Swisscom must open up its broadband network to competitors. The Federal Administrative Court has confirmed that the former monopolist is market-dominant in this area. According to SDA, the time and conditions of access have not yet been determined.
In April 2007, parliament broke Swisscom's monopoly on the last mile from the local exchange to the home connection. In order to accelerate the opening up of the market, competitors, who had previously only been able to resell Swisscom's broadband offering to their end customers, were to be able to rent Swisscom's ADSL equipment in the local exchanges for four years. Following an application by competitor Sunrise, the Federal Communications Commission (Comcom) came to the conclusion the following November that Swisscom was dominant in the market for broadband data lines (bitstream) and therefore had to grant access. The Federal Administrative Court has now confirmed this decision.
According to Swisscom's press release on Thursday, it will now enable bitstream access. However, this will require extensive technical and contractual preparatory work. It expects access to be realized in November 2009.

Successful completion of the Maz degree course in science journalism: according to a press release issued on Thursday, eight academics from a wide range of disciplines have completed four modules to learn how to communicate their expert knowledge in a way that is understandable and accessible to the public. They honed their language as a creative tool and examined the mechanisms and criteria according to which the Swiss media function.
The CAS program in Science Journalism is supported and recommended by the Swiss Academy of Sciences Scnat.

The Swiss Press Association is committed to the use and dissemination of Acap technology. If it has its way, its members' websites should be created using the software in future.
The Swiss Press Association is committed to the use and dissemination of Acap technology, as it announced in writing today, Thursday. Acap stands for "Automated Content Access Protocol". This is a computer language that allows the rights applicable on the sites to be defined appropriately. In particular, the association is calling on its members to work with Acap in future.
This allows the content owner to determine how search engines and other internet services search and collect the texts. For content on news portals in particular, Acap is a simple means of regulating its use according to individual needs.
Acap even makes it possible to release the numerous contents and define their intermediate stages. However, Acap does not yet say anything about how exactly the content may be used and reused.
Around 200 Internet portals, mainly in Europe, have installed Acap to date. In Switzerland, Ringier, NZZ, LZ Medien, News1, Schaffhauser Nachrichten and the Swiss Press Association will use Acap technology on their websites. This has been announced by the media companies so far. Other publishers such as Tamedia and AZ Medien are currently examining the use of the system.
The standard was developed and tested by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The protocol can be obtained easily and free of charge.

The Waz Media Group wants to cut around 300 editorial positions. The staff cuts are to be implemented "as socially responsible as possible" and the Waz hopes to be able to avoid redundancies. So far, around 200 employees are said to have been offered the option of taking part-time retirement or concluding a termination agreement.
The Waz wants to save a total of 32 million euros in the current year. The national sections of the three major NRW newspapers Waz, Neue Ruhr Zeitung/Neue Rhein Zeitung (NRZ) and Westfälische Rundschau (WR) are to be produced by a joint editorial team from spring.

From February 19 to 22, 2009, the Natur Messe 09 will take place at the Basel Exhibition Center. Aroma Productions has designed, produced and realized the exhibition stand of the main sponsor Coop. The market presence will cover an area of 50 square meters, as detailed in a press release. The stand design is aimed at the Lohas (Lifestyle of Health and Substainability) target group and is intended to show visitors in a playful way how large their ecological footprint is and how they can reduce it by adopting responsible consumer behavior.
Responsible at Coop: Sibyl Anwander (Head of Quality/Sustainability), Barbara Irniger (Head of Public Relations), Gilbert Montavon (Project Manager Public Relations). Responsible at Aroma Productions: Jeannette Bours, Roger Stämpfli (concept/creation), Georg Gaukel, Marc Wiederkehr (project planning, production).

The Lucerne-based organic cosmetics company Hotz & Celia has commissioned the Zurich agency Transformer with a complete relaunch of the Claudia Celia brand. The new look will be introduced gradually from April 2009.
Hotz & Celia produces its own natural cosmetics. The range of over 40 different products consists of body and facial care products.

The media industry - not only in Switzerland, but also internationally - is preparing for a difficult year in 2009. Some forecasters even believe that the misery will not be over in 2010 either. On the contrary, it could even get worse.
In Germany and abroad, strategies are being rethought, old habits are being thrown overboard and new ones are being planned. Optimization and redimensioning are taking place, and the red pencil is being used. Forced to do so because advertising revenues are collapsing across the board.
The Publicitas index fell from 89.9 in December to 88.3 points in January. In January 2008, it was still at 98.1 points. At first glance, this is certainly dramatic. But the decline did not just start last year. In 2002, the same index was still at 123.7, so in seven years it has fallen by 35.4 points. An impressive figure, but actually relatively harmless on an annual basis. But it was a steady decline. We could see the downturn coming. But no one could have foreseen how rapid it would suddenly become.
At the moment, the print sector is the big sufferer. But no one knows whether other media will also be affected by the decline in the near future. Media that can boast lower absolute costs will benefit from the slowdown in advertisers' spending. Online, for example.
In recent months, many of the planned measures of the individual media companies have already been communicated. Mostly in the form of more or less clear statements of intent or possible scenarios. Clear information was lacking in most cases. The bush phone was running hot. Strategies were being reviewed, it was said everywhere. Information would be provided in due course. Often there seemed to be a certain helplessness. One knew that something had to be done. But what?
The number of media construction sites is large. There are plenty of unsolved problems. Without any claim to completeness, here are a few: What is happening with the Bund? What will the new NZZ look like? What is the Tages-Anzeiger doing? Where is the Basler Zeitung heading? What is happening with Le Matin and Le Matin bleu? What is happening at Cash? What is Blick doing?
At the moment, the market is suspiciously quiet. It seems as if the industry is playing dead, so to speak. Everyone seems to be waiting for someone to take the first step and present not only possible strategies, but also solutions at last. What is missing at the moment is such a liberating blow. Only such a move can break the deadlock reflex. At least let's hope so.

Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]

Ringier Verlag is expanding the product line of its political magazine Cicero: under the name Cicero Portfolio, monothematic magazines with in-depth background stories will be published at irregular intervals in future. The subject of the first issue is Barack Obama and the new political direction of the USA.
According to the publisher, Cicero Portfolio is designed as a "reference work" and "collector's item". The magazine will be published in a print run of 50,000 copies and will be available to purchase for 3.90 euros. According to the industry service Horizont, two to four issues are currently planned. The first will be published on February 26.
The political magazine Cicero is a German product of the Ringier publishing house. It reports monthly from Berlin on political and social issues.

In order to improve its regional coverage, the Keystone photo agency has restructured its team of photographers. As a result, Dominic Favre, an experienced press photographer, has been appointed for French-speaking Switzerland, according to a press release issued on Wednesday. Previously with ARC in Lausanne and a freelancer for Keystone since 2007, he joins the Romandie team with a 100 percent workload. He replaces Sandro Campardo, who was previously employed by Keystone on a 60 percent basis and will continue to work as a freelancer for the agency in the Neuchâtel/Jura region.
Ennio Leanza is now working for St. Gallen and the region of Eastern Switzerland. After successfully completing his degree in press photography at the MAZ, he completed a three-month traineeship at Keystone last summer and was employed by the St. Galler Tagblatt until the end of 2008. He joins Regina Kühne, who continues to work for Keystone on a reduced 30 percent workload.
Following the departure of Eddy Risch last fall, the team of photographers in the Zurich area was joined at the beginning of the year by Patrick B. Krämer, who has been working as a freelancer for the photo agency for some time. He is an established name in sports photography, particularly in the field of swimming. For the time being, he will be working 50% of the time.

Swiss trade via the internet has increased significantly in recent years. This is the conclusion of a long-term study by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Chair of International Retail Management at the University of St. Gallen. In 2008 alone, Swiss consumers purchased products worth around 5.87 billion Swiss francs via the Internet - an increase of over 38 percent in two years. The study will be presented on April 28, 2009 as part of the St. Gallen Internet Day.
For the sixth time in succession, over 1,000 people were surveyed for the study at the end of 2008. The authors of the study attribute the strong growth in particular to vacation travel (+9.6 percent online customers), flight bookings (+7.6 percent), the sale of second-hand products (+3.6 percent) and electrical appliances (+1.2 percent). Almost 100,000 Swiss consumers also prefer to purchase less popular online products such as food online.

The service magazine of Axa Winterthur Meine Firma is now under the management of Sandra Willmeroth. The business journalist has been responsible for the customer magazine as editor-in-chief since February 1, according to a press release issued on Wednesday. Meine Firma is published four times a year with a print run of 100,000 and a Website.

Willmeroth studied political science and economics in Marburg and was head of the finance department at Handelszeitung for two years. Previously, she was a member of the management team at Swisscontent and an editor at Tages-Anzeiger.

Mobile network operators Orange, Sunrise and Swisscom will be installing more than 1,000 new antennas along Swiss railway lines over the next few months. This was reported by the Handelszeitung according to Blick am Abend on Wednesday. The operators want to plug the gaps in coverage. At the same time, they intend to prevent overloads so that connections are not lost. Swisscom spokesperson Olaf Schulze is quoted as saying that around 270 new sites will be put into operation this year in addition to the 5,300 existing antennas. Orange is planning 400 new antennas, while Sunrise is even planning 500 in 2009.