While some Asia-Pacific economies are world leaders in information and communication technologies (ICT) where broadband access is ultra-high speed, affordable and close to ubiquitous, in most of the region’s poorer countries Internet access remains limited and predominantly low-speed.
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…
Tags: 3G, Asia-Pacific, Bangkok, Bangladesh, Broadband, broadband access, broadband and triple-play services, broadband Internet access, broadband Internet subscribers, broadband technologies, Cambodia, China, communication services, communication technologies, continuous high-speed Internet access, desirable and valuable online services, Distance Learning, fibre optic, Fixed and mobile broadband technologies, HIGH-speed Internet access, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Internet technologies, Internet Telephony, IP telephony, ITU TELECOM, Japan, Laos, Maldives, mobile phones, Myanmar, poorer countries Internet access remains, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Philippines, Tonga, ubiquitous Internet access plan combining, ultra-high speed Internet applications, USD, Wi-Fi.
When he built Parakrama Samudraya a millennium ago, King Parakramabahu the great did not have to depend on the Internet. How lucky! Had it been so, he would have achieved few great feats. The pitiable Broadband services at Polonnaruva looked as if we have not made any advances since the days of the Great King.
Both SLT and Dialog boast about their island wide networks. These backbones, they say, are capable of delivering ‘kiri’ to rural communities too. ICTA does not let a day go without mentioning taking ICTs to villages. The reality, as we have experienced for the last three days, is different.
Apparently 3G services are unavailable in Polonnaruva. All Mobitel could deliver was GPRS at a speed less than 5 kbps. (top) Good that…
Tags: 3G, 3G services, Broadband, Colombo, Dialog, Dialog Broadband Networks, in-house wi-fi network, Mobitel, Parakramabahu, Rs, Wi-Fi.
Economist.com - Cities Guide
Singapore’s free Wi-Fi service, which since December 2006 has covered almost all public areas, has been extended to the place it was most notably lacking: the terminals at Changi Airport. Users of the airport, including those at the new Terminal 3 and Budget Terminal, can now log on to wireless@sg and access the internet free of charge. The download speed, 512 kilobits per second, is fast enough for most needs.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Calgary’s 22-year-old Piotr Staniaszek subscribed the Bell Mobility $10 unlimited mobile internet plan. But he was hammered with a whooping $85,000 bill in less than two months!
Because Mr. Staniaszek plugged his mobile phone with a PC and happily downloaded high-definition movies using the “unlimited” mobile internet plan. Bell says its “unlimited plan” is applicable for browsing internet from mobile device only – not using the gadget as a modem and browsing the net from PC. Therefore, it has decided to charge Mr. Staniaszek $85,000 for every bit of data he has downloaded.
Baffled Mr. Staniaszek has refused to pay and Bell Mobility has shrunk the mammoth bill to $3,243 as “goodwill”. Yet the angry customer is reluctant to pay the “reduced amount” and decided to fight instead.…
Commercial WiFi hotspots face a dim future in South Africa - at least among corporate workers on the move, a new research study by World Wide Worx reveals. The report shows that the corporate use of WiFi - small networks that allow wireless access to the Internet - has fallen back after a steady rise in the previous three years. By contrast, the use of 3G - wireless broadband provided by the mobile networks - has rocketed.
“We have been warning for several years that commercial WiFi hotspots, especially in hotels and conference centres, are in danger of pricing themselves out of the market,” says World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck, who led the research. “And, now that a monthly subscription to a basic 3G service…
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.
CITATION for Mahabir Pun
Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
Nangi Village, where Mahabir Pun was born, rests high in the Himalayan foothills of western Nepal. Here and in surrounding Myagdi District live the Pun Magar, whose men have soldiered for generations across the globe as Gurkhas. Yet, their worldly careers have done little to change their sleepy homeland, so far from the traffic patterns that knit together the rest of the world. Indeed, Nangi is seven hours’ hard climb from the nearest road. No telephone lines have ever reached it. Despite this, these days the people of Nangi are definitely connected to the world outside. Wireless Internet technology has made this possible. Mahabir Pun has made it happen.
Pun passed his boyhood grazing cattle and sheep in mountain…
Tags: Australia, British Broadcasting Corporation, e-market, Europe, Himalayan, Mahabir Pun, Myagdi District, Nangi Village, Nebraska, Nepal, Nepal\'s lowlands, Pokhara, Ramche, Ramon Magsaysay, rural wireless pioneer, telephone connection, telephone lines, the University of Nebraska, United States, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Wi-Fi, wireless computer technology, wireless connection, Wireless Internet technology, Wireless Network.
More mobile innovations. This looks like a body blow to fixed telephony in high-income households.
IPhone-Free Cellphone News - New York Times
It’s called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, and it’s absolutely ingenious. It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, and yet enrich T-Mobile at the same time. In the cellphone world, win-win plays like that are extremely rare.
Here’s the basic idea. If you’re willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you’re out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.
But when it’s in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it…
BBC NEWS | Technology | City wi-fi plans under scrutiny
But as councils offer public wi-fi, questions are being asked about how much citizens will use them and how sustainable they are.
City-wide wi-fi is the obvious next step from wi-fi hotspots, bringing them out of cafes and hotel lobbies to provide ubiquitous coverage in a town.
But some analysts claim that few citizens are using public wi-fi while other call for more cautious rollouts.
Companies such as BT and The Cloud are partnering with local governments in the UK to build city-wide wireless networks offering councils enhancements to public services and giving citizens the chance to connect to the web from wi-fi enabled devices.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Another municipal WiFi network, but this time, not for free.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Switch on for Square Mile wi-fi
But is there really that much demand for open-air surfing? After all, staring at a laptop screen in the sunshine is not a great experience - especially in an area where so many cafes have wi-fi access.
The network’s backers think one of the big attractions will be the ability to use wi-fi enabled phones to make cheap calls using Skype or other internet telephony services.
It’s hard to see why well-paid City workers would bother with the extra effort needed to make a wi-fi call - but the City of London Corporation believes it will prove attractive to migrant workers on construction sites.
Public wi-fi networks, free and…
With new acronyms (NGN) being introduced instead of better service (ADSL that actually gives the 2 mbps or 512 kbps we paid for), our thoughts had begun to wander to WiMax, but sadly, cold water is being poured on that hope too.
On continuing discussion of municipal wireless there is a great quote in here: ‘Using municipal Wi-Fi for residential coverage, [Sanjit Biswas] said, was “the
equivalent of expecting street lamps to light everyone’s homes.” ‘
Wireless Internet for All, Without the Towers - New York Times
WiMax, which will be a high-power version of the tower approach, comes in two flavors: mobile, which has not yet been certified, and fixed, which is theoretically well suited for residential deployment. Unfortunately, it’s pricey. Peter Bell, a research analyst at…
Tags: ADSL, Broadband, DSL, municipal wireless, Peer-to-Peer, Peter Bell, TeleGeography Research, Towers - New York Times, USD, Washington, Wi-Fi, wireless internet.
The low-cost and quick deployment time of wireless technologies give them the potential to connect communities and regions that are currently disconnected. However, governments in many developing countries have not unlicensed the use of spectrum that is necessary to deploy wireless networks like Wi-Fi. In many countries, transmission of data using unlicensed spectrum over public areas is prohibited, which makes connecting villages, for example, impossible. In some countries like the United States, telephone companies are actively lobbying against unlicensed use of the spectrum. These were some of the key issues that came up at the Air Jaldi wireless infrastructure summit held in Dharmasala.
Vic Hayes, Senior Research Fellow at the Delft University of Technology, one of the nodes in the LIRNE network, attended the Summit and also…
The Indonesian Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Dr Sofyan Djalil, presented a number of new initiatives for removing the barriers to Internet growth in his country at Building Digital Communities forum session at the ITU World 2006 event in Hong Kong on December 7, 2006.
Divakar Goswami, LIRNEasia’s Director, Organizational and Projects, who was moderating the panel asked the following question:
One of the first achievements of your government was to delicense the 2.4 GHz frequency that allowed communities to use Wi-Fi extensively in the country. Despite that, Indonesia currently has Internet penetration of 0.69 percent. You have about 124 ISPs that operate in Indonesia. How do you explain the low penetration and what are the barriers preventing Internet from growing faster in Indonesia? When we look…
Tags: Broadband, broadband wireless, fiber optic, Hong Kong, Indonesia, information technology, Internet penetration, Internet service, Jakarta, LIRNE asia, optic based network, Sidney, Sofyan Djalil, telecommunications, Wi-Fi.
A Wi-Fi Express Lane - New York Times
IT’S axiomatic in the computer world that nothing is ever fast enough. And so it goes with popular wireless Wi-Fi networks, which already seem overcrowded and slow. The growing interest in video sites like YouTube and streaming TV programs online has served to underscore the problem. Naturally, the wireless manufacturers are happy to step into the breach with a new, faster Wi-Fi standard. Well, almost.
Under the technical rubric 802.11n, the new Wi-Fi routers and adapters for desktops and laptops are based not on a completed specification but on a draft version of the specification that is before the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers standards body. The institute standard is not expected to be ratified until early…
Please continue discussion from the thread Dharmashala meeting on Wi-Fi here. This thread is dedicated to ICT infrastructure issues in Sri Lanka that include mesh networks in Mahavilachchiya, backbone infrastructure, Wi-Fi and Wimax licensing etc. Please keep discussion civil.
Recent Comments