This book contains the best papers of the First International Conference on E-business and Telecommunication Networks (ICETE 2004), held in Setúbal (Portugal) and organized by INSTICC (Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Communication and Control ) in collaboration with the School of Business of the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal, who hosted the event. This conference represents a major initiative to increase the technical exchanges among professionals, who work on the e-Business and Telecommunication Networks fields, and who are deploying new services and technologies into the lives of ordinary consumers. The major goal of this conference is to bring together researchers and developers from academia a and industry working in areas related to e-business, with a special focus on Telecommunication Networks. This year, four simultaneous tracks were held, covering different aspects, including: “Global Communication Information Systems and Services”, “Security and Reliability in Information Systems and Networks”, “Wireless Communication Systems and Networks” and “Multimedia Signal Processing g”. The sections of this book reflect the conference tracks. ICETE 2004 received 202 paper submissions from 43 different countries, from all continents. 110 papers were published and orally presented as full papers, i.e. completed work, and 44 papers were accepted for poster presentation. The full paper acceptance ratio confirms our confidence that ICETE 2004 has achieved a high quality standard that we will strive to keep and enhance in order to ensure the success of the next year ICETE edition.
