January 2010 Archives

Wireless Communications Prove Crucial for Disaster-Hit Haitians

By
Indrajit Basu
 on January 20, 2010 7:50 AM
Bookmark and Share
TSF 1a.jpgWhen the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, the capital city of Haiti, on the evening of January 12, Vilemé Emmanuel, a student, was fortunate he was outside. As buildings around him collapsed and people died in dozens, Vilemé saved his life by managing to stay outdoors.

Unlike Vilemé, Cherisca Ronald was not so lucky. He was inside his room watching the television and when the earthquake -- 7.0 on the Richter Scale and the worst in the region in 250 years -- struck Cherisca's house, it collapsed. Although Cherisca somehow managed to escape death by running outside, his family and friends couldn't; and they perished.

But the first thing both Vilemé and Cherisca needed, and didn't get, was access to a communication network. Virtually all telephone networks stopped working almost immediately after the disaster because the quake damaged the country's only international submarine cable system operated by Bahamas Telecommunications Company.  

Moreover, few man-made structures were left standing in the 11-mile radius of the city, making availability of a landline or a mobile phone almost impossible.

Help came though, in less than 24 hours, when Télécoms Sans Frontières, the leading France-headquartered humanitarian NGO that specializes in emergency telecommunications, was able to deploy an emergency team from its American base in Managua to provide a vital support in emergency telecom. 

With the help of TSF's satellite, mobile and fixed telecommunications tools, Cherisca could make a free call to his father in Boston to ask him for money to survive. Vilemé took advantage of TSF's free calling facility too to inform his father in Massachusetts that he was alive and safe.

That is not all. "With the telecommunication facilities nearly absolutely disabled due to the earthquake, our satellite-based telecommunication systems have been consistently helping the government and many other local as well international aid and rescue missions to conduct their operations since the January 13," says Catherine Sang, the Communications and International Relations officer at TSF. "You can say that TSF's ability to rapidly deploy communications networks has made ICT as crucial for rescue as food, shelter and medicine in Haiti."

For TSF this is not the first mission in Haiti though. Since 2003, this ICT-NGO has launched four rescue operations in Haiti to respond to situations like conflicts to severe hurricanes.

TSF 2.jpgBut according to TSF, this earthquake has hit the country's telecommunication network the hardest, as its collapse has not only affected the Haitian population but also its government's telecommunications networks, as well as those of the essential services like the radio stations and the airport.

"At the very beginning of the mission, TSF had to install reliable and durable connections for local authorities and emergency responders," says Sang, "TSF experts have set up multiple broadband access points too for logistics centers and the airport."
  
Additionally, TSF teams are providing IT support to the Minustah (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti) and is planning to open a telecom centre dedicated just for the NGOs.

An analysis of calling operations reveals that Haitian community is very important abroad, says Sang, since 100% of the calls made through its networks were international, especially in the United States (95% of the calls).  "In this desperate situation, giving affected people a link with the outside world is vital; I am alive was a sentence that was uttered the most initially."

TSF says it is not going to leave Haiti soon. "TSF teams will continue their operations until the country revives its telecommunication networks," says Sang. However following TSF, a few other ICT-driven help have started emerging for Haiti.
 
The Los Angeles Times, for instance was one of the firsts to create a list of Twitter users believed to be tweeting from Haiti to provide quick information on the Web, while a Wordpress-powered blog called Haitifeed is also delivering a steady stream of first-hand accounts as well as mainstream media reports from across the globe.

On Facebook, a group called Earthquake Haiti has already reportedly acquired over 14,000 members that is largely using the "New Media" for garnering support as well as for posting critical information including pleas for assistance to injured Haitians.

These apart many websites and online relief efforts have originated over the last week to help tackle the Haitian disaster, which can be used not only to monitor what's happening in Haiti but also for making donations. These include;

• Save the Children: www.savethechildren.org;
• UNICEF: www.unicefusa.org/haitiquake or call (800) 4UNICEF.
• Red Cross:  Text HAITI to 90999 ( $10 will be charged to your cell phone bill) as well  online at www.redcross.org.
• Direct Relief International: www.directrelief.org.
• Mercy Corp: www.mercycorps.org 
• TwitterMap.tv: for mapping people tweeting geographically
• Google Earth: for image mapping layer of Haiti
• Center for International Disaster Information: for information as well as donations.

Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and has a population of 9.6 million inhabitants. In recent years the effects of the global food crisis and particularly strong hurricane seasons have left the country very vulnerable.

"Amidst all their hardships," says a blogger, "what the Haitians need most is reassurance. And a simple message that says  'wish you the best' or a meager $10 donation over the Internet can work wonders."


Comments (0)
Digg.com Facebook
Newsvine
Delicious

Google Says Enough Is Enough to China!

By
Indrajit Basu
 on January 14, 2010 8:39 AM
Bookmark and Share
Google Chuna.jpgIt has always been the concern of the human rights activists and the US government that China has been aided in its censorship efforts by hardware and software provided by major US technology companies. This was despite the global outcry against these companies because at 360 million, and growing, netizens the country was too big a market to fight its government.

And even now, whether Google will really pull out of China or not remains a big question, since a few -- particularly from the Chinese government -- view the threat as mere saber rattling. Yet the most significant aspect of Google's threat two days back is that it has thrown down the gauntlet in a way that the world has not seen before, either from a company nor or a government against censorship in China. 

From that aspect then, Google's backlash against Chinese censorship is indeed unprecedented and an extraordinary gesture.  

Human rights activists are now hoping that governments and companies around the world would take this as a cue to not only develop policies that safeguard rights, but will also stand together to try to make Internet access the same for everyone worldwide.

Indeed, Google's actions have highlighted the growing unhappiness of Western companies and the growing problems foreign information technology companies in particular face with Chinese government policies. From government procurement policies that insist on "buying only Chinese," to widespread counterfeiting, to growing restrictions on foreign investments, the list of obstacles to doing business in China is growing everyday.

For IT companies the difficulties are even bigger. For instance, China not only devotes massive financial and human resources to censor the Internet, but also takes the help of Western companies to hunt down and punish netizens who hold views which the ruling Chinese Communist Party disagrees with.  

Several US-based IT companies including Cisco Systems,  Juniper Networks, Yahoo, Microsoft and even Google have succumbed to the  Chinese government's demands of censoring information, "even as all these companies all along have been pushing for less censorship," says Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch. "It is heartening to note that Google has finally said enough is enough!"

Meanwhile, with Yahoo already siding with its rival to denounce the alleged cyber attack, and Microsoft still reportedly mulling their response, Google's threat has resoundingly echoed the world over. Except in China of course.

Reacting to the Google threat, Wang Chen, China's Minister of the State Council Information Office, said that China will not bow to pressure since the Internet through online pornography, fraud and rumors was emerging as a menace for the country.

"Our country is at a crucial stage of reform and development, and this is a period of marked social conflicts. Properly guiding Internet opinion is a major measure for protecting Internet information security," said Wang on the Ministry's website.

But this stance too is hypocritical, just like many others previously. Consider this: China conveniently describes the Internet as a menace while talking about contents and organizing capabilities that the Chinese government does not like. But when it comes to the extent in which the Chinese government has benefited or still benefits from the Internet -- like online snooping on other governments and eCommerce -- China then doesn't consider the cyberspace to be a menace.

But who is going to point this out to the Chinese government?

 

Comments (1)
Digg.com Facebook
Newsvine
Delicious

Wooing Indian IT Companies to America to Hire US Employees

By
Indrajit Basu
 on January 6, 2010 9:36 AM
Bookmark and Share
Stung by double digit unemployment rate despite the over trillion dollar stimulus, even as President Obama is extending unemployment benefits and looking for other ways to generate job growth, a few American cities have devised a seemingly smarter way of generating more jobs. They are wooing top Indian IT companies to set up operations in their cities so that more Americans can be hired by these Indian companies.

So in a way the job crisis has managed to turn the table pretty quickly. Indian IT companies, which as recently as in March last year were blamed for taking jobs away from America, are now being actively courted for expanding operations in USA. The hope is that to compete against their U.S. rivals -- like IBM and Accenture -- the Indian IT companies will hire more Americans and thus create more jobs.

However, the moot question is that while some these cities are throwing millions of dollars in tax credits to attract the Indian IT companies, could this money be more effectively spent in focusing on infrastructure -- say on wider penetration of broadband?

Some think so.

But first here's the big news. Ohio, Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Tallahassee created quite a bit of furor in the outsourcing world when Bloomberg reported a few days back that these cities were actively courting top Indian IT companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro for setting up or expanding operations in these cities.

Governor Strickland.jpgOhio Governor Ted Strickland (photo left), as it was reported, has even gone a step further by throwing in $19 million in tax credit to TCS for expanding its operations in the Cincinnati suburb of Milford. This will allow the Indian tech company to ramp up its head count from 300 to 1000.

The TCS operation, reported Bloomberg, has already picked up 250 of its current 300 employees from places like Ohio State University, the University of Cincinnati, and other nearby schools. And it is being assisted in moves to grab a larger bite of the  government and health-care work, where the transfer of data overseas are prevented by laws. 

Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Tallahassee too are following a similar strategy. Atlanta, for instance, is encouraging  Wipro Technologies, which now has 350 employees -- nearly 300 of them Americans -- to expand its operation in the city. And Dallas is encouraging  Infosys to set up an operation  to target Texas'  expenditure of billions of dollars for outsourcing work in 2010.

But smart as the policy may appear, it has not pleased the veterans. Christopher Hytry Derrington, the co-founder of Rural America Onshore Sourcing says; "While I am glad that jobs are being created in America, they are just a drop in a bucket in solving the economic and unemployment crisis that is in America right now."

He added that a lot of people view these brick and mortar centers as basically a conduit to bring over Indian labor at greatly reduced Indian rates.

Christopher's views are worth noting. With business development centers in Wisconsin, Ohio and Kentucky, Rural America Onshore Sourcing is a USA-owned and operated on-shoring company that provides business process outsourcing services using lower cost rural based professionals so that American companies don't have to send projects offshore or use expensive urban vendors.

Christopher is also peeved with the tax credit that the Ohio governor is offering to TCS. "What Strickland should be doing, that we do not see, is focusing more on bringing broadband to all of rural Ohio that would create more jobs than what all these Indian companies could bring in," he says. 

To one Cincinnati resident,  the wooing appears to simply be a gimmick just to gain political mileage. "The business community in Cincinnati is viewing these announcement with a little bit of wariness because it might reduce pay rates overall while creating very little impact in improving the overall job scene," said one local business-owner requesting anonymity. "After all politicians love being in the spotlight and love making announcements."

That may be true but for the time being, city administrators may have set their visions much beyond what a commoner can see. 

For instance, according to Bloomberg, if a Senate bill introduced in April makes it through Congress (the bill  seeks to bar companies with more than 50 U.S.-based employees from using temporary visas for more than half their U.S. workforce), these Indian IT biggies that employ thousands of Indians in the U.S. on temporary visas would be forced to employ many Americans.

Jobs created by the Indian IT companies then would be not only long-term, but could also increase in numbers, Strickland said in the Bloomberg report.

Comments (7)
Digg.com Facebook
Newsvine
Delicious
« December 2009 | Main Index | Archives | February 2010 »