International Beat

Broadband Still Out of Reach for Many Despite Crashing Prices

2010-03-01T18:30:26Z

Photo: Setting up Broadband access to the African people - in this case Liberia.

That the global financial crisis has hardly dented the growth of use of ICT globally is a common knowledge by now. So is the fact that ICT prices have been crashing globally. But while crashing ICT prices have come as good news for global policy makers, the bad news is that despite hopes and even tall claims, broadband Internet still remains outside the reach of many in poor countries.

Consequently, even as by the end of 2009, there were an estimated 4.6 billion mobile cellular subscriptions (corresponding to 67 per 100 inhabitants globally), and an estimated 26 percent of the world's population (or 1.7 billion people) were using the Internet, the overall digital divide still remained as it were before the financial crisis hit the world in 2008.

In fact, reveals the Measuring the Information Society 2010, ITU's latest ICT Development Index (called IDI) released on Tuesday, while falling prices have somewhat narrowed the divide between the rich (that ITU called the high group) and the not-so- rich countries (upper group) in the developed world. The divides between the upper group countries and the poor countries (low group) in the developing world have widened.

"Globally the price of telecommunication and Internet services is falling with cellular services having become the cheapest service in terms of per capita income and prices of fixed broadband services decreasing by as much as 42% over 2008," said Esperanza Magpantay, one of the authors of the report. "This reduction is remarkable. But despite this reduction, a notable aspect of ICT penetration in the post crisis period is that in some developing countries, prices are still very high that pose a barrier for people in such countries to subscribe to fixed broadband internet."

Although much of the world basks in the assurance that ICT is growing by leaps and bounds despite the many odds of the last two years, "there is still much room for improvement in ICT penetration," says Magpantay.

Indeed IDI 2010 is a revelation. While many governments (usually regulatory telecommunication/ ICT authorities) and several regional and international organizations, including the OECD and the World Bank, collect and publish price data for selected telecommunication services, these are usually limited to a country, a region or a single telecommunication service. The IDI Price Basket in the IDI, as claims ITU, was the first price index to track and benchmark the affordability of ICT services globally.

A key objective of the ICT Price Basket was to provide information on the cost and affordability of ICT services. It is a benchmarking tool to inform policy decisions, says ITU.

The IDI 2010 has found that while the global average spend on ICT was about 13% of the per capita gross national income (GNI), owing to their far lower earnings levels, people in the developing countries paid as much as 17.5% of their average annual income for ICT in 2009. In comparison the developed world paid a mere 1.5% of their average annual income.

However, the real bad news lies in fixed broadband access, which is still the dominant route for broadband access globally. According to IDI 2010, fixed broadband is still the single most expensive and least ICT affordable service in the developing world. IDI has found that of the 159 countries surveyed, fixed broadband access costs about 7% of GNI in just about 44 countries, while a huge 71 developing countries pay up to 174 % of their GNI for what developed countries calls broadband access.

This extent of digital divide has important policy implications and suggests that countries with high fixed broadband prices need to put in place policies to reduce this price in order to bring more people online, says the IDI report.

"There are various reasons for this disparity," says Magpantay. "The price of ICT services is determined by a number of factors that include policy measures regulatory intervention, market competition and size, operators' cost, profit margins, etc. But largely, although recent evolution of ICT markets has shown that tariffs decreases with competition, the ICT Price Basket analysis of IDI has shown that in a number of countries, state subsidies and regulations continue to have an impact on prices."

Nevertheless, IDI said that several countries - including some developing countries - have shown strong improvements in their IDI score and ranking between 2007 and 2008. Notable examples include Bahrain, Cape Verde, Greece, Macedonia, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Vietnam. While some of these countries still rank low on the IDI (e.g., Nigeria or Vietnam), their improvements illustrate the progress these countries are making in information society developments.

Moreover, in terms of access, use and skills, IDI noted that between 2007 and 2008 an increasing number of countries are moving towards more intensive ICT usage.

Photo by Michel SAKR. CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Global Green ICT Initiative May Pose New Challenges for CIOs

2010-02-01T16:55:33Z

Although IT didn't feature prominently at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last month, a new initiative called GreenTouch might lead to significant ICT contributions to a greener world.

Announced about two weeks ago, this new global consortium is led by Bell Labs, the R&D division of French-US telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, And it is drawing political support from countries as diverse as UK, US, and France to Portugal, South Korea and even a little from India. Its objective is rather ambitiousto say the least -- to create the technologies needed to make communications networks 1000 times more energy efficient than they are today.

In other words what GreenTouch says is that, in five years, with the same amount of power that it uses in a single day, it is possible to run the communications networks of the world, including the Internet, for three years. This is equivalent to a saving of 7.8 giga tons of CO2, or 15% of the total world emissions predicted by 2020.

Indeed, considering that the ICT industry today is responsible for a relatively small portion of global greenhouse gas emissions - about 2 to 2.5 % according to the International Telecommunications Union, that it can save so much of carbon dioxide is almost unbelievable.

Moreover, communication network's like fixed-line telecommunications, mobile telecommunications and LAN and office telecommunications, share in that is even lower accounting for a mere 31%.

But hold on; in the next decade, with another billion particularly from the developing countries using the communications networks to upload and share video, images and information through an additional estimated 15 billion new devices, ICT's contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is projected to nearly double - to about 4% - by 2020.

This naturally then means that the world is heading for anexponential growth in ICT energy consumption "which we, as an industry, have to jointly address." says Gee Rittenhouse, vice president of research at Bell Labs and GreenTouch head.

Achieving the kind of reduction that GreenTouch wants to achieve though will not be easy since there is still no solution available now to reduce the energy consumption.

"Today's networks are designed for optimal capacity, not efficient energy use," says Dan Kilper, the New Jersey-based member of the technical staff of Bell labs. Moreover the technologies used over the networks is so diverse that whatever efforts that are currently pursued to achieve energy efficiency can produce only incremental results, say the GreenTouch experts.

Yet the consortium is confident that the 1000-fold improvement in energy efficiency of the Internet and communications networks could be achieved.

"What is needed is a major breakthrough; a total rethinking of the way telecom networks are designed in terms of low energy processing," says Kilper.

The initiative, he says, aims to come out with innovations that could revolutionize the architecture, as well including a complete reworking of protocols. And that means "a lot of new things are going to come out of re-engineered networks."

Which, say experts, poses a big challenge for CIOs as well.

The CIO's biggest challenge, GreenTouch spokespeople point out, would not only be to balance future networks for both optimal capacity and energy efficiency.

The responsibilities of future CIOs would also expand beyond the information system of the organization to include even some of the responsibilities of say the marketing and human resource departments for making the best use of IT, says a human resource expert Vanessa Robinson.

Meanwhile, the first meeting of the consortium will take place in a few weeks from now --in February -- when it will adopt its first goal to deliver, within five years, a reference architecture, specifications, technology development road map and demonstrations of key components needed to realize a fundamental re-design of networks (including the introduction of entirely new technologies) that can reduce energy consumption both by individuals and in aggregate.

"This is an open initiative which means that anybody and everybody can participate in this effort," says Paul Ross, spokesperson, Alcatel Lucent. "We intend to define the challenge through a focused and collaborative cross-industry initiative."

Wireless Communications Prove Crucial for Disaster-Hit Haitians

2010-01-20T15:50:22Z

When 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.

But 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."

Google Says Enough Is Enough to China!

2010-01-14T16:39:51Z

It 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?

Wooing Indian IT Companies to America to Hire US Employees

2010-01-06T17:36:43Z

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.

Ohio 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.

The Role of ICT Neglected in Copenhagen Climate Discussions

2009-12-11T14:59:50Z

As leaders haggle over global warming in Copenhagen and struggle for the most desirable solution of initiating a 'green revolution' without compromising economic growth, one important omission in the key areas of the global negotiations has been the use of ICT as a tool in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

While a plethora of methods and technologies that include smart grids, sustainable networks, energy-efficient data centers, telework, intelligent cars, smart buildings, energy-efficient workspaces, and even vegetarian diet are being discussed. That ICT too could be a powerful tool to mitigate the catastrophic effects of global warming seems to be missing

The fact is that even as ICT today has insignificant (estimated to be less than 2.5 percent) contribution to GHG emissions -- which is why perhaps few consider any discussion on it worthwhile, many experts feel that a more effective use of ICTs right away could yield remarkable results in helping reduce total global emissions going forward.

Quite a few studies recently have been trying to establish that fact. Take the SMART 2020 -- the first ever study on the role ICT can play for a low carbon economy -- that The Climate Group prepared on behalf of the Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI), an international strategic partnership of ICT companies.

"In total, ICTs could deliver approximately 7.8 GtCO2e of emissions savings in 2020. This represents 15% of emissions in 2020 based on BAU estimation. It represents a significant proportion of the reductions below 1990 levels that scientists and economists recommend by 2020 to avoid dangerous climate change. In economic terms, the ICT-enabled energy efficiency translates into approximately $946.5 billion of cost savings," the study said.

In other words, the 15% reduction in total global emissions that more effective use of ICTs could achieve (by 2020) is five times higher than the estimated emissions for the whole ICT sector in 2020. The GeSI also estimates that these reductions could deliver energy efficiency savings to global businesses of over $740 billion.

Indeed, even if many blame technological innovation for the unfortunate consequence of creating unforeseen environmental damage, there's no denying that ICT at least is a profitable opportunity and has a critical role to play as well with other sectors to design and deploy solutions needed to create a low carbon society.

"It's quite simple. In order to avoid catastrophic climate change and stay well below 2 degrees warming we need to decarbonize our economy in 20-40 years," says Lasse Gustavsson, CEO WWF. "It is only possible if we fully utilize modern ICT solutions and drastically increase efficiency and invest in sustainable renewables. This is a must if we want to secure an energy future for 9 billion people."

Gustavsson's claims in terms of ICT's ability to impact billions single-handedly may look tall, but his observations are not really without basis.

Consider these proof points:

According to ITU, strategies like the universal charger for mobile phones, which has just been standardized by ITU, will deliver an estimated 50% reduction in standby energy consumption, eliminate 51,000 tons of redundant chargers, and cut GHG emissions by 13.6 million tons annually.

A study conducted by the European Telecommunication Network Operators' association (ETNO) and the WWF, showed that by replacing of 20% of business travel in EU-25 countries by non-travel solutions (such as videoconferencing), it would be possible to avoid some 22 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Also amazing is, how significantly anyone -- including you and I -- can contribute to reduction of GHG by simply altering some of our consumption habits.

Dematerialization for instance - where bits replace physical goods - can play an important role in reducing GHGs by reducing or even entirely eliminating the need for manufacturing and transport. Examples are e-mail, online billing, online submission of government forms, downloads to replace music CDs, video DVDs, magazines and books, and so on.

Similarly did you know that every time you don't go to office and decide to work from home you contribute a fair bit in helping the world breathe easy?

According to ITU, every one million telecommuters working from home in Europe, can help save one million tons of GHG emissions annually. In the United States, where commuting distances tend to be longer, the savings are higher. ITU has found that the country already has 3.9 million telecommuters who save up to 14 million ton of GHG annually.

"Even conservative estimates show that the contribution ICT to addressing climate change can be significant," says Hiroshi Ota, the official at ITU who works on the organization's efforts to include ICT in global climate change negotiations." Without the application of ICT the kind of reduction we are talking about in 2050 will be impossible to achieve. But unfortunately its role does not find its way into the current draft text of UN's COP 15 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference."

According to ITU then, specific mention of the ICT sector, along with the adoption of an agreed methodology for measuring the carbon footprint of ICT equipment and its inclusion in National Adaptation/Mitigation Plans is imperative as a key point in the ongoing UN's COP 15 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

That,according to ITU, would not only provide an incentive to the ICT industry to invest in developing countries and help reduce the digital divide, but at the same time also help fight climate change.

A win-win scenario indeed!

Photo COP 15 Media Center from UN Climate Talks Pool - CC Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic

Frame-up Virus Could Haunt Government Departments

2009-12-03T14:28:08Z

It's a story straight out of a crime movie: You are a not-so-scrupulous businessman trying to get, let us say, an out-of-turn permit from a government department. You are confronted with this brutally honest officer who can neither be forced nor be lured with a bribe. If you are not vicious, you may accept your situation. But if you are, and tech savvy too, there's help at hand. Get hold of a professional hacker, pay him to plant illegal content in the officer's computer, and then tip off his boss.

Chances are that the officer would either be moved or lose his job.

The trouble is, this movie-like scenario has become reality. A recent investigation highlights how malware can plant illegal content, like child porn, on innocent people's computers without their knowledge, And it is not just citizens who could find themselves victims in trouble with law enforcement. Experts say that employees of the government departments may be even more vulnerable to this kind of attack by hackers.

"Government officials, due to the sensitivity of their position, tend to be a pretty desirable target for hackers anyway. So as an expert I would be a little bit more concerned if I were working in the government than may be an average citizen or even a high profile corporate chief," says Jeff Michael Fischbach, a Los Angeles-based certified forensic technologist.

He says, with the sophistication and complexity of hacking crimes, there are now a plethora of techniques and viruses that can plant illegal content into the computers of innocent people without leaving a trail.

Fischbach added that government officers particularly face much greater risks because, in the U.S. at least, most of their emails addresses and other electronic contact details are listed and are thus very easy to find.

The threat isn't as far-fetched as some might suppose. Take what happened to Michael Fiola, an ex-investigator at the Massachusetts Workers' Compensation Advisory in Massachusetts. A few weeks ago, an Associated Press (AP) investigation revealed that in 2007 Fiola was charged and eventually fired by the Massachusetts attorney general's office for storing child porn in his state-issued laptop.

Fiola was innocent in so far as he didn't put the porn there. But it took him 11 months of court battle and a quarter million dollars of legal fees to prove that he not commit this crime.

Moreover, his acquittal came quite by chance. A defense finding stumbled upon a virus in his laptop that was programmed to implement the physically impossible task of visiting 40 child porn sites per minute, reported Associated Press.

Beyond just a curious case of creative cyber-crime, security experts view this as yet another example of how sophisticated cyber-crime is becoming.

"Hacking is getting increasingly sophisticated. There are now a growing number of viruses that not just simply change files, but, with the help of botnets, are usually able to install multiple functionalities with objectives like searching hard drives, sending out emails, attacking other users, and even dumping illegal content on hard drives for a framing-up," says Jonathan Logan, a UK-based expert, with Roque Holding, a boutique security consultancy outfit.

"Threats from these hacking methods increase manifold for government departments and officials because besides economic profits, there are many other motivations; an attack can disrupt the operations of the whole department" added Logan. "Imagine how easy it would be to implicate or replace for instance a building inspector, who doesn't take bribes."

Experts say hacking has not only become sophisticated, it has also become cheap -- very cheap in fact.

"Some of the things you can ask for on the black-market is a botnet operator who will attempt to access to a specific computer, based on details like an email address, or all users that have a particular email address in their address books," says Logan.

"All this can come for a mere US $50 per thousand hacked computers," added Logan, "and most importantly, in very large and sophisticated spying cases, it is tremendously hard to trace back the source of the attack."

Consequently hacking attempts are getting increasingly frequent and regular. Estimates suggest that at any point in time there are over 100 million hacked websites. And it is not uncommon today for a medium sized hosting platform to experience several hundred hacking attempts per day.

"For servers that host sensitive websites like government departments, stock market brokers, banks, etc, the frequency of attempts could be much higher," says Logan.

According to security software maker F-Secure Corp, millions of PCs worldwide get infected every day with viruses that could give hackers full control.

Unnerving numbers indeed, but a bigger concern is, as says Logan, "there's very little a government department can do to prevent such attacks."

Typically complex network like those found in government departments, financial institutions, etc, need very high level of security to be sufficiently tamper-proof. "But the problem is, in doing so, machines become very difficult to be used by an ordinary user," says Logan.

"The other problem is that most average individual users in government departments do not really understand their own computer security," says Fischbach "They are usually relying on somebody else to interpret security for them. And when another person manages somebody else's computer security, it is rarely a number-one priority."

So, can a government department really do something to stop hacking attacks or frame-up viruses? Uninamously, experts say no. But it is possible to make it very hard for a criminal to hack into a sensitive computer.

For that they suggest a few safeguards, the most effective of which is to ensure that the user's online identity remains hidden.

"The first step is maintenance of a strict communication hygiene, which means that the user should make sure that an official computer is not used for any sort of private communication in the workplace," says Logan. "Do not surf sites that are not directly work related. Do not go to the bank. Do not send emails to your family or friends from the office computer. These reduce the vector of attacks to a large extent."

Other useful safeguards include exposing only those government computers that need Internet access. "Not all government computers require Internet access," says Logan.

Making sure that the only way of communication within the department is through servers of the department, is another safeguard; and important too is ensuring anonymity for network connections through data encryption. These, according to Logan, make hacking extremely costly, which is a natural deterrent.

"But the most important thing to remember is that humans are hackers' biggest vulnerability," says Fischbach. "One human click on the wrong link or one wrong plugging-in can create havoc for the whole network."

Photo by Asbjørn Sørensen Poulsen. CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Internet Blocking: A Tussle between Fighting Crime and Fundamental Freedom

2009-11-20T15:41:26Z

With networks swamped by SPAM, pornography, hate speeches, illegal gambling and even terror literature, Internet blocking may have emerged as the apt illegal content handling solution for the cyber police. Rattled by the explosion of such content, countries around the world are stepping up Internet blocking. However, research has found that this increasing clampdown on the World Wide Web is hardly having any effect.

On the contrary, experts say that attempts to block offensive content have actually started backfiring by providing an easy reference list for offenders desperate to gain access to illegal content.

In a report (released late October) entitled "Internet Blocking :Balancing Cybercrime Responses in Democratic Societies," funded by George Soros-founded Open Society Institute, four European cyber experts noted that citing public interest, quite a few democratic states globally have started promoting the use of Internet blocking technologies in relation to various types of content.

"But while blocking has helped to some extent," said Marco Gercke, one of the authors, and a director at the Institute for Cybercrime Law, an independent research institute on computer and Internet crime in Germany. "All blocking methods largely in use today can be easily circumvented. So from a technical point of view Internet blocking does not prevent intentional access."

"We analyzed Internet blocking both from the legal point of view as well as from the technical side," Gercke added. "And we found that it can only help accidental access to certain content but it will never stop desperate people accessing such content"

Indeed in the zest to make cyberspace cleaner and as crime-free as possible, as governments around the world -- democratic or otherwise -- have increased censorship of the Internet, the right to unimpeded Internet access without interference is emerging as one of thorniest issues in the virtual world.

The primary means of Internet censoring or blocking is that content is stopped from reaching a personal computer or computer display by a software or hardware product which reviews all Internet communications and determines whether to prevent the receipt and/or display of specifically targeted content.

However, the four expert -- as well as authors of the report -- that got together early this year in a new effort to study the motivations for implementing Internet blocking (vis-à-vis the legal issues around such control), found that the term "Internet Blocking" itself has become somewhat a misnomer.

While the term suggests that Internet could be blocked by a simple action of switching on or switching off the network to illegal or undesirable content, in reality implementing effective censoring is far more complex.

"We found even as blocking can be easily implemented superficially, the fact that the Internet was designed to ensure data can flow around any barriers, makes it easy to bypass blocking with little effort," says Cormac Callanan, one of researchers who is also the director of Aconite Internet Solutions, a cybercrime and Internet security advisor.

According to the researchers, there are basically two reasons that make Internet blocking ineffective: one, when content is blocked, it is not actually removed from the source, so strictly speaking the content is always available behind a barrier, which is not very hard to surmount.

Secondly, there is no one central authority to decide what should be blocked. "Usually it is either the government or the government-controlled regulatory authority or often the service providers that take the blocking decision," says Gercke. "Consequently blocking becomes not only ineffective but also a sensitive rights issue."

"Most countries do not apply democratic principles and there are no independent authorities to vet whether that blocking list was made through a democratic process of evaluation," he adds.

Therefore, in order to make Internet blocking effective, it is imperative to exercise proportionality, suggest the researchers. According to them, countries should craft Internet blocking strategies in a manner that will not only address the negative effects of illegal content and criminal activities. But such a measure must also ensure that other rights and freedoms are not violated.

Photo by Akbar Simonse. CC Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Not All Americans View Broadband As Necessity, But Finland's Another Story

2009-10-26T16:08:24Z

Internet access is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity. In fact more of a necessity than automobile fuel some would believe. But it appears that despite the year long brouhaha over the need for ubiquitous broadband access in USA, over a third of its population still does not believe so.

In the status report on the current state of broadband in the U.S. that the bewildered FCC Broadband Task Force delivered to the Commission this week, it found that 33 percent Americans could have subscribed to the broadband, but turned it down.

Why you may ask and what may shock you as well is that the FCC does not have an answer. While it cites many possible reasons, it finally admits that the reasons "are not well understood."

Fortunately FCC is not sitting idle. For one, the commission is sending teams to 22 countries that have broadband plans to seek the best practices that could suit the United States. More importantly, it is also conducting a survey to study the psyche of non adopters as well as to influence them on the utility of broadband.

However would such efforts help? Take the instance of South Korea. This is the nation that is now one of the top countries in the world in terms of broadband speed and penetration. It faced a similar problem of non-adoption when it started wiring the country with fat data pipes in 1999. One of the first measures it adopted to convince the older and the poorer sections of the society was door-to-door campaigning. The outcome has been encouraging no doubt. Yet South Korea, which suffered far less of the technical problems faced by a country like the U.S. -- its size, sparsity of population, etc. --has reached about 87 percent penetration.

Comparatively, the US with 77 percent overall penetration may not be that bad; depending on whether you prefer to look at the glass being half empty or half full.

Still experts say that perhaps taking a leaf out of Finland's latest policy may be more helpful. In what no other nation has done before, Finland last week took a policy decision to make broadband Internet access a guaranteed legal right for its citizens.

According to a decree issued by the Finish Ministry of Transport and Communications, starting with 1 July 2010, a 1 Mbit Internet connection will be defined as a requirement of the Universal Service.

The decree states that by the end of 2009, the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority will impose this universal service obligation on select telecom operators, that will have to provide access for all residential or business users, at a reasonable price.

Significantly the providers will be free to choose the technology themselves as long as average speed of downstream traffic remain at least 75 percent of the required speed in a 24 hour period. In a four hour measuring period that average speed must be at least 59 percent of the required speed.

Clearly the Finnish government is putting very high-speed Internet access at the forefront of its development strategy. According to Suvi Lindén, Finland's Minister of Communications, the country realized well in time that high speed access to everybody will improve people's quality of life, especially in the less populated areas, will boost business, enable electronic communications, and encourage online banking; all that a country needs to forge ahead in the cyber age.

This is amazing given that already the country is rated one of the highest in almost all global broadband rankings. Not only does Finland have the eighth highest number of subscribers per 100 inhabitants, according to a recent OECD survey, it has some of the most affordable services available as well, ranking in the top five in entry-level, medium-speed and high-speed connections.

Since the Finnish announcement, reportedly UK too, which like the US has just embarked upon a national broadband strategy called Digital Britain, is mulling on a similar legislation. And perhaps it is high time for U.S. too to follow the Finnish footsteps.

Although it would still not be easy to convince those 33 percent Americans that broadband is as relevant in life as say electricity. Yet making broadband a legal right could at least make them realize what they are missing, hope experts.

Meanwhile here are some interesting facts from the FCC status report;

1] Economics of providing broadband to the rural U.S. are challenging because of low linear density.

2] Among non-adopters, lack of relevance cited as main reason for not having broadband at home [50%]. But others are;

# Usability: too difficult, waste of time, too old, physically unable. [13%]
# Price: price must fall, too expensive, no computer.[19%]
# Availability: broadband not available. [17%]

3] Current barriers to adoption, according to FCC are;

# "Inclined, but skill challenged"-or- "Inclined, but device challenged."
# "Resource-constrained" -or- "Access-constrained"
# "Digitally isolated"
# "Content with life offline"

Photo of an Internet Cafe in Helsinki, Finland by Amy Jiang. CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Could US Financial Worries Be Good News for Broadband Penetration?

2009-10-19T16:44:51Z

Much has been said about how much America is lagging behind in broadband penetration and how imperative the broadband stimulus is for the country. But did you know that even before a cent of the $7.2 billion has been spent, broadband adoption is already picking up - by over 14%?

What's more, while experts say that since America was lagging behind, and coupled with the demand of new applications -- like social networking, YouTube, etc. -- broadband penetration in America had to catch up sooner or later. But it appears that the recession has emerged as a big driver for that growth.

"In terms of quarterly broadband numbers, America seems to have forged ahead in the last two quarters. So in the worst of recession, broadband addition was nevertheless dong very well in America," says Phillippa Biggs, the Geneva-based analyst and economist at ITU, who has a keen eye for picking out interesting trends out of mundane numbers.

"People say it could be the media coverage or the stimulus. But it could also be that because of the recession, since many people had less money to go out and spend, many subscribed to broadband so that they could be entertained staying at home."

According to The Broadband Forum that released the global broadband subscription tally last month (based on research by Point-Topic, the London-based broadband bean-counter), the number of North American broadband lines reached almost 96 million (by adding 2.34 million subscribers) in the quarter ending June this year. This represents 14.86 percent growth over the previous quarter ending June 2009.

However while that number looks impressive, the growth in IPTV -- Internet Protocol TV -- has been massive. The report said that with over five million IPTV subscribers, which represent now nearly 20 percent of IPTV penetration worldwide, Americas IPTV adoption grew by 86% over the last 12 months.

This growth is not sudden. Although broadband subscriber additions looked shaky for the world at the start of 2009, "both the US and Canada managed to stand out posting strong increases in real numbers not seen since early 2007," said Point Topic. During that period North America added almost 3.5 million subscribers to touch 93.5 million broadband subscribers.

"Difficult economic situation forced by hard economic times has caused a greater appreciation of what broadband could provide in terms of returns on investments at the household level," said David St James, the spokesperson of FTTH Council North America, the Houston-based non-profit association that works on building industry consensus on key issues surrounding fiber to the home broadband connections.

The Council too in its latest study found continued robust growth in the number of homes passed by FTTH networks, which rose to 17.2 million from 13.8 million a year ago. Five years after their deployment began in earnest, fiber to the home networks are now available to 15 percent of homes in North America, it noted.

But according to David, while the recession is indeed one of the primary drivers of the increasing broadband penetration in US, just asit has been in the rest of the world, its adoption by Americans was not entirely voluntary.

"The recession had forced many people to reassess what they were doing to make money," says David. "Whether they lost their jobs or they realized that their jobs did not have a good enough future so they needed to earn more, or simply because they wanted to do moonlighting, many had to fall back on broadband to beat the recession."

That should be good news for the Obama administration which is about to start doling out the billions through the $7.2 billion broadband stimulus plans.

But recession or not, some think that America would have had to catch up anyway.

"Penetration wise the US is unarguably rather behind many developed as well as developing nations. So they have some catching up to do anyway," says Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst, Point Topic.

"I think the whole movement towards using IT for productivity is changing the channels; applications are maturing to a point where more people in the US thought that they had to have it. The productivity angle, that people are trying to do other things or more things besides their jobs, or employers encouraging people to work from home, is the other angle that may have aided increasing broadband adoption, but that is not the primary reason I think," Johnson said.

Nevertheless, despite this encouraging trend, the fact is that the broadband stimulus still has a lot of work to do. According to Communications Workers Association of America, the United States faces a significant digital divide. Families in rural areas for example are much less likely to subscribe to broadband. According to its survey, while 67 percent of urban and suburban households subscribe to broadband, only 46 percent of rural households do. Similarly, whereas 88 percent of Americans who earn over $100,000 a year have broadband, only 35 percent of households that earn less than $20,000 subscribe. These broadband gaps must be closed to ensure unlimited access information available on the Internet, says the CWA.

Photo by Wyatt Preul. CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Financial Crisis: A Blessing in Disguise for ICT?

2009-10-09T12:44:52Z

Has the financial crisis been a boon or a bane for the ICT sector? Ask this question and most would wonder if the crisis benefited ICT in any way at all.

Read between the lines however of the voluminous yet enlightening sequel report of the impact of the financial crisis on the global ICT sector that the UN agency, International Telecom Union (ITU), released a few days back, and you will find that the crisis had one upside at least. And that is that governments in many countries have stepped up investments to fund ICT networks, somthing that certainly promises longer term benefits to the sector.

Called Confronting the Crisis, ICT Stimulus Plans for Economic Growth, this report follows a February report, which noted that despite the crisis, ICT had contributed consistently as a high-growth sector and was poised to power economic recovery across all sectors. That report also noted that to ensure long term competitiveness, the ICT industry had to continue investing in infrastructure and roll-outs of cost-effective services, such as next-generation networks.

Yet in its latest study, the ITU found that private investments in ICT infrastructure have certainly taken beating since then. While certain sections of the ICT, like mobile telephony and satellite, continued to flourish, the financial crisis and credit crunch had nevertheless cut directly across many operators' investment plans particularly in upgrade plans of the existing networks and the rolling out various Next-Generation Networks (NGNs).

Forced by the massive investments required against the background of uncertain cash flows and revenues, the operators began calling for governments to get more involved in the financing and roll-outs. And thankfully, many governments responded by accepting that ICT had become more of a public policy problem, rather than earlier views that it should be left solely the responsibility of the private sector.

"The financial crisis has pushed governments in some countries, at least, to come back and start financing the telecom sector," said Phillippa Biggs, the author of the report and an ITU economist. "But in any case it certainly led to more widespread recognition that governments and corporations have to work together to ensure the long term interest of the ICT industry."

According to the report, lack of readily available financing, higher financing costs and lower risk thresholds for many operators are making corporate financing increasingly difficult. In the face of these challenges, governments in some countries are now providing advantageous financing terms to fund the roll-out of fiber and NGN deployments. They are also experimenting with innovative new financing models to fund network deployments in new technologies.

For many governments, this involvement is not a stand-alone decision or a result of the debate whether the government should invest in ICT or not, adds Biggs. "These decisions were actually taken in context of what the private sector was doing already, as well as because rolling out next generation networks (primarily broadband) was of strategic importance to the competitive environment."

"In some countries, for instance, the incumbent had already been working on NGNs for several years prior to the crisis. Then came the crisis that cut across the investments plans by making it harder for corporate funding, which is when the government woke up and realized that there is an issue and additional support funding is needed and they come in and announce plans," says Biggs.

For instance in Australia the incumbent telecom company Telstra launched an AU$10 billion IP core network roll-out as far back as in 2005. But when that roll-out started faltering due to the crisis, the Australian government stepped in the end of 2008 to announce US$3 billion FTTH plan to take broadband to 90 percent of the Australians.

Similarly Irish telecom company Eircom's Eur60 million migration to NGN in 2006 started well before the crisis. Subsequent ICT sector uncertainties however forced the Irish government to move in this year to announce its Eur223 million universal broadband coverage plan.

Still, notes ITU, despite the increasing participation of the government, there is not enough public sector money to solve the global crisis. This is why recovery strategies should be crafted in a manner that encourages private business and financing as well. "In fact government stimulus is almost always associated with how much money the government doles out," says Biggs. "Such emphasis on financing in stimulus packages however may overlook more simple and immediate measures that governments can take to promote private sector investments."

ITU therefore suggests that stimulus packages should also contain regulatory changes or a change of the whole policy environment so the private investments are not crowded out.

"Reforming tax structures, creating greater regulatory, clarity and resolving spectrum issues are some factors that can help promote an enabling framework and generate growth within the ICT sector and beyond," said the report.

US Border Search of Electronic Devices Presents New Security Concerns

2009-09-10T16:05:44Z

You may thank the gods for all the technology innovations that have made carrying vast amounts of information in electronic form easy and economical. But the Department of Homeland Security doesn't think so. For DHS really, the dramatic increase in use of compact, large capacity, and inexpensive electronic devices are turning out to be a huge security threat and quite a headache. So much so that about two weeks back, DHS granted itself the broad authority to search electronic devices possessed by travelers, including US citizens, at US borders.

This means that almost any electronic device - such as laptop computers, thumb drives, CDs,DVDs, cell phones, SIM cards, digital cameras, iPods or any other devices capable of storing electronic information - will be subject to searches by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), regardless of the fact that you may look like a criminal or terrorist, or not.

Moreover, DHS has also retained the power to make copies of such devices if it thinks that is required, and even seize them depending on the threat perception of the CBP or ICE police.

DHS says that searching these devices is actually an extension of searching a backpack or a briefcase; after all if briefcases can be searched why can't be electronic devices? But for cyber security experts, it is not that simple.

While some consider this move to be a blatant breach of privacy, according to a few security experts, it is actually much worse; it is, they say, another form of that type of e-policing, which is opening up new avenues for cyber criminals to access private data.

"The DHS policy fails to comply with the intent of the federal Privacy Act and leaves US citizens returning to the United States subject to surveillance by government and an enhanced risk of identity theft," says EPIC, a Washington, DC-based public interest research center that focuses public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and tries to protect privacy, in its reaction.to the DHS announcement.

According to Lillie Coney, EPIC's Associate Director; the first question that comes up is "whether the information gathered from such electronic surveillance are interpreted properly and are used only for the purpose they are obtained."

Lillie and her ilk fear that increasing e-policing by governments around the world is opening up newer avenues to cybercriminals who have found an easy way to hack into computer networks riding on back of e-policing.

Their argument goes like this; "The whole problem of lawful interception is that such interception installs equipments and these quipments could come with backdoors that cybercriminals use as interfaces to break into private computer systems," says Jonathan Logan, a security expert from Europe who specializes in e-policing.

"Anytime you create vulnerability in the system so that law enforcement has access to computer systems, then you are creating an access to information and that access can be exploited. And it is reasonable to expect that criminals would also know how to exploit them," adds Lillie Coney to Jonathan's arguments.

DHS however, says that conducting search operations on electronic devices is imperative to determine whether a violation of U.S. law has occurred.

Because of the availability of electronic information storage and the capacity for comfortable portability, the amount of personal and business information that can be hand-carried by a single individual has increased exponentially, says the department. And it is this capacity for comfortable portability that criminals are exploiting to bring merchandise contrary to law into the United States.

That may be true; still security experts are not convinced. According Paul Rosenberg, Cryptohippie Inc, a security technology company, even as e-policing around the world is increasing by leaps and bounds, it may be emerging more of a bane that a boon.

Photo by Redjar via Flickr. CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Yahoo! Centmail: A Charitable Way to Beat Spam, But Will It Work?

2009-08-27T17:01:39Z

Simple were the days when one could just send an email without worrying about whether that mail is ending up in the recipient's mail box or somewhere else. But with the explosion of the use of electronic mail came myriad problems: spams, malicious software, botnets, rampant cybercrime and loads of technologies to check spams most of which not only fail to cut spams but also end up sending genuine emails to spam bins.

In yet another ambitious effort to cut spam -- which at the end of the day may end up being as ineffective as all others -- researchers at Yahoo are trying to resurrect the idea of email "postage stamps" which could put a stamp of authenticity to the senders of genuine emails.

Called Centmail, the modus operandi of this pay-per-email plan is simple: senders attach a cent worth of stamp on each email they send so that the receiver (or the receiving server) knows that the email comes from a genuine sender when it sees the stamp. And why would pasting a stamp on the email make it genuine? Because even a cent makes spamming too expensive a proposition for spammers who need to send millions of emails to achieve their objectives.

"The fairly immediate benefit of Centmail will come from getting your message through other spam filter. The first time you sent somebody a message, it often that ends up in the spam filter's bin and trashed," say the researchers of Yahoo, who are working hard to tout this concept.

In other words, Centmail aims to work like an anti spam filter where, unless the spam filter is instructed to trash Centmails too, it will assure delivery of emails to recipients' mail boxes.

The other long term goal of this plan would be, say the researchers, to reduce the amount of spam in the whole electronic mail world.

Centmail is not a new idea though. There have been a few similar efforts in the past like Goodmail, Microsoft's Penny Black project, and an IBM project called Charity Seals to name the most prominent ones.

But all wilted because most users couldn't accept the idea of paying for emails while many thought paying for emails is similar to putting a barrier in the way of sending emails.

Centmail is different, say the Yahoo researchers, because the plan has the concept of charity attached to it. "CentMail, begins as a charity fund-raising tool: Users donate $0.01 to a charity of their choice for each email they send. The user benefits by helping a cause, promoting it to friends, and potentially attracting matching donations, often at no additional cost beyond what they planned to donate anyway. Charitable organizations benefit and so may appeal to their members to join," says its white paper.

The researchers also add that economic approach-based filtering -- that Centmail is -- would be more effective than the others like domain and content based filtering because those do not put the burden of high costs on spammers and cyber criminals.

However, some disagree. According to a security expert, to stop any type of denial of service (DoS) attacks, spams, malware, etc. at or even close to their source of origin requires unforgeable network identity. This means that a filtering system must have the capability to identify a computer from where the spams are originating.

"The simple and the horrific problem of the whole of Internet is that it is largely an anarchic space, and does not know how to identify unforgeable network identity," said the expert.

He added: "The problem we have today is not some mail servers sitting on the Internet firing out lots of mails to everyone. That happens and but we are pretty good at blacklisting 80 percent of such servers."

"But the dangerous problem of spam and malware these days is that they come out of botnets -- computers hacked and taken control of by hackers without the knowledge of the actual owners). And the problem with botnets is that they leave no trace of who is actually controlling them."

He fears that even if Centmail does succeed in cutting spam initially, "it would be only for a few weeks maybe for a few months after which spammers would be able to update their systems to be able to make use Centmail to their advantage as well."

Is China losing Grip On Information Censorship?

2009-08-14T17:03:19Z

Now that China's controversial Green Dam has been damned - at least for now, following a furious public backlash, could it be a harbinger of changing times in China? Maybe! For, although the Chinese Government has said it has delayed the implementation of the compulsory implantation of this Government-controlled web-content filtering software in all computers to be sold in China - and have not quite scraped the mandate yet, it is still another instance of the fact that China is increasingly losing control over the spread of information.

Bowing to China's 300 million booming netizens who, along with foreign PC makers like as Dell, Sony and HP- refused to accept this measure lying down, China just pushed back Green Dam's deadline indefinitely. This is not the first instance of China's weakening grip though. Just about a month back China's Communist Party failed to handle the clampdown on the spread on information of the rioting in Xinjiang over the Internet. And ineffective too was the Government's clamp down on the social networking sites ahead of the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen in June this year. Since 2004, the Government has also given in to many smaller citizen-initiated movements conducted over the Internet.

Experts say that even as popularity of the net in China makes China's Communist Party wary, it has also realized that censorship is proving increasingly counter-productive. Not only has dealing with affluent and information-based society become complex for the Party, the power of ICT may have become stronger than the world's largest authoritarian regime.

Photo: Green Dam in action: Flickr UK images blocked even if you are logged in... (Tomek Augustyn/ CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic)

First Phase of Broadband Stimulus Money Might Miss the Mark

2009-08-06T17:57:42Z

As the August 14 deadline approaches for applications for the first of three phases of federal broadband stimulus funding, many telecom companies apparently are going for their share of money. But experts say that small businesses, organizations and communities should also aim for a share of that pie.

In fact, some broadband advocates are saying that the best way to make use of the grant money would be to make it available to end-users who actually the face the problems of non-availability or inadequate availability of broadband.

That's what Craig Settles, an municipal broadband strategy consultant says. "I am very much in favor of putting money in the hands of local communities because I feel they [the actual users] would have the best ideas of what their needs are and to decide how to roll broadband out."

Craig is not the only one. Chris Derrington, the founder and CEO of Rural America Onshore Sourcing, the Wisconsin-based IT company that is using lower-cost rural-based professionals to provide outsourcing services to US-based companies. This way, they don't have to send projects offshore or use expensive urban vendors. He also feels that if the grant is grabbed up mostly by the larger, privately-owned telecom companies, most rural areas would be short-changed.

"I think the best way to spend that $7.2 billion would be to hand it over to smaller telecom companies or even rural co-operatives that could be formed specifically for rolling out the broadband," says Chris. Chris should know because his business depends solely on the availability of broadband in the rural areas. And he says that he has a database of 300 people who live in 12 different cities and to whom he could offer work if only they had high-speed broadband access.

Meanwhile, the tight window for submitting grant proposals that has left many scrambling to file out the paperwork is already making it very difficult for such smaller entities to meet the deadline. "The application process is not easy; it requires a lot of paperwork, mapping, etc and I think only those applicants who have been preparing for this since February would be able to file," says Craig.

This means that there will not be many, because even though the details of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 were known in February, the official notice of funding came only on July 1.

"Given that the 130 pages of rules that had to be understood and adhered to for the application, which according to Government's own estimate requires 120 hours, the six-week window is too short for most applicants," says Craig.