Launched this year, the Future Telecom Leaders Contest asks students to address an important question: “How can Canada become a recognized global leader in telecom in the next 10 years?” Students are invited to submit their ideas in a variety of formats: audio-visual files (like YouTube); audio only (podcasts or MP3 form); or print. Ten winners will be selected from across Canada and invited to attend the 2008 Telecom Laureate Awards Gala and Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies in Ottawa/Gatineau on October 29, 2008, and have exclusive introductions to Canadian telecom senior executives. The top two winners will receive $1,500 scholarships.
“The Future Telecom Leaders contest is a novel and exciting way to engage young minds on the question of Canada’s telecommunications future,” says Lorne Abugov,…
In one of the two websites it runs, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) gives its mission statement - which is cut and pasted below:
“To create the optimum conditions for the telecommunications industry in Sri Lanka by serving the public interest in terms of quality, choice and value for money; the service providers with equitable access to spectrum and other common resources; and the nation in its drive for socio-economic advancement through a skilled and ethical workforce.”
We are surprised to see pornography not mentioned – considering the latest task TRCSL has been assigned – blocking porno. Lankadeepa reports only about blocking pornographic movies and video clips, not images. Assumed strict enforcement, this can lead to the ban of not just YouTube but Gmail and…
Tags: Cuba, Indonesia, Internet access, Internet censorship aim blocking political content, North Korea, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka, telecommunications industry, Thailand, YouTube.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, resident of Sri Lanka, citizen of the United Kingdom, and man of the universe, passed away on the morning of the 19th of March. His was a life well lived. He will be remembered.
Sir Arthur imagined what the world could be. In some cases, such as the geostationary orbit that was named after him, he even did the mathematics to substantiate his imagination. But the mathematics was not the true achievement: it was that he imagined this wondrous idea of a specific orbit where satellites would be stationary in relation to the earth and could therefore serve as very tall towers for wireless transmissions with line of sight covering one third of the surface of the globe; it was that he imagined it a decade before…
Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies, BANGALORE, Colombo, inchoate Internet, Manila, Ronald Reagan, Sri Lanka, then doing live web searches, United Kingdom, video conferencing, wireless transmissions, YouTube.
Video Road Hogs Stir Fear of Internet Traffic Jam - New York Times
For months there has been a rising chorus of alarm about the surging growth in the amount of data flying across the Internet. The threat, according to some industry groups, analysts and researchers, stems mainly from the increasing visual richness of online communications and entertainment — video clips and movies, social networks and multiplayer games.
Moving images, far more than words or sounds, are hefty rivers of digital bits as they traverse the Internet’s pipes and gateways, requiring, in industry parlance, more bandwidth. Last year, by one estimate, the video site YouTube, owned by Google, consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000.
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The Economist is not correct saying ‘No Evidence’ of Internet blocking in Sri Lanka, and in Laos and Cambodia the Internet usage is low so blocking does not make any difference.
As shown, even in Asia the attitude of officialdom varies when it comes to filtering content of a social nature. In many places agreements are set with service providers to block nasty stuff such as child pornography. In a few countries intervention is stronger, up to the level of pervasive censorship. This week Pakistan’s block on YouTube accidentally caused an international outage for that website. Iran and Saudi Arabia have also prevented their citizens from accessing the video-sharing site.
Source: The Economist, Chart Gallery
Tags: Asia, Cambodia, Chart Gallery, Internet blocking, Internet usage, Islamic Republic of Iran, Laos, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, video-sharing site, YouTube.
Pakistani officials have lifted a ban on the YouTube video-sharing Web site, saying that material deemed offensive to Islam has been removed.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered Internet providers to unblock the site Tuesday.
In a statement Tuesday, YouTube confirmed the Web site was again accessible in Pakistan. Company spokesman Ricardo Reyes says YouTube took down the particular link on Saturday, after receiving flags from the YouTube community and determining the content violated the Web site’s terms of use.
Read the full story in ‘VOA News’ here.
humanitarian.info » The Long Last Mile
Courtesy of Nuwan on the humanitarian-ict mailing list, I just watched “The Long Last Mile” on YouTube. Produced by Television for Education - Asia Pacific, it describes the project by LIRNEasia to evaluate Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination. Some useful points in an accessible format - redundancy in communication technologies, identification of key responders, community engagement in the process, the importance of simulation exercises for learning, and so on. Only 12 minutes long, it’s definitely worth watching. Plus, YouTube! Web2.0! Etc, etc.
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It is well known that China polices the Internet content that its citizens can access. The story below talks about a growing movement within China that seeks to challenge these arbitrary restrictions on simple information retrieval and publishing actions. A 17-year old girl’s comment “I don’t know if it’s better to speak out or keep silent, but if everyone keeps silent, the truth will be buried,” seems particularly powerful to me and motivated me to write this post.
Several months ago, the government of Sri Lanka blocked access to Tamil Net, a website used by many, including almost all the important journalists, to find out the other side of our one-sided news stories on the war. Of course, this was easily circumvented by those who wanted…
Tags: Burma, CDMA, China, Congress, Faces Online Rebels - New York Times, firewall, Guangdong Province, Internet content, Kangxi, Pan Liang, phone networks, SMS, Sri Lanka, Web site operator, YouTube.
The “Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) project full-length video documentary, “The Long Last Mile”, is now available on YouTube. TVE Asia Pacific, a HazInfo partner, has also published an article on the premiere of the video in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
More coverage of the Dhaka HazInfo Dissemination Workshop event on 25 October can be found at the Bangladesh Network Office for Urban Safety of BUET.
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…
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