Helani Galpaya is attending the 2008 Global Event on Measuring the Information Society in Geneva, Switzerland on 27 – 29 May. She is acting as a Facilitator in a session on Advancing the ICT Agenda .
The Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development is an international, multi-stakeholder initiative to improve the availability and quality of ICT data and indicators, particularly in developing countries. It provides an open framework for coordinating ongoing and future activities, and for developing a coherent and structured approach to advancing the development of ICT indicators globally.
George Sciadas of StatsCanada also made a presentation at this event. He highlighted LIRNEasia’s intervention to remove the proposed regressive tax on mobile phones, using its 2006 T@BOP2 survey data as an example of statistics and data being used successfully.
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Will authorities be able to use this satellite system to ensure that hazard information gets to the vulnerable in a timely and accurate manner? Detection technology is available but it is up to governments to not only use it but find the means to convey the message to vulnerable communities.
“A global satellite system should come on line next decade, potentially saving billions of dollars and thousands of lives by boosting preparedness for natural disasters, a top scientist said on Wednesday.
Monitoring changes in climate, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) should also help health officials prevent epidemics and guard against man-made environmental damage, said Jose Achache, head of the group behind the project. “I’m an optimistic guy. So, I think in ten years from…
Our friend and colleague from TVEAP, Nalaka Gunawardene, writes from Geneva:
Message to aid workers: Go mobile — or get lost! « Moving Images, Moving People!
It might be that aid workers are all frustrated computer geeks…because all their talk was about collaborative and networking software, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the use of really high resolution (read: oh-so-sexy) satellite imagery, and the latest analytical tools — all requiring high levels of skill and personal computers with loads of processing power.
But no mobile phones! This was too much to let pass, so I raised the question: did you guys even consider this near ubiquitous, mass scale technology and its applications in crisis and disaster situations? And how do you engage the digitally empowered, better informed disaster survivors and…
U.N. Agency Gives Boost to WiMax - New York Times
The United Nations telecommunications agency in Geneva gave the upstart technology called WiMax a vote of approval, providing a sizable victory for Intel and something of a defeat for competing technologies from Qualcomm and Ericsson.
The International Telecommunication Union’s radio assembly agreed late Thursday to include WiMax, a wireless technology that allows Internet and other data connections across much broader areas than Wi-Fi, as part of what is called the third-generation family of mobile standards.
That endorsement opens the way for many of the union’s member countries to devote a part of the public radio spectrum to WiMax, and receivers for it could be built into laptop computers, phones, music players and other portable devices.
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Tags: Ericsson, Geneva, Intel, International Telecommunication Union, portable devices, Qualcomm, telecommunications agency, United Nations, United Nations Agency, upstart technology, WiMax - New York Times, wireless technology.
Looks like international law is being made as we speak. According to the UN, basic human rights are violated when countries cut off Internet access. Burma is not the first. King Gyanendra of Nepal cut off everything in his palace coup. If cutting off Internet is a violation of human rights, what is cutting off phone service to entire regions like Jaffna? More people use the phone than the Internet.
The story about the undersea cable is quite intriguing. To the best of my knowledge, SEA-ME-WE 3 is the cable the government official is referring to (they were not part of the SEA-ME-WE 4 consortium). I have not checked this fact, but my recollection is that Burma had been disconnected from SEA-ME-WE 3 for non-payment some…
Tags: Ban Ki-moon, Burma, Geneva, Gyanendra, Hamadoun Toure, International Telecommunications Union, Internet access, Internet blockage, Myanmar, Myanmar government, Nepal, telecommunications agency, United Nations.
Readers of this website will know that from 2005 we have been pushing hard for action to reduce the risks of disasters and to better prepare people to save their lives. Starting from an effort to get government to create a national early warning system, we shifted to community-based disaster preparedness work at the last mile in association with Sarvodaya. It is heartening to see the risk reduction focus gaining acceptance worldwide:
News & Broadcast - Global Gathering Seeks to Reduce Disaster Risk
Nations and institutions are looking for other ways to protect an estimated 3.4 billion people living in areas prone to at least one natural hazard, such as flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes. A Global Hotspots Analysis conducted by the World Bank and Columbia University…
Rohan Samarajiva and Divakar Goswami, chaired sessions at the first Telecom World event , ITU Telecom World 2006, to be held in Asia, in Hong Kong SAR, 3-8 December 2006. This event, held once in four years, is normally held in Geneva. It was moved to Hong Kong to recognize the leading role of the Asia Pacific in the ICT sector today (see Figure 1).Samarajiva and Goswami were the only persons from Sri Lanka featured in the program of the Forum at Telecom World.
Figure 1: 
Goswami, lead researcher on LIRNEasia’s Indonesia ICT sector and regulatory performance study, chaired a session that included keynote presentations by Dr Sofyan Djalil, the Indonesian Minister of ICTs. Samarajiva’s session on universal access included keynotes by the Vice President of China Unicom,…
Tags: Asia, Asia-Pacific, China Unicom, Divakar Goswami, Geneva, GSM, GSM Association, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, International Telecommunication Union, Johannesburg, Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Rohan Samarajiva, Sofyan Djalil, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tom Philllips, United Kingdom, United States, Zhengmao Li.
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