exclusively confined to universities and research departments of large enterprises its penetration into SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) is now gaining momentum as telematic literacy increases and new telecommunications facilities and services are deployed at affordable costs. Also, the availability of information is more and more perceived as a key factor for gaining vital competitive advantages in a market where Italian SMEs are increasingly driven to compete at an international level. This has catered for a proliferation of services offering access to information sources located world-wide. In the near/medium term the evolution of this trend will very likely continue along the following lines: y Complete globalisation of the information market The achievement of a common European market for goods and services since the beginning of 1993 is posing new challenges especially to SMEs which frequently have operated only at a national level: competition can now virtually come from any company in any European (and even non-European) member state but, on the other hand, business opportunities can be pursued with no geographical limitations. The information necessary to face this new situation and to support economic operators, either directly or indirectly, needs as well to be available and on-line accessible at a global, world-wide level. This need will very likely be satisfied by an increasing offer by specialized information brokers providing one-stop-shopping information retrieval services from anywhere in the world. y Growth of sophisticated information handling services In addition to simple information retrieval, which, as of now, has represented the vast majority of on-line information services, new information handling services will very likely gain additional popularity: - customized information retrieval and assembly, such as personalized newsletters and periodic news scan performed according to users-specified profiles, are already present in the market and are offered by a number of information brokers and service providers; - information directory services are going to play a key role with the proliferation of on-line databases and the consequent need for locating the right source(s) of the information to be accessed; - services allowing a user to both specify, via menu, search criteria for the information to be accessed and to prowl through all on-line networked databases containing the information matching with the search criteria (like the INTERNET "gopher" service). y Distribution of information over a wider choice of network alternatives Access to on-line databases can usually be performed through a limited number of network alternatives with some of them often provided by specific VAN providers. (4) The slow but steady introduction of Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) in the present scenario of Italian telecommunications should in perspective allow integration of network services for on-line database access. y Integration of on-line database access services with additional communication services With the emergence of new communications services (electronic messaging services, on-line directories, remote database access, multimedia messaging, etc.) based on open, international standards and the availability to the general public of higher throughput networks, traditional remote information access services will very likely gain additional features both in the content of the information retrieved (which could become multimedia, hypertextual) and in the way by which access is granted (i.e. via store and forward messaging services vis-a-vis on-line access services). Notes: (1) See "Green Paper on the Development of the Common Market for Telecommunications Services and Equipment" - May 1987 (2) Installation and operation of equipment for radio-maritime services on board of business ships is currently granted in concession to companies SIRM and TELEMAR. The concession will expire in 1997. After this date operational responsibility for these services will also be transferred to I.R.I.. Also, radio and TV broadcasting are operated, under a non-exclusive concession, by R.A.I.. (3) This situation can by no means be ascribed to technical difficulties. On the contrary it can be attributed to a rather old-fashioned, short-sighted approach by several, if not all, VAN providers which still tend to consider their customers as a sort of "captive market". As a consequence, still today, customers of VAN A can interoperate with customers of VAN B if and only if they also subscribe to VAN B services (and vice-versa). (4) As interoperability among VANs is still a dream for the Italian end- users, this results in a situation where you may need to subscribe different contracts with different VAN providers if you want to reach databases which are accessible on different networks. *** ISSN 1071-5916 *** >From kessler Wed Oct 20 05:20:56 1993 Subject: Information networking in Italy -- a correction Fabio Metitieri both corrects the Italian gopher address which I included in the October 15 FYI France posting and announces a multi-lingual e-conference on things Italian, in what follows. Ciao a tutti, Jack Kessler kessler@well.sf.ca.us *** Dear all, in the notes forwarded by Jack Kessler, there was a small error. Our Gopher (CSI Piemonte, Direzione Atenei) has the address ITOCSIVM.CSI.IT (good old Jack forgot an o), and it isn't the Torino University gopher. We work for Torino University too, but we're not Torino University. We will soon work at one or two Gopher Server for Torino University (one for humanists, the second for biomedical disciplines). For whoever would be interested in italian NIR activities, there is the List NIR-IT-L@itocsivm.csi.it. Of course, it's in italian... but we all understand a little english and a little french, and questions in english or in french will be accepted. Soon there will be (next week, probably) an italian List for humanists. Thank you for your attention, Ciao a tutti, Fabio. ************************************************************************ iiiiiiii CSI Piemonte (Consorzio per il Sistema Informativo) ii*iiiiiii Direzione Atenei iiii Corso Unione Sovietica 216 - 10134 Torino - Italy i iiii Tel (3911) 4618211 - Fax (3911) 4618212 iii iiii iii iiii Fabio Metitieri ii ii Email FABIO.METITIERI@CSI.IT iiiii ii Tel (3911) 4618291 iii Like Abelard wrote to Eloise: don't forget to drop a line to me, please. (a song by Cole Porter) ************************************************************************ .