The whole event was organized by a project called 3pod (www.3pod.cz) –The Tripod project was founded at the Czech Technical University in Prague with the intent to provide a full set of support activities that create optimal conditions for cooperation between the academic and business environments.

The presentation began with a quick profile of Graham Maher, including some details of his carrier, family and also his hobby – running. Graham successfully finished PIM (Prague international marathon) on 11 May in 3 hours 31 minutes, impressive performance from a top manager. Event than continued with a short presentation of Vodafone and then followed a discussion of students and academics of FEE with Graham Maher and I have to say topics were quite interesting.

Mobile Internet networks and its problems

Mr. Maher talked about current situation of mobile Internet in the Czech Republic and his introduction could be summed up by just two words: expensive and slow. In his opinion the situation is caused by so many technologies on the market – because building infrastructure costs millions of dollars and these costs are included in fees. There is at least 7 different more or less successful mobile Internet network technologies – WIFI (the Czech Republic is unique in the amount of WIFI hotspots per citizen almost all around the globe), CDMA, 3G, GPRS, WAP and others.

In contrast to Czech situation was mentioned that there is 10 000 000 people in the Czech republic who use 7 different technologies provided by many companies and on the other hand there is China where is 1 500 000 000 people and there are just 2 technologies and 2 providers on the market that brings great savings for both companies (building infrastructure) and its clients (saving on monthly bills). Graham also highlighted that China telecom is world no. 1 in the total amount of clients followed by Vodafone on the second place.

Other news connected to high speed mobile Internet were that Vodafone successfully negotiated with Apple and it is almost sure that new version of IPOD will be introduced to Czech market (and also to other east and middle European markets) by Vodafone before Christmas 2008.

Situation on world markets

The Vodafone General Director also spoke about current situation on world markets. The important markets for Vodafone are currently for instance Germany (growing for last 5 years) and also India – where is huge increase of customers – particularly 6 000 000 of new customers per month.

Future situation of telecommunications

The discussion was ended by short consideration of future of telecommunications. Graham Maher said that there are big opportunities particularly for young people in this field of business. Anyone could invent another facebook and implement it in mobile devices; also social networks are nowadays quite successful.