Sowing to reap, nine of Greece's biggest telecom and informatics companies have pooled their resources and expertise to create the South-eastern Europe Telecommunications and Informatics Research Institute (INA), an organization designed to facilitate investment in the region's telecom and informatics markets by analysing regional market trends, enhancing the exchange of technological expertise and helping to develop a regulatory framework for the regions telecom markets.

The incentive for the move is the huge potential of Europe's least-developed telecom markets - less than 25 out of 100 people living in the southern Balkans have a telephone - as the areas liberalizing and privatising post-Communist countries put their relatively well-developed telecommunications networks on the market. As these nations attempt to build their market economies in the age of information, telecoms have led the way in making Greece one of the regions major foreign investors.

Recently, the state-owned Hellenic Telecommunications Company (OTE) became the biggest international investor in the Balkans with its purchase of strategic stakes in the Serbian and Romanian state operators Telekom Serbija and Romtelecom respectively. The company is also set to acquire a majority stake in Bulgarian state operator BTC, in partnership with KPN of the Netherlands.

Setting goals
INA's activities also serve the larger effort on the part of Greece and the EU to gradually bring the developing nations of South-eastern Europe into line with European standards and norms. Prospective clients of the institute include state bodies and organizations in Greece and abroad, as well as private entities involved in the telecom industry, universities and research institutes. The recent successful Greek experience in the areas of telecommunications and IT will serve as a model for the development of regulatory and institutional infrastructures in the region, which is home to 50 million residents.

Set up in 2000 on the initiative of the Federation of Industries of Northern Greece (SBBE), INA (from the Greek word for fibre - as in fibre-optics) officially opened its doors on January 4 of this year, in Thessaloniki. The publicly-owned organization's approximately 1.3 million euros in starting capital comes from founding members and stockholders OTE, Intrasoft, Intracom, Info Quest, Hellascom, Siemens, Altec, Vodafone Greece and Forthnet, each of whom own 10.55% alongside SBBEs 5%. INA has also moved to secure future funding for its operations from national and international agencies. The original proposal for the venture was made by Intracom chairman Socrates Kokkalis in 1998 at the 5th Annual Inter-Balkan Forum in Thessaloniki.

Telecom academy
The Institute's first act will be to set up a South-eastern Europe Telecom Training Academy, which will educate telecom institutions and regulatory authorities "on regulatory/ normative/ legislative issues in accordance with the standards of the E.U". The proposal for the training academy was discussed at the 1st Regional Symposium of Regulatory Authorities in Telecommunications in South-eastern Europe, which took place in the capital of FYROM, Skopje, in January. The symposium was organized by INA in collaboration with the FYROM's Ministry of Transportation and Communication and Greece's National Committee for Telecommunications. Representatives from all the countries of the region had signed on in support of the project.

INA's feasibility study for the creation of such an academy is currently underway, in collaboration with the Inter-Balkan and Black Sea Business Centre and with the support of Greece's Ministry of Transportation and Communication. Branches of the Thessaloniki-based training academy are planned for all major cities of SEE countries by 2003.

The prospect of harmonizing the regional regulatory frameworks for telecommunications with each other and with those of rest of Europe has important implications for the region's telecommunications, IT and overall economic development. Not only will it improve the south-eastern countries prospects for accession to the European Union, it will also promote private investment in the sector and make the region more tempting to large multinationals of Europe and the U.S., who have heretofore shown little interest due to the small size of the fragmented local markets and excessive red tape.