UBI-hotspots: Sustainable Ecosystem Infrastructure for Real World Urban Computing Research and Business

T. Ojala, V. Valkama, H. Kukka, T. Heikkinen, T. Lindén, M. Jurmu, F. Kruger and S. Hosio MediaTeam Oulu, Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Oulu

P.O.Box 4500, FIN-90014 University of Oulu, Finland

{skidi, vv, hkukka, tjh, tomasl, mjurmu, fabiokru, zion}@ee.oulu.fi

ABSTRACT We report a novel deployment of so-called UBI-hotspots in a city center to establish an ecosystem infrastructure for conducting diverse urban computing research and business in authentic urban setting. We focus on the value network of the hotspots where the commercial use of the hotspots generates revenue for covering their operational expenses. The value network has been validated by a 12-month long operation, during which the hotspots and their services have been available to the general public on 24/7 basis.

Categories and Subject Descriptors K.6.0 [Management of Computing and Information Systems]: General – economics.

General Terms Economics, Experimentation.

Keywords Ubiquitous computing, value network, large public display.

1. INTRODUCTION The contemporary urban landscape is currently undergoing a paradigm shift, where shared public spaces are becoming increasingly saturated with new types of pervasive computing technology. The deployment of ubiquitous high-speed wireless access networks, powerful mobile devices, large public displays and different types of sensors is bridging the gap between physical, virtual and social worlds, and altering the ways people behave in urban spaces. Coupled with urbanization, the paradigm shift has given rise to urban computing, an emerging multidisciplinary research field studying the use of ubiquitous computing resources in public urban spaces.

Since Weiser [18] coined the term “ubiquitous computing” (ubicomp) in the 1980’s, we have seen an immense research investment in ubiquitous (or pervasive) computing. Most of this research has been conducted as short-term small-scale lab studies, which have produced numerous scientific publications laying the existing theoretical foundation. As the related computing technology has finally broken into the urban landscape, the time would be ripe for the research results to break out into the real

world, as well. However, not that many visible and lasting contributions to the urban digital fabric have emerged from the mainstream ubicomp research.

This lack of coherent progress motivated the 2005 UbiApps workshop at Pervasive 2005, where 25 researchers from academic and industry were invited based on their position papers. In their summary of the position papers Sharp and Rehman [15] identified several reasons underlying the crisis in the international ubiquitous computing research. One of them was the well-known fact that the research community values novelty over high-quality implementations and good engineering practices. This has led to ‘reinventing the wheel’ in tiny increments, which may have been worth yet another publication, but very little else to the community, as they have not been shareable due to their poor engineering. The consensus was that the research community should reward good engineering and encourage research that constructs open, reusable infrastructure for the wider community’s benefit. Interestingly, while some research communities have made long-term large-scale investments in shared infrastructure to support joint and transparent research, such as astronomers on telescopes, no such effort has been made by the ubicomp community. Another identified reason was insufficient evaluation of applications with plain lab experiments and without comparative methods. Applications should be instead evaluated in realistic environments in comparative manner.

A real world ubicomp application comprises of two fundamental parts: the underlying pervasive computing infrastructure (e.g. a 3G network providing wireless connectivity) and the application specific components (e.g. a Java client or a service directory). Further, the application should be provisioned under a viable business model to be sustainable. Because the infrastructure part can be a really problematic issue in terms of availability, cost and sustainability, the mainstream ubicomp research often sidesteps it, likewise the business model. These simplifications again make it more difficult for research results to propagate from the research labs to the real world.

We argue that the lack of lasting and visible results (in terms of applications) in urban informatics is partly due to the lack of open pervasive computing infrastructure in the public space. Successful public spaces are mixtures of activities and applications, which purposefully combine physical and virtual spaces. They link places and context, consciously avoiding the “anything, anytime, anywhere” paradigm. Doing this in practice requires permanent local infrastructure, which for business reasons is often deployed as closed verticals. We wish to challenge this by deploying a pervasive computing infrastructure in the urban space, and providing it as an open “horizontal” resource layer to the whole community.

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The availability of such infrastructure facilitatescale studies in authentic urban setting. Such stubecause real world ubicomp systems are culturally situated, which cannot be reliably assessed with lab studies detacworld context. Infrastructure and time are neededrequired technical and cultural readiness and the criticusers, before an ubicomp system can be evaluated ‘(un)successful’ [2]. The vast majority of consists of studies that typically last a few days or weeks at best. Further, from the viewpoint of urban computing these studies are often executed in artificial settings such as labs and university campuses. While they allow execution of costcontrolled experiments, they inevitably fail to world urban context.

Further, the infrastructure should involve a value network to be sustainable in the long run.infrastructure deployments initiated with public fundingoften collapsed soon after the public support did not have a proper business model for covering the operational expenses and renewal of the infrastructure.

Figure 1. Outdoor UBI-hotspot at downtown Oulu.

We have deployed a network of so-called UBIlater hotspot) in Oulu, Finland, to create a novel ecosystem infrastructure for conducting diverse urban and business in authentic urban setting with a viable business model. Our hotspot is effectively a large public display embedded with other co-located computing resources such as wireless access points. It offers a range of infotainment services realized with well-known Internet components.

The novel contribution of our study is two-fold. First contribution is the deployment of the hotspot infrastructure according to the open access principle [16] so that the hotspots range of concurrent usage modes: research and development, free provisioning of nonprofit services by the municipality and nonprofit organizations, and chargeable provisioning of commercial services by businesses. Second contribution is the establishment of a value network where the commercial use of the infrastructure generates enough revenue to cover itsexpenses. Thus, effectively, the profits from the commercial ufacilitate the nonprofit use of the hotspots. Bo

facilitates long-term large-. Such studies are important

systems are culturally situated, which cannot be reliably assessed with lab studies detached from the real

are needed to establish the cultural readiness and the critical mass of

system can be evaluated The vast majority of mainstream research

t a few days or weeks at best. Further, from the viewpoint of urban computing these studies are often executed in artificial settings such as labs and university campuses. While they allow execution of cost-effective and controlled experiments, they inevitably fail to address the real

uld involve a functional real world to be sustainable in the long run. Many

with public funding have support ceased, because they for covering the operational

hotspot at downtown Oulu.

called UBI-hotspots (Fig. 1, later hotspot) in Oulu, Finland, to create a novel ecosystem

urban computing research with a viable business

Our hotspot is effectively a large public display embedded located computing resources such as wireless access

points. It offers a range of infotainment services realized with

fold. First contribution infrastructure according to the

so that the hotspots facilitate diverse concurrent usage modes: research and development, free

provisioning of nonprofit services by the municipality and nonprofit organizations, and chargeable provisioning of

Second contribution is the e commercial use of the

ates enough revenue to cover its operational . Thus, effectively, the profits from the commercial use

facilitate the nonprofit use of the hotspots. Both contributions

have been proven by a year-long during which the hotspots and their services have been available to the general public on 24/7 basis.

To our best knowledge a similar infrastructure deployment in authentic urban setting with equally extensive reseand commercial use and a proven business model has not been reported in literature. The notable academic deployments of large interactive public displays such as the eUniversity [17] and the iDisplayshave been limited to university campuses and research use. Commercial deployments of large public displays limited to passive digital signage, which is known to suffer from so-called display blindness [6, 10displays with useful interactive affordances is worth studying.

Since have earlier reported implementation and evaluationcommunity engagement [13] of the hotspots, overview of the hotspot infrastructure and services this paper we focus on the value networkaround the hotspot deployment. value network, identifies its challenges and proposes avalue network that could better Section 4 discusses briefly related work and the paper, summarizing the contribution and discussing the many challenges involved in this type of research.

2. UBI-HOTSPOTS 2.1 Motivation In our long-term vision the uhotspots, which provide rich interaction between the physical, virtual and social spaces. We do not offer our hotspots as solutions to particular (research) problems at downtowwhich undoubtedly would survive just fine without the hotspots. Instead, we promote our hotspots as ‘h[14] and research enablers.

A probe refers to an instrument that allows measurement of an unknown, producing hopefully uscase the unknown is the urban landscape, where new technology is emerging and where complex social roles of the urban communities, people’s movement and traces through cities, and people’s interactions with place and publiurban probe is a direct constructive intervention to the urban landscape, to alter or disrupt the usage, actions or flow within the urban space. An urban probe must be an artifact that does not blend into the landscape, but is proreaction and promote immediate discussion about it. By assessing the reaction and interaction of people and place with the new artifact we hope to learn more about the urban landscape.

Further, the hotspots enable in-business with real users and with sufficient scale and time span. The hotspots are effectively versatile computing platforms, which facilitate provisioning of a diverse range of services to the general public in authentic urban setting. By deploying a number of hotspots for a sufficiently long time we wish to establish the technical and cultural readiness and the critical mass of users needed for determining whether this kind of computing infrastructure and services can be provisunder a sustainable business model.

We wish to offer the hotspots as a horizontal infrastructure layer according to the open access principle [16

long operation since summer 2009, during which the hotspots and their services have been available

24/7 basis.

To our best knowledge a similar infrastructure deployment in authentic urban setting with equally extensive research, nonprofit and commercial use and a proven business model has not been reported in literature. The notable academic deployments of large interactive public displays such as the e-Campus at the Lancaster

] and the iDisplays at the University of Münster [9] have been limited to university campuses and research use. Commercial deployments of large public displays are typically limited to passive digital signage, which is known to suffer from

led display blindness [6, 10]. Thus, embedding such displays with useful interactive affordances is worth studying.

reported in detail the design and implementation and evaluation [5, 8, 13], maintenance [4] and

] of the hotspots, we provide just an of the hotspot infrastructure and services in Section 2. In

value network that has been established around the hotspot deployment. Section 3 describes the current value network, identifies its challenges and proposes a future

better fulfill the needs of different actors. related work and Section 5 concludes

, summarizing the contribution and discussing the many challenges involved in this type of research.

term vision the urban space is populated with hotspots, which provide rich interaction between the physical,

. We do not offer our hotspots as solutions to particular (research) problems at downtown Oulu, which undoubtedly would survive just fine without the hotspots. Instead, we promote our hotspots as ‘heavyweight’ urban probes

A probe refers to an instrument that allows measurement of an unknown, producing hopefully useful and interesting data. In our case the unknown is the urban landscape, where new technology is emerging and where complex social roles of the urban communities, people’s movement and traces through cities, and people’s interactions with place and public artifacts intersect. An urban probe is a direct constructive intervention to the urban landscape, to alter or disrupt the usage, actions or flow within the urban space. An urban probe must be an artifact that does not blend into the landscape, but is provocative enough to elicit direct reaction and promote immediate discussion about it. By assessing the reaction and interaction of people and place with the new artifact we hope to learn more about the urban landscape.

-situ urban computing research and with real users and with sufficient scale and time span.

The hotspots are effectively versatile computing platforms, which facilitate provisioning of a diverse range of services to the general

setting. By deploying a number of hotspots for a sufficiently long time we wish to establish the technical and cultural readiness and the critical mass of users needed for determining whether this kind of computing

can be provisioned in the urban space under a sustainable business model.

We wish to offer the hotspots as a horizontal infrastructure layer the open access principle [16]. The principle, which

is usually applied in the context of networking, is applicable to other types of infrastructures, as well. The principle states that the owner of an infrastructure must make the infrastructure available to everyone under equal terms (not necessarily for free) and must not interfere with the service provisioning conducted atop the infrastructure. This is assumed to stimulate open innovation of new services in comparison to closed access networks.

2.2 Infrastructure 2.2.1 Hardware We installed a network of 12 hotspots (Fig. 1) at pivotal outdoor and indoor locations around downtown Oulu in summer 2009. The six outdoor hotspots are installed at the walking street area at the heart of the city and at the market area. The six indoor hotspots are placed in popular municipal buildings such as main library, youth and culture center and swimming hall.

The hotspot comes in two different versions for outdoor and indoor use. While the portable indoor version has one LCD panel controlled by an industrial grade PC, the permanently installed outdoor version is double-sided with two LCD panels back-to-back and separate control PC’s for each panel. The LCD panels and other components are confined in a weather proof aluminum casing with heating and cooling systems.

The visible component of the hotspot is the 57” landscape LCD panel with full HD resolution. The panel is protected by a 6 mm hardened safety glass. Behind the glass is a projected capacitive touch screen foil. A loudspeaker is implemented by a transducer that transforms the front cover to a loudspeaker. A NFC/RFID reader is attached behind a plastic window in the front of the case and two cameras are integrated to the top frame of the case. Bluetooth and WLAN access points are placed inside the hotspot and their antennas are integrated into the roof of the casing.

The hotspots are accompanied by a server farm, which runs the centralized software components (e.g. databases) and services discussed in Section 2.3.

2.2.2 Software In terms of software our goal has been a cost-efficient implementation utilizing existing open source and Internet components. The modular software architecture of the hotspots is designed to allow each hotspot to function individually based on its proximity context. At the same time the hotspots are also networked in a loosely-coupled fashion via an event-based communication overlay, which allows the hotspots to publish and subscribe to events related to their context. This design allows application distribution on multiple levels, from reliance on one hotspot to the utilization of multiple physically separated hotspots simultaneously.

2.3 Services A hotspot alternates between a passive broadcast mode and an interactive mode. The transition to the interactive mode is triggered by a user touching the touch screen, a face being detected from the video feed of the two overhead cameras or a user presenting an RFID tag to the RFID reader. The end of the interaction is determined with a timeout since the last interaction event, after which the hotspot returns to the broadcast mode. We refer to these interaction periods commonly as sessions.

In the broadcast mode the whole display is allocated to a digital signage service called UBI-channel. It repeats a playlist

comprising of a varying number of so-called spots, which can be either high resolution images or video clips. The current structure of the playlist is shown in Fig. 2. While the playlist can technically be configured on per hotspot basis, currently the playlist in each hotspot contains the same commercial spots (max 20) and nonprofit spots (max 20). Further, the playlist of an indoor hotspot can contain up to 10 spots allocated to the owner of the location of the hotspot. For example, the indoor hotspots placed in the entrance halls of a municipal swimming center and indoor sports stadium show spots marketing the various sports and exercise services provided by the municipality. Commercial customers can purchase campaigns (i.e. slots in the playlist) of varying duration, typically 1-12 months, at fixed pricing.

Figure 2. Structure of the UBI-channel playlist. The numbers in parentheses correspond to the number of distinct 15 second

spots allocated to the designated actor.

In the interactive mode the display is divided between the UBI-channel and a touch screen portal called UBI-portal. The UBI-portal is basically a web portal of various information and leisure services, which are referenced by their URLs and can reside on any web server in the public Internet [8]. The UBI-portal includes services which are used with a mobile device so that they jointly constitute a distributed user interface [5, 7]. The UBI-portal can be configured on per hotspot basis. The generic functionalities include language selection, a service specific help page and buttons for giving “thumbs up/down” votes for the currently selected service. To support research use all interaction events in every UBI-portal instance are recorded into a centralized log.

So far we have released two distinct versions of the UBI-portal. The first version released for summer 2009 employed a two-level tabbed navigation hierarchy (Fig. 3), where the 1st level services were Map (starting view): a map-based service and information directory based on Google Maps; Oulu Today: up-to-date news, events and weather information, provided by the local main newspaper as a prime example of the openness of our architecture, where 3rd party services can easily be integrated into the portal; Multimedia: multimedia content such as images and video, including user generated content uploaded from personal mobile phones; Fun and Games: entertainment and leisure services; Help: usage instructions and relevant information; and Survey: online questionnaire. A detailed analysis of the usage of the first version is reported in [13]. On average each hotspot had daily 49 interactive sessions of which 14 sessions involved the usage of the UBI-portal for 6.8 clicks on service tabs and 467 seconds of browsing time. However, there were great differences in the usage frequency of different hotspots and services.

Commercial customers(20)

Location of indoor hotspot (10)

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Municipality and nonprofit organizations authorized by municipality (13)

Research organization (6)Oulu Business Coalition (1)

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Figure 3. A screenshot of UBI-hotspot 1.0 in interactive modeUBI-channel in the upper left quarter, mobile

window on lower left, and UBI-portal in the right half showing real-time bus schedule for the selected bus stop.

The second version released for summer 2010 based service selection menu (Fig. 4). It allows more dynamic configuration and expansion of the portal, asadded in a very straightforward manner service metadata (incl. URL) via a management interfaceservice has to conform to the given specification governingusage of various web elements, layout, etc. The contains the 1st level service categories of introduces new categories such as municipalcommercial services. Businesses can purchase a right to offer a service in the commercial services category for a varying duration at fixed pricing. From the user’s point of view the second version introduced new features such as personalization of the service selection menu and Facebook integration.

Figure 4. A screenshot of the service selection portal 2.0.

3. VALUE NETWORK OF UBI3.1 Business models and value networksWhile the capital investment of the hotspots was provided fully by public sources, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF, 89%) and the City of Oulu (11%), the responsibility for creating revenue for covering the operationalexpenses of the hotspots, which requires a business model. Further, we are expected to establish a sustainable lifecycle model, which would keep the hotspots operational for at least five years after the conclusion of the ERDF project. This calls for

hotspot 1.0 in interactive mode: mobile application

portal in the right half time bus schedule for the selected bus stop.

2010 employs a widget-allows more dynamic

, as new services can be by just entering the

a management interface. Each o the given specification governing the

e of various web elements, layout, etc. The second version level service categories of the first version and

s municipal services and Businesses can purchase a right to offer a

service in the commercial services category for a varying duration From the user’s point of view the second version

ersonalization of the service

selection menu in UBI-

OF UBI-HOTSPOTS value networks

he capital investment of the hotspots was provided fully by public sources, the European Regional Development Fund

we were vested with the responsibility for creating revenue for covering the operational

requires a business model. Further, we are expected to establish a sustainable lifecycle model, which would keep the hotspots operational for at least five years after the conclusion of the ERDF project. This calls for

refining the short term business model into a long term value network.

Adopting a business and building a value network are closely connected issues. A business model has a clear role in capturing value from especially early stage technology.business model enables connecting the with the realization of economic value technology remains latent until commercialized in some way. A business model not only illustrates how to make money, but also structures the value chain and the places of actors in it. The value chain enables further value network thinking, as well as illustrates value creation which motivates the actors of a value network.

Past research has shown that networks between organizations on a market generate higher survival rates [3environment is undergoing a fundamental change, networks are rapidly replacing so called traditional markets. Instead of mere supplier-customer relationships, webs of firms form R&D networks and more competitive coaliticonsist of unrelated firms and other actors, such as research and government agencies. Presently, other activities besides core competencies tend to be outsourced. This externalization of value activities is dependent on creating stronger supplier relationships according to strategic relevance.

Simultaneously, companies develop relationships with noncommercial actors such as governmental agencies, universities and other research and sSome of these target R&D purposestarget is in influencing legislation for the norms and guidelines that regulate industrial and commercial action. In practice, often gaining access to regulated markets orgoal. [11]

Horizontal relationships have played a major role in our hotspot deployment: the municipality provides the urban space of the hotspots, the university has created the “early stage” technological innovation of interactive hotspots, and a number of technology and media companies participate either as suppliers and/or strategic R&D partners hoping to gain competitive advantage.

3.2 Current value networkThe current business model of the hotspots is straightforward: the revenue generated by the commercial use of the UBIUBI-portal cover the operational expenses of thethe first 12 months of operation 35 businesses purchased 45 campaigns in the UBI-channel and 3 businesses purchased the right to offer a service in the UBI149000 EUR.

Fig 5. shows the underlying value network, depicting the different actors, and the cash and content flows partnerships that are relevant to the hotspots. the hotspots running while the content flows are providing services. The value networmanaged by the research organizationconditions of the ERDF funding, which impose limitations on the commercial use of the infrastructure.

In the following we briefly describe the roles and tasks of each actor.

t term business model into a long term value

Adopting a business and building a value network are closely connected issues. A business model has a clear role in capturing

pecially early stage technology. A successful ables connecting the technological potential

realization of economic value – the inherent value of a technology remains latent until commercialized in some way. A business model not only illustrates how to make money, but also

chain and the places of actors in it. The value chain enables further value network thinking, as well as illustrates value creation which motivates the actors of a value network. [1]

Past research has shown that networks between organizations on a ate higher survival rates [3]. When competitive

environment is undergoing a fundamental change, networks are rapidly replacing so called traditional markets. Instead of mere

customer relationships, webs of firms form R&D petitive coalitions. These networks can

of unrelated firms and other actors, such as research and . Presently, other activities besides core

competencies tend to be outsourced. This externalization of value t on creating stronger supplier relationships

cording to strategic relevance. [11]

companies develop specific types of horizontal with noncommercial actors such as governmental

agencies, universities and other research and social institutions. Some of these target R&D purposes, as with universities. Another target is in influencing legislation for the norms and guidelines that regulate industrial and commercial action. In practice, often gaining access to regulated markets or industries is the ultimate

Horizontal relationships have played a major role in our hotspot deployment: the municipality provides the urban space of the hotspots, the university has created the “early stage” technological

ive hotspots, and a number of technology and media companies participate either as suppliers and/or strategic R&D partners hoping to gain competitive advantage.

Current value network business model of the hotspots is straightforward: the

revenue generated by the commercial use of the UBI-channel and portal cover the operational expenses of the hotspots. During

of operation 35 businesses purchased 45 channel and 3 businesses purchased the

o offer a service in the UBI-portal for total revenue of

value network, depicting the different the cash and content flows and the strategic

that are relevant to the hotspots. The cash flows keep the content flows are required for

The value network has been established and is managed by the research organization under the rules and conditions of the ERDF funding, which impose limitations on the

mmercial use of the infrastructure.

In the following we briefly describe the roles and tasks of each

Figure 5. Current value network of UBI-hotspots.

Research organization – Owns the hotspot infrastructure, takes care of the operations and maintenance of the infrastructure by purchasing assorted services from external service providers, conducts research and development of new services, takes care of media sales.

Municipality – Owns the public space and buildings where the hotspots are placed, provides municipal content and services into UBI-channel and UBI-portal, produces the content in-house and/or purchases content from content production companies, coordinates the nonprofit use of the UBI-channel.

Commercial hotspot customers – Purchase commercial campaigns in the UBI-channel, purchase rights to offer commercial services in the UBI-portal, produce the content in-house and/or purchase content from content production companies, may outsource the media purchase to a media agency.

Nonprofit hotspot users – Nonprofit organizations that are authorized by the municipality to use the nonprofit quota of the UBI-channel, produce the content in-house and/or purchase content from content production companies.

Content production companies – Produce spots to the UBI-channel and/or web pages to the UBI-portal.

Media agency – Purchases commercial campaigns in the UBI-channel on behalf of some client (commercial hotspot customer).

Hotspot manufacturer – Provides hotspots with warranty under which any hardware faults are fixed.

External service providers – Provide the services needed for the daily operation and maintenance of the hotspots (Internet connectivity, electricity, cleaning, insurance).

R&D partners – Includes a diverse range of actors collaborating with the research organization for the purpose of provisioning services and developing new services. Research partners (e.g. other research projects) are welcome to deploy in the hotspots the services they have developed. The Oulu Business Coalition maintains the service directory provided by the hotspots. A media distribution company and local newspaper are partners of the hotspot project. For example, the newspaper provides the Oulu Today service in the UBI-portal.

The main challenges in establishing and maintaining the business model have been the following:

Launching novel local media products– The UBI-channel and the UBI-portal were effectively novel local media products. They had to break into the small established media market in the Oulu region amidst recession, when organizations cut their marketing budgets and all media channels slashed their prices. Most existing media channels have agreements with local content production companies, where the content production and media space are packaged into a single product. This motivates content production companies to steer their customers towards these existing media channels. In a related matter, many potential customers usually relying on mass marketing in printed media had difficulties in understanding the content requirements and dynamic potential of the UBI-channel. To address these obstacles, we established strategic partnerships with a couple of local media production companies, where media production and the UBI-channel campaign were packaged into a single product. Further, the fact that the hotspots are a localized media channel is both a clear weakness and a potential strength. Major international and national brands with large marketing budgets are not generally interested in local media coverage. The hotspots should best suite the marketing needs of local businesses, for example to conduct highly localized context-aware marketing, but regrettably they rarely have neither resources nor competence to utilize novel media products. A specific detailed challenge in launching UBI-channel and UBI-portal was determining the number of contacts they would provide. Commercial customers seek to minimize the unit price per contact and have adapted to the somewhat imaginary contact counts advertised by the traditional media channels. Do all people passing by the hotspots qualify as a contact or should we only count the faces detected by the overhead cameras?

Balancing commercial use and nonprofit use of the hotspots – All services in the hotspots compete for the limited (visual) capacity of the screen and the limited attention paid to by the (potential) users of the hotspots. This is particularly true for the UBI-channel, where a playlist of spots is repeated. Commercial customers would prefer just their own spots to be shown, whereas municipality and nonprofit users would want to use as many spots as possible. During the first year of operation it has become clear that the commercial customers want to get more visibility to their spots. To accommodate for this we have twice shortened the playlist, first from 60x10 s spots to 50x12 s spots and then further to 40x15 s, and at the same time reduced the proportion of nonprofit spots. Clearly, our playlist is still much longer than in typical commercial digital signage deployments. However, we argue that it is important to provide ample noncommercial content and services, whose use also creates visibility to commercial content and services. If our hotspots would be perceived to be just advertising boards, they would be quickly forgotten [6].

Complex role of the research organization – The research organization is responsible for the academic research, daily maintenance of the hotspot infrastructure and services, design and implementation of new services, and media sales. While executing all these tasks gives a strong control point over the value network, they are partly contradicting and impose a great strain on our limited personnel resources. Balancing the allocation of the infrastructure and manpower between the commercial use generating revenue for operational expenses and the research use generating scientific results such as publications has been particularly challenging. Further, we have not been able to fulfill

Research

Organization• Infrastructure O & M

• Service R&D

• Media sales

Municipality

• Urban space

• Municipal services

External Service Providers

•Internet access

•Electricity

•Cleaning

•Insurance

Content

Production

Companies

Media

Agency

Commercial

Hotspot

Customers

Nonprofit

Hotspot Users

R&D Partners

• Research partners

• Oulu Business Coalition

• Media distribution company

• Newspaper (Oulu Today)

Cash flow Content flowStrategicpartnership

Hotspot

Manufacturer

all requests such as commercializing the hotspot concept to be sold to interested parties.

3.3 New actor: “hotspot operator” Given the complex role of the research organization, we have identified the need for a new actor called “Hotspot operator”. As illustrated in Fig. 6, the “hotspot operator” would effectively adopt the role of the research organization in the current value network, taking care of the operations and maintenance of the hotspot infrastructure. The “hotspot operator” would have to establish an agreement with the municipality on the exchange of the nonprofit service provisioning to the hotspot sites. The “hotspot operator” could also take care of media sales or alternatively delegate it to a media agency.

The research organization would be “relegated” into an R&D partner focusing on conducting academic research with the hotspots. Obviously this would require a detailed agreement with the hotspot operator regarding the access to the hotspot infrastructure and their usage.

Given the ongoing consolidation of the advertising market in Finland, there are no guarantees that purely local media channels such as our hotspots will be able to survive in the long run. To create a media channel with more extensive and attractive coverage, the “hotspot operator” could seek strategic partnerships with similar actors and/or propose interactive hotspot deployments to other municipalities. For this purpose the “hotspot operator” could productize the hotspot concept in collaboration with the hotspot manufacturer and research organization licensing the software system.

Figure 6. New value network involving the hotspot operator.

4. CONCLUSION We reported a real world deployment of interactive public hotspots, which are utilized by research, public service and commercial use. We reported the current value network, which provides a functional business model for covering the operational expenses of the hotspots with the revenue generated by the commercial use. We wish to emphasize the importance of the strategic partnership with the municipality which is a mandatory prerequisite for this type of research driven real world deployment to succeed in the first place.

This kind of large-scale real world deployment involves a number of challenges. First is balancing traditional academic research with development, public service and commercial use. Second is scalability, to what extent our ongoing infrastructure deployment in a small downtown of a city of about 140000 people would scale up to a really large urban space? Third is sustainability, as every infrastructure deployment is subject to study of its economical and technological sustainability. Fourth is the demand for high quality engineering: deploying and maintaining in a city center a large-scale distributed system that the user community expects to be available 24/7 is a totally different ball game than presenting a one-shot demo to your sponsors or conducting an evaluation in a controlled environment such as a usability lab. Fifth is urban planning, including the ‘battle’ for the urban space and prevention of vandalism after deployment. Sixth is the public scrutiny by the general public and the local media, which has been very ill-tempered at times.

We wish to emphasize the openness of our hotspots. As demonstrated by the few commercial services, we can embed any 3rd party web service into the UBI-portal, as long as they fulfill certain design criteria. We cannot ourselves presume to foresee all the possibilities created by this new infrastructure. Thus open and transparent access to the infrastructure is crucial in finding the killer applications that will make the hotspots irreplaceable to the community. To make this happen we are conducting various activities to involve the whole R&D community. Students design new services to the hotspots as their course works. To stimulate user-driven open innovation and generation of new commercial services we are executing a national “UBI Challenge” in 2010, which challenges both individuals and businesses to innovate and implement novel services to the hotspots - best proposals are supported with grants. An international “UBI Challenge” prepared with a number of leading researchers is being executed in 2010-2011, inviting the international research community to show what they would be able to do with the hotspots.

5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, the European Regional Development Fund, the City of Oulu, and the UBI (UrBan Interactions) consortium.

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