In the interest of the user as well as in that of fair practice in the virtual market place, these agents require to be licensed and controlled by the appropriate societal authorities, currently the national regulators. The factors which influence sustainability of an information economy and an information society have not been sufficiently researched. The standardisation of SCEs requires to be speeded up and internationally co-ordinated. Insufficient progress is being made in software engineering, giving rise to an unacceptable complexity and cost of designing, creating and managing of very large distributed software systems required. Software research for communications intelligence has to have a very high priority.
More security implies more cost, complexity, even inconvenience, for the user.
The user must have a choice of levels of security. Mobility is the major enabler for realising the vision of personalised access to services, independent of time, physical location and type of access. For mass market application a number of critical issues must be attended to which include inter alia interoperable, global mobility management for world-wide access and connectivity, and affordable broadband wireless mobile access. Future European personal and business communications will be profoundly influenced by developments of the Internet protocol and its effect on switching and routing networks. However, the effects on ICT business models are uncertain.