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Origins of DECTweb At a DECT conference in London, in the autumn of 1997, Eric Spain of the Hong Kong DECT Forum spoke on DECT developments in the Asian region. He mentioned in his talk the difficulties that he and others had experienced, at times, of getting hold of detailed information relating to DECT products and activities in a timely manner from the other side of the world. The idea of a DECT Internet newsgroup was suggested and he invited people who might be interested to talk to him, especially someone who might be able to set something up, as he was too busy to. It was out of this seed of an idea that the concept of DECTweb emerged. The following January 1998, on the final day of the DECT '98 event in Barcelona, Spain, the chairman of the event, Walter Tuttlebee, announced news of plans to initiate DECTweb to the conference attendees. The proposal had by then been discussed with, and endorsed by, a number of the leading figures in the international DECT industry, including members of the DECT Forum. By this time the www.DECTweb.com domain had been applied
for and initial content assembled. March 1998 - the beta-site launched DECTweb went 'live' in September 1998, after a 6-month period of beta-trialling. During 1999, its first full year of operation, DECTweb received over 0.5 million hits, with average hits/month of 46621. During calendar year 2000 traffic continued to increase very substantially, closing the year with nearly 2 million hits during the previous 12 months. During calendar year 2001 traffic doubled again, closing the year with nearly 4 million hits during the previous 12 months. In the three months to Jan 2002, the site averaged >1,000 separate user sessions every day. Average sessions usage times have continued to hold constant over the past 12 months, indicating a stable and solid user community, who recognise and value the content provided on the DECTweb site. Very little formal promotion of DECTweb has been attempted - such sustained traffic growth and loyalty has primarily been achieved through word-of-mouth as news has spread through the industry. DECTnews, our free-on-request subscription e-mail news service, is another important part of the DECTweb community package. DECTnews is currently e-mailed to nearly 2000 members in > 50 countries, all of whom are self-subscribed members of the DECTweb community - ie by definition these are people with a self-declared specific interest in DECT, most of whom are employed within the DECT industry. Such individuals submit news directly to DECTweb and are the source of most of the news we include on our news pages. We still have many ideas yet to be implemented, including increased interactivity, and expect the site to be enhanced further over the coming year - please tell us what you would like to see on the site. We're trying to ensure a high quality of content, providing extensive links to existing DECT resources on the web, and to keep the presentation such that pages download quickly and such that a variety of browsers are supported. Already DECTweb has succeeded in growing well beyond simply being a website, to truly be a place where people involved in DECT - whether technically, commercially or whatever - can exchange information and build friendships. You can help us to achieve this by supporting DECTweb in a number of different ways, the simplest of all being to become a member and to encourage your friends and colleagues to. Your company can sponsor a page of DECTweb. You can also support us by sending us information to put up on the site and in news mailings. If it's not yet on the site, please tell us - it may be old news to you, but it may be of great interest to others. |
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