International

Amsterdam gets it on community fiber

EuroTelcoBlog has a story on Amsterdam's community fiber initiative.

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Taiwan plans whole country wireless broadband

Taiwan joins the growing list of countries that have nationwide strategies for providing some kind of broadband everywhere. The government has inked a $209 million dollar agreement with Intel to build an island-wide WiMax network.

Taiwan is much smaller than many U.S. states, but nonetheless, can you point to a single U.S. state that has put any significant funds behind a statewide broadband initiative?

Neither can I.

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American companies supress freedom

There is something both wierdly ironic and deeply depressing when American companies happily work with repressive regimes like China and now Myanmar, selling them Internet hardware and software for the express purpose of suppressing free speech (hat tip to Instapundit)

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15 megabit mobile VoIP in Japan

Japan has announced a plan to roll out mobile Voice over IP services nationwide in less than two years, leaving the U.S. in dust. The new system will handle data speeds of 15 megabits/second, or 15-25 times faster than typical wired DSL and cable servie in the United States and nearly a thousand times faster than typical 3G cellphone data services.

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The $100 dollar computer

MIT's $100 dollar computer is beginning to take shape. The idea is to create a computer that is affordable for virtually everyone in the world, and does not have the power-hogging and environmental requirements that work fine in air conditioned homes and businesses but that are entirely unsuitable for use in rural villages without reliable electric power.

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Is Yahoo! Communist?

In a disturbing development, Yahoo! provided information to the communist Chinese government that was used to convict and imprison a journalist.

The Chinese government was angry because the journalist had merely expressed views about restrictions on the press in China that the government disliked.

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New Zealand phones go all IP

New Zealand Telecom has announced it will switch every phone in the country to the Internet-based VoIP system, starting in 2007. The company estimates it will take approximately five years to get every phone changed.

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U.S. Communities: Almost as good as Ethiopia

This article on Ethiopia's countrywide broadband project, which is four years old and beginning to deliver results, puts U.S. states to shame. Impoverished Ethiopia gets what many rural states and communities in the U.S. are still trying to understand. Here is the money quote from the Ethiopian prime minister:

Because we are poor, we can’t afford not to use ICT.

Exactly. Distressed rural and urban communities in the United States can't afford not to invest in IT. What is important about the Ethiopan effort is not what they did (the technology choices they made are tied to other infrastructure issues), but the fact that they recognized a problem, created a plan, funded a plan, and followed through.

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Singapore mainstreams VoIP

While our FCC dithers about the best way to preserve legacy telephone and cable services, Singapore has pushed VoIP into the mainstream by creating a system for managing telephone numbers assigned to VoIP service providers. Singapore is not requiring VoIP providers to give subscribers access to emergency systems (911 services), but is offering incentives to those companies that do make the effort. This is much more sensible than the confusing and potentially punitive policy the FCC is trying to enforce.

And the FCC is not really the main problem. Our Congress just passed a huge roads appropriation bill, which is terrific. We're trying to fix our twentieth century highway system, while other countries are building twenty-first century highway systems.

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U.K. arrest for wireless theft

Here is the second case of a person being arrested and charged for using someone else's wireless access. The perpetrator was caught deliberating cruising a residential neighborhood in the U.K. looking for open wireless access points (called wardriving).

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Cisco aids Chinese "Public Security"

Cisco is beginning to draw attention on the 'net for its practice of selling network equipment to the Chinese Bureau of Public Security. This is the organization that beats up peaceful protesters, routinely engages in brutal physical torture, and is turning China's node of the Internet into a highly controlled state network, where typing a word like "freedom" on your personal Web site might get you a visit from the Bureau of Public Security.

Cisco is claiming they have not broken any laws, and that if they don't sell the equipment, someone else will.

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Fiber to the home in Asia

A private report by Informa Telecoms & Media shows that Asian countries are deploying fiber to the home faster than ever. In Japan, there are now about 2.5 million homes and businesses with fiber connections, and 10 million are expected by 2010. FTTH connections in the U.S total probably well under half a million, and that may be wildly optimistic.

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New Zealand builds MSAPs

The city of Wellington, New Zealand has created an MSAP service they call CityLink. It is exactly the MSAP concept, and like Blacksburg, which began offering MSAP service in 1999, ISPs have flocked to it because it lowers costs and enables them to provide better services.

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British Columbia builds MSAPs

BC.NET, a project of the British Columbia provincial government, is deploying what they call Transit Exchange Hubs in communities throughout the province.

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Spain says yes to fiber

The province of Catalonia, in Spain, along with a consortium of 782 towns and cities located in the province, have agreed to invest $542 million in a province-wide, redundant fiber network that will connect all the partner towns and cities.

Meanwhile, in the United States, many of our elected leaders are trying to pass laws making this kind of investment illegal.

Motto for the week: Our state--not really as good as Catalonia, but we have great dial-up.

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Are phone companies wrecking America?

Are the phone companies wrecking the U.S. economy by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy legislation that prevents America's businesses from competing in the global marketplace?

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South Korea builds a Digital Media City

I write a lot about what is happening in other countries, but some of my citations are just statistics--useful to a point, but sometimes you want more detail. Here is some great information about a single project in South Korea that probably dwarfs many other technology park efforts in the United States, and an indicator of how serious some other countries are about passing the U.S. in technology.

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America still has an edge in the Global Economy

Although I think U.S. communities have to work much harder on their economic development because of overseas competition that simply did not exist even fifteen years ago, we still have a valuable edge. This blog reprints an op-ed piece on some of the problems businesspeople in India face. Red tape, bureaucratic foot-dragging, costly permits, intrusive rent control, and antiquated labor laws make it very difficult to start a business in India.

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Afgahnistan beats the US in TV

Afghanistan has converted successfuly to a new countrywide all digital television system, while the FCC dithers in the U.S. with a myriad of mostly irrelevant and/or conflicting regulations on the U.S. television industry.

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New Zealand invests in broadband

New Zealand, which is a country smaller than most U.S. states, is investing heavily in broadband, with a budget in the tens of millions of dollars. While too many state legislators (14 states at last count) are trying to limit broadband, we've got countries that are going in the opposite direction.

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