Rural broadband services in Vietnam

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:56:11 +0000

Interesting parallel to Sri Lanka’s Mahavilachchiya experiment. The only worrisome aspect is the fact that it is a fully subsidized project. I guess that they’ll spend more on evaluation only than the total spent on Mahavilachchiya including the hardware. The important thing is that all these projects need to be monitored, to see how they do after the subsidies end.

Asia: Telecom’s Rural Revolution

The project in Lao Cai illustrates the trends of joint cooperation between vendors, operators and governments to tap new opportunities for economic development.

Intel Corp., the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Vietnam Data Communications, a local service provider that is part of Vietnam Post and Telecom Group (VNPT), joined together last year to deploy WiMAX in the rural agricultural province of 600,000 comprised of 25 different ethnic groups. Lao Cai is located in a mountainous area of northern Vietnam, abutting the Chinese border. There had been some limited fixed-line telephone service and DSL broadband available within the city of Lao Cai, but even these services disappeared for the bulk of the population when they stepped outside the immediate town borders.

Indian Ocean tsunami detection buoy

Rohan Samarajiva — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:52:17 +0000

Early warning regarding tsunamis depends on skilled interpretation of earthquake data from seismic monitors like the one at Pallekale and data from ocean based buoys that detect fast moving bodies of water.

The ocean between Sri Lanka and Thailand now has one. It is up to us to make sure that the warning that get communicated from international and regional warning centers will be communciated to the affected communities promptly and that those communities will be prepared to respond properly.

NOAA Provides First Tsunami Detection Buoy for the Indian Ocean: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance

Following a ceremony in Phuket, Thailand, where the 2004 Boxing Day event caused the most extensive tsunami damage in Thailand, the MV SEAFDEC set sail today to deploy the buoy about mid-way between Thailand and Sri Lanka. NOAA scientists and engineers are onboard to provide technical assistance during the launch operations.With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), NOAA built and provided the DART station on behalf of the U.S. government. The buoy will be maintained by the Thai Meteorological Department and National Disaster Warning Center. The station’s data will be available to all nations through the World Meteorological Organization Global Telecommunications System and will be part of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

The Thai buoy is the first of 22 tsunameters planned for the Indian Ocean’s regional tsunami warning system. NOAA will provide a second DART buoy further to the south in the spring of 2007. This is part of an end-to-end warning system that includes tide gauges, communications upgrades, modeling, and dissemination systems for five countries — Indonesia, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

LIRNEasia » United States Agency for International Development

Rural broadband services in Vietnam

Indian Ocean tsunami detection buoy