Iraq is an Asian country. While LIRNEasia is unable at this time to work in Iraq, our hearts are with the people of Iraq as they use ICTs to cope with the crazy murderousness of their world. A excerpt from today’s New York Times story: “Your call cannot be completed,” it says, “because the subscriber has been bombed or kidnapped.” Cellphones have long been considered status symbols in developing countries, Iraq included. But in an environment where hanging out is potentially life threatening, cellphones are also a window into dreams and terrors, the macabre local sense of humor and Iraqis’ resilience amid the swells of violence.
What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It? – New York Times “Despite WiFly’s ubiquity — with 4,100 hot spot access points reaching 90 percent of the population — just 40,000 of Taipei’s 2.6 million residents have agreed to pay for the service since January. Q-Ware, the local Internet provider that built and runs the network, once expected to have 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but it has lowered that target to 200,000. That such a vast and reasonably priced wireless network has attracted so few users in an otherwise tech-hungry metropolis should give pause to civic leaders in Chicago, Philadelphia and dozens of other American cities that are building wireless networks of their own.
India Becoming a Crucial Cog in the Machine at I.B.M. Click here for full article [registration required] By Saritha Rai, New York Times, June 5, 2006 BANGALORE, India, June 4 — The world’s biggest computer services company could not have chosen a more appropriate setting to lay out its strategy for staying on top. On Tuesday, on the expansive grounds of the Bangalore Palace, a colonial-era mansion once inhabited by a maharajah, the chairman and chief executive of I.
[By SHARON LaFRANIERE, New York Times, Aug.25.05] This NYT article looks at Africa’s mobile boom, stating that it has taken the industry by surprise; common wisdom was that Africans are not big telecom users. But ‘it turned out that Africans had never been big phone users because nobody had given them the chance.’ Today, one in eleven Africans (roughly 9%) is a mobile subscriber.
Some very important issues on government vs private supply of last-mile access (of the type that will come to the fore in places like Andra) are discussed at: Philly Leads Charge For Wireless (New York Times) Are we ready to discuss anything other than tsunami related stuff?
Should this be added to the debate? 65% of homes have electricity; more than the 25% with some form of telecom access. By TOM McNICHOL HIGH-speed Internet access usually comes to homes through one of two wires: a telephone line for D.S.L.