Tag Archives: America
Productivity driving growth in China and Asia
LIRNEasia’s future work will focus on knowledge-based economies, which makes us very interested in stories like this, which place innovation at the center. China’s productivity has been lifted by a massive expansion of private enterprise, and a shift of labour out of agricultural work and into more productive jobs in industry. China’s average return on [...]
One Billion Internet users?
The number of people going online has passed one billion for the first time, according to comScore, an online metrics company. Almost 180m internet users—over one in six of the world’s online population—live in China, more than any other country. Until a few months ago America had most web users, but with 163m people online, [...]
Every child in country that invented Internet should be online – Obama
‘The 21st Century Tech President’ said Saturday morning that the U.S. will launch new investments in its infrastructure – including a boost of broadband accessibility – as part of a larger strategy to revitalize the economy and create jobs. Specifically, President-elect Barack Obama said broadband connections need to be made widely available to school children [...]
IBM to bring broadband over power line to rural America
IBM has been hired to help rural Americans get broadband access using power lines. On Wednesday, Big Blue announced it has signed a $9.6 million contract with International Broadband Electric Communications to bring the technology to rural America where it hopes to deliver high-speed broadband connectivity to millions of people who otherwise wouldn’t be able [...]
What is the cheapest remittance mechanism of them all?
Last year as many as 190m migrant workers sent cash home, according to the World Bank. These remittances amounted to US$337 billion, of which US$251 billion went to developing countries. But the cost of sending hard-earned cash depends on both the source and destination. On average, sending US$500 from Spain to Brazil will incur a [...]
Indonesian Mobile Phone Providers Found Guilty of Price Fixing
Indonesia’ competition watchdog found six mobile phone providers guilty of price fixing, which may have cost consumers more than $300 million in additional rates. The Business Competition Supervisory Commission says the companies formed a cartel to keep tariffs for text messaging artificially high. The companies include Telkomsel, Telkom and Smart Telecom. They were given fines [...]
US bemoans falling behind in broadband (and lacking data to measure the extent of the fall)
Broadband Access Data Mischief — SSRC There is clear consensus that our nation’s ability to compete in the high speed broadband world is essential to our economic future. Unfortunately, the Administration and the Federal Communications Commission continue to rely upon inadequate, highly-flawed data to assess the marketplace for high-speed Internet access. The Administration’s “mission Accomplished” [...]
This is how a technology dies: Telex phases out
Telex | A faint ping | Economist.com In March Britain’s BT will be the latest big company to cease offering telex services. “All good things come to an end,” says a spokesman. Britain will then join around 30 countries including Austria, Germany and Russia that no longer provide telex through their national telecoms operators.But that [...]
Tuition outsourcing?
Does Sri Lanka have a comparative advantage in tuition? Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math – New York Times A leading candidate to watch, according to analysts, is TutorVista, a tutoring service founded two years ago by Krishnan Ganesh, a 45-year-old Indian entrepreneur and a pioneer of offshore call centers. Concerns about the [...]
The Chinese are coming
The stunning impact of the Chinese telecom equipment manufacturers observed in South Asia in as early as 2005 is now being observed in the balance sheets of the old established equipment suppliers. Telecoms-equipment makers | Toughing it out | Economist.com First, the market for wireless networks is beginning to mature. After years of bumper profits, [...]
Talking CAP in Harbin, ISCRAM-CHINA 2007
Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) was the talk of the town in Harbin at the ISCRAM-CHINA workshop, which took place August 26-27, 2007. The event was jointly organized by the ISCRAM-Community and the School of Economics and Management – Harbin Engineering University. The workshop was a post-conference meeting to the International Disaster Reduction Conference (IDRC), which [...]
“Free” WiFi on the skids
It’s tempting to say “we told you so,” but we’ll give in to temptation. We told you so back in discussions in 2006-06. Municipal Wi-Fi | Reality bites | Economist.com IT WAS supposed to democratise the internet and turn America’s city-dwellers into citizen-surfers. In 2004 the mayors of Philadelphia and San Francisco unveiled ambitious plans [...]
Sprint mutes subscribers for calling customer service
America’s 3rd largest cellphone provider, Sprint, is sending out letters to 1,100 of its subscribers informing them that their service will be summarily terminated by the end of this month. Because they make too many calls to Sprint’s customer service centres and helplines! The letters read, “Our records indicate that over the past year, we have received frequent [...]
Satellite broadband
Cost is USD 50 a month; is this higher or lower than what is paid by the Nanasalas in Sri Lanka? With a Dish, Broadband Goes Rural – New York Times Craig Clark, who works from home in Rindge, made do with a sluggish dial-up line until he signed up for broadband service from the [...]
US about to be overtaken by Slovenia in broadband
Former Chair of the FCC, Bill Kennard, calls for a broad national debate on how get more broadband connections, especially in rural America. One of his two recommendations is for the adoption of “reverse auctions” or least-cost subsidy auctions for the disbursement of US universal service funds. Another case of policy innovations in the developing [...]
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