t-learning - Future Scenarios - A Virtual Professional Channel

Helmut is working in the mobile telephone industry and needs to regularly keep up to date the future developments in this field. His employer also needs to be assured that Helmut is regularly upskilling himself as this is vital for the company to remain competitive. The demands of the working day increasingly make it difficult to offer professional upskilling during work time. Sending people away on courses is also time consuming and expensive for the employer.

However, a satellite broadcaster has approached the company with a deal that involves giving its professional employees a free set-top box and satellite receiver if the company subscribes to the pan-European professional learning channel.

This learning channel offers regular professional updating for science and engineers across Europe who are involved in the IT, Telecom, multimedia and broadcasting industry. Known as the Convergence Channel, it is in fact not a viewing channel but purely a digital distribution channel. An advanced set-top box is used, which can be programmed to receive specific programmes. These programmes are transmitted in a compressed format and stored on the set-top box for viewing anytime over a limited period. The set-top box is able to decompress the programmes when they are viewed which means they take up limited storage space.

Should the professional home user wish to do so, they can also take out a subscription for any of the other satellite TV offerings made available by the satellite broadcaster. This is a good deal for the broadcaster as they not only receive revenue from the company for subscribing to the Convergence Channel - a high value premium service, but they are also able to reach professional people who have tended to buy higher value subscription services. In addition they are also able to take advantage of the higher incomes of the professionals and target specific interactive home shopping and other interactive services.

From the point of view of the mobile telephone company its an ideal way of keeping their professionals updated in their own time at home. In addition employees like Helmut can also take part in interactive quizzes to ensure that they have acquired the additional skills and knowledge. This information is also relayed back to the employer. Helmut is also able to subscribe to specific interactive training courses. The convergence channel offers other related interactive services like asynchronous discussion groups enabling people from across Europe to discuss specific issues of professionals by submitting textual, audio or video comments, which are transmitted by the Convergence Channel. These comments can be submitted via email and translated into multiple languages.

The Convergence Channel is successful because it is a high value premium service that can be offered to a specific community of 100,000s of professionals across Europe in multiple languages.

Future Scenario - A Virtual Professional Channel