Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores.

This study, following up on others, finds that broadband access is not necessarily good for kids and may be harmful to their academic performance. And this study used data from 2000 to 2005 before Twitter and Facebook took off.

These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is leading to a short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.

The $825 billion stimulus plan presented this month by House Democrats called for $37 billion in spending in three high-tech areas: $20 billion to computerize medical records, $11 billion to create smarter electrical grids and $6 billion to expand high-speed Internet access in rural and underserved communities.

A study published this month, which was prepared for the Obama transition team, concluded that putting $30 billion into those three fields could produce more than 900,000 jobs in the first year. The mix of proposed spending is different in the House plan, but the results would be similar, said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which did the study.

The full report is here.

“I use the Internet daily for e-mail and marketing,” Lira said.

But today Lira is enjoying broadband Internet access as she provides virtual administrative help for offices around the country through Miracle Executive Services.

The relief came in the form of small white boxes with tiny antennas atop homes, the school, even a light pole at the baseball field. Lira happily shows these to a visitor to illustrate what a wireless Internet network means to this community.

“Having high-speed in rural communities is like having a sewer system; it’s needed for a healthy community,” Lira said. Since 2007, Superior residents have been able to pay $29.99 a month for unlimited high-speed Internet access through WI-VOD, a company that specializes in providing broadband in rural communities. There are about 100 customers here so far.

In theory, anyone in Arizona can have broadband Internet access, but in remote areas that often involves service via satellite and a monthly charge that’s more than people want to pay. Officials say affordable broadband is essential for small communities to attract businesses and new residents and to provide current residents with online education, e-medicine and other benefits that come with high-speed Internet access.

Read the full story here.

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 radios have stood in the way of mass adoption.

In recent years, new modulation techniques supported by other technological advances have helped BPL evolve. Most services today are capable of delivering between 512Kbps and 3Mbps of throughput, which is comparable to most DSL offerings.

In rural areas in particular, BPL technology could finally bring high-speed Internet access to people who otherwise couldn’t get it. Traditional phone and cable companies often find it too expensive to deploy new infrastructure to provide service to the far reaches of rural America.

Read the full story in CNET here.

Recent International Telecommunication Union (ITU) data reveals that the success of India’s telecom revolution is restricted to mobile voice with very little to showcase in fixed line and internet access, or high-speed broadband. For a country that is the global IT and ITeS capital or the world’s back office, its own internet penetration remains one of the lowest in the world. Forecasts are equally uninspiring, projecting high-speed internet access to remain abysmal till 2012.

Internet broadband penetration will limp along to eventually reach a measly 3.9 connections for every 100 citizens by 2012. Even though internet users may be multiple times higher, actual broadband penetration will not exceed 18.1 million at the beginning of the next decade. In contrast, mobile telephony will add as many as 350 million subscribers during this five-year period to end at roughly 615 million by mid 2012.

These forecasts fall short of the government’s conservative target of 20 million high-speed internet subscribers by 2010-end. India’s broadband penetration is roughly 4.5 million subscribers. Even with a 300% growth rate over the next five years, the sector will fall short of the 50 million mark by 2012.

Read the full story in The Times of India here.

This is what ITU’s Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Report for the Asia-Pacific region 2008 says. It was released at ITU TELECOM ASIA 2008, Bangkok, Thailand yesterday (Sept 2, 2008).

The Report finds evidence that ICTs and broadband uptake foster growth and development, but the question remains as to the optimal speed that should be targeted in view of limited resources.

The area in which the region really stands out is the uptake of advanced Internet technologies, especially broadband Internet access. The Asia-Pacific region is the world’s largest broadband market with a 39 per cent share of the world’s total at the end of 2007. In terms of broadband access, Asia-Pacific has made remarkable progress in the past few years, with subscriber numbers growing almost five-fold in five years: from 27 million at the beginning of 2003 to 133 million at the start of 2008.

In the region’s high-income economies, ubiquitous access is progressing through a competitive race to provide ever faster fixed broadband access. Operators in Hong Kong (China) and Japan have launched one-Gigabits per second (Gbps) broadband and triple-play services aimed at the residential market, featuring applications such as Internet telephony and television. The Republic of Korea leads the world in terms of the percentage of households with fixed broadband access, and no less than five economies in the top ten are from Asia-Pacific. The Republic of Korea, Hong Kong (China), and Japan also lead the world in terms of the proportion of households with fibre optic connections, essential for supporting the next generation of ultra-high speed Internet applications.

These high-income economies are also leaders in terms of third generation (3G) mobile cellular deployment. Fixed and mobile broadband technologies complement each other and users enjoy continuous high-speed Internet access. In Singapore, a ubiquitous Internet access plan combining unlimited 8 Megabits per second (Mbps) fixed broadband, 2 Mbps mobile broadband and access at some 800 Wi-Fi hotspots is available for just USD 35 per month.

At the other extreme, in most of the region’s low and lower-middle income economies, high-speed Internet access is limited to urban areas at best, typically expensive, and often not available at all. The regional broadband divide is striking, with poor economies having a close-to-zero broadband penetration, compared to that of rich economies where one in four persons is a broadband subscriber (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Fixed broadband Internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants, 2007

The gap in available broadband speeds between rich and poor countries is as wide as broadband penetration. In Japan, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong (China), the minimum advertised broadband speed is faster than the maximum broadband speed in Cambodia, Tonga, Laos and Bangladesh.

While in low and lower-middle income economies mobile phones have become a substitute for the shortage of fixed lines, they are not yet fulfilling the potential of broadband access. By the end of 2007, only Indonesia, the Maldives, the Philippines and Sri Lanka had commercially deployed WCDMA networks. The region’s two largest mobile markets, China and India, have yet to launch mobile broadband. By the end of 2007, there were over 120 million mobile broadband subscribers in the region (Figure 2), but almost all (97 per cent) were in high income economies.

Figure 2: Mobile cellular broadband subscribers in Asia-Pacific

While the region’s high-income economies are pushing the frontier of broadband bandwidth to a point where applications have yet to catch up, many Asia-Pacific developing economies are bandwidth starved, inhibiting the development of their information societies.

The ITU Report argues that broadband uptake enables a range of socially desirable and valuable online services in areas such as government, education and health. The use of broadband technologies can help overcome many of the basic development challenges faced by poor countries. The Report provides a number of examples where broadband connectivity has acted as a catalyst for development. These include the provision of education through distance learning in the Solomon Islands, the creation of jobs through business incubators for women in China, and the supply of communication services for disaster management in Myanmar.

Read the press release here. Full report is not yet available in the public domain.

(Please click on the images for a better view)

The findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project challenge the argument that broadband providers need to more aggressively roll out supply to meet demand.

Only 14 percent of dial-up users say they’re stuck with the older, slower connection technology because they can’t get broadband in their neighborhoods, Pew reported Wednesday.

Thirty-five percent say they’re still on dial-up because broadband prices are too high, while another 19 percent say nothing would persuade them to upgrade. The remainder have other reasons or do not know.

Read the full story in Associated Press here.

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 Park, Red Hook and Hunts Point — don’t even have affordable access beyond a dial-up connection
* Ten percent of Chicago area residents do not even have access to DSL service
* Broadband growth in the US is slowing — down 15 percent from last year’s pace
* The Administration has argued that while the U.S. may be behind in percentage of subscribers, we are the #1 in the world in total number of subscribers – thus we have won. But news from China suggests that it now has 122 million broadband users — the highest number in the world.

When the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) first collected data on broadband penetration in 2001, the US ranked 4th among the 30 nations surveyed. In June 2004, President Bush noted that America then ranked 10th amongst the industrialized world in per capita broadband penetration. “That’s not good enough,” he said at the US Department of Commerce. “We don’t like to be ranked 10th in anything. The goal is to be ranked 1st when it comes to per capita use of broadband technology. It’s in our nation’s interest. It’s good for our economy.” According to OECD June 2007 data, After several years of steady decline in the rankings, the US ranked 15th among industrialized nationals in broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants..

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To get a clearer picture of where the US stands, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislation that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband services — including the types, advertised speeds and actual number of subscribers — available to households and businesses nationwide.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., is intended to provide policy makers with improved data so they can better use grants and subsidies to target areas lacking high-speed Internet access. He said in a statement last week that promoting broadband would help spur job growth, access to health care and education and promote innovation among other benefits.

The inventory wouldn’t cover other countries, but a cursory look shows the US lagging behind at least some of them. In South Korea, for instance, the average apartment can get an Internet connection that’s 15 times faster than a typical US connection. In Paris, a “triple play” of TV, phone and broadband service costs less than half of what it does in the USA. Read more.

In rural Cambodia, a new 3G/UMTS mobile network is being deployed for delivery of high-bandwidth wireless services, including live streaming of mobile TV channels.  

In rural India, farmers can monitor crop prices and place orders for goods electronically by visiting broadband “community centers” that are taking root around the country. 

All are examples of a “rural revolution” enveloping less-developed countries in
Asia and around the world, made possible by advanced telecommunications technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and 3G.  

This revolution is bringing high-speed Internet access and next-generation telephony to millions of users who previously had little or no access to even the most basic telecoms services. Read more.

The project is the largest of a new breed of wireless networks being built across the country. They are taking advantage of the falling cost of providing high-speed Internet access over radio waves as opposed to cable or telephone lines.

The project will cover 1,500 square miles in 38 cities in San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Santa Cruz Counties, an area of 2.4 million residents. Its builders, going by the name Silicon Valley Metro Connect, said the service would provide free basic wireless access at speeds up to 1 megabit a second — which is roughly comparable to broadband speeds by telephone — in outdoor areas. Special equipment, costing $80 to $120, will be needed to bolster the signal enough to bring it inside homes or offices.

Full story.

Extended Family      
05 June 2006 14:23:29
Sri Lanka opens the door for fifth mobile phone operator
 
June 5, 2006 (LBO) – Sri Lanka plans to expand its mobile phone market to five players, in a bid to bring down costs of telephony, the telecom regulator said Monday.
 
Sri Lanka’s mobile market had grown 53.5 percent to 3.34 million customers as at end 2005, according to TRC figures. 

The island’s cellular penetration is expected to increase to 20.0 percent in 2006, from 17.3 percent last year, according to industry analysts. 

“Mobile phones are one of the fastest growing segments in the economy now, and it is showing potential to grow further,” notes Ratwatte. 

Dialog Telekom, currently dominates the market with over 2-million subscribers. 

A unit of Teleokom Malaysia, Dialog competes with Mobitel – a unit of Sri Lanka Telecom; Celltel Lanka Ltd and Hong Kong’s Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd. 

Newcomers will have to pay 4-million dollars for the license fee, says Ratwatte adding that the closing date for applications has been fixed for June 30. 

In May, Sri Lanka invited mobile operators to set up a next generation or third generation mobile phone network, with the aim of offering high speed wireless services. 

TRC has fixed the license fee at 5-million dollars. 

Third generation or 3G licenses will be available on the 2GHz (gigahertz band) and the initial spectrum allocation will be limited to existing mobile operators.
 
Dialog is currently offering 3G test runs and hopes to offer high speed internet access on mobile phones later this year. Mobitel is also expected to start test runs for 3G shortly.

By TOM McNICHOL

HIGH-speed Internet access usually comes to homes through one of two wires: a telephone line for D.S.L. subscribers, or a coaxial cable for cable modem users. But an emergingtechnology known as broadband over power lines, or B.P.L.,may soon offer a third wire into homes, channelinghigh-speed data through a somewhat improbable conduit: anordinary electrical outlet. B.P.L. is the ultimate in plug-and-play. Users plug a smallpower line modem into any wall outlet and then connect the modem to a computer with a U.S.B. or Ethernet cable, orthrough a wireless Wi-Fi connection. The appeal of B.P.L.is that most of the wiring for the network is in place.Although data must be carefully routed over the electricgrid to prevent interference and signal degradation, there is no need to dig up streets or rewire homes. Two weeks ago the Federal Communications Commission adopted rule changes to encourage the technology in the hope of making broadband more widely available and fostering greater competition among high-speed Internet providers. Internet service over power lines is probably a year or more away from becoming widely available, but the F.C.C.’s ruling is expected to spur investment in B.P.L. by utilities. "Three or four years ago, the technology was not ready for prime time, but now we know it is," said Jay Birnbaum, vice president and general counsel for Current Communications of Germantown, Md., which makes B.P.L. equipment. "And we’ve gotten the cost down, so it’s competitive with other broadband services."

The idea of using electric power lines to send data is not new; companies have been working on it for a decade. The major technical challenge has been how to send bursts of radio frequency energy over power lines without interfering with other radio signals, particularly ham radio and public safety frequencies. The recent F.C.C. ruling establishes frequency bands that B.P.L. signals must avoid to protect aeronautical and Coast Guard communications, and sets up a publicly available database for resolving claims of harmful interference from private radio operators. B.P.L. has been tested in small field trials for several years, involving about 5,000 customers in 18 states. Cinergy, a power company in the Midwest, recently began offering B.P.L. to homes in the Cincinnati area for $30 to $50 a month, depending on connection speed. The company says it hopes to have B.P.L. equipment in more than 50,000 homes by the end of the year. Cinergy is also marketing B.P.L. to smaller municipal and cooperative power companies, particularly in rural areas. "We felt those municipal and cooperative power companies are a terrific market because many of those areas are underserved by D.S.L. and cable," said Bill Grealis, a Cinergy executive vice president.

Adding a data channel to the power lines also has potential benefits for the utilities themselves. By reserving a sliver of the B.P.L. data channel for themselves, power companies can use the network to identify problems and accomplish troubleshooting remotely, rather than sending out a crew. Down the road, utilities could install Internet-enabled meters and switches to offer automated meter reading, power demand management and time-of-day pricing. "Our main interest in B.P.L. is using it to better manage our utility," said Bob Dobkin, a spokesman for Pepco, which is based in Washington. Pepco has a pilot B.P.L. program in about 500 homes in Potomac, Md. "It enables you to identify problems without having to send someone out."

While B.P.L. holds promise, there are unanswered questions about the technology. One F.C.C. commissioner, Michael J. Copps, dissented in part with the commission’s recent action, saying the agency had failed to address issues such as whether electricity customers pay higher monthly bills to subsidize their utility’s foray into broadband. "We’re great on technology, but not so good on working out the rules of the road," Mr. Copps said. "Nearly all of the industrialized nations except the U.S. have national plans for broadband. We don’t have any comprehensive strategy." Mr. Copps and others note that the United States has lately become a broadband laggard; it ranks 13th in the world in broadband penetration, behind countries such as Japan, Korea, Denmark and Iceland. Many believe one main reason is cost. While Americans typically pay $40 to $50 monthly for a D.S.L. or cable modem connection, the Japanese, for example, pay $10 to $15 a month for even faster connections. American broadband consumers, in short, get less bit for the buck. Will B.P.L. bring down the cost of broadband? Mr. Grealis of Cinergy will say only that the cost of a B.P.L. connection will be competitive with D.S.L., cable and wireless. It remains to be seen whether the third wire into the home turns out to be a cheaper alternative or more like the third gas station on a corner, battling the competition at remarkably similar prices.

New York Times