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 to get it. IBM and IBEC, which will build and manage the networks, are working with over a dozen electricity cooperatives in seven states, The Wall Street Journal reported.
For years, people have hoped broadband-over-power line technology, or BPL, would allow power companies to become the third alternative in the broadband market, competing against cable operators and telephone companies. But technical limitations and interference issues with local emergency radios and short-wave ham…
Tags: America, Big Blue, BPL technology, Broadband, broadband access, broadband-over-power line technology, dozen electricity cooperatives, DSL, HIGH-speed Internet access, I.B.M., International Broadband Electric Communications, International Business Machines Corporation, Partnership, telephone, The Wall Street Journal, USD.
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 modest charge of US$7.68, or a 1.5% fee. Sending the same sum from the Netherlands to Indonesia costs a whopping US$86.41, a 17.3% charge. The Netherlands, Germany and Japan tend to be the priciest places to send money from. Costs are generally lowest in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Singapore, America and Britain. (economist.com)
With hard times at our doorsteps, all we can say is a remittance mechanism that employs mobile communications…
Tags: America, Brazil, Britain, Germany, Indonesia, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Japan, mobile communications, remittance mechanism, remittances, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, The Netherlands, USD.
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 totaling more than eight million dollars.
Source: Voice of America
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” rhetoric does not match reality:
* According to a September 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project phone survey, roughly half of all Americans don’t have broadband at home. Half is far from universal.
* Fewer than 25% of New Yorkers in rural areas have access to broadband service and nearly two-thirds of people living in New York City lack access to affordable, high-speed broadband. Some New York City neighborhoods — like Sunset…
Tags: America, Broadband, broadband access, broadband technology, Bush, Chicago, China, DSL, Federal Communications Commission, HIGH-speed Internet access, New York City, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Sunset Park, United States, US Department of Commerce.
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 clears the way for nimble, low-cost competitors. These have turned round the technology. As well as maintaining the old-fashioned service involving terminals and dedicated lines, they provide telex services both over phone lines and over the internet—in effect, making it a secure and ultra-reliable variant of e-mail. One, SwissTelex, is a spin-off from the Swiss national telecoms operator that offers international telex services and has taken over BT’s network. Another is…
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 quality of K-12 education in America and the increased emphasis on standardized tests is driving the tutoring business in general. Traditional classroom tutoring services like Kaplan and Sylvan are doing well and offer online features. And there are other remote services like Growing Stars, Tutor.com and SmarThinking.
Yet TutorVista, analysts say, is different in a number of ways. Other remote tutoring services generally offer hourly rates of $20 to $30 instead of the $40…
Tags: America, classroom tutoring services, India, Krishnan Ganesh, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Math - New York Times, online features, remote services, remote tutoring services, Silicon Valley Bank, software system, Sri Lanka, TutorVista, USD.
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, telecoms operators are facing more competition and are having to cut costs. In America carriers have delayed purchases, which explains much of what went wrong for Alcatel-Lucent. In Europe operators are increasingly renting their networks out to virtual service providers and are sharing capacity. That has allowed them to delay network upgrades which would otherwise have boosted Ericsson’s and other telecoms-equipment firms’ earnings.
Second, Western firms face competition from two Chinese companies,…
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 took place 21-25 August, 2007.
LIRNEasia project manager, Nuwan Waidyanatha, was 1 of 2 Sri Lankan delegates invited to present a research paper and the other was Chamindra De Silva of Lanka Software Foundation – Sahana Project. LIRNEasia presentation titled “Common Alerting Protocol Message Broker for Last-Mile Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka: An Essential Component” was 1 of 115 papers published in the workshop proceedings. The paper was based on the…
Tags: America, China, Delft, European Union, Harbin, Harbin Engineering University, Lanka Software Foundation, Last, Mile Hazard Warning, Mile Hazard Warnings, Nuwan Waidyanatha, School of Economics and Management, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, Van de Walle.
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 to provide free wireless-internet access to all residents using Wi-Fi, a technology commonly used to link computers to the internet in homes, offices, schools and coffee-shops. Across America, hundreds of cities followed suit. Yet many municipal Wi-Fi projects have since been hit by mounting costs, poor coverage and weak demand. This week Chicago became the first big city to abandon its plans for a city-wide network. “Everyone would like something for free,”…
Tags: America, Chicago, Chuck Haas, city-wide network, EarthLink, fee-based wireless service, free wireless-internet access, MetroFi, Philadelphia, SAN FRANCISCO, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi systems.
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 calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information. While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs. Therefore after careful consideration, the decision has been made to terminate your wireless service agreement effective…
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 satellite provider WildBlue Communications last autumn. With a 26-inch dish outside his home and a modem inside, Mr. Clark now connects to the Internet at speeds similar to those offered by the phone company.
“It’s not a perfect technology, but it is one of the best options for those of us in rural areas,” he said.
In bringing Mr. Clark and others in rural America into the fast lane, WildBlue and its chief rivals…
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 world seeping back into the developed. See LIRNEasia’s extensive work on this subject, based on the Indian universal service fund and the least-cost subsidy auction in Nepal.
Spreading the Broadband Revolution - New York Times
“Any serious discussion of the future of the Internet should start with a basic fact: broadband is transforming every facet of communications, from entertainment and telephone services to delivery of vital services like health care. But this also…
Tags: America, Bill Kennard, Broadband, broadband Internet, Broadband Revolution - New York Times, Federal Communications Commission, narrowband dial-up Internet, Nepal, Slovenia, telephone services, United States.
Yesterday, I spoke to a large and restive crowd (made so by lack of air conditioning and a delayed start) in Matara (main city in the South of Sri Lanka) at the launch of the Pathfinder Foundation’s first book, a Sinhala translation of Janos Kornai’s Toward a free economy. I was asked to talk about globalization and the relevance of Kornai’s ideas for facing the challenges posed by globalization. In this talk that I pieced together thanks to time zone differences that caused me to wake up at 3 in the morning while in the US, I illustrated the issues referring to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), a broad area of service exports for which efficient, flexible and low-cost telecom is a pre-condition.
I think the talk provides…
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