December II 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

Mobile broadband, competing technologies and user interfaces

I asked a few people about mobile broadband. One, while queuing at the bank, must have thought I was a bit weird, but research is research. The others I asked, friends, family and acquaintances – well, they already know I get a bit weird when I am talking about technology. Still, no matter how I put it, except to my co-directors at the local telecom association, almost no one had a clue. A few that recently bought phones and were pitched about 3G by a smartphone-pushing salesperson, a Crackberry addict or two and one proud owner of a mobile-phone laptop modem had some notion of its benefits – oh, yeah, fast photos, email, Google and one or two other common applications.

Mobile broadband is a revolution, but it’s got such a great disguise no one knows it’s there – that is no one except Intel, Microsoft, Google, all the big operators, equipment manufacturers, service providers, content providers, applications developers and a long , long, list of other interested parties all waiting for the big bucks to flow.

Mobile broadband is not only a revolution and an opportunity; it is a technological race and a competitive challenge

Google – you know, the guys that own the Internet – is so interested it has developed its own open platform (with lots of Google apps stuck in – really stuck in – for free) operating system (OS) for mobile phones. The OS called Android, and the Open Handset Alliance that supports it is rapidly gaining support from handset manufacturers – at least, as an alternative.

Android backers are celebrating the steady growth of the alliance supporting Google’s technology, and they are especially pleased by Vodafone’s adhesion to the group. Vodefone is the mobile operator with the most – the most revenues, and the most clout with cell phone manufacturers; what Vodafone wants, it gets. Until recently, Vodafone has been a great mobile Linux supporter.

Google is happy. If you haven’t counted them, Google now offers 59 services in addition to search; and many of those that aren’t yet ready for mobile are like to go mobile shortly. Many are already bundled with Android.

Google, together with a number of other companies, plans to launch 16 satellites that will circle the globe above the equator. The idea is to offer cheap high-speed Internet access by the end of 2010 to the poorer, developing, regions of the world. In these regions, many more people have mobile phones than PCs, so mobile phones will be their main form of Internet access.

Google, with a number of other investors, have put some US$60 million into O3b Networks, a startup that proposes to offer Internet services in developing regions that now have little or no connections with Internet backbones. O3b’s motto is, “Connecting the other 3 billion” – O3b. Of course, it will take much more than US$60 million; initial estimates put the total cost at close to US$650 million.

The system is not directly aimed at the final user. The plan is to sell bandwidth and backhaul to local mobile operators, WiMAX services, ISPs, and fixed-line telcos. Google surely plans to use O3b to increase the already astounding penetration of its services and applications. About 710 million people search Google each month. Worldwide, Google handles 60 per cent of the world’s search traffic; in some countries they handle more than 90 per cent and they want to extend that dominion to the furthest reaches of our world – not just search, but for all their applications. Backhaul for mobile broadband fits Google’s plans well.

Google isn’t alone in its search for ways to provide inexpensive or free, mobile broadband access. They have even joined with archrival Microsoft, among others top-tier players, in the White Spaces Coalition to plead for the use of ‘white space’ spectrum – the unused frequencies between analogue television channels. Anything that Microsoft and Google agree upon has to be important.

This push to use white space frequencies has, obviously, called down the wrath of TV broadcasters, ISP’s and cell phone operators who rightly see the plan to use these unlicensed frequencies to provide free broadband access as a threat to their businesses. Nevertheless, the FCC approved this spectrum for, despite tests that found significant interference in the adjacent licensed spectrum. Once the US TV broadcasting becomes totally digital, this unlicensed spectrum will become increasingly valuable.

While the White Spaces Coalition celebrates its victory, and is gloating over the prospect of free – maybe just cheap in some instances – mobile broadband, companies with big investments in 3G and 4G rollouts must be looking on in dismay. No mistake, this is an all out street fight. If the US experiment works, it is likely to spread around the world.

The mobile broadband for cell phones will grow rapidly in the coming years, but its use with data cards (laptop modems for broadband mobile phone networks), laptops with built-in WiFi, WiMAX or even whitespace connectivity, eBooks, gaming consoles and a wide range of special purpose devices will all use one form or another of mobile broadband. It is said that within five years, these devices will drive between US$80 to 110 billion in operator revenues around the world.

Intel’s decision to include WiFi capability in its PC chips gave a major, perhaps most the important, push to WiFi acceptance. Intel is now a major WiMAX and white space supporter. Its recently displayed ‘Moorestown’ chips support 3G, Bluetooth, WiMAX, WiFi, GPS and mobile TV broadband. Given Intel’s support of white space technology, can a white space chip be far behind?

The move to mobile wireless, whether cell phone-based, 3G, 4G (WiMAX or LTE) white space – whatever the technology – will strain the ability of existing networks to handle the backhaul traffic these high-speed technologies generate. Traditionally, backhaul is a significant cost factor. Since mobile broadband providers must continually reduce the prices they charges users to remain competitive, finding ways to reduce the cost of backhaul is essential. Still, like the search for the Holy Grail – passionately sought for salvation, ways to cut backhaul costs are often tantalisingly just out of reach. Nevertheless, equipment providers will spare no effort and miss no trick to reduce this cost; it can become a matter of life or death for their customers. The need to economically deal with broader coverage, increased base station deployment and rising backhaul requirements will challenge the sector for some time to come.

The competition between WiMAX and LTE – essentially the same technology cooked with different sauces – will provide some interesting moments, but over the next few years, as both of these standards mature, the differences between them from a consumer’s perspective should practically disappear.
Advanced Wireless Services, or AWS-1, spectrum is used in the USA for mobile voice and data services, video, and messaging. The AWS frequencies, originally used for MMDS and wireless cable service were sold by the FCC for mobile voice, data, video, and messaging services. Exit MMDS, an unmourned death. Understandably, T-Mobile, which bought most of the available AWS-1frequencies for its 3G wireless network is now aggressively fighting a proposal by the FCC to auction spectrum called AWS-3 for a nationwide network; the proposal calls for using much of the AWS-3 spectrum for free Internet access. A vote on the proposal scheduled earlier this month was cancelled. It is unlikely to be considered until next year, after a new FCC Chairman is appointed by the Obama administration.

Despite the great advances in technology, the real revolution of mobile broadband will be the applications it makes possible, many of which have yet to be deployed or even invented. The impact will be profound everywhere, but nowhere more so than in the developing regions of the world.

I have no idea how the applications will shape up, but I am willing to bet that the combination of high-power, high-speed, anywhere/anytime access and really small screens will spark a significant revolution in user interfaces. The more today’s screens put a lid on innovation, the harder people will work to invent better interfaces to overcome its limitations. I don’t know what the new user interfaces will look like or how they will work, but they will be better than an iPhone, more useful and far more exciting.

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Masdar City is the most ambitious sustainable development in the world today – it will be the world’s first zero carbon, zero waste, car-free city powered entirely by renewable energy sources. It is part of the Masdar Initiative; a long-term strategic endeavour by Abu Dhabi to accelerate the development and deployment of clean future energy solutions. By taking sustainable development and living to a new level, Masdar City will lead the world in understanding how all future cities should be built. The City is a free zone cleantech cluster, which is already attracting the world’s best in all areas of sustainability, from renewable energy to biomass. All types of companies including innovators, incubators, research and development, pioneers and solution providers will be part of the journey to create, work and live in Masdar City.

Masdar City is more than a concept – it is happening. Phase One of Masdar City has now begun – The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology is underway and Masdar City will be home to 100 students and faculty by fall 2009. Masdar is embarking on a global drive to attract industry partners in the field of ICT to achieve this important objective.

Your expertise in ICT solutions will contribute to the development of a blueprint for the cities of the future.

To find out how to become a partner please visit us at www.masdaruae.com

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The next issue of Connect-World Asia-Pacific will be published early next month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: PTC, Hawaii (18-21 January 2009) and Carriers World Asia, Hong Kong (16-19 March 2009).

The theme of this issue of Connect-Word Asia Pacific will be – Convergence, communications and business innovation.

Communications with customers, suppliers, service providers, financial institutions and the like are the lifeline of any business. Today’s converged networks, converged devices and applications that take advantage of the possibilities a converged environment brings are revolutionizing the office – or the home in the case of tele-workers/ telecommuters – to deliver a seamless work environment to workers wherever they may be. The converged environment has stimulated a wide variety of innovative applications for large and small businesses alike. Many of these applications are not just new ways of doing the same things, but are real changes in the way we do business or are new businesses in their own right. Interaction is facilitated, costs are eliminated or drastically cut, and collaboration with colleagues, clients and suppliers anywhere at any time is enhanced. By minimizing the need to travel, applications such as video-presence are also starting to reduce business travel – and the user’s carbon footprint.

This sort of convergence offers a powerful way to simplify business processes, and its implications are far reaching and complex. Cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS) special applications, Swiss knife communications and computing devices, innovative applications and a host of storage, communications and network equipment will be needed to make this work efficiently and cost effectively.

This issue of Connect-World Asia-Pacific 2009 will examine the implications of these far-reaching converged systems and the impact they have not only upon users, but upon the complex ecosystem that will make these innovative communications systems possible – the networks, communications equipment, user devices, software and business applications.

Asia-Pacific I 2009 Media Pack; Click here

December I 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

Talking business – inclusion through the ‘cloud’Including the digitally un-includable – this could be the biggest untapped ICT market in the world

My last eLetter ended by stating:
The mobile phone is rapidly becoming – by default – the device most of the world’s people will use to access the Internet. The mobile phone is affordable and easy to use, limited in many ways, but not as limited as many of the people who use it. Sadly, a great percentage of the world’s population can barely read and write – if they can read at all. Windows, Explorer, Firefox, in fact almost every application many of us use regularly, are as beyond the grasp of non-readers as rocket science. Cloud applications tailored for the mobile phone, with visual and voice interfaces that can meet the needs of these people might well be a worldwide ‘killer app’ for cloud computing.
That is, it could be the next killer app – if the sector would just wake up.

Last week, I spoke about this at the CITEL Technology Forum held in coordination with AHCIET (Asociación Iberoamericana de Centros de Investigación y Empresas de Telecomunicaciones) and the ITU in Costa Rica. CITEL, the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission – is an entity of the Organization of American States. It is there that governments and the private sector work to coordinate regional efforts to develop the Global Information Society.

I have written in several eLetters in the last year or two about one of the great failures of current digital inclusion programmes. Digital inclusion programmes, as such, are not entirely failures; they are relatively successful at including the includable – those that can read and write (or can easily learn to) and are interested in using information and communication technology (ICT) for more than games and Hi Mom-emails. More often than not, though, a great percentage of those in these inclusion programmes – like the majority of people in the developing world – are functionally illiterate.

A functionally illiterate person can often read and write, but not well enough to understand any but the most basic – this is a cat – text. Without applications they can use, without fully supportive technological ecosystems, these people will never reap more than marginal benefits from ICT and the hoped for economic and social inclusion will not occur. For these people, and for the microenterprises where most work, digital inclusion has failed.

How can someone who can barely read and write benefit from the Internet? Can they benefit from basic applications – let’s say MS Office? Of course not! What use is MSWord to someone who can barely read or write or Excel to someone who has only the barest ability to deal with the simplest arithmetic operations? These applications, physics, biology, engineering and just plain reading are equally incomprehensible to more than half the world’s workers.

Illiterate is not synonymous with unintelligent; most illiterate people have had little schooling, little opportunity to practice or have little talent for reading and writing. Reading and writing talent, like mechanical talent or artistic talent often has little to do with intelligence. There are PhDs with no artistic or mechanical talent whatsoever and brilliant, talented and inventive mechanics and artists with no talent for reading.

This story is quite a bit more complicated than it seems at first glance, but let us leave it at that for now. Functional illiteracy is extremely high throughout the world – over 40 per cent, in even the most developed regions such as the USA and the EU. Look up functional illiteracy in the Wikipedia and prepare yourself for a shock. This is not only a question of schools! After five-thousand years, this is the best the schools can do. Many people are just not properly equipped from birth to deal with reading and writing.

If we want to promote social and economic inclusion, we need to offer this enormous mass of workers digital devices and applications they need and can use. Only then will we achieve the hoped for economic and social impact. This is a killer app – and a lifesaver app at the same time.

Imagine the impact of mobile phone systems and applications that eliminate the written word and use voice, graphics and video to handle the tasks the small (micro) businesses where most of the functionally illiterate population works.

There is no education better than real-time on-the-job training. To be productive, even university graduates must learn on the job. If a worker can access a manual built upon symbols and photos, get video instructions for any task or procedure, get real-time spoken or visual diagnostics to handle difficult repairs, verbally handle accounting or get practical business advice or get help with hundreds of common business and practical problems – all on their mobile phones – their productivity, their earnings and social inclusion all grow. Multiply this by hundreds, thousands or millions of workers and local, national and regional economies grow. This creates jobs and economic inclusion. Workers that earn enough can let their children go to school and get a better start in life. This is social inclusion. This is digital inclusion.

Today, we have the technology we need for a good start, if not yet for a great finish. We have voice, voice recognition and response, graphics, video, augmented reality (aviation ‘heads-up’ displays, for example), databases and knowledge bases, hardware of all sorts and much more. Cloud computing offers a hassle-free infrastructure to reliably, simply and economically deliver the applications and content to users’ handsets. Cloud computing hides the true complexity of the supporting systems, infrastructure and applications from the user.

Nevertheless, there are some very real problems. First, there are no business applications or content today not based upon the written word. In addition, there are no applications and content especially designed to meet the needs of the functionally illiterate micro-enterprise worker. Worse, we do not even know what they, and the small businesses they work at, really need to be more productive! This is an area where partnerships between businesses and academia, with universities the world over, might be uncommonly productive.

Next, there is no ICT/social ‘ecosystem’ to support the development of such an ambitious and, yes, costly, programme. I have spoken with many people in many companies, governments and organisations concerning the need for such a programme. Everyone agrees but no one does anything; in truth, no one can do anything – that is, no one can do anything alone.

Yes, there are problems, but this can be good, incredibly good, business. It is a new market, made up (just as a start) of more than half the world’s workers – workers who now use little if any, except voice, ICT products or services. It can be a win/win proposition for the sector – manufacturers, software, applications and content developers, service providers, operators suffering from bit-pipe disease – and for society as a whole.

Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world”. The problem with developing a programme, with developing the tools, for true digital inclusion is the lack of a place to stand – a base, a platform. Alone no one person – so far, me – no one company, no one country or organisation has the resources to develop everything needed to effectively resolve the problem. There is no business model that will survive without a broad base of support, without a true industry-wide technological base, without a wide reaching set of accepted standards and without ample support from governments and international institutions.

I called my presentation at CITEL, ‘Talking Business’. ‘Talking business’, means talking seriously. A ‘talking business’, is a business based upon the spoken – not written – word.
I strongly believe there is a need for a broad-based organisation dedicated to creating a viable talking business ecosystem; let’s say a Talking Business Forum. It should be comprised of thought leaders, ICT sector players (manufacturers -chips, data centers, network equipment, etc., software and application developers, content providers, service providers, telcos – fixed and wireless) governments, universities and international institutions. Anyone that can contribute to the vision is welcome.

It is going to be a battle to move ahead, to get a critical mass of companies and institutions to sign on to the vision and create a working, officialised, organisation and real tools for digital inclusion, but the battle matters; it can be won.

Would you like to help me make some waves? Rock the boat? Shake the world? Do you think your company or organisation might be interested in helping setup or participate in an industry-wide, a worldwide, forum? Get in touch with me (fredric.morris@connect-world.com) let’s chat and exchange ideas – we can make a difference.

If we don’t try, something terrible will happen – nothing!

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The next issue of Connect-World Asia-Pacific will be published early next month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: PTC, Hawaii (18-21 January 2009) and Carriers World Asia, Hong Kong (16-19 March 2009).

The theme of this issue of Connect-Word Asia Pacific will be – Convergence, communications and business innovation.

Communications with customers, suppliers, service providers, financial institutions and the like are the lifeline of any business. Today’s converged networks, converged devices and applications that take advantage of the possibilities a converged environment brings are revolutionizing the office – or the home in the case of tele-workers/ telecommuters – to deliver a seamless work environment to workers wherever they may be. The converged environment has stimulated a wide variety of innovative applications for large and small businesses alike. Many of these applications are not just new ways of doing the same things, but are real changes in the way we do business or are new businesses in their own right. Interaction is facilitated, costs are eliminated or drastically cut, and collaboration with colleagues, clients and suppliers anywhere at any time is enhanced. By minimizing the need to travel, applications such as video-presence are also starting to reduce business travel – and the user’s carbon footprint.

This sort of convergence offers a powerful way to simplify business processes, and its implications are far reaching and complex. Cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS) special applications, Swiss knife communications and computing devices, innovative applications and a host of storage, communications and network equipment will be needed to make this work efficiently and cost effectively.

This issue of Connect-World Asia-Pacific 2009 will examine the implications of these far-reaching converged systems and the impact they have not only upon users, but upon the complex ecosystem that will make these innovative communications systems possible – the networks, communications equipment, user devices, software and business applications.

Asia-Pacific I 2009 Media Pack; Click here

November II 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

Heads in the clouds, doves, pigeons and cybermeters
Cloud computing, sky-hy-hype, data centres, cellphones and digital inclusion

Cloud computing, refers to the use of Internet (the ‘cloud’) not as a communications system, but as a way to access computing services one – most often – does not own, control or even understand. The information and the applications reside somewhere in the Internet cloud. Users access the applications they need and, using a simplified interface – Web browsers for example, request the services and data they need. Cloud computing really refers to a series of separate, but related concepts including Software as a Service (SaaS) and utility computing where one pays for usage as for electricity; a sort of ‘cybermeter’ measures the computing resources used. Most often, the computing resources that provide the cloud’s virtualised services and data storage are housed in vast data centres. This has made cloud computing a viable alternative for many users.

Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Salesforce, IBM, Sun and Microsoft are among the best-known providers of cloud computing resources for individual users and large companies alike.

Cloud computing pops up with increasing regularity at industry events, emails, newsletters, newspapers, on the Net, discussions with cyber-geek friends. OK, I don’t deny it has great potential, but the awe and reverence with which some treat it – let’s face it we are not being showered with blessings from above – really puts me off.

There are pigeons and doves in this cloud. Doves are the good guys, the aristocrats of the family. Doves get the good jobs, they carry olive branches for the United Nations, they are the harbingers of peace and good tidings and they get to coo for lovers. Pigeon, on the other hand, are the bums of the family. Pigeons, sometimes called feathered rats, just get to sit on – and mess- statues, windowsills and unlucky passersby.

First, as it befits their rank, let’s talk about some of the ‘doves’ of cloud computing.

For some, cloud computing (let’s call it CC for now) is a great way to handle heavy peak traffic without investing too heavily in computing infrastructure that is idle most of the time. CC is also an effective way to obtain emergency backup. By maintaining a ‘mirror image’ of its systems and data at a data centre in the cloud, a company can often resume full operation within minutes of a major system outage.

By using CC resources, by paying for service only if and when needed, the costs for building and maintaining extra capacity are shared with many other users. CC applications can also greatly reduce the investment tied up in software and applications development. The large centrally managed CC data centres generally have staff dedicated to security and have effective, massive, backup for everything – hardware, software, applications, communications and data.

Major data centres also tend to be ‘greener’ than individual computing facilities, if for no other reason than they must work constantly to reduce their operational costs, especially energy consumption. Google, for example has one of the biggest solar panel installations in the United States. Data centres are looking seriously into alternate sources of energy including wind power to reduce both their cost and their carbon footprint. Then too, companies that use the cloud for peak demand or for backup tend to have smaller installations, use less energy and have smaller carbon footprints than they otherwise would.

All these uses are very important and they will grow. In the years to come, I believe there is another use which will eventually surpass these applications, but I will leave that for the end.

Let’s move on to the pigeons.

Despite the generally high level of security and backup, even the best and biggest operations can go down. Even Google’s enormous operation went down for 90 minutes earlier this year. Security, although the big centres have a good record, will still be a problem. Big centres are a tempting target for both terrorists and hackers – and they are sure to win a battle or two.

I like cloud computing but, in a sense, it reverses the personal computing revolution. The idea of putting complete control in the hands of users is more satisfying. Cloud computing takes away control and makes the user dependant on others. I can rationalise this in many ways – still, it doesn’t feel right. The more one uses the cloud, the more one depends upon data in someone else’s hands, upon applications picked and spoon-fed by a third party, the less freedom one has to pack up and move on to another supplier. I don’t like having to depend upon third party decision.

What happens if your personal cloud moves with the wind to another applications supplier, to another version – with another cost structure? What if your cloud supplier keels over and dies – what happens to your data? The economy goes bust; you have no job and can’t pay the rainmaker in the cloud – where do you stand then? How do you work? What happens to your data? What if your connection goes? Earlier this year several undersea cables were cut almost simultaneously; it has been convincingly denied, but some still suspect terrorists. What if terrorists or hackers strike, take out the system you use, and it is off the air for days or weeks?

I stopped writing this for a moment to take a call on Skype. I am a Skype fan. Every day, I speak with – and see -family and friends thousands of miles away and use it to keep in touch with my office, but the quality varies from great to downright rotten. This call was close to the rotten end of the range. It reminded me just how much cloud computing depends upon connections and servers – and how undependable and easily overloaded these both are. Performance and risk – in many respects, not all – are a lot easier to manage on a PC or at your own computing centre.

All considered, the best arguments for the cloud might be cost related, but without flat-rate subscriptions one can get ‘nickeled and dimed to death’. Micropayments for every little service or access, unless controlled, capped and predictable, can get out of hand. If you could have affordable access to everything you want in your own little box, why would you use the cloud?

Enough pigeons! The mobile phone is rapidly becoming – by default – the device most of the world’s people will use to access the Internet. The mobile phone is affordable and easy to use, limited in many ways, but not as limited as many of the people who use it. Sadly, a great percentage of the world’s population can barely read and write – if they can read at all. Windows, Explorer, Firefox, in fact almost every application many of us use regularly, are as beyond the grasp of non-readers as rocket science. Cloud applications tailored for the mobile phone, with visual and voice interfaces that can meet the needs of these people might well be a worldwide ‘killer app’ for cloud computing, but that’s a story for the next eLetter.

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The next issue of Connect-World Global will be published later this month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: Mobile World Congress (16-19 February 2009, Barcelona)and CTIA Wireless (April 1-3, 2009 Las Vegas)

The theme for this issue will be The information society 2015 – corporate responsibility and digital access for sustainable development..

The World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS, established a number of goals for the year 2015. Providing the world’s peoples with access – to connect the world’s people in even the remotest regions, its schools, governments, research centres, libraries hospitals and health centres, cultural centres, museums, post offices and archives – was the primary goal. One of the most important goals set by the WSIS calls for a world where, “more than half the world’s inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach,” by 2015. The WSIS also called for, “ensuring that all of the world’s population have access to television and radio services”.

Providing digital access, as a way to achieve sustainable development, to half the world’s population within a decade is a grand ambition. It will take a mighty effort. Governments, international organizations and non-governmental organisations – NGOs, can do part of the job, but far from all of it. Much of this mighty effort will depend upon the world’s business enterprises. To complete this mission, new technologies, new hardware and software, new applications and content, manufacturing genius, financial resources and logistics that only private enterprise can efficiently provide, develop, deploy and manage will be needed.

What is corporate responsibility in this context? What can, and should, corporations do, then, to help achieve the ambitious WSIS goals? What are they already doing? How can businesses participate? Why should they participate? What will be the rewards and the costs? Is corporate responsibility – corporate participation in the building of the Information Society – good business? These are the questions Connect-World will ask global leaders.

Global 2008 Media Pack; Click here

November I 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

The once and Future Com

The FutureCom show is like none other I have seen. Sure, it has stands for all the top-name exhibitors and a very good conference but, unless you look closely, it easily passes for any one of the many regional telecom shows around the world. In truth, once every year FutureCom is the true power centre of Brazil’s telecom sector.

The FutureCom show (October 27-30, 2008, Transamérica Expocenter, São Paulo) is the telecom event of the year, of every year, in Brazil. This year – having run out of space in the smaller cities, such as Florianópolis – a charming beach city in the south of Brazil where it has been held in recent years – it moved to the São Paulo megalopolis. The move doubled the attendance, but generated enough subdued grumbling to guarantee its move back to Florianópolis next year. I approve, FutureCom has no business being a show for technicians, students and interested passersby. It has always been something of an elite show, a show for the sector’s leaders, and it should stay that way; that is part of its unique value.

Unlike most shows, having more people roaming the corridors does not necessarily bring joy to the exhibitors. One of the reasons FutureCom has hidden in smaller cities, until now, is to keep swarms of telecom technicians away. FutureCom has always been a show for the decision makers, the leaders of the industry and, of course, everyone that wants to do business with them, so exhibitors don’t want to be distracted, don’t want to keep the buyers waiting while they answer questions from low-level, non-buyer, techies.

FutureCom started as government-run show back in the days when the government’s monopoly, Telebrás, was the only game in town. In those days, the show was called Semint, and everyone who was anyone in the Telebrás system and the Ministry of Communications went there – so did everyone that wanted to do business with the system.

Things changed when Telebrás was privatised, but not much. The government’s Semint show was privatised and re-named – this year was its tenth anniversary as FutureCom, a bigger, happier and better-organised event – but in many respects, the more things changed the more they remained the same. The show is now a family affair. Laudálio Veiga, who has run the show since the beginning, has enlisted the help of his wife and sons. They all pitch in to make sure everything runs smoothly for exhibitors and attendees alike; this is one of the secrets of the show’s success. It is hard to find anyone who does not like them and is not pleased with their efforts to smooth the inevitable glitches.

The rainmakers, the top decision makers of all the privatised companies are still there and so are all the companies that want to sell to them. Even the government, as always, is there.

This year, once again, the Minister of Communications, the President of Anatel, Brazil’s telecom regulatory agency, senators, deputados, the chief telecom advisors from the President of Brazil’s staff are always at the event. This year, the vice-governor of the State of São Paulo, the Mayor of São Paulo, the European Commission’s General Director for the Information Society, the Ambassador from Canada, the presidents of all the telecom-related trade associations among others were also there.

Yes, this is an important event, but what makes it important are not only the officials – it is the presence of every president of every operating company and the country or regional president of just about every major supplier. Users are there as well – not just any users, but the heads of the big users, the buyers that carry corporate check books in their pockets.

Most of these people are not just there for a quick pro forma appearance; they spend time there speaking at the conference, meeting and greeting customers and suppliers, delivering veiled and not so veiled messages to one another, supplier to buyer, everyone to the government and the government to all.

Following long-established tradition, Brazil’s Minister of Communications, Hélio Costa, spoke at the opening ceremony. At the cocktail before the opening ceremony there was quite a bit of good natured speculation and mock betting among the assembled VIPs – How late would the ceremony start? Would the Minister make any significant announcement? Would he speak about the taxes Brazil applies to telecommunications – among the world’s highest? The answers? – It started only half an hour late (often, it is quite a bit later); there were no significant announcements from the Minister, but he did mention taxes and the need to reduce prices. Once again there was a good deal of disappointed laughter at the government’s refusal to seriously consider or even mention reducing taxes; the Minister spoke only about competition as a way to reduce prices. One of the telco presidents – no names to protect the guilty – derided the government’s apparent wish to reduce margins to razor thin levels. The government, by far, profits most from the telco business in Brazil; the people and the economy suffer most from the tax inflated prices

The stands are where business is done, but everyone pays attention to the auditoriums where the sector’s leaders send their messages to the market and to the government. The largest auditorium, called Brasil, is always full; at times even standing room is difficult to find. It is there the President of Anatel, the regulatory agency, and the Presidents of all the fixed and mobile operators speak.

Smaller auditoriums – often packed as well – hosted the talks of other important first rank, but less exalted, industry figures. These rooms also served as the setting for an impressive series of roundtables featuring some of the industry’s most respected experts and chaired by some of Brazil’s best-known journalists.

Most of the executives staffing the stands, the directors of marketing and the like, at least for public consumption kept insisting that Brazil’s telecom sector, if not crisis-proof, was strong enough not to be severely affected. The keynotes in the Brasil auditorium, starting with the President of Anatel, ex-Ambassador Ronaldo Sardenberg, spoke more realistically of the economic situation. Although calm in their evaluations, each spoke in his own manner of the need to be alert and proactive to move smoothly through the upcoming turbulence in the world’s markets.

Anatel plans to, “stop reacting and become proactive”. They plan, “a full-scale review and update of Brazil’s telecom regulations… to make investors more secure facing the international crisis we are awaiting”. This will not be a quick fix; according to the Ambassador, the new regulations should guide the agency and the sector for the next ten years. It has been a bit more than ten years since Brazil’s General Telecommunications Law was passed and the sector was privatised. Almost US$200 millions have been invested in the sector since; the government expects this investment to double during the next ten years.

The heads of the major telcos – Antonio Carlos Valente of Telefonica, José Formoso Martinez of Embratel; e Luiz Eduardo Falco of Oi (fixed and mobile) – and the other major mobile operators – João Cox Neto of Claro, Roberto Lima of Vivo, and Mário Cesar de Araújo, of TIM all spoke of the economic turmoil – some as economists, others as engineers and still others somewhat philosophically. They all made good sense and spoke well, but there was little that we haven’t heard many times over during the last weeks and months on our TVs, newspapers, radios, magazines and on the ‘net’ – either about the crisis or new services. All, one way or another, emphasised that the market would eventually stabilise either towards the end of next year or during 2010. They might even believe it. The analyses and the presentation.

Perhaps the best analysis of all, the one that covered the most territory, was that of João Cox, President of the mobile operator Claro – part of Mexico’s América Móvel. Greatly simplified, he predicts that the decline in usage resulting from the drop in family income and falling company profits would make things more difficult for the operators.

The repatriation of capital will grow, perhaps as much as one third of the capital in the local stock exchanges, to cover cash flow problems of foreign owners. Brasil will increasingly depend upon international demand for its mining and agricultural commodities. The short-term value of the Real, converted into dollars on the balance sheets of foreign owner, will fall. The weaker Real will also affect the importation of electronic equipment.

Despite this, since the fixed-service operators have little competition and prices are among the world’s highest (taxes are mostly responsible), telecommunications will still push Brazil’s economy, although at a somewhat slower pace. Mobile service margins are quite low despite high prices – those taxes again. Capital costs are also high given the need to keep up with the rapid changes in technology – 3G mobile broadband introduced one year ago has grown incredibly.

FutureCom is a direct descendant of Brazil’s previously government dominated telecom sector. It is, at the same time, the most complete representation possible of the sector today and of the days soon to come. Although there were participants from 40 countries, it is hard to imagine a more intensely regional, more wholly Brazilian event. Despite the lack of surprises and the move to São Paulo, it is still quite a show.

____________________________________________________

The next issue of Connect-World Global will be published later this month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: Mobile World Congress (16-19 February 2009, Barcelona)and CTIA Wireless (April 1-3, 2009 Las Vegas)

The theme for this issue will be The information society 2015 – corporate responsibility and digital access for sustainable development..

The World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS, established a number of goals for the year 2015. Providing the world’s peoples with access – to connect the world’s people in even the remotest regions, its schools, governments, research centres, libraries hospitals and health centres, cultural centres, museums, post offices and archives – was the primary goal. One of the most important goals set by the WSIS calls for a world where, “more than half the world’s inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach,” by 2015. The WSIS also called for, “ensuring that all of the world’s population have access to television and radio services”.

Providing digital access, as a way to achieve sustainable development, to half the world’s population within a decade is a grand ambition. It will take a mighty effort. Governments, international organizations and non-governmental organisations – NGOs, can do part of the job, but far from all of it. Much of this mighty effort will depend upon the world’s business enterprises. To complete this mission, new technologies, new hardware and software, new applications and content, manufacturing genius, financial resources and logistics that only private enterprise can efficiently provide, develop, deploy and manage will be needed.

What is corporate responsibility in this context? What can, and should, corporations do, then, to help achieve the ambitious WSIS goals? What are they already doing? How can businesses participate? Why should they participate? What will be the rewards and the costs? Is corporate responsibility – corporate participation in the building of the Information Society – good business? These are the questions Connect-World will ask global leaders.

Global 2008 Media Pack; Click here

October II 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

Good hope and the Cape

Years ago, during a university summer vacation, I went with a number of friends to Birdland – a New York jazz club named after Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. Sitting next to me at the next tiny table – shoulder to shoulder in the crowded space – was a young, mid-thirties, South African. We were soon talking about the music and a host of other subjects. He was a professor of anthropology, a medical doctor and a PhD; he was a fascinating conversationalist with informed opinions about everything. We all left together after the show and walked downtown towards the ‘Village’ for a few beers, talking as we walked. When the bars closed we exchanged addresses.

We wrote back and forth a few times, but I let the correspondence slide, increasingly aware of my inability to keep up my end of the exchange. Although overwhelmed by Dr Phillip Tobias’s brilliance (I recently looked him up in the Wikipedia, he has since been nominated three times for the Nobel Prize), he fired my longtime interest in South Africa.

In the years since, I have avidly read every bit of news about the country that came my way – relatively little, as with most countries, except in times of trouble. What little I knew about the state of technology in South Africa came mostly from articles published in Connect-World by government officials and local ICT sector leaders.

Savant – South African Vanguard of Technology – is a public-private partnership between the government and a number of important South African information and communication technology sector players. Savant’s main concern is that, outside of the country most people in the ICT sector, like me, know little of what South Africa’s ICT sector is capable of producing.

Savant’s mission is to raise global and local awareness of South Africa’s ICT (or, as they often put it, electrotechnical – ICT, electronics and electrical engineering) sector skills by showcasing the capabilities, successes and competitive advantages of SA companies. Their job is to promote the sector, build its exports and attract foreign investment and joint ventures.

When they invited me to visit South Africa, to take part in a dti – road tour of their country in the company of other ICT editors from around the world, I couldn’t say no. The ‘dti’ is the South African Government’s Department of Trade and Industry.

Savant, a coalition of industry leaders supported by the Department of Trade & Industry and the ICT Development Council, is South Africa’s first marketing and branding campaign for its hi-tech sectors. The aim of the tour was to showcase the best that South Africa’s ICT sector has to offer.

All in all, it was an intriguing, highly interesting, experience. Although the tour only scratched the surface, it soothed a long-term itch.

The road show – from Cape Town to Durban to Johannesburg, took a week. Savant, dti, ICASA (the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa) and USAASA (Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa) briefings provided the social, political, regulatory, government policy and government programme background information needed to put the daily visits with ICT sector players into context. A number of detailed briefings from Frost and Sullivan, Africa Analysis, the South African Electrotechnical export council and Dimension Data concentrated more on sectorial and economic analysis.

As expected SA is a leading user of ICTs in Africa, but overall, the usage is low. Universalization of services and bridging the digital divide are top-level government priorities, but are not easy goals to achieve, especially given the country’s skills deficit. Surprising were the charts showing SA as the world’s fourth fastest growing mobile market at 50 per cent per annum, and that HSDPA mobile networks provide 34 per cent of the country’s broadband access.

South African Governments at all levels are rightly proud of a number of initiatives aimed at promoting, rather incubating new ICT companies. Although there are many differences between the way the programmes are structured and their specific goals, they follow a common pattern.

The Bandwidth Barn – a subsidiary of the Cape IT Initiative (CITI), is a Business accelerator, an incubator, for information and communications technology start-ups in the Western Cape. The Bandwidth Barn cuts the costs most start-ups face by sharing common office spaces and services; it also promotes networking between the start-ups and established businesses. The Barn’s business development programmes teach the business skills required to develop into profitable companies.

Like the Barn, Durban’s SmartXchange, a public/private partnership, seeks to incubate start-up businesses. It provides start-ups with rental space where common areas and services are shared to reduce costs. SmartXchange’s most significant contribution is the intensive mentoring that it, and its partners offer the participating start-ups. Deloitte, Dimension Data, Axiz, IBM, Microsoft, bizWorks, Business Connexion, Waltons, CityWorks, Lexmark, the City of Durban, Ramco, AdaptIT and Thusa, a mixture of local, multinational and government entities, are the partners behind this effort.

Unfortunately, I was only there for a week; it was impossible to cover everything I would have like to have seen. I missed seeing some of the many ICT-driven economic and social inclusion projects – the hard-core digital inclusion efforts. The inclusion programmes I did get to see were essentially platforms to include technically savvy graduates, they accelerated the inclusion of the already included to build the momentum of South Africa’s high-tech sector.

I also missed seeing and learning more about SA’s networks and countrywide communications – again, not surprising given the time available. The statistics confirmed that South Africa’s networks – as far as they currently reach – are as well managed as any and from the balcony above Vodacom’s network control centre there was as impressive a display of computer screens and blinking lights as any such room I have ever seen.

I expected to see a number of good digital inclusion projects in SA and I was not disappointed, but I had not expected a number of the globally active South African-based technology companies and I certainly had not expected some working, bleeding edge, quantum technology.

Fundamo, based in Durban, is a world leader in mobile funds transfer. Most of Africa’s people, indeed the majority in most developing regions, are ‘unbanked’. They have no bank accounts and live on the edge of the money-based economy. Many of these people do have pre-paid mobile phones, and the systems designed to store credits in these devices to pay for calls are, in a sense, equivalent to money left in a bank. Phone companies with mobile banking applications, such as those developed by Fundamo, let users transfer funds to other users in distant villages or even serve as a sort of debit card to make purchases. As a broader range of applications become available including, especially, mobile micro-credit, mobile money will drive an economic revolution in developing regions. Mobile money, perhaps more than any other mechanism, will soon make the ‘long tail’ economy at the bottom of the pyramid relevant. Fundamo is working with Accenture in GSMA project to build a hosted mobile-wallet platform that will let operators quickly rollout mobile money financial services for the millions who have no bank accounts.

DigiCore, traded on the Johannesburg Exchange, is another South African global company. Its GPS tracking technology is used throughout the world for end-to-end trucking and fleet management and to locate and recover stolen vehicles. DigiCore currently manages more than 340 thousand vehicles in 32 countries on five continents.

The Quantum Secure Network programme at the University of Kwazulu in Durban was wholly unexpected. They are building the world’s first network secured by quantum cryptography. Currently, the best cryptography for secure messaging utilises complex mathematical algorithms to encode the content. Although exceedingly difficult to break, they can be overcome by using massive computing power. Some years from now, when quantum computers are available, most such cryptography will be easy to break. Quantum cryptography, though, is inherently impossible to break. Any attempt to measure a quantum encoded transmission will, following the laws of physics, change the state of the transmission and make it impossible to read.

Durban’s Smart City Initiative will use this technology over The eThekwini Municipality optical fibre network and make it the world’s first quantum encryption network. Links between Durban and several suburbs are now being tested.

I visited a number of other very impressive companies as well; I can’t cover them all now, but I promise invite a number of them to write in future Connect-World EMEA and Africa and the Middle East editions and let them each speak of the part they are playing in the transformation of South Africa.

The Cape of Good Hope was once the turning point in a long voyage, the mark that the worst was over and there were good prospects ahead. Today, technology marks the turning point in South Africa’s quest for inclusion, progress and good hopes.

____________________________________________________

The next issue of Connect-World Global will be published early next month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: Mobile World Congress (16-19 February 2009, Barcelona)and CTIA Wireless (April 1-3, 2009 Las Vegas)

The theme for this issue will be The information society 2015 – corporate responsibility and digital access for sustainable development..

The World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS, established a number of goals for the year 2015. Providing the world’s peoples with access – to connect the world’s people in even the remotest regions, its schools, governments, research centres, libraries hospitals and health centres, cultural centres, museums, post offices and archives – was the primary goal. One of the most important goals set by the WSIS calls for a world where, “more than half the world’s inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach,” by 2015. The WSIS also called for, “ensuring that all of the world’s population have access to television and radio services”.

Providing digital access, as a way to achieve sustainable development, to half the world’s population within a decade is a grand ambition. It will take a mighty effort. Governments, international organizations and non-governmental organisations – NGOs, can do part of the job, but far from all of it. Much of this mighty effort will depend upon the world’s business enterprises. To complete this mission, new technologies, new hardware and software, new applications and content, manufacturing genius, financial resources and logistics that only private enterprise can efficiently provide, develop, deploy and manage will be needed.

What is corporate responsibility in this context? What can, and should, corporations do, then, to help achieve the ambitious WSIS goals? What are they already doing? How can businesses participate? Why should they participate? What will be the rewards and the costs? Is corporate responsibility – corporate participation in the building of the Information Society – good business? These are the questions Connect-World will ask global leaders.

Global 2008 Media Pack; Click here

October I 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

Broadband World Forum, in denial, the meltdown and developing regions

The IEC’s Broadband World Forum, held this year in Brussels, is a major event for equipment manufacturers and operators – fixed and wireless alike. Year after year, this IEC (International Engineering Consortium) event brings together the latest and best developments in the broadband universe – technology, applications, services and a bit of content.

The importance of the event to the sector can be gauged by its keynote speakers: Scott Alcott, the Forum Chair and the Executive VP of Belgacom- the show’s official host company; Didier Bellens, President and CEO of Belgacom; Ben Verwaayen giving his first public address as Alcatel-Lucent’s new CEO; John McMahon, President and Managing Director, Europe, of Sony Pictures Television International; Ericsson’s President and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg; and Julio Linares, Telefónica’s COO.

Operators from the world over were there, of course, looking for whatever competitive advantages broadband services could bring them. Broadband drives a range of video-based services – IPTV was everywhere – that operators hope will raise their ARPUs. Equipment suppliers are counting upon this to drive their business – they pray that video will drive growth for years to come.

Still, the spectre of a teetering economy hung over the show. There were many smart people there, operators and suppliers alike, and many had to know in their hearts that the financial meltdown would hurt everyone. But everyone soldiered on, seemingly untroubled by the gathering forces of darkness. I expect the markets’ quickening slide in the two weeks since the show have changed the, ‘it won’t hurt us’, attitude of so many of those at the show.

Since then, the meltdown has accelerated and brought to the surface the waste products of a system long polluted by unintelligible securities derivatives, largely uncontrolled short selling, unprincipled distortion of the ‘everyone has a right to a home’ principle and the economically incomprehensible posturing of ideology-driven politicians.

I spoke at the show with many heads of companies, CTOs, heads of marketing and other pivotal figures of the sector. Save for a few, all spoke in glowing terms of their companies’ visions of the future – all were ‘in denial’. I wonder how many secretly feared for their jobs.

Abdelkrim Benamar is Alcatel-Lucent’s Vice-President Business Strategy & Market Planning Solutions for Europe, Africa and Asia and one of the few who seemed to really grasp today’s realities. Benamar knows the world’s developing regions well.

During our meeting he described a particularly compelling vision of some of the opportunities and challenges that the sector faces. He spoke of emerging markets and, odd as it might seem to those who know little about emerging markets, it is one of the scenarios that I expect will hold up best in the post-meltdown world.

Mr Benamar cited OECD statistics that showed strong growth in ‘south to south’ investment and the belief of some analysts that this will soon overtake traditional ‘north to south’ capital flows. Mr Benamar’s subsequent analysis was based in good part upon this assumption. This means that cash-rich investors from regions south of Europe and the United States – many of them recent success stories in the south’s emerging economies looking to put their capital to work – will soon be the biggest sources of FDI (foreign direct investment).

There are many reasons to believe that during the overall economic slowdown we are likely to see Mr Benamar’s scenario hold, especially in the near future, and an increasingly larger portion of the funds available for FDI spent in emerging economies. If for no other reason, more of the FDI will come from emerging economies; it will come from investors whose cash was earned in these economies and know their potential. These investors live in emerging markets themselves, know that money can be made there, have faith in long-tail consumers and know the time is ripe to take advantage of the inevitable explosion of demand in these markets.

It will take a while before prices in the developed economies adjust to the new realities, so low-cost emerging markets – if they can quickly upgrade their infrastructures and provide a trained workforce (the biggest ‘if’) – will be able to capture a growing portion of the world’s markets.

Although economic problems in other parts of the world tend to drag developing economies along, the growing use of ICTs in these regions might well tip the table, slide some of the bigger economic crumbs into their hungry mouths, and permanently fatten their economies. In more stable, proactive, developing economies the meltdown might well have a number of long-term – even short and medium term – positive effects.

This does not mean countries such as India – just one example – will not suffer; everyone will, but the newly created and empowered middle class, the highly competitive new companies and the world-class entrepreneurs in the emerging economies will not just sit back this time. They are hungry and accustomed to succeeding in difficult conditions. Instead of just handling the outsourced needs of the developed economies, the energy that made them succeed will go into growing their own markets and those of other developing economies. South to south investment, and marketing, will drive a new sort of expansion. The expansion will be uneven, often painful. This time, the economic development of these countries will not be driven predominantly by raw goods and manufacturing, but by ICTs and intellectual capital.

There will be lasting differences in the world’s markets when all is once again stabilised and the competitive playing field will be more level than ever before.

The recently created pool of middle class jobs – the muscle of the newly emerging economies was built upon the credit-fuelled expansion of western service economies. The new middle class cannot be sent back down. Desperation, preparation and imagination have long driven new companies to success and none of these ingredients will be lacking. Expect surprises.

Mr Benamar sees a fundamental shift in investment within the telecom sector; the increasing dependence of major suppliers upon capital expenditure in emerging markets to drive their businesses and maintain profitability. This is likely to continue in the AM (after-meltdown) world, since little of economic consequence can be done without information and telecommunications technology. Even though budgets will be cut, this is not the dot.com bust. Industries will be investing a greater part of their remaining budgets in ICTs to cut operating expenses in other areas and sharpen their competitive edge.

Long-term presence – real local history and experience – in emerging markets, Mr Benamar predicts, will be decisive for both large suppliers of services and equipment and their clients. Local technical competence will be at a premium; the current pool of well-trained technical personnel is just too shallow for sustained expansion. Programmes such as Alcatel University and a number of other company sponsored high-level training programmes can provide a decisive edge for sponsoring company and local economies alike.

The new technological ecosystem that Mr Benamar foresees in emerging markets – ecosystems that extend upward from the end-user through the service provider to the manufacturer or original service developer – will depend heavily upon services that enable the end user. The availability of content and applications that meet local needs, the availability of a first-class access infrastructure, economies of scale and affordable end-user equipment, all stressed by Mr Benamar, will be increasingly important in the after-meltdown world.

Stephen Scholz, Nokia Siemens Network’s CTO, spoke to me of the challenges facing the industry. He expects traffic to grow one-hundred fold in the next seven to ten years. The good news is tempered by the fact that revenues will stay flat and operators, manufacturers and service providers alike will face huge difficulties reducing costs to maintain profitability. Operators will have to build capacity to handle the enormous volumes expected and at the same time drop costs by going to flat architectures, full optical fibre access and either LTE or WiMAX wireless depending on the market.

He agrees that many operators might well become gigantic bit-pipes operating on razor-thin margins.

Considering the relentless acceleration of the meltdown since the event, I – and the entire sector – would like to know what sort of world we really will be living in. Try as we may, it is hard to deny the world has changed in the last few weeks and harder still to predict where it all will lead.

____________________________________________________

The next issue of Connect-World Global will be published early next month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: Mobile World Congress (16-19 February 2009, Barcelona)and CTIA Wireless (April 1-3, 2009 Las Vegas)

The theme for this issue will be The information society 2015 – corporate responsibility and digital access for sustainable development..

The World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS, established a number of goals for the year 2015. Providing the world’s peoples with access – to connect the world’s people in even the remotest regions, its schools, governments, research centres, libraries hospitals and health centres, cultural centres, museums, post offices and archives – was the primary goal. One of the most important goals set by the WSIS calls for a world where, “more than half the world’s inhabitants have access to ICTs within their reach,” by 2015. The WSIS also called for, “ensuring that all of the world’s population have access to television and radio services”.

Providing digital access, as a way to achieve sustainable development, to half the world’s population within a decade is a grand ambition. It will take a mighty effort. Governments, international organizations and non-governmental organisations – NGOs, can do part of the job, but far from all of it. Much of this mighty effort will depend upon the world’s business enterprises. To complete this mission, new technologies, new hardware and software, new applications and content, manufacturing genius, financial resources and logistics that only private enterprise can efficiently provide, develop, deploy and manage will be needed.

What is corporate responsibility in this context? What can, and should, corporations do, then, to help achieve the ambitious WSIS goals? What are they already doing? How can businesses participate? Why should they participate? What will be the rewards and the costs? Is corporate responsibility – corporate participation in the building of the Information Society – good business? These are the questions Connect-World will ask global leaders.

Global 2008 Media Pack; Click here

September II 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

For whom Bell tolled

I read a rather ordinary press release last week about a consumer product – a good product likely to have a good market. A product, nevertheless, that like so many others, we never knew we needed. According to the release, the product was based upon research from Bell Labs.

There are so many products based upon research from Bell Labs, that this is not news, but it reminded me of the Lab’s history.

I can think of no other corporate research facility quite like Bell Labs at its prime. The world we know would be a much different, much poorer, place without the basic research that built the fame of Bell Labs. Can you imagine a world without the transistor, the lasers, information theory, UNIX, the C programming language or the mobile phone?

Many of the biggest questions science is struggling to answer today – the sort of questions that prompted countries around the world to invest US$ 9 billion in the EU’s CERN atomic research facility’s LHC super atom smasher – were first raised because Bell Labs ‘invented’ radio astronomy.

In 1931, Bell Labs’ Karl Jansky investigated the causes of the hissing, the static that plagued long-distance shortwave communications and found something wholly unexpected – the centre of our galaxy was emitting powerful radio waves

This discovery gave birth to radio astronomy and paved the way for the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to two Bell Labs researchers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, for their discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation – the radio remnants of the Big Bang.

Bell labs researchers won five other Nobel prizes as well:

• Clinton Davisson shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter;
• Philip W. Anderson shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetic materials vital to the development of electronic switching and memory devices in today’s computers;
• Steven Chu, shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for cooling and trapping atoms with laser light;
• Horst Stormer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui, won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect; and
• Perhaps most important in terms of the world we live in, 1956 John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the transistor.

Can you imagine the world today without the transistor?

The list of brilliant Bell Labs researchers, the list of prizes, of truly important scientific breakthroughs and the list of the inventions born there is far from restricted to those that won the Nobel Prize. The first workable fax machine, synchronous sound motion pictures, the first long-distance television transmission, the ‘cell’ that gives cell phones their name, the seamless handoffs between cells and many other technologies that make mobile telephony what it is, were all from the Labs. So too was Claude Shannon the father of modern cryptography and the father of information theory. The list is long, far too long to deal with here.

I never worked at Bell Labs, but I do have a very personal and long-standing attachment to the Labs.

The Chairman of the Physics Department at my New York City High School worked with William Shockley at Bell Labs during the 1940s. He was there when the transistor was invented. His stories of the research going on at the Labs, where he also served as a consultant, and his courses in solid state theory and practice, at a time when few universities taught this at an undergraduate level (observers came from as far as Japan), inspired me to study physics at the university.

To me, to my generation at school, Bell Labs was a powerful, legendary, influence. A friend’s cat was even named Jansky after the discoverer of the hissing from space – what can you expect from a nerd? Jansky hissed at everyone and everything and often came back from his nightly rounds badly clawed and bitten until, one day, may he rest in peace, he didn’t return.

Many years ago, looking for solutions to some difficult radio communications problems – now long resolved, but beyond even Bell Labs at the time – I spent a good deal of time there as a client. It was a memorable experience – work sessions with brilliant people, tours of the labs to see the latest developments, meetings with some of the best theorists of the time.

In one lab, two wires connected to a rather messy looking bunch of circuits and devices were hooked to a screen. The end of each wire was held in a clamp with a micrometer-type adjusting screw. The clamps were mounted on a workbench so the ends of the wires rested point-to-point on a glass slab. A researcher dripped a bit of colourless liquid, immersing the ends of both wires, and turned the adjusting screws until the ends of the wires were aligned within the liquid. The screen came to life and showed that a signal was flowing along the wires.

The ‘wires’ were, in fact, among the world’s very first optical fibres; a laboratory curiosity at the time. No one had yet figured out a good way to splice the ends of the fibres so they dropped a bit of liquid with the same refractive index as the fibres between the ends to make the connection. They eventually resolved the splicing problem. Twenty years ago, in 1988, Bell Labs’ TAT-8 became the first trans- Atlantic fibre optic cable.

That same day I saw the fibre demonstration, researchers in another nearby lab demonstrated one of the first experiments in Free Space Optics (FSO) using lasers to transmit data between two points. In one of the most bizarre demonstrations of explicit ‘geekness’ I have ever seen, a rather awkward researcher climbed on a chair, frantically flapped his arms and jumped through the beam to show how a bird could disrupt the signal. I grabbed and kept him from stumbling to the floor.

I could go on.

John Donne (1572-1631) wrote of the ties that bind us one to another. “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Bell Labs tolled for us all; it rang the changes of a new world, and tunes now ring from transistorised devices around the globe. Today, the bell tolls the passing of an era, not just at Bell, but at corporate facilities everywhere. The bell also celebrates the greatness of vision that looked for the unforeseeable and saw the birth of the information society – that looked for the causes of radio static, but saw galaxies and the beginnings of the universe.

And for whom did Bell toil; why it toiled for thee.

____________________________________________________

The next issue of Connect-World Latin America will be published early next month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: Futurecom (São Paulo, Brazil October 27th to 30th).

The theme for this issue will be Merging and converging – work, life and ICT.

The convergence of networks, technologies, devices and applications has changed our lives – even the lives of those that don’t use a computer or a cell phone – it’s inescapable. Our lives and our lifestyles have changed – lifestyles that depend upon ICT, digital lifestyles, are evolving. This is happening, not only in the world’s great cities, but everywhere reached by digital communications – anywhere a mobile phone works or a cyber café exists. The companies we work for, the companies we deal with, the governments we depend upon and the services they provide, our entertainment, our finances, our security, our health, our social networking and many other aspects of our lives have merged into the worldwide digital universe. ICTs surround us just as surely and pervasively as air.

The ICT sector created the conditions for this change, but users of every type – businesses, governments, manufacturers, individuals and so forth – are now driving the change and shaping the sector’s technological priorities, the solutions, applications and content. The more you have the more you want; the demand is insatiable

This issue of Connect-World Latin America will examine the growing impact this pervasive digitalization of our lives and lifestyles is having upon the ICT sector, businesses, government and society.

Latin America 2008 Media Pack; Click here

September I 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

From Democrats, to democracy to Internet demos (δήμος)

For many years, I have worked with a small television on my desk, usually with the news – CNN, BBC or a local channel – burbling along, barely audible. I rarely pay much attention; I have a neuron or two that monitors the TV and lets me know when something important is happening. These neurons bypass the daily bumph, the feel-good features, the glop that turns any woman into a supermodel and the latest must-have technology that does something no rational person really wants. If something important happens, like 9/11, my watch-neuron rings an alarm

A few days ago, with the Democratic Party National Convention rolling along in the background, I got a wakeup call from my watch-neuron. A participants on one of those panels of distinguished figures, academics and reporters, that re-hash the obvious or speculate knowingly about things none has more direct knowledge of than I do, spoke of online, viral, political marketing.

Viral marketing refers to marketing campaigns that depend upon word of mouth or the Internet – especially via social networks – to spread information, stories, product promotions and such in much the same way viruses, both human and computer, propagate. Viral marketing campaigns are designed to be passed voluntarily from person to person. The information might be in a song, a video clip, text messages, an advertisement, a game and image of some sort – anything that conveys an idea. What caught my attention was a statement by one of the panellists that, on average, people pass along good news, a favourable review – whatever they agree with – to three people. On the other hand, when people do not like something they tell eleven other people.

I don’t know if the ‘3 – 11’ rule was discovered by serious researchers, or if someone invented it on the spur of the moment to win an argument. When I mentioned the rule to a friend that had phoned me – a marketing type, not much given to scholarly pursuits or reflection – he quickly said, ‘sure, everyone knows that’. I didn’t, and I was amazed that he did. It made me wonder if that statistic itself wasn’t a bit of virally propagated misinformation.

Correct or not, the ‘3 – 11’ rule sounds like it should be right, so people believe it – they want to believe it – and, besides, it’s a good line; it sounds scientific enough to sidetrack a discussion when you run out of facts.

The panel’s ‘expert’, explained that conservatives were using the Internet and social networks to accelerate the spread of viral marketing – especially negative marketing – aimed at Obama, the Democrat’s nominee for President of the United States. He was probably right, at least in this.

As they spoke of negative marketing, I thought of the ways technology influences so many aspect of our world, including the election for the President of the USA and I remembered something I had read, somewhere, earlier during the week. I still don’t remember where. It was one of those interesting things you come across while chasing another subject, but have no time to look into it. It had something to do with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and cultural convergence.

A little Googling got me to the site of the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium.

Cultural convergence, as the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) describes it, is a marketing-related phenomenon, “an emerging pattern of relations bringing together entertainment, advertising, brands, and consumers in creative and often surprising ways. These new relations are underpinned by three key concepts: transmedia entertainment, participatory culture, and experiential marketing”.

The site surprised me; MIT C3 site’s emphasis on marketing, branding and advertising surprised me.

I had expected MIT would have adopted a somewhat broader-based cultural/social/ political/economic approach to the question. They have identified a major technology-driven cultural trend, but are looking – or so it seems – only at the technology, techniques and business implications of this sociological revolution.

MIT has done some amazing work on language sciences, cognitive science, especially during the Steven Pinker era at MIT, and other more human-centred studies, including at its famous Media Laboratory. Despite this, MIT has always been better known as a technology and business (Sloan School of Management) centred institution, so the C3 emphasis might be a reflection of what is commonly perceived to be MIT’s traditional world view. Or is it?

I suspect that MIT’s investigations cover a much broader universe than its avowed marketing / advertising focus.

The political campaigns in the USA have shown the convergence between technologies, content and the de facto sort of social and political engineering, although just beginning, is a powerful force. The campaign inspired viral messaging also shows us that the C3 vision is correct, but very short-sighted; the convergence of technologies with media is much more than a marketing phenomenon, just as viral messaging is more than just a marketing tool. The convergence of technology with such socially manipulative tools as viral messaging has the potential to change the course of society, to change governments, to change the world.

Today, converged, viral, messaging is powerful, but still primitive. It uses social networks to spread commercial messages, political messages, spiritual messages and even the words of terrorist and hate groups. As primitive and inefficient as it is, it still gets the message across. It works well spreading messages about the supposed sins, foibles, weaknesses, questionable activities and questionable past of political candidates – the 3 – 11 rule. I expect that before long – and with the help of groups such as C3 – the effectiveness of technology-enhanced positive viral messaging will improve, although given human nature I doubt it will fully rival that of the negative.

I wonder if those studying media/technology convergence and the tools it enhances, such as viral messaging, are ‘in denial’ regarding its potentially broader impact, or are just trying to downplay the Orwellian overtones, the connotations of mind control, that hover over any use of technology to convince people, to instigate mass movements or to manipulate popular perceptions. I suspect C3 chose to speak only of advertising, branding and marketing for reasons such as these.

Perhaps C3 is right to be careful about the way it presents itself; when I first looked at their site this week, I was deeply suspicious about the possible exploitation and misuse of viral messaging. Sure, the potential exists, but closer examination of the danger took the edge off my worst fears. Unlike in the past, when the state or a few well-defined media groups controlled the means of mass communication, the Internet is open to all and notoriously hard to control. Even individuals can easily – at no cost – use their own Internet-powered messages to counter-attack malicious attempts to manipulate mass perceptions.

It seems that with the help of technology we have come full circle. Democrats and democracy are both words and concepts derived from the Greek demos – the people, the citizens, of the ancient Greek states that had equal privilege and voice in the public assemblies that ruled the state. Today, the Internet is the public assembly where we all have a voice, and when we all have a voice, tyrannies – political or marketing – find it harder to flourish.

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Our next Connect-World EMEA Issue will be published early next month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: IBC Amsterdam (12-16 Sept) Carriers World (London, UK, 23-26 Sept) Broadband World Forum Europe (Brussels, Belgium, 29 Sept-2 Oct) and AfricaCom (18-19 Nov, Cape Town South Africa).

The theme for this issue will be Convergence and data – pushing the limits of the network.

The Internet has changed our world and the global economy. We are now entering a new stage in its growth. Web 2.0, collaboration, virtual worlds and mashups are all part of it. Also parts of the new Web are the evolutionary moves towards the semantic/ intelligent web, IPv6, the growth in enterprise services that are not a mere extension of existing services and financial services such as mobile cash and credit. The Web is also revolutionising education, healthcare, government and social services in general. The impact of this upon the world’s ICT infrastructure is hard to calculate, but you see and feel the effects wherever you are in the region – or the world.

EMEA 2008 Media Pack; Click here

August II 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

Digitally repackaging the news – a tale of time and technology that matters

The earliest known ‘newspaper’ was the Roman Acta Diurna. Julius Caesar ordered the posting of handwritten notices in major cities to inform the public about important happenings, governmental matters, wars, executions, even government scandals. The handwritten notices were posted in public gathering places including the famous baths. That was over two thousand years ago. The first printed newspapers, of sorts, were more like occasional pamphlets.

It was not long after Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1447 that newsletters and scandal sheets, the forerunners of sex, sports and celebrity rags at modern newsstands were circulating in German cities. One of the earliest scandal sheets reported how Germans were suffering at the hands of Vlad TsepesDrakul – the famous Count Dracula. There are no photos to tell if he really had long pointy teeth. By the 17th century, frequent, periodical, news publications were springing up throughout Europe. Censorship was common, most rulers were afraid the newssheets would spread dissension – the reaction, even today, of less enlightened governments.

It took a while, but rulers gradually, probably begrudgingly, became accustomed to newspapers and eased the heavy-handed censorship. In a sense, the birth of the information society – of information and communication technology, ICT – might be dated to the invention of the telegraph in 1884. It was not long before reporters started electrically communicating information, sending stories by telegraph; this changed the newspaper business forever. It might have been a big news item in London, but I found out about it quite by accident. The news that the Times would make its archives available to the public – from the date of its founding in 1785 to 1985 – online was tucked away in two lines at the back of my local newspaper. The Times is not the oldest surviving newspaper in the world or even in London.

The London Gazette, although it is now an official newspaper that records court decisions and the like, and no longer a general interest newspaper, is some 120 years older. Nevertheless, as the United Kingdom’s newspaper of record, and having followed the events that have sped our world on for more than 200 years, the Times tells the endlessly fascinating story of civilization’s ‘recent’ development. The Times has re-packaged its archives for modern times; it has digitalized some 20 million articles and more than 35 million images – almost everything it has published since its founding. Some of the original issues were damaged.

These are being restored; they will be digitalized and added to the online archive when ready. The next phase of the project will digitalise the remaining articles from 1985 on and those from the Sunday Times, another publication of the same group. The Time’s site is http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/tol/archive/; for now, the Times archive is open to all free of charge. The pages of the Times on the site were scanned and are displayed in their original format. Not only were they scanned, but the latest OCR (optical character recognition) technology was used to convert the image into a machine-readable format. This makes it possible to machine search the entire database for any topic or keyword.

It also makes it possible to use the basic Windows Ctrl C/ Ctrl V sequence to cut and paste the text directly into another document and edit it. One can ‘zoom’ the images and magnify them to read the text more easily. The typography of the early Times left much to be desired, so this is a very useful feature. In fact, the typography was so bad, that complaints prompted the Times to commission a new typeface, Times New Roman – which for almost 80 years has set the standard for typeface readability. It is one of the most popular typefaces in the world and almost every computer includes it as a standard font.

The Times is nothing less than a day-by-day history – from the Times’ rather singular perspective – of how the world has navigated for more than two centuries. Read about the adoption of the USA’s Constitution, Napoleon’s successes and defeat, the crowning of kings and the beheading of a queen, world wars and local wars, the wonders of science and technology, the rise and fall of dictators, the rise and fall of countries or the sinking of great ships – it’s all there in the Times. The digital Times, although not planned as such, is one more important piece in the drive to digitalise all the world’s information, another step towards the completion of a universal online library that contains all the still existing written material ever published. A universal digital library is a sort of holy grail for all those involved in a wide variety of digital library initiatives.

The Library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt was said by some to contain all of the world’s existing knowledge. Other estimates put the figure at 30 to 70 per cent. Today, it may be technically possible to get close to the 100 per cent mark. Honestly, I am not sure it is all worth the trouble and expense to save. Still, even if we do not diligently search out every bit of junk ever put to paper, disc, film or tape I am sure we will do a much better job of documenting the world than they did in Alexandria – Alexandria did not have You Tube. The EU’s i2010: Digital Libraries Initiative, is part of the EU’s 2009-2010 Work Programme for ICT research for the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The Digital Libraries Initiative, in a sense, is working to create a contemporary Library of Alexandria. I read through the EU’s far-reaching and well thought through digital initiatives several weeks ago and, well, I’m impressed. The Digital Library, one part of these initiative, is the EU’s effort to make “our cultural and scientific heritage (books, journals, films, maps, photographs, music, etc.) accessible to all and preserve it correctly for future generations…It is a flagship initiative of the Commission’s overall strategy to boost the digital economy, the i2010 strategy.”

I don’t think we will ever get to the point where everything is on-line, but I am fairly sure we will eventually save and make available all that really matters – all the important contributions from every culture on Earth. And one day, not too many years from now, we will all be able to easily access the world’s knowledge and wisdom whenever we need it, and that’s all that matters.

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Our next Connect-World EMEA Issue will be published early next month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows such as: IBC Amsterdam (12-16 Sept) Carriers World (London, UK, 23-26 Sept) Broadband World Forum Europe (Brussels, Belgium, 29 Sept-2 Oct) and AfricaCom (18-19 Nov, Cape Town South Africa). The theme for this issue will be Convergence and data – pushing the limits of the network. The Internet has changed our world and the global economy.

We are now entering a new stage in its growth. Web 2.0, collaboration, virtual worlds and mashups are all part of it. Also parts of the new Web are the evolutionary moves towards the semantic/ intelligent web, IPv6, the growth in enterprise services that are not a mere extension of existing services and financial services such as mobile cash and credit.

The Web is also revolutionising education, healthcare, government and social services in general. The impact of this upon the world’s ICT infrastructure is hard to calculate, but you see and feel the effects wherever you are in the region – or the world.

EMEA 2008 Media Pack; Click here

August I 2008

Fredric Morris
Editor-In-Chief
Connect-World

The greening of ICT

I am not terribly correct – politically, ecologically, nutritionally or any other ‘…ally’ you can name. My heart is in the right place, but I react badly to the pushing, posturing, the rhetoric and the half (if that) thought-through propositions of many of the ever so righteous advocates of ‘correctness’. I thoroughly understand – and support – the need for measures to combat global warming, to protect wildlife, and to protect the ecology of planet Earth, but I prefer reason to the unthinking enthusiasm of the LGM.

Way back in the sixties, radio astronomers discovered a rapidly pulsating, highly regular, star. They first named it LGM-1; we now call them ‘pulsars’ and they have proper astronomical catalogue denominations. The precision and regularity of their binary on/off radio pulse led some scientists to speculate half-seriously that an advanced alien civilization was sending signals. They jokingly named the new star after the old, stereotyped, science fiction intelligent extraterrestrials – ‘Little Green Men’ (LGM) that arrive on flying saucers.

Many of the environmentalists I have met, though not all by any means, are LGMs. They are ‘green’ and binary – yes or no, good or bad, love it or hate it – and emotionally simplistic in the way they see and try to deal with some very complex problems. Faced with evident environmental dangers and with little information about the complex tradeoffs – is it better to use biodegradable paper packaging or plastic bags and save millions of trees? – many well-intentioned souls turn into LGM and strike out blindly against the enemy.

Emotion and commitment is understandable, but simple solutions, simplistic solutions, won’t solve complex environmental problems. If the ICT sector is to contribute to the solution, we need more ICT sector leaders and industry associations involved in a concerted effort to understand the trade-offs, find workable solutions and develop green standards. It is neither simple to analyse nor easy to avoid being paralysed by the overwhelming amount of data involved.

In the United States, the TIA, the Telecommunications Industry Association, has made a promising start. Their EIATrack environmental programme offers companies a comprehensive international database of the relevant environmental legislation and regulations accompanied by expert analysis. They are striving to become the thought leaders in the field.

The EU is generally considered a leader in the use of “IT to help other industries reduce their carbon emissions”. Viviane Reding, the EU’s Telecoms Commissioner stated, “I am convinced that ICT has a key role to play in enabling energy efficiency improvements across the whole economy, thus lowering emissions and fighting climate change”. The EU hopes to use ICTs to monitor, optimise and reduce the energy consumed in construction, heating, cooling and lighting of buildings -some 40 per cent of the energy consumed in Europe. Indeed, ICTs will be essential to efforts aimed at saving vast amounts of energy – perhaps more than 50 per cent.

The need for ICT green is evident and new sector groups are springing up constantly, but despite a number of green initiatives, the impact has been tiny. Data centres are turning green more because of energy costs than conviction. Energy reduction through better equipment engineering, better data centre design, and better work management is the easy answer; it is an obvious way to reduce the carbon footprint and it cuts costs, so no one objects. Still, there is enormous waste in the sector that is not quite as obvious. Green ICT is relatively new and most ICT green efforts amount to little more than wiping carbon’s footprints on a doormat. How to eliminate other forms of waste is a somewhat harder question. Digging deeply into the question and eliminating less obvious sources of waste is not yet popular with most of the environmentally engaged ICT players.

Software is only one example of less obvious green waste. Watching my computer creep along, even after a recent registry cleanup, it occurred to me that I am using much more energy and time than necessary – that the time for a periodic Windows re-installation has come.

No one talks about it, but it seems to me that software is one of the major contributors to energy consumption. Once upon a time, in the early IBM 1401 days of mainframe computing, programmers prided themselves upon writing the tightest most efficient code possible. Of course, with 4KB mainframes (yes, that’s 4KB – about four thousand characters, kiddies) and an 87.5 KHz clock one had to code efficiently. Today, the cost of software, including what it costs to develop and maintain, often makes it more cost-efficient to use more lines of code rather than less.

In the cave-dwelling days of programming, one used machine language, Auto Coder, assembly languages, SPS-1, SPS-2 or, if you were a scientist, you might have used an early version of Fortran one of the first higher-level (somewhat) languages. We now have optimising compilers that transform high-level languages into code that can run as quickly – or more quickly given the complexity of hand-optimizing massive volumes of code for modern processors – as assembly language coding.

These days, with bigger, faster, processors, CPUs are idle a good part of the time while I/O operations are going on and information swapped between memory and disk storage. Although the time it takes to execute code or the constant execution of extra lines of sloppily written code is not very important to programmers or to data centre managers, it does keep machines humming needlessly.

Reducing the complexity of software, its sheer size and the tendency of some software’s performance to degrade is one of the ways to achieve green savings. It is time to re-examine the tendency to needlessly complicate software by including functions and features that are rarely, if ever, used. How about an industry-wide standard to rate just how green software is? Let’s see how MS Office stacks up against office suite X, how Windows’ green compares to Linux or if Oracle is greener than SAP. Kill two birds – bloated software and energy emissions. Better yet, force users of inefficient software to buy carbon offsets – we might end software bloat forever.

No matter how much we improve the energy efficiency of the ICT sector at every level, the real savings from ICT, as the EU rightly emphasises, are likely to come from ICT contributions to monitoring and reducing the emissions of heavy polluters, by monitoring factories and big office buildings to optimise their energy usage profiles. The largest corporate solar panel installation in North America, the 1.6-megawatt array at Google’s headquarters saves a lot of energy, but it is a trivial compared to what people can save by using the Internet to work at home.

The answer to the greening of ICT isn’t easy; the savings have to come from the whole value chain, from all the equipment, from the software and the way it is used and powered. To do this right, we will need accepted standards for green equipment, software, operations and the like. We will also need a much better idea of the tradeoffs, of the hidden costs down the line – do we use plastic bags or save trees – to make the right decisions.

There are no easy answers, but one thing seems certain, there is no way to make a greener world without ICTs.

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Our next Connect-World Asia Pacific Issue will be published later this month. This edition of Connect-World will be widely distributed to our reader base and, as well, at shows where we are one of the main media sponsors such as: • ITU Telecom Asia (Bangkok, Thailand 2-5 September) • GSMA Mobile World Congress Asia 2008 (Macau, SAR, 18th-20th November) • PT Expo Comm (Beijing, China 21-25 October) and • Vietnam Telecomp (Vietnam, 26- 29 November).

The theme of this issue will be – Internet usage and services.

The Internet has changed our world and the global economy. We are now entering a new stage in its growth. Web 2.0, collaboration, virtual worlds and mashups are all part of it. Also parts of the new Web are the evolutionary moves towards the semantic/ intelligent web, IPv6, the growth in enterprise services that are not a mere extension of existing services and financial services such as mobile cash and credit. The Web is also revolutionising education, healthcare, government and social services in general. The impact of this upon the world’s ICT infrastructure is hard to calculate, but you see and feel the effects wherever you are in the region – or the world.

Asia Pacific III 2008 Media Pack; Click here