An advocacy group called “De-fund the ITU” demands the US government stops funding the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In a signature campaign they have accused ITU of leading several countries to seize the control of the Internet during WCIT 2012 in Dubai. Their goal was a coup: to overthrow the open and transparent system of internet governance that ensures the internet’s freedom and accessibility, and replace it with their own central point of absolute control, through which policies of censorship and repression could be enacted. The group claims that Germany, France, Spain, and Finland have already de-funded the ITU. American technology giants like the IBM, Cingular, Microsoft, Fox, Agilent, Sprint, Harris, Loral, and Xerox have allegedly withdrawn their private-sector contributions from the ITU.
Internet activist and computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, who co-developed RSS 1.0 at the age of 14, has died at 26. He has committed suicide. He has earned the fame of an online icon after hacking 18 million pages of documents from the U.S.
Civil servants across the developing world squarely blame inadequate resources for inefficient delivery of services. It doesn’t sell to India’s state government of Karnataka, which has captured the willingness to serve at the core of its principle. And it has partnered with Tata Teleservices for SMS and interactive voice response (IVR) to fast track the delivery of services. The Indian media has all the reasons to be upbeat about the impressive results of this pilot public-private partnership. The Hindu said: While 96.
The decline of telecoms tariff has been a universal trend. State-owned BTCL has, however, decided to double the monthly line rent and increase the call charges across the board. And they did it without giving a damn to the regulator. The usually rowdy BTRC is unusually calm about BTCL’s blatant noncompliance: The (BTRC) officials said they overlook the flouting of the law by the BTCL as the high-ups of the telecom ministry are involved with the latter’s policy making. The industry is unimpressed: According to the telecom act, PSTN operators have to take prior approval of BTRC for any kind of tariff and charges.
Per capita GDP (PPP) of Myanmar is US$1,300 and each mobile connection costs $240 only. The country has “succeeded” to raise teledensity from 1 percent in 2005 to 5.4 percent in 2011. State-owned monopoly has been the sole culprit behind such abysmal state of telecoms profile. The authorities have, however, realized their good days are nearing to an end.
It’s like a country with excellent seaports but bandits rule the roads and highways. Welcome to Nigeria, which has awarded four 3G licenses in 2007. It also boasts of four submarine cables with an installed capacity of over 19.2 terabytes international bandwidth. The country was never short of hype.
Making affordable communication devices for the BOP is not a high school project. It requires strong backing from every stakeholder of the industry. GSMA’s Emerging Market Handsets (EMH) was intended to make the mobile handsets at or below $30 level. Motorola won the GSMA’s deal. My study on Stolen Handsets has captured the semiconductor industry’s involvement in scaling down the handset prices.
The Bangladesh delegation flew to WCIT 2012 without necessary homework. Members had, however, informally said they would “follow the crowd” in the conference at Dubai. And they kept their word while voting in favor of the new ITR. After coming home, the team leader is triumphant: Least developed countries like Bangladesh will be benefitted from the recent amendment to international telecom regulations, said an official. Subscribers in Bangladesh will enjoy reduced international roaming charges, better internet security, freedom from junk mails, and wider access to international communication.
Now defunct PanAmSat’s corporate tagline was, “Truth and Technology Will Triumph Over Bullshit and Bureaucracy.” Its fight against the multi-government Intelsat’s monopoly in the satellite market was captured in this marketing pitch during early 90s. Mobile phone has triggered the funerals of state-owned monopolies worldwide. But it was dogged by the “Bullshit” of 3G or third generation issue. Soon it was followed by 4G and the press screamed, “ITU’s G-spot numbed by over-use.
Bangladesh has raised its broadband bar from 128 Kbps to 1 Mbps, said a press report. Time will answer if it’s a political statement or an official roadmap. But the government’s prejudice on technology is alarming. The whole country should be connected through optical fibre cable. We want to provide broadband to all corners of the country, and it is very much possible.
Yesterday the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) have been updated behind the closed door after fortnight-long extensive intergovernmental debates in Dubai. Dubbing it the possible “Digital cold war” the Economist said: The most important result of the conference has been to demonstrate that the world now splits into two camps when it comes to the internet: one is comprised of more authoritarian countries, which would like to turn back the clock and regain sovereignty over their own national bits of the internet; the other wants to keep the internet and its governance as it is (bearing in mind that some of its members’ motives may not always be as pure as they pretend). This sounds much like a digital version of the cold war. The funny thing is that the leading countries in the two camps are the same two that were at loggerheads until the iron curtain parted. One must hope that the failure of the WCIT is not a first step towards raising a digital one.
Norman Joseph Woodland, who co-invented the bar code along with his classmate Bernard Silver and patented it in 1952, has died last Sunday. He was 91. Bar code’s invention was far ahead of its time. It had to wait until 1974 to make commercial debut in America. Today the ubiquitous bar code is like the oxygen of logistics.
Born free Internet will breathe its last once the authoritarian governments-led ITU-members sign a revised ITR at 1330 GMT today at the end of fortnight-long WCIT 2012 in Dubai. United States and its West European allies along with Australia, Japan, Philippines, Poland, Egypt, Kenya and Czech Republic are, predictably, not signing this controversial treaty. It will give the ailing ITU a monstrous power to regulate Internet the way it governs international phone calls. This phenomenon is feared to damage the digital economy. Yet the control-freak governments are tightening their grips over the net in the name of national interest.
The government’s negligence has deprived Bangladesh of joining the second submarine cable consortium way back in 2006. As a result, the country has wasted a rare opportunity of directly accessing the transpacific link to the United States of America. Officials behind compromising the country’s competitive edge have never been investigated. The private sector has been crying foul for resilient international connectivity ever since. It remained unheard.
The civil society advocates attending the WCIT 2012 in Dubai have jointly protested the lack of opportunity to effectively participate in the conference process. In a letter addressed to the ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré, they have identified three urgent matters: the lack of any official standing to the public comments solicited prior to WCIT at the ITU’s invitation; the lack of access to and transparency of working groups, particularly the working groups of Committee 5; and the absence of mechanisms to encourage independent civil society participation. The letter, which is co-signed by nearly 20 other organizations, says: Unfortunately, the ITU has provided no mechanism for inclusion of the public comments in the WCIT working papers. They are not made accessible through the document management system (TIES) in the same manner as proposals submitted by members, nor are any of the comments reflected in the numerous working drafts reviewed by WCIT delegates. As a consequence, delegates appear entirely unaware of these comments, and the diligent work of civil society organisations that accepted the ITU’s invitation to participate through the public comment process is in danger of being lost.
Moscow has claimed Cairo’s partnership in its plan to command and control the Internet. Nashwa Gad, a department manager at Egypt’s Ministry of Communications & Information Technology (MCIT), has, however, flatly denied: Our name was associated to this proposal by mere misunderstanding. Egypt has always been supporting the basic Internet principles that … the Internet should remain free, open, liberal. We do not see that the ITU mandate deals with the Internet. If the veil of diplomacy is removed, Egypt has officially accused Russia of cheating in the global stage.