The government is finalising an intensive e-education programme which would ensure that information communication technology (ICT) is integrated in the teaching and learning processes. This was revealed by the minister for Education and Vocational Training, Dr Shukuru Kawambwa, in Dar es Salaam over the weekend. He said the programme dubbed “Tanzania Beyond Tomorrow” was important due to the fact that the world had become a village and therefore the ICT element was expected to enable Tanzanian children to compete globally. This, according to the minister, was part of the government’s plans to streamline the education sector between 2010 and 2015. “The second phase of Sedep (2010-2015) would see the completion of school infrastructure, providing teaching and learning materials, building science laboratories and libraries, as well as building capacities of the teaching teams,” he said.

 

(Source: The Citizen)

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The Citizen

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of targets intended to reduce global poverty and improve living standards by 2015. Specific goals target education, fighting disease and promoting gender equality. Access to communications technology is a part of one of the targets. With five years to go until the deadline to achieve the goals, progress remains uneven. Some countries have achieved many of the goals, while others - mostly in the developing world - may not realise any. Many development experts question how the goals will be achieved and how they will be paid for. Some even question whether the approach is necessary or helpful.

But Dr Toure said that he believed technologies such as broadband could be used to "accelerate" progress on the goals and help countries achieve them. "Access to broadband in an affordable manner is our greatest challenge," Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), told BBC News.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

With over 3.4 million users of the internet in Kenya, research indicates that the importance of the internet outstrips those of several key developed countries. Even so, the latent demand for local content is underlined by the fact that surveys show that lack of local content is the main reason many Kenyans shy away from accessing the internet. On the launch of the grant facility, the CEO, Kenya ICT Board Paul Kukubo, commented, “We are pleased that we are launching this grant at a time that the ICT industry is growing and access to the internet all over the country has vastly improved.

The future for content industry is bright. Talent, creativity and skills are key drivers of competitiveness in the content sector and we expect that this grant will enable Kenyans everywhere to develop world class locally relevant content and get this industry to rapidly match the lucrative opportunities for talented content developers in developed nations.”

 

(Source: Afrinnovator)

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Afrinnovator

Many of us take the Internet for granted, but what about locations that are too remote or economically impoverished to enjoy the hi-tech benefits of the developed world? The Shadow Chancellor in the UK, George Osborne, illustrated in a recent speech that people in the developing world - even in the poorest of circumstances - do care about having access to technology.

In a visit to a remote village in Rwanda in 2007 he and 40 other Conservative Party volunteers were working on transforming a once derelict orphanage into a school. When it was announced that they were going to fix up the buildings and improve the water supply there were cheers from the villagers, but the loudest shouts were received when it was announced that the school was to be equipped with a computer. Osborne was at first surprised with the reaction - access to a computer is not a fundamental of life. But even villagers in the remotest part of Rwanda knew about computers and the Internet and didn't want their children to be excluded - as they had been - from something that could help lift them out of poverty.

 

(Source: All Africa)

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All Africa

At the eighth Ministerial eHealth Conference in Barcelona today, EU ministers have outlined a joint vision and policy priorities on how to make eHealth more accessible, interactive and customised to patients. The Declaration outlines a vision and identifies key objectives to be achieved in the next ten years.

The Declaration calls for policy coordination amongst the various areas where eHealth can have an impact on citizens' health in order to enhance benefits for patients, healthcare systems and society. It recognises the need for stronger synergies with policy areas like competitiveness, research and regional development both at European and national levels.

 

(Source: Europe's Information Society)

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Europe's Information Society

From 15 to 18 March 2010 the Ministry of Health of Spain and the Regional Government of Catalonia in cooperation with the European Commission are organizing a ministerial Conference in Barcelona. It will co-locate with the World of Health IT conference. High-level eHealth conferences organised by the presiding countries since 2003 represent important annual milestones in this specific field. Spain therefore will carry on the tradition and host this Conference in Barcelona as a part of its presidency in the first half of 2010.

A platform will be provided to encourage the development of on-line health services in Europe. The politicians, health administrators, researchers and suppliers, along with health professionals, are meeting to share their experiences and to discover what is new in this fast-evolving area.

 

(Source: Europe's Information Society)

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European Comission

The government develops a new strategy to help the information technology industry cut down on waste While no one will ever confuse the polluting effects of the information and communications technology sector with, say, the oil industry, all is not green in the realm of ICT. The world throws away of hundreds of millions of mobile phones, computers, printers, batteries and gadgets annually, while energy and raw materials consumed by the industry account for more than 2% of global greenhouse gases emissions.

It is with this in mind that the Egyptian government has begun work on a green information and communication technology (ICT) strategy aimed at reducing the sector’s energy use and finding a place for the tons of hardware thrown away every year.

 

(Source: Business Today)

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Business Today

The United Nations (UN) agency responsible for IT and telecommunications has delivered 25 satellite phones to Chile to help restore communication links vital to bringing aid to areas devastated by the massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake on Saturday. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said it airlifted the satellite phones out of Geneva on Monday and expected them to be in use on Tuesday. The UN agency thanked Iridium Communications, which operates a global satellite network for mobile telecommunications, for its support of the effort. International aid groups and UN agencies in Haiti are already using Iridium 9555 satellite phones in support of Haiti relief and recovery efforts.

International aid groups and UN agencies in Haiti are already using Iridium 9555 satellite phones in support of Haiti relief and recovery efforts.

 

(Source: PC World)

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PC World

The International Women Day (8th of March), once again will provide the European Commission with an occasion to address the role of women in the ICT sector. However, this year, substantive changes have been introduced to the formula of the event, starting from the location: Cyprus. The intention is to move the discussion to Member States which have only recently joined the European Union adventure, exactly where women's potential is particularly untapped and where fresh ideas could bloom. This year the debate on women and ICT will be embedded in a broader initiative encompassing other ICT related issues. The event will comprise workshops targeting women willing to set up consortia and submit proposals for future calls.

 

(Source: Europe's Information Society)

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European Comission

The World Economic Forum today released its study on Scaling Opportunity: Information and Communications Technology for Social Inclusion, an analysis of how ICT is evolving to address the social and economic needs of the poor. The study notes that, as 4 billion people have access to the global communications infrastructure, the opportunity to create innovative and inclusively tailored solutions for connecting the unconnected is extraordinary.

Along with highlighting the rapid adoption rate of mobile phone usage within emerging economies, the report focuses on the question: “What’s next?”

 

(Source: eGov Monitor)

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eGov Monitor

The Taiwan government says it will spend 2 billion New Taiwan dollars ($65 million) to support its electronic-book industry and help makers cash in on the rapidly growing world market.

Companies can receive government subsidies of up to 40 percent of costs for programs developing related technologies, according to an Industrial Development Bureau report released Thursday. Taiwan is already a leading player in the digital book market, being the exclusive supplier of e-paper displays for Amazon's Kindle and Sony's e-Reader through collaboration with foreign firms that hold cutting-edge electronic ink technologies, officials said.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

Developing countries risk missing out on the benefits of information technology because of their lack of broadband infrastructure, a U.N. agency said.

Lack of broadband Internet access deprives countries of the possibility of building up offshoring industries, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in a report late on Thursday. It also prevents people from tapping into all the advantages of mobile phones, whose use is exploding in poor countries. "What is known as the broadband gap for example is becoming a serious handicap for companies in many poor countries," he told a briefing to launch UNCTAD's Information Economy Report.

 

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters 

After a two weeks meeting in Bonn Germany, it appears that an ambitious and effective global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is in sight.

“A big achievement of this meeting is that governments have made it clearer what they want to see in the Copenhagen agreed outcome,” said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.The Copenhagen outcome is to follow on the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012. The negotiating text under consideration covers issues of a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, enhanced action on adaptation, mitigation and finance, as well as technology and capacity-building.

The gathering in Germany, which brought together more than 4,600 participants from government, business and industry, environmental groups and research institutions, was the second in a series of five major UN negotiating sessions slated for this year ahead of Copenhagen. The next meeting is scheduled to be held from 10 to 14 August in Bonn, followed by sessions in Bangkok from 28 September to 9 October and Barcelona from 2 to 6 November.

Source: UN

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Press Release

 

A mobile phone-based health project is helping the Peruvian military to keep disease at bay. The initiative, dubbed Alerta DISAMAR, has allowed doctors in the navy to report disease outbreaks and ask for help with treatment. The scheme was set up following the deaths of two Peruvian sailors in 2001 from malaria and is part of a wider mHealth project by the United Nations-Vodafone Foundation. Since it was set up in 2003 it has provided invaluable information for epidemiologists and enabled them to track the spread of diseases. It is also a useful way of gathering statistics on disease for health planning. To date, over 80,000 cases have been reported - everything from snakebites to yellow fever.

The US navy helped establish the product and a firm called Voxiva developed the technical aspects, under advice from Ernesto Gozzer, a doctor who specialises in public health.

Source: BBC

Read full Report: here

 

The government of Bahrain has introduced an e-government services that can be accessed through mobile phones. The mobile portal will allow anyone with a mobile phone to communicate with all government entities and avail of their services. The services are accessible through a mobile version of the national portal to WAP-equipped phones, in addition to other services available via text message. The initial phase of the mobile portal will include 11 basic government services, with 39 more to be rolled out by year’s end, taking the total to 50. The key services include enquiries regarding electricity bills and traffic contraventions, daily price index, flight information, school examination results and registration of complaints to government bodies.

“Launching the mobile portal and CSCs are two of the basic components of e-government vision. By offering government e-services through multiple easy-to-access delivery channels, everyone is included, regardless of education, income, gender, age or nationality, with the aim to achieve quality and integration with a focus on customer satisfaction.”  said H.E. Sheikh Ahmed bin Ateyatalla Al Khalifa, the government of Bahrain’s Cabinet Affairs Minister and Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology member.

Source: Future Gov

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Bahrain e-Government Portal

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced a landmark agreement reached by over 30 African ministers to mainstream climate change adaptation measures into national and regional development plans, policies and strategies.

The Nairobi Declaration adopted at the Special Session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) called on the international community to support the continent in implementing climate change programmes while at the same time achieving sustainable development, with an emphasis on the most vulnerable, such as women and children, who bear the brunt of the impact of global warming.

“Africa’s environment ministers have today signalled their resolve to be part of the solution to the climate change challenge by forging a unified position, within their diversity of economies, in advance of the crucial UN climate change convention meeting in Copenhagen in just 192 days time,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

The Declaration highlights the need for a coherent financial mechanism to battle climate change, with equitable governance and simplified access procedures. In this regard, African ministers are advocating for the improvement and modification of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in order to ensure equitable geographical distribution of projects that contribute to sustainable development efforts on the continent. They are also calling for the expansion of eligible categories to benefit from carbon credits and other international incentives to include sustainable land use, agriculture and forest management, in order to promote agricultural productivity in a way that improves resilience and adaptation to climate change.

Source:United Nations

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Nairobi Declaration

As part of this year’s focus on education, the UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID) presented the newly formed University of the People, a non-profit institution offering higher education to the masses.

For hundreds of millions of people around the world higher education is no more than a dream, Shai Reshef, the founder of the University of the People, told reporters. They are constrained by finances, the lack of institutions in their region, or they are not able to leave home to study at a university for personal reasons. Mr Reshef said that this University opened the gate to these people to continue their studies from home and at minimal cost by using open-source technology, open course materials, e-learning methods and peer-to-peer teaching. Admission opened just over two weeks ago; and without any promotion some 200 students from 52 countries have already registered, with a high school diploma and a sufficient level of English as entry requirements. Students will be placed in classes of 20, after which they can log on to a weekly lecture, discuss its themes with their peers and take a test - all online. There are voluntary professors, post-graduate students and students in other classes who can also offer advice and consultation.

Source: United Nations

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Experts on information and communication technology (ICT) from the United Nations, private industry, non-governmental organizations and government agencies have met in Geneva to look at ways to use the latest digital innovations to fight poverty and improve public health.

“The objective is to introduce cutting-edge, innovative knowledge, experiences, expertise and best practices” to the work of the UN, and the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development in particular, according to the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID), which organized the one-day meeting. “New technologies can boost education through distance learning, content creation and delivery, and teacher training,” GAID noted in a news release. “They can help create new job opportunities for people living in poverty. These technologies can also empower women and the disadvantaged to increase their access to information and participate in the economy.”

The Alliance also noted that advances in health information systems based on ICT are improving patients care and healthcare providers’ productivity worldwide. However, developing countries lag behind in employing ICT to these ends. “While diseases in developing countries account for over 90 per cent of the global disease burden, it is estimated that only 10 per cent of the more than $100 billion spent annually on health research is allocated for health problems prevalent in these countries,” it stated.

Source: UNESCO

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In order to increase efficiency in municipal parking services in Turkey, the Municipality of Istanbul and Turkcell Mobile Phone Company, have come up with a project that aims at solving the parking problem in Istanbul by using mobile technologies, especially mobile phones. Subscribers to the service use SMS function of their mobile phones to park their cars and the parking bills are sent to them within their mobile phone bills.

Source: epractice.eu

Project Website

 

"Digital technologies, or Information and Communications Technologies as they are commonly known, offer massive opportunities: Innovation and technology are "the backbone of the modern economy," says Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and the deputy leader of the Government in the Senate.

As part of the Government of Australia's efforts at reducing carbon emissions by 2020, the energy sector providers plan to use broadband to improve the way they monitor and manage power distribution. Using broadband to connect power consumers with power generators will allow them to harness means of distribution in a more efficient and reliable manner. Smart grids connected by broadband will also raise the potential to not only monitor energy use but to allow remote adjustment of lights or temperature. This implies the very real possibility of significant carbon emission reductions for the country. 

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A new report of the mobile industry shows that some progress has been made by the 26 mobile operators signed up to the "European Framework for Safer Mobile Use by Younger Teenagers and Children” brokered by the Commission in February 2007 (IP/07/139). These operators serve around 580 million customers, 96% of all EU mobile customers. "The new report of the mobile phone industry association shows that mobile operators have started to take seriously their responsibilities to keep children safe when using phones," said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding.

50% of 10 year-old, 87% of 13 year-old and 95% of 16 year-old children in the EU have a mobile phone, but half of European parents worry mobile phone use might expose their children to sexually and violently explicit images (51%) or bullying by other children (49%), according to a survey. The European Commission today called on mobile operators to do more to keep children safe while using mobile phones by putting in place all the measures in the voluntary code of conduct, signed by 26 mobile operators in 2007. The report published by the GSM Association, the trade body of the mobile phone industry, showed that national self-regulatory codes based on the framework agreement brokered by the European Commission now exist in 22 Member States, 90% of them in line with the 2007 agreement, and 80% of operators have put in place measures to control child access to adult content.

Read the full EC press release from 20 April 2009 here.

More information on the GSMA report onimplementation of the framework agreement on "Safer Mobile Use by Younger Teenagers and Children" can be found here.

ITU is pleased to announce the launch of its 2009 Cybersecurity and ICT Applications Essay Competition.

The 2009 ITU Cybersecurity and ICT Applications Essay Competition is open to current students and recent graduates in economics, political science, law, literature, telecommunications, computer science, information systems and related fields between the ages of 20 and 30 years old. The winners of the 2009 Essay Competition will be offered the opportunity of a consultancy contract within the ITU Development Sector's ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division for three months. The winners will be given a contribution towards the cost of an economy class flight from their place of residence. In addition, they will be paid the sum of CHF 6000 towards living expenses for the duration of the contract.

To enter the competition you need to submit an essay on one of the following essay topics:

• Mobiles for Development: Enabling Low-Cost e-Applications for Rural and Remote Areas (e-Health, e-Government, e-Environment)
• Protecting Children and Youth in the Internet and Mobile Age: Innovative Technical and Social Solutions
• Connecting the World Responsibly: Empowering Women and Girls Through Creative Uses of ICTs
• Personal Information Online (internet/mobiles): Responding to User Safety Concerns

All applications should be submitted online through the competition website.

The deadline for applications is 14 June 2009.

We look forward to reviewing your applications and wish you the best of luck in the competition!

 

The EU's Commissioner in charge of Information and Communication Technology Viviane Reding, has called on the European ICT sector, which accounts of 2% of carbon emissions, to become the engine in the drive against carbon emissions, by setting trends that can be followed in the wider economy to affect the other 98% of emissions.

"Personally, I would recommend the ICT sector to lead the way for the rest of the economy by reducing its own carbon footprint by 20 percent as early as 2015", said Reding. "I see from the response of European ICT companies to the Commission's ongoing work that Europe is already well ahead in using ICT to green the economy, with some ICT companies already voluntarily working to reduce CO2 emission by 50 to 80 percent."

Commissioner Reding cited buildings and transport as other sectors where ICTenabled energy efficiency could have an impact. Recent studies suggest that better use of ICT could reduce energy consumption of buildings in the EU by up to 17% and to reduce carbon emissions in transport logistics by up to 27%.

Read Full Report

Source:European Union

Students and Teachers in Andhra Pradesh will now have access to an online learning platform that enables teachers to integrate learning projects into their classroom curriculum and students to develop critical 21st century skills, including creativity, communication, teamwork, and technology skills. This is made possible by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Oracle Education Foundation (OEF) and Institute for Electronic Governance (IEG), a non-profit organization under the government of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Through this link-up, 500 government schools and over 25,000 students and teachers will gain access to the ThinkQuest online learning platform over the next two years. In the first phase of the rollout, IEG and OEF will train 120 teachers from 60 schools on the ThinkQuest platform and instruct them how to best integrate 21st century skills instruction and project learning into their curricula.

First launched in India in 2004, ThinkQuest currently supports over 146,000 students and teachers in 1,100 schools across the country, including Kendriya Vidyalayas, Navodaya Vidyalayas, DPS, DAV, and other schools.

Read the full text here.

 

The Anti�]Phishing Working Group (APWG) and IPC has released a new idustry advisory document titled: "What to do if your site has been hacked by phishers". The purpose of the document is to provide website owners with specific actions they can take when they have been notified that their website or webserver has been infiltrated and used for phishing.

The document notes that "Some phishers use compromised computers to host malicious or illegal activities, including identity theft, fraudulent financial activities, as well as collecting personal information and business identities from their victims for future use. Others attack or 'hack' into and gain administrative control over the legitimate web sites of businesses and organizations of all sizes. Such hacked web sites disguise the bad acts the phishers perform. More importantly, web site hackers are fully aware that the web sites they hack and 'own' are reputably legitimate."

"Law enforcement and anti�]phishing responders respect and operate under established business, technical, and legal constraints when they seek to remedy or take down hacked web sites. These measures protect legitimate web site operators but unfortunately serve the attacker as well by extending the duration of the attack. The Anti�]Phishing Working Group (APWG) offers this document as a reference guide for any web site owner or operator who suspects, discovers, or receives notification that its web site is being used to host a phishing site. The document explains important incident response measures to take in the areas of identification, notification, containment, recovery, restoration, and follow�]up when an attack is suspected or confirmed. This document serves a guideline for web site owners."

See the full APWG "What to do if your site has been hacked by phishers" Industry Advisory here.

The ITU has launched new partnerships to help 13 Pacific Island countries develop information and communications technology (ICT) in the region.

In a joint communiqué issued at the end of the Pacific ICT Ministerial Forum, held in Tonga, senior officials from the 13 countries called for greater coordination to minimize overlap in ICT initiatives and maximize the impact of investments in development projects. The ministers, including two Prime Ministers, called for rapid implementation of regional connectivity projects and for reinforced efforts to create more ICT professionals and a workforce with technical skills.

“The Pacific Island countries have clearly stated their objectives and priorities,” said Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid. “ITU is fully committed to work with our partners in delivering results for the Pacific Island States,” added Mr. Al Basheer, who announced several new partnerships to assist the countries. “We are building on the expertise and resources of all interested partners to reinforce our collective impact on ICT development in the Pacific.” The Pacific Island ministers also directed officials to work towards establishing a shared regulatory resource centre and encouraged regional States to make full use of ICT for early warning and response systems to improve disaster preparedness.

See the full ITU press release here.

A new report from ITU, highlights some harsh realities for the global ICT industry. The report, Confronting the Crisis: Its Impact on the ICT Industry, considers how the industry can position itself for recovery in the future.

Confronting the Crisis: Its Impact on the ICT Industry draws on analysis from leading industry experts and international institutions. As the established order is overturned, it says, convergence in the ICT industry will accelerate, with the emergence of new players with new business models. Firms’ ability to weather the economic storm will depend on their ability to invest for the future and explore new opportunities to benefit from the eventual upturn. For an industry founded on innovation, the current turmoil will create openings for nascent ICT companies.

Confronting the Crisis finds that although credit is now less abundant and more expensive, with financing costs for operators on average 3 − 4 per cent higher year-on-year, savvy operators can take advantage of the economic turmoil to reposition their services for the upturn. Funding is still available for players with sound business models, established demand and early projected cash flows. Alternative sources of financing are now needed, with a growing role for government financing and economic stimulus packages.

Many analysts contributing to Confronting the Crisis underlined the need for ICT as vital services and suggested that fixed-mobile substitution and consumers’ decision to switch to mobile telephony may gain momentum in developed markets during a prolonged recession. The report also notes that long project lead times for the satellite industry mean that it has been less affected in the short term, with strong recent growth in demand from developing countries. The financial difficulties facing the private sector could add to pressure for government intervention in the financing of national backbone infrastructure. Governments are already stepping in to diminish the impact on the transition to next-generation networks (NGN), which can carry voice, data and media services simultaneously. Several administrations have announced commitments to invest in their national backbone infrastructure, while others, such as the European Union, have included the roll-out of broadband networks in their economic stimulus packages. Although the financial crisis may delay investment in NGN, it has also led to a widespread reaffirmation of the importance of building advanced telecommunication infrastructure as part of an economic stimulus package.

See the full press release from 16 February 2009.
The report is available for download here.

According to a article in the Indian Hindustan Times, "Indian diplomats now cannot open a Facebook account, use external e-mail services, or write blogs, thanks to new rules and much stricter firewalls aimed at preventing cyber attacks and leakage of classified information. Over the past eight months, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has been overhauling its computer network security, putting up layers of barriers against intrusions into the network, officials associated with cyber security said. There are almost 600 computers at its headquarters at South Block, about half of which are connected to the Internet. Classified work is typically done on stand-alone computers, usually with the external drives removed. "We have set up a unified threat management system for the ministry. This simultaneously uses eight levels of protection like firewalls and spam mail filtering," said a senior official.

"We are also requesting and encouraging more responsible behaviour from our staff when working online," the official told IANS, requesting anonymity. A circular issued last week asked officials not to log on to social networking sites, specifically citing Facebook, Orkut and Ibibo as examples. The other prohibited practices include download of peer-to-peer music using sites like Kazaa and sharing of photos through Flickr and Picasa. The circular also discourages using services like G-mail, Yahoo! or Hotmail for official communication. A similar circular, officials said, had been issued in the Prime Minister's Office in December. But the matter is even more critical for the foreign office as officials posted in Indian missions abroad or on foreign tours tend to use web-based mail rather than the ministry's own mail system. "We have had cases of senior officers using G-mail or other similar accounts abroad for official work, only to find some form of tampering when they return," the official said, adding people have been told to change their web-mail passwords if they had opened the account during foreign tours. The missions have been told to use their official mail ID issued by the National Informatics Centre for communication. But several missions have complained that the mail home page was inaccessible due to port blocks by local Internet service providers. They have been asked to contact their service providers to unblock the site. "We want to secure communications with Indian missions through private networks. This may be implemented in the next few months," said an official working with the technical team in the ministry.

Read the full article here.

The ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau launched the study report "ICTs for e-Environment - Guidelines for Developing Countries, with a Focus on Climate Change", which is intended to strengthen the capacity of developing countries to mitigate and adapt to environmental change, including climate change, through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Although ICTs require energy resources, they also offer a number of opportunities to advance global environmental research, planning and action. This includes monitoring and protecting the environment as well as mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. The report also looks extensively at the use of ICTs in many different aspects of work on the environment, including environmental observation, analysis, planning, management and protection, mitigation and capacity building.

In order to assess the adoptability of selected ICT applications for environmental management in developing countries in general, the report proposes a ranking system with parameters such as (a) environmental scope, (b) technology, (c) transferability, and (d) impact.

Furthermore, the ICTs for e-Environment report considers over 150 ICT applications in one of its annexes, including the name of the ICT applications, description, area of work, sponsor, region, active dates, and relevant web references.  

Not all countries have the capacity to take advantage of these technologies in order to use the full potential of ICTs for environmental action. The report states that there is a clear need for a more comprehensive and integrated approach to global environmental action through access to ICTs and the use of information technologies and management practices to eliminate duplication of efforts. This can be done by consolidating action at national levels on the many and varied environmental conventions and initiatives that developing countries have already agreed to in principle. ICTs provide a unique opportunity to do so while assisting in building local capacity to use these tools and practices.

There is also a need to assign the environment a more important profile in ICT strategic planning initiatives at the national level and, in particular, in e‑Governance and e-Goverment initiatives so that the use of ICTs for the environment is integrated into planning processes from the beginning, along with other national priorities and initiatives.

The report proposes a methodology to undertake rapid national e‑Environment assessments as well as to develop and implement national e‑Environment strategies. Among other proposals, the report recommends the preparation of an e‑Environment toolkit comprised of best practices as one practical method to assist developing countries to take advantage of ICTs for environmental research, planning and action. Strengthening ongoing research activities is another proposal as well as placing more focus on the environment sector in e‑Government initiatives. Working on a regional basis may be the best approach for smaller, landlocked or island jurisdictions, such as small island developing states.

Whatever approach is taken to support the use of ICTs for environmental action in sustainable development, it must be undertaken in close collaboration with key development partners at the national and international level and in consultation with actors in the public and private sectors as well as civil society.

The ITU-D recruited an expert to produce a study report concerning "Electronic Government for Developing Countries", which is intended to help address challenges in formulating e-Government policies. The draft version as of August 2008 is now available online on the ITU-D ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division (CYB) website.

The purpose of this report is to examine the adoption of e-Government services in countries with developing economies. As the day-to-day business of a public administration is to build on data and information, using the latter is critical to help ensuring its accountability, managing its operations, and to allow its citizens to participate in the country's governance. With the revolutionary changes that ICTs are bringing to our global society, public administrations worldwide continue to develop more sophisticated ways to digitize their operations and practices so that they can offer the public access to government services in more effective and efficient ways.

The seven key recommendations outlined in this report are:

• Developing a strategic plan to guide e-Government services;
• Understanding the needs of citizens and of all public administration segments;
• Using well established system development practices for e-Government services;
• Creating a learning organization;
• Developing effective ICT governance mechanisms;
• Developing ICT capabilities, including human resources capacity building and suitable ICT infrastructure; and
• Developing an e-Government security and disaster recovery plan.

To continue reading the report and its case studies, click here. More information on ITU-D activities related to ICT applications, click here.

The International Telecommunication Union organised two Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change. The first was held in Kyoto, Japan 15-16 April 2008, hosted by MIC Japan, and the second was held in London, UK, on 17-18 June, hosted by BT.

These symposia brought together key specialists in the field, from top decision-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and others. Among others, the ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau presented a summary of the study report on "ICTs for e-Environment - Guidelines for Developing Countries, with a Focus on Climate Change".

For more information on presentations, meeting summarie and the outcomes of the symposia, click here.

As part of its effort to combat climate change, the European Commission announced on 13 May 2008 that it would promote the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) to improve energy efficiency throughout the economy, starting with buildings, lighting and the power grid. The Commission will encourage the ICT industry to demonstrate leadership in reducing its own CO2 emissions and by identifying and creating solutions that will benefit the whole economy. "To meet Europe's energy efficiency goals by 2020, we need a high growth, low carbon economy. Research and rapid take-up of innovative energy efficient ICT solutions will be crucial to lowering emissions across the whole economy," said Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media. "There is a win-win situation in which ICT will promote the competitiveness of EU industry while leading the fight against climate change."

For more information, click here or read the European Commission document on Addressing the challenge of energy efficiency through Information and Communication Technologies.

On an article published Wednesday, 14 May 2008, on the Guardian, Will Ashley-Cantello writes about how the youth are both fully aware of the need to reduce environmental impacts and equipped to making this change happen. Ashley-Cantello points out that the second generation internet has fast become the most powerful tool the environment movement has. "Around 96% of Americans between 11 and 18 are members of an online social network. So when you consider that protecting the environment is a passion of many young people, the potential power of influence of Web 2.0 for the green movement is phenomenal." According to the Forum for the Future, 78% of university applicants in 2007 believed that "lifestyles need to change across the board, or in many areas, for human civilisation to survive the next 100 years". It is, therefore, imperative that our young citizens are given a fair hearing on the decisions that current leaders are making - and online social networking can help achieve this.

A new social networking site, Footprintfriends.com, was set up exclusively to join together young people who share a passion for protecting our natural environment. As a moderated site, it aims to be an enabler for young people aged 11 to 18 to act on their environmental concerns. The site has already attracted hundreds of young people since launching last August. It is set to expand rapidly after establishing a new partnership with the British Standards Institute, which is using the site to promote a Sustainable Students competition, involving about 20,000 schools.

Read the full article here.

The Guardian recently reports on a survey into ways in which colleges and universities can make computing greener and more sustainable. Preliminary findings of the study is about to be published soon. "Higher Education Environment Performance Improvement (Heepi) and SustainIT, an NGO set up to focus on the environmental and social impact of IT, are researching how sustainable further and higher education IT is, and how education best practice compares with the private sector. The report being written for the Joint Information System Committee (Jisc) says green IT is best achieved through the collaboration of IT and estates management." Among the findings is that increased energy and computing costs can be offset by technologies such as grid computing and virtualisation. According to Peter James, author of the report and is also part-time professor of environmental management at Bradford University and associate director of SustainIT, "Eighty to 90% of a computer's capacity is wasted. By linking PCs together we can run complex computing tasks broken down into manageable chunks when the computers are not in normal classroom use."

The publication of Heepi and SustainIT's interim report in June marks the start of a series of up to seven campus IT open days to be held throughout the UK until October and designed to allow IT managers a chance to see the latest sustainable initiatives for themselves. At least one event will be focused on the further education sector and based around the virtualisation programme at Stockport college.

Read the full article here.

According to an article on The Citizen (Dar es Salaam) on 10 May 2008, toll-free mobile services are on its way to selected remote areas in Africa aiming to save lives by connecting people with emergency medical cases to health personnel. Under the initiative launched in Nairobi on Wednesday, health workers will also be trained through mobile phone sessions on day to day skills like collecting and sharing basic household health information.

Telecommunication equipment provider Ericsson and mobile phone service provider Zain have entered into a partnership that will ensure they provide network access, mobile phone handsets, sim cards and toll-free emergency numbers in remote areas in order to stimulate demand for cellular phone solutions in those areas. The initiative is being rolled out in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. In Kenya, Ericsson and Zain subsidiary, Celtel, are rolling out a pilot programme in North Garissa in Dertu village targeting some 5,200 inhabitants.

According to the President of Ericsson, Mr Carl-Henri Svanberge, the partnership also includes the Earth Institute and will benefit 400,000 people in Africa. "The partnership will provide the development of a comprehensive voice to data coverage and a telecommunication strategy in the villages to drive up mobile connectivity," said Mr Svanberge. The phones will use solar charges which according to Ericsson are capable of charging 30 mobile phones a day.

Read the full article here.

McKinsey & Company, with its McKinsey & Company Report: Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency, provides critical analyses, key findings, and recommendations on data center efficiency.

Some of the key points in the report include:

• The rapid recent (and projected) growth in the number and size of Data centers creates two significant challenges for enterprises: 1.) Data center facilities spend (CapEx and OpEx) is a large, quickly growing and very inefficient portion of the total IT budget in many technology intensive industries such as financial services and telecommunications. Some intensive data center users will face meaningfully reduced profitability if current trends continue; 2.) For many industries, data centers are one of the largest sources of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. As a group, their overall emissions are significant, in-scale with industries such as airlines. Even with immediate efficiency improvements (and adoption of new technologies) enterprises and their equipment providers will face increased scrutiny given the projected quadrupling of their data-center GHG emissions by 2020.
• The primary drivers of poor efficiency are poor demand and capacity planning within and across functions (business, IT, facilities), significant failings in asset management (6% average server utilization, 56% facility utilization), and boards, CEOs, and CFOs are not holding CIOs accountable for critical data center facilities CapEx and data center operational efficiency.
• Improving efficiency is the best near term means to solving the twin challenges of rising spend and GHG emissions. The report proposes a three part solution to double IT energy efficiency by 2012 and to arrest the growth of GHG emissions from data centers: 1.) Rapidly mature and integrate asset management capabilities to reach the same par as the Security function; 2.) Mandate inclusion of true total cost of ownership (including data center facilities) in business case justification of new products and applications to throttle excess demand; and 3.) Formally move accountability for data center critical facilities expense and operations to the CIO and appoint internal “Energy Czars” with an operations and technology mandate to double IT energy efficiency by 2012.
• To achieve this doubling of energy efficiency CIOs, equipment manufacturers, as well as industry groups in dialog with regulators should quickly establish automotive style “CAFE” metrics that will measure the individual and combined energy efficiency of corporate, public sector and 3rd party hosted data centers. The report proposes one metric that would deliver immediate financial and transparency benefits to executive management of enterprises and could become a government recognized measure of efficiency.

A related OECD meeting on ICT and the Environment will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark on 22-23 May 2008. A paper on Khazzoom-Brookes postulate and datacenters is also available online. This paper presents how Khazzoom-Brookes have demonstrated that improved efficiency actually results in increased energy consumption as it decreases the overall cost of a product or service and therefore increases demand.

Read more on the McKinsey report here.

According to a press release of the European Commission, published on 25 April, a pan-European survey on electronic services in healthcare (eHealth) shows that 87% of European doctors (General Practitioners) use a computer, 48% with a broadband connection. The survey shows that there are considerable differences between the countries, with broadband penetration ranging from 93% in Finland to 5% in Romania. An increasing number of doctors in Europe store and send patients' data such as lab reports electronically.

In using such eHealth applications, doctors and medical services have already improved healthcare in Europe through, for instance, more efficient administration and shorter waiting times for patients. According to the report, a majority of European doctors agree that information and communication technologies (ICTs) improve the quality of healthcare services that they provide.

Doctors not using ICT mention a lack of training and technical support as major barriers. In order to increase the use of eHealth, they ask for more ICT in medical education, more training and better electronic networking among healthcare practitioners that are willing to share clinical information. The report also highlights where doctors could make better use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to offer services such as telemonitoring, electronic prescriptions and cross border medical services.

For more information, click here.

The 6th "Med-e-Tel Conference and Exhibition" took place on 16 -18 April 2008 in Luxembourg with about 450 participants from over 50 countries. Med-e-Tel focuses on eHealth and telemedicine applications and a wide range of other medical information and communication technology (ICT) applications and on the convergence of ICT with medical applications, which lead to higher quality of care, cost reductions, workflow efficiency, and widespread availability of healthcare services. Abstracts and presentations of annual events are soon available on the organizer's website.

The ITU/MIC Kyoto Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change closed 16 April with agreement that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) should play a significant role in the global efforts to combat climate change. The Symposium had six substantive sessions, including:

• Climate change: ICTs to the rescue?
• Corporate responsibility: Towards a climate-neutral ICT sector
• ICTs for monitoring climate change
• ICTs as a clean technology
• Towards a high bandwidth, low carbon future
• Adapting to climate change

A number of actions were recommended for ITU such as assisting countries, in particular developing ones, to raise awareness on how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help adapting and mitigating to climate change. Specific areas mentioned are, among others, strengthening the capacity of developing countries to use ICTs for sustainable development, disaster and emergency preparedness, actions on food insecurity, use of remote sensing, assistance to rural communities and coordinated action to assist the most vulnerable countries. Experts also recognized that each country should consider promoting the use of ICT applications for government services (e-Government) from national to local levels, as well as reducing the emission of greenhouse gases through environmentally friendly use of ICTs in other sectors such as public health, education, business and employment.

More information on the Symposium is available in the chairman’s report, the meeting summary and the ITU background report. Presentations from this event can be viewed here. The chairman’s report will be forwarded to upcoming meetings of the World Economic Forum, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ministerial meeting in the Republic of Korea, the G8 meeting in Japan and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The second ITU symposium on ICTs and climate change, will be held 17-18 June in London, hosted by BT. The London event will also be broadcast as a live Webinar. To register online at this event, see here.

The United Nations (UN) recently launched the e-Government Survey 2008: From E-Government to Connected Governance assessing the e-government readiness of the 192 Member States of the UN. The study results are based on a quantitative composite index of e-readiness, including website assessment, telecommunication infrastructure, and human resource endowment.

One of the key outcomes of the study is that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help reinvent government in such a way that existing institutional arrangements can be restructured and new innovative approaches can flourish, paving the way for a transformed government.

The focus of the report, in Part II, is e-government initiatives directed at improving operational efficiency through the integration of back-office functions. Whilst such initiatives, if successful, will deliver benefits to citizens, the primary purpose is to improve the effectiveness of government and governmental agencies. Models of back-office integration, irrespective of the delivery mode, fall into three broad categories: single function integration, cross functional integration, and back-office to front-office integration. The level of complexity, expressed in terms of the number of functions within the scope and number of organizations involved, is the primary factor influencing a successful outcome - with a tendency amongst the more ambitious projects to fail to deliver the full anticipated benefits. The key variables involved in the delivery of back-office integration are the people, processes and technology required.

The report is available at the website of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the UN's Public Administration Programme. For more information, click here.

The first ITU Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change (15-16 April in Kyoto, Japan, co-organized and hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) will be available as a webinar in order that remote participants can see and hear presentations from wherever they are in the world. Provision will also be made for remote participants to submit comments and questions. Space is limited.

Reserve your seat for

- Day 1 at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/862573173.

- Day 2 at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/540961252.

A live audio stream will be provided at: mms://stream.icckyoto.ne.jp/ict/.

Full Programme (times in JST, London -8, New York -13)

ITU Background Paper on ICTs and Climate Change

System requirements

The impact of human activities on the environment – and on climate change in particular – are issues of growing concern confronting life on Earth. Concurrently, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are being rapidly deployed around the world. Although ICTs require energy resources, they also offer opportunities to monitor, learn about and protect the environment, reduce carbon emissions, and mitigate climate change.

A scoping study on using ICTs for environmental matters has been commissioned last year by the ITU's Telecommunication Development Bureau. This ICTs for e-Environment report approaches the issues from a development perspective and is based on consultations with key actors and extensive online research. It documents current activities and initiatives and makes a set of recommendations for strengthening the capacity of developing countries to make beneficial use of ICTs to mitigate and adapt to environmental change, including climate change.

The draft report and an overview presentation are available at ITU's ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division dealing with e-Environment matters.

For more information about ITU activities relating to climate change, click here.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) issued a press release on the upcoming Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change that aim at reaching a better understanding of the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and climate change.

The International Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change, featuring high-level experts drawn from industry, government and academia as well as key writers on the topic, will seek to provide guidance to the global ICT sector on how to monitor, mitigate and adapt to climate change. The meetings will take place April 15−16 in Kyoto, Japan, co-organized and hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC); and 17−18 June 2008 in London, UK, supported and hosted by BT. These events will be available as a webinar so that remote participants can see and hear presentations from wherever they are in the world. Provision will also be made for remote participants to submit comments and questions.

It is estimated that ICTs contribute around 2-2.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. These percentages are likely to grow as ICTs become more widely available. At the same time ICTs can be a major linchpin in the effort to combat climate change. ICTs have the potential to serve as a potent, cross-cutting tool to limit and ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions across economic and social sectors, in particular by the introduction and development of more energy efficient devices, applications and networks, as well as their environmentally sound disposal. ICT can therefore be a key enabler to a low carbon economy while also promoting growth.

In December 2007, ITU representatives made a statement at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, illustrating how ICTs are both a cause and a potential cure for climate change. UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon previously underlined ITU’s role in meeting one of the most important challenges facing mankind. "ITU is one of the very important stakeholders in the area of climate change," he said. Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General, said, "Unequivocal and authoritative scientific evidence, recent climate events and an increased public awareness have elevated climate change to the highest rungs of the political agenda — globally, regionally and at national levels. Climate change is a concern for all of humanity and requires efforts on the part of all sectors of society, including the ICT sector. ITU is committed to achieving climate neutrality and to working with our membership to promote the use of ICTs as an effective tool to combat climate change."

For more information on all ITU activities related to climate change, including e-environment, click here.

A blog entry by Jessica Hupp at VirtualHosting.com addresses the impact on the environment in web development and use of computer equipment in general.

It provides a sample collection of environmentally friendly applications, tools, networks and directories, web hostings, and others. The list mentions tools and resources concerning information and communication technology infrastructure, hardware, software, and so on.

For more information, click here.

Bill St. Arnaud writes about fiber to the home (FTTH) connections on his blog on Green IT/Broadband and Cyberinfrastructure. A presentation quoted of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the European FTTH Council of 28 February 2008 takes into account CO2 emissions that are produced in the construction and deployment of fiber and measure them against the savings of three ICT applications in the area of telecommuting,telemedicine and home assistance. Among others, the main findings are that the environmental impact of the deployment of a typical FTTH network would be positive in less than 14 years regarding the selected services mentioned above. Additional existing or future applications would further emphasize these results.

For more information on the European FTTH Council, click here.

The Global Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) today launched the project of "1000 Telemedicine Units for Africa". This eHealth initiative aims to support financing telemedicine units in Africa as well as to enable health professionals to obtain continuing education. The project consists of equipping district hospitals with diagnostic tools and internet connectivity to enable real-time or deferred exchanges with experts at a distance and to update medical knowledge of health professionals through e-Learning tools.

To date, DSF partners in this project are the Network of French-speaking Africa for Telemedicine (RAFT) of the University Hospitals of Geneva and the Africa Health Infoway (AHI) of the World Health Organization.

For more information on DSF, click here.

Jooce, a virtual desktop aimed at users who access the Web via cybercafes is attracting interest from organisations set up to bridge the digital divide. It is claimed that Jooce is presently targetting the estimated 500 million people who log on to the Internet from a cybercafe each day. Experts suggest that its free web-based desktop may be of great use for people who cannot afford their own personal computer.

Jooce provides the same functions as a personal computer, allowing access to files, e-mail, instant messaging, storage and other applications. "It's a platform that will make it much easier for the world's cybernomads to manage their digital lives",  said Jooce founder, Stefan Surzyck, referring to this platform as "their very own private space online".

Joocetop, a public desktop, is also said to be able to allow friends to access and share files. In addition a dedicated e-mail client is underway.

Eloisa San Mateo, regional IT coordinator for the Philippines National Computer Centres, has some concerns about the performance of Jooce on lower spec machines with poor bandwith.

Meddie Mayanja, a senior program officer with telecentre.org sees organisations such as Jooce  as essential to the sustainability of net access centres.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with JupiterResearch is less positive about web-based operating systems.

CNET.com, an online technology news site, nominated Jooce as a finalist in its 2008 Webware 100 awards.

Read full article at BBC website.

The Australian federal Government's plan to have internet service providers filter pornography and other internet content deemed inappropriate for children is going full-steam ahead. The Government wants to evaluate content filters in a controlled environment. Trials are to be conducted soon in a closed environment in Tasmania. Enex TestLab was selected more than six months ago after the Australian Communications and Media Authority closed a tender for an organisation to test ISP-based content filters. ISP-based filters will block inappropriate web pages at service provider level and automatically relay a clean feed to households. To be exempted, users will have to individually contact their ISPs. The trial will evaluate ISP-level internet content filters in a controlled environment while filtering content inappropriate for children, Enex said. "We invite vendors of all types (hardware appliances, software - proprietary or open-source) of ISP-based internet content filters to participate." The testing is slated for completion by July and will be followed by live field trials.

The internet sector has consistently voiced concern about the Government's ISP filters. Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos has said any clean feed policy would have to be balanced against the likely financial and performance costs, and ACMA's first annual report to Senator Conroy confirmed his fears. On the performance impact of filters, ACMA said: "In the case of personal computers the cost of upgrading processing power may be modest (although significant in terms of household income). "However, for ISPs the cost of upgrading or augmenting the expensive hardware that they typically deploy may be substantial, particularly for small providers."

Read the full article on the Australian IT.

GigaOm Earth2Tech’s 101 Cleantech Startups provides a map showing cleantech hot spots around the globe. The different sectors such as solar, energy storage, biofuels and electric vehicles are all represented by a logo, and each pin on the map has all of the vital stats for each startup (founding year, investors, technology, etc.).

For more information, visit GigaOm's Earth2Tech website.
View the map here.

The ITU-T newslog featured the following entry last Friday:

Senior technical experts have laid down the gauntlet on energy saving in information and communication technologies (ICTs) following a recent meeting in Geneva. Following tutorials on power saving, at a February meeting of ITU-T’s Study Group 15, experts agreed to work towards a proposed percentage reduction of power consumption in broadband technologies. The aim is for the agreed figure to form part of a Resolution from the upcoming World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly. Reduction of power consumption should and can be done without the degradation of services according to experts.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon has also underlined ITU’s role here saying: "ITU is one of the very important stakeholders in the area of climate change." ITU representatives made a statement at the UN Conference on Climate Change in, illustrating how ICTs are both a cause and a potential cure for climate change.

Speaking during the event attended by over 100 representatives from the ICT industry worldwide for each of its three, hour-long sessions, the Deputy Secretary-General of ITU, Houlin Zhao expressed appreciation that the meetings had proven so popular at such an early stage of the work. He pointed out that ICTs are responsible for 2.5 per cent of carbon emissions. This is roughly the equivalent of the airline industry and would require our urgent attention, he said.

The issue of power saving will be discussed within the wider context of climate change at ITU Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change to be held 15-16 April 2008 in Kyoto (Japan) and hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and 17-18 June 2008 in London (Great Britain) and hosted by British Telecom. The events are part of a new initiative by ITU to better understand how ICTs can help mitigate and adapt to climate change as well as monitoring its impact.

Experts speaking at the SG 15 tutorials pointed to inefficiencies in terms of end-device power consumption level compared to the signal power. The deployment of passive optical network (PON) technology is of particular concern as operators worldwide rollout this new technology that some predict will massively increase power demands. Some simple measures, for example specifying power saving modes in network terminations such as: ‘asleep’, ‘standby’, as well as ‘on’ and ‘off’, were cited by speakers. It was also noted that next-generation networks (NGN) can lower greenhouse gas emissions by reducing network complexity, and introducing equipment that is more tolerant to natural climatic conditions and therefore does not require air conditioning. Smart buildings, energy supply and transport industries must all play their part in achieving greenhouse gas reductions.

A first and completed task of the ITU experts has been to create a power saving checklist for standards authors. Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU congratulated SG 15 for responding so quickly to the request to address climate change. He urged all Study Groups to start the process of reviewing their Recommendations (ITU’s name for standards) according to the new checklist and assign appropriate metrics regarding reduction of greenhouse gases.

The checklist is intended to ensure that standards are drafted taking into account the most economic and energy-efficient solution, particularly related to energy saving in networks. Experts propose that each new ITU-T Recommendation should contain a clause that identifies its impact on climate change and demonstrates ways that it contributes towards emission reduction, covering both production and the use of the equipment.

To ensure that this work is completed with the highest degree of efficiency there is broad consensus that ITU action has to be taken into account collaborating in partnerships with other bodies working in the field and that everything is done to avoid duplication of work.

For activities carrying out in ITU's Telecommunication Development Sector on ICTs and climate change and e-environment, click here.

In the context of promoting Risk Management and Information Security, ENISA has generated material that can help Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to understand and to apply simplified Risk Management methods. The aim of this document is to provide a simplified and comprehensive view of risk management/risk assessment for use within small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). To achieve this goal, the present document has been structured in a modular way. It is made up of various parts each devoted to particular needs of stakeholders involved in the process of risk assessment and risk management. The philosophy behind the generation of this material was to shield (non-expert) users from the complexity of risk management and risk assessment activities. In doing so, some complex security matters have been simplified to the minimum needed to achieve an acceptable security level.

For more information, see the relevant deliverable.

As a further step towards the promotion of Risk Management, ENISA has also planned to pilot this method with a number of European stakeholders. The selected pilots will be financially supported by ENISA, helping them to install Risk Management within their IT infrastructure and perform an initial Risk Assessment. Potential stakeholders (e.g., SMEs, associations, etc) who would like to run such pilots are requested to apply for a possible Risk Management introduction project. The deadline for proposals is the 29th of February 2008.

Please visit the ENISA website for more information.

OECD, through its Working Party on Indicators for the Information Society, developed Measuring the Impacts of ICT Using Official Statistics. This paper presents available (mainly official) statistics on the impacts of ICT and discusses a number of statistical issues associated with ICT impact measurement. It attempts to place ICT impacts measurement into an Information Society conceptual framework and suggests a number of areas for further work.

Read the full paper here.

A draft paper from Bill St. Arnaud,  entitled ICT and Global Warming Opportunities for Innovation and Economic Growth, is now available online. There has been considerable interest recently about how ICT (Information, Computer, Telecommunications) technologies and how they can address the global challenges of protecting the environment and supporting sustainable development. The subject of ICT and the environment covers a wide range of fields such as sustainable development, using ICT to improve practices in agriculture and forestry, monitoring atmospheric and water pollution, waste management and recycling, improved energy efficiency and, of course ICT as a source of toxic waste in its own right. Although these are all important areas of scientific research and public policy, the intent of the report is not to address the various areas on how ICT can address global environment challenges such as the emission of  Green House Gases (GHG). Instead the purpose of this brief report is to focus on the opportunities for innovation and economic growth that might arise through the use of ICT to address the challenge of GHG emissions.

To date most approaches for using ICT to reduce GHG emissions have focused on "sackcloth and ashes" approach of reducing energy consumption or emission abatement techniques such as tele-commuting, tele-presence, etc.  Various industry consortia and government programs have been set up to promote innovation in these areas. Although these may be worthwhile endeavours, they have been in existence for some time and so far, have made little progress in reducing energy consumption or GHG emissions. Rather than focusing on energy efficiency or abatement techniques, the document aims to demonstrate that ICT can provide much greater opportunities for innovation and economic growth through a strategy of "zero carbon" for the ICT industry itself and using ICT e-products and e-services as a reward mechanism to encourage consumers and businesses to reduce their overall carbon footprint including heating, transportation, etc.

Read the complete draft paper here.
For additional information, please contact the author  or visit the Green/IT and Cyber-infrastructure blog.

UNCTAD Information Economy Report 2007-2008, Science and technology for development: the new paradigm of ICT, Chapter 7, Promoting Livelihoods Through Telecentres, provides a comprehensive report on the importance of telecentres in supporting sustainable livelihoods, stating that this will depend largely on their capacity to support local development and not only access to ICT.

More information at the UNCTAD website.

The Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) recently published its third annual Progress Report 2007. GeSI shares relevant information with its stakeholders and the civil society to support the economic and technological progress on information and communication technologies (ICTs) worldwide. This report highlights GeSI’s recent work on sustainability, specific accomplishments in climate change mitigation, managing supply chains, determining materiality, reducing e-waste, and leading public policy.

With support by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), GeSI is dedicated to the sustainable development of the ICT sector. For more information on GeSI's activities, click here.

With the rise of initiatives such as the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and Classmate, security experts warn that this development could mean an explosion in botnets in the developing world. However, Ivan Krstic, OLPC's director of security hardware, points to the choice of Linux as the operating system for the computers emphasizing that for an attack with an overall control, it would have to be written to the system kernel, and those vulnerabilities are patched very quickly making it difficult to get them to run bots. There is an option to run Windows XP on the machine though making all connotations of Windows security apply.

"The bigger problem in the long term may be the developing world's choice of operating system. 'Most of the machines we are shipping have Windows on them. That's the operating system most countries want,' says Intel. It adds that teachers will receive training from Intel to monitor the network and will be able to see if changes have been made to the machines: 'Some schools using the computers will have a teacher who is responsible for security on their networks, others will have an IT person.' As a last resort the Classmate, like the OLPC XO, can be wiped clean and restored to its factory settings. But while Windows has its problems, Linux may not offer much better protection, says Guillaume Lovet, a botnet expert for Fortinet. 'The first botnets were Stacheldraht, Trinoo and TFN, and were built in Linux,' says Lovet. He also dismisses claims that the low bandwidth and internet use in parts of the developing world - the World Economic Forum's 2007 Africa Competitiveness Report estimated that African internet use was just 3.4% of the world total - would act as a brake on the development of botnets. 'It doesn't take any bandwidth to control or make a botnet,' Lovet says. 'Aggregated bandwidth is what is important, and that would still be massive. You could still build a huge cyber-weapon with only a thousand of these machines.'"

Intel and OLPC point out that the laptops will often only have intermittent connectivity which could lower the risk of getting infected. This could lower the chances of getting security upgrades as well though. Rolf Roessing, a security expert for KPMG, notes "if we are to bring IT to Africa then it will not work unless we bring security with it. Computer security in the west grew because of a loss of innocence and there are still weaknesses in the developed world because of a lack of awareness. If you bring IT to developing countries then you have to develop awareness, too."

Read the full article on The Guardian.

A presentation on "ICTs and e-Environment - Overview of BDT Scoping Study for Developing Countries" has been posted online today on the ITU-D ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division (CYB) website. The presentation is based on the report "ICTs and e-Environment", which provides an overview on the contribution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and related strategies as tools to assist developing countries in mitigating and adapting to environmental and climate change. The report will be available after final review on the division website.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) extended its call for papers for the ITU Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change to 29 February 2008.

The first symposium will be held in Kyoto, Japan (15-16 April 2008, hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication) and will be followed by finalizing the initial proposals at a second symposium in London, UK (17-18 June, hosted by British Telecom). These symposia will bring together key specialists in the field, from top decision-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and others. To contribute to this work, stakeholders are invited to submit an abstract, of maximum 300 words, for a paper or presentation which is relevant to one of more of the topics above.

The topics of interest at the symposia include:

• Climate change and the impact of ICTs
• Use of ICTs in monitoring climate change
• ICTs for mitigating the local effects of climate change
• ICTs and concerted action against global warming
• ICT standardization in the field of climate change

For more information on the ITU Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change, click here. For information on ITU's e-environment activities, click here.

The Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) recently commissioned a research study to assess current carbon impacts of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector and to analyse the role of ICTs in catalyzing transformation to a low-carbon economy. With a focus on both developed and emerging economies, the study aims to:

• Deliver a globally comprehensive picture of direct and indirect carbon emissions of telecommunications, computing, services and software.
• Define common themes across the lifecycle of ICTs, identifying critical trends, scenarios and impact assessments for the ICT sector to 2020.
• Create a ‘road map’ to allow the ICT sector to act now on reducing global energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions.

To know more about the study, click here.

The Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) is an initiative of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies aimed at improving the sustainability impact of the ICT industry, and is supported by the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations Environment Programme.

The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector announces the Study Group 15 tutorials on energy saving techniques to be held on 13-15 February 2008. This activity is in the context of ITU-T's efforts to address climate change issues. "A checklist for developers of standards is already under development in SG 15. The technologies considered in the list include optical transport networks and access network transport technologies such as digital subscriber line (DSL) and Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks (GPON). Together these technologies represent a significant consumption of energy worldwide. The idea is that the checklist is applied before the work commences, during the work and after the completion of the work. The use of the checklist should ideally be complemented by involving energy efficiency experts and users in the process."

Other topics in the tutorials include energy efficient Ethernet and opportunities and techniques for power saving in DSL and PON. Also, a general introduction to the issues surrounding ICTs and climate change, (to be addressed in two upcoming ITU Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change), and an update on the outcome of the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, December 2007, will also be discussed.

More updates on this event on the ITU-T Newslog.
More information on ITU-D's activities involving ICTs and the environment (e-Environment) here.

The Wall Street Journal recently reports on President Bush's move to improve protection against cyberattacks. Despite promising a frugal budget proposal next month, an estimated $6 billion has been allocated to build a secretive system protecting U.S. communication networks from attacks by terrorists, spies and hackers. "Administration officials and lawmakers say that the prospect of cyberterrorists hacking into a nuclear-power plant or paralyzing Wall Street is becoming possible, and that the U.S. isn't prepared. This is 'one area where we have significant work to do,' Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a recent interview."

Read the full article on the Wall Street Journal.

Speech recognition technology has been an accelerating technological development and is now making its way to the mass market. Among these companies providing speech recognition technology is Vlingo Corporation. "Vlingo’s service lets people talk naturally, rather than making them use a limited number of set phrases. Dave Grannan, the company’s chief executive, demonstrated the Vlingo Find application by asking his phone for a song by Mississippi John Hurt (try typing that with your thumbs), for the location of a local bakery and for a Web search for a consumer product. It was all fast and efficient. Vlingo is designed to adapt to the voice of its primary user, but I was also able to use Mr. Grannan’s phone to find an address. The Find application is in the beta test phase at AT&T and Sprint." Other companies offering speech recognition technology to their customers include Nuance with its Nuance Voice Control system recently released last August, and Microsoft with its purchase of TellMe Networks last March. According to Opus Research, speech recognition has reached a $1.6 billion market in 2007, and they further predict an annual growth rate of 14.5 percent over the next three years. "Dan Miller, an analyst at Opus, said that companies that have licensed speech recognition technology would probably see faster revenue growth, as more consumers used the technology."

Speech recognition technology has also been available on personal computers since 2001 in applications like Microsoft Office but with a weaker following. It is also already used in high-end G.P.S. systems and luxury cars from Cadillac and Lexus, and is now spreading to less expensive systems and cars. The speech technology chief at I.B.M. Research, David Nahamoo, adds that the company has an automotive customer testing speech recognition to help drivers find songs quickly while driving. SimulScribe, on the other hand, uses speech recognition to convert voice mail into e-mail.

More on this article on the The New York Times.

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs recently released the UN e-Government Survey 2008: From e-Government to Connected Governance, which presents an assessment of the new role of the government in enhancing public service delivery, while improving the efficiency and productivity of government processes and systems. It comprises two parts including a section which presents the findings of the UN e-Government Survey 2008 and a section focusing on the ‘how to’ approach connected governance.

For more information on the survey, visit the Global E-Government Survey 2008 website.
Access the complete survey here.

The article, Beware, botnets have your PC in their sights, by New Scientist republished by TMCnet, provides a brief discussion of the cybersecurity situation in developing countries and how the current conditions may later evolve into an enormous cybersecurity problem in the coming years. Although hackers and cybercriminals tend to attack computers in developed countries at the moment due to more stable and consistent Internet connectivity, it is foreseen that developing countries may be next in line with the increasing technological developments and initiatives such as the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) programme and Intel's low-cost Classmate computer. "If thousands of Classmates are distributed without adequate security, or if a previously unknown flaw in BitFrost, OLPC's security system, emerges, the new generation of cheap PCs will lead to problems... The ITU is assuming that attacks of this kind are a foregone conclusion and is organising a global effort to help developing countries fortify themselves against them." ITU, with its Botnet Mitigation Toolkit and Cybersecurity efforts, aims to increase international cooperation among states and provide the training and expertise needed to build CERTs in developing countries.

Read the full article here.

More information on ITU Cybersecurity related activities here.

The OPTA Commission has imposed a fine of 1 million Euros on three Dutch enterprises, operating under the company name DollarRevenue, and their two directors, due to their unlawful installion of software on more than 22 million computers belonging to Internet users in the Netherlands and elsewhere. They primarily used misleading files, making Internet users believe that they were about to download apparently innocent files, whereas they actually contained DollarRevenue software. "They also used botnets, thereby installing files without user intervention. Each day 60,000 installations occurred on average. A total of more than 450 million program files were illegally placed on 22 million computers." With the enterprises and their directors having deliberately contravened provisions of the Universal Service and End Users Decree [Besluit universele dienstverlening en eindgebruikers], based on the Telecommunications Act [Telecommunicatiewet] and designed to promote safe Internet usage and to protect the privacy of Internet users, fines totalling 1 million Euros were imposed.

Read the full article on the OPTA website.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) highlighted the role played by information and communication technologies (ICTs) as both a cause and a potential cure for climate change at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, on 12 December.

ICTs can be used for remote monitoring of climate change and the gathering of crucial scientific data such as using telemetry or remote sensing by satellite. Smart and emerging technologies can be integrated into energy-efficient products, notably in next-generation networks (NGN) where ITU's Standardization sector (ITU-T) is carrying out vital specialized work.

Activities at the ITU's Development Sector (ITU-D) refer to promoting a role for information and communications technologies in the protection of the environment, together with partners from other international organizations and the industry. ITU-D also provides assistance to developing countries in emergency telecommunications as well as in the area of e-waste.

At the UN Conference, ITU raised awareness on standby services of ICT equipment such as computers and PC screens, DVD players, TVs and battery chargers, which places a burden on energy consumption. "Always-on" services, like broadband or mobile phones on standby, have increased energy consumption compared with fixed-line telephones, which do not require an independent power source.

ITU underlined an active commitment to promote the use of ICTs as a positive force to reduce greenhouse emissions and to find ways to mitigate the effects of climate change. In this regard, ITU can support and facilitate scientific studies aimed at implementation of new measures against the negative effects of climate change. As part of a unified effort of the UN system, ITU can contribute in its areas of expertise to support Member States and to foster partnerships with the private sector to develop more energy-efficient technologies.

For more information, click here.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported on 26 November about the launch of 20 broadband-enabled teacher resource centres in the Maldives to help the Ministry of Education to provide quality education to every child of a population spread across 1,000 small islands.

Using information and communication technologies (ICTs) enables administrators and teachers to be part of one learning community across the country. Teachers can simultaneously receive online training, access and exchange information through the common network. Moreover, the internet and state-of-the-art technologies are aimed to enhance interactive education and to increase motivation of both students and teachers, as UNICEF noted.

ITU, in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, is hosting a workshop on 28-30 November 2007 entitled ITU Regional Workshop on ICT Applications for Rural Communication Development. The workshop is held in Bali, Indonesia.

The description of the event, draft agenda, invitation letter, and practical information for meeting participants are available on the event website.

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) are contributing to climate change, but can also provide problem-tackling tools, as the United Nations News Centre reported from a conference on the impact of ICTs on climate change organized by the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development and AIT Global Inc., a global association of management and information technology professionals,on 27-28 November.

Experts and industry leaders highlighted that servers, personal computers and monitors account for more that 60 per cent of global ICT-related carbon emissions, and that product design, manufacturing and internal operations would be essential to minimizing emissions. Even though the paperless office environment has not yet been achieved, industry could develop energy-efficient appliances that shut down automatically when not being used. ICT could also improve the energy efficiency of all economic sectors, for example diagnosing the carbon emissions of products or processes and suggesting their redesign.

To read the full article, click here.

The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) on 15 November 2007 is launching PreventionWeb.net, a new website for increasing knowledge-sharing on natural disaster risk reduction issues. The website will feature news reports, publications, fact sheets, examples of best practices and country reports targeted to both the general public and specialists. Users can also search for information related to disaster risk reduction such as early warning, climate change, health, education, etc.

For more information, please click here.

The U.S. Center for Information Technology Leadership (CITL) conducted a study on The Value of Provider-to-Provider Telehealth Technologies. Assuming some specific healthcare settings such as emergency departments, correctional institutions, nursing homes and physician offices the cost-benefit analysis focused on three technology systems, i.e. store-and-forward, real-time video, and a hybrid model combining the first two.

The CITL study found that benefits outweighed costs for all three systems, but the research organization recommends the hybrid model as the most cost-effective one for the U.S. The report is available at citl.org.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) organizes the first conference in the ITU Arab region on "Sharing experience on best practices in ICT services for persons with disabilities", in cooperation with the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean of the World Health Organization (WHO/EMRO). The conference will take place in Cairo (Egypt) on 13 - 15 November 2007 under the auspices of the Ministry of ICT of the Government of Egypt and H. E. the Minister Dr. Tarek Kamel.

The conference is open to administrations, policy makers, regulators, and all industries involved in the development of dedicated information and communication technologies (ICTs) for persons with disabilities in addition to physicians and doctors from the public health sector. The main objective of the conference is to raise awareness on the importance of accessibility to all, including persons with disabilities, to ICTs.

For more information, please click here.

"Buses equipped with wi-fi are being used to deliver web content to remote rural villages in the developing world. In rural India and parts of Rwanda, Cambodia and Paraguay, the vehicles offer web content to computers with no internet connection." United Villages is an initiative that provides communties in Asia, Africa, and Latin America with a digital access to locally-relevant products and services using a low-cost, store-and-forward "drive-by WiFi" technology. Mobile Access Points (MAPs) are installed on existing vehicles (e.g. buses and motorcycles) and automatically provide access for WiFi-enabled Kiosks along the roads. Whenever a MAP is within range of a real-time wireless Internet connection, it transfers the data from and for those Kiosks. The United Villages project also allows users to request specific information or content for a few additional rupees. The wi-fi vehicles also deliver as well as collect e-mails, and brings e-Commerce to the villagers.

Read the full article on BBC News.
More on United Villages on their website.

The United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) last Friday launched a project aimed at helping farmers in Gabon diversify their incomes by developing and marketing new products from staple crops and by obtaining better access to value chains for products with significant market potential. The project aims to directly benefit 28,000 farmers, half of whom are women and a third young people.

Through training, farmer exchange visits and a new market information system, the project will also help farmers’ organizations better defend the economic interests of their members and market their goods more efficiently, according to IFAD's press release.

The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria launched a new website, MyGlobalFund.org, to foster sharing of best practices in the fight against the three pandemics; spreading ideas and stimulating research; and encouraging partnerships.

For more information on the Global Fund, please click here.

Economist.com recently features a report discussing innovation and how industries have become more open to and involved with it. Among these industries are the automotive and the IT industries. Larry Page, co-founder of Google, "had earlier hosted a gathering of leading environmentalists, political thinkers and energy experts to help shape an inducement to get things moving: the Automotive X Prize, expected to be unveiled in early 2008." This project urges both automotive and IT experts to develop the clean, software-rich car. "The organisers will offer at least $10m to whoever comes up with the best 'efficient, clean, affordable and sexy' car able to obtain the equivalent of 100 miles-per-gallon using alternative energy."

The article further discusses the current situation regarding Research and Development around the world, and continues to stress the importance of innovation. "Analysis done by the McKinsey Global Institute shows that competition and innovation (not information technology alone) led to the extraordinary productivity gains seen in the 1990s. 'Those innovations—in technology as well as products and business processes—boosted productivity. As productivity rose, competition intensified, bringing fresh waves of innovation,' the institute explains."

Read the full article here.

On an interview with Interpol by CNN, Kristin Kvigne, assistant director of Interpol's trafficking in human beings unit, discussed how Interpol currently addresses the growing concern on child pornography and child abuse online. A brief rundown on investigations related to the recently identified child pornographer Christopher Paul Neil was also discussed. According to Kvigne, the latest technological tools utilized by Interpol have greatly aided in the progress of their on-going investigation and manhunt. The Interpol officer further stressed that "Interpol has got great tools in place for preventing people with prior convictions, et cetera, to enter into countries unknown. Countries can use the notice system that Interpol has in alerting other countries as to their traveling potential sex offenders. And Interpol would like to see that used more by law enforcement globally." According to the interview, "Interpol has half a million more pictures of child sex abuse. In fact, more than half a million, with maybe 10,000 or 20,000 kids in them -- 10,000 or 20,000 victims. They've rescued roughly 600." More on Interpol related news here.

Incidentally, Facebook, a popular social networking website, recently expressed its renewed efforts to protect its users from online predators. "The precautions will include a new safety disclosure for parents and a more efficient complaint process to report unsolicited sexual advances and inappropriate content, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday at a news conference. Facebook will also allow an independent examiner -- chosen and paid for by the company, but approved by the attorney general -- to report on its compliance for the next two years." According to CNN, this recent announcement followed an investigation into Facebook launched by Cuomo wherein tests conducted by investigators "revealed 'significant defects' in safety controls and the company's response to complaints." Read the full article on the CNN website.

John Leyden recently reports on the WabiSabiLabi, an IT company providing space for auction of vulnerabilities and exploits, on The Register. According to the report, "it has exceeded expectations with the submission of more than 150 vulnerabilities in its first two months of operations." Among the vulnerabilities in the marketplace are 51 bugs in Windows, 19 flaws in Linux, 29 web application vulnerabilities, two Mac-related flaws, 10 flaws in enterprise software from SAP, and one IBM-related vulnerability. The company, however do not accept all submitted vulnerabilities. It has recently rejected 40 due to the use of "illegal methodology." Selling prices range between 100 to 15,000 euros each, and currently, 1,000 researchers have registered on the site.

Read the full article on The Register.

A social networking space to address climate change, OneClimate.net, was recently launched by OneWorld. The idea is to act as a ‘Climate Facebook’ to inspire people to protect planet Earth through exchange of experiences, asking questions, etc.

To read the press release, click here.

The Information for Development Program (infoDev) of The World Bank identified trends in 53 African countries related to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in education.

The report indicates a shift from small-scale pilot projects supported by donors and NGOs to a systematic policy and multi-stakeholder approach. While the degree of e-readiness varies from country to country, there is a growing commitment to using ICTs in education throughout administrations on the continent.

The survey finds some notable trends in the areas as follows:

• Public-private partnerships
• Digital content
• Open source software and operating systems
• Regional initiatives
• National research and education networks
• Internet connectivity
• Wireless networks

To read the summary report, click here.

To read the full article, click here.

Inveneo is a non-profit social enterprise whose mission is to get the tools of ICT into the hands of organizations and people who need them most - those in remote and rural communities in the developing world. To do this, Inveneo creates and sells highly affordable and sustainable ICTs that are specifically designed for organizations- governments, NGOs, private enterprises - that serve these rural communities with vital services that include education, healthcare, economic development, relief and telecentres.

During September 2007, CNN showed a programme about the work of Inveneo in rural Uganda where the co-founder, Kristin Peterson stated that she regarded providing ICT to rural areas as important as providing food.

HKDNR, together with the Office of Telecommunications Authority (OFTA), HK Police Force, Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT) and other agencies, dedicates much effort in implementing all possible measures to strike .hk domain names that are related to phishing or spamming sites.

"HKDNR is kept updated daily on a spamvertised domain list so that more comprehensive monitoring can be maintained and immediate action can be carried out against these domains. Any domains that are verified as phishing / spamming will be suspended immediately. According to the information published in mid June in AbuseButler on the top 800 spamvertised domains worldwide over the previous 4 weeks, the number of reports on .hk spamvertised domains accounted for 2.3 % of the total reports received. In early August, the number of reports on .hk spamvertised domains dropped to 0.3 % of the total reports received."

Read the full article at the HKIRC Newsletter (September 2007).

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on 28 September launched a new interactive web-based site, underscoring the important role information and communication technology (ICT) can play in promoting agriculture and rural development. Users can exchange experiences, opinions and good practices on the platform, http://www.e-agriculture.org/, which was developed by the FAO and its partners.

The platform is part of the Community of Expertise - a global initiative to boost sustainable agricultural development and food security through increased use of ICT –that includes policymakers, rural service providers, development practitioners, farmers, researchers and ICT specialists.

"We are confident that the e-agriculture Community of Expertise will help facilitate further global discussions and decisions facing farmers, Governments and the international community at large related to the role that ICT can have in agriculture and rural development," said the Director of FAO's Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division, Anton Mangstl.

More than 3,400 people from 135 countries participated in an online survey and in virtual forums to help develop the platform.

Although the digital divide is shrinking, only 18 per cent of the global population has access to the Internet. The UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that one billion people worldwide - most of whom depend in some way on agriculture for their livelihoods - still lack connection of any kind to ICT.

To access the press release from the United Nations News Centre, click here. 

For more information on e-agriculture activities related to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), click here. 

Om Malik of GigaOm writes about the popularity of the One Laptop Per Child project among kids and the problem of internet connectivity and infrastructure in the emerging economies. He sites the success and impact of the OLPC project on children in Brazil as expressed by the Brazilian Culture Minister Gilberto Gil on his speech at the Emerging Technologies (EmTech) Conference at MIT. However, the nation is not yet ready to pick up on this demand because of the lack of network infrastructure in the country. "We can’t just distribute computers. We have to build a backbone. Just making the technology accessible is not enough. Technology leads to language, to spiritual dimensions. It’s the whole process that matters. It’s not just one item, computers are not enough," says Gil.

However, John Roese, chief technology office of Nortel (NT), wrote on his blog about OLPC and the concept of hyperconnectivity saying that "while OLPC is not a Nortel product, it is a tool to stimulate the R&D teams to consider new communication models of hyper connectivity, new programming models and new collaboration methods. It also represents a new type of client, as well as new economic and networking models that are possibly a reflection of the future nature of broadband networking."

Read the full article here.

OECD has recently released its September 2007 issue of its newsletter. "OECD Information and Communication Policy News was launched in June 2006. Every quarter, it brings the latest news, statistics and best practice recommendations from the OECD on Information and Communication Policy, including policy for communication infrastructures and services, the information economy, security and privacy, and consumer protection." For more information, visit the OECD website.

Sophos recently reported on the hefty jail sentences that the pump-and-dump stock spam gang faces today. 47-year-old Michael Saquella (also known as Michael Paloma), 63-year-old Lawrence Kaplan, 38-year-old Henry Zemla and 26-year-old Justin Medlin have all pleaded guilty to being part of an international gang that spammed out fraudulent news stories to create artificial demand in stocks, pumping up the share price of 15 small companies (Beverly Hills Film Studios; Body Scan; Cor Equity Holdings; Courtside Products; eDollars, IFINIX; Integrity Messenger; Latin Heat Entertainment; Motion DNA; PokerBook Gaming; TKO Holding; Trans-Global Holdings; V3 Global; Xtreme Technologies; and Zuma Beach Entertainment) and raising more than $20 million from investors. The four men are now facing between 5-10 years in prison.

"Pump and dump stock campaigns work by spammers purchasing stock at a cheap price and then artificially inflating its price by encouraging others to purchase more (often by spamming "good news" about the company to others). The spammers then sell off their stock at a profit. Sophos experts report that pump-and-dump stock campaigns account for approximately 25 percent of all spam, up from 0.8 percent in January 2005. Earlier this year, Sophos reported how the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had suspended trading in 35 companies as they were found to be commonly referenced in pump-and-dump stock email campaigns."

Read the full article here.

The International Trade Centre's e-Trade Development Unit published its latest newsletter today, which highlights the topics as follows:

• ITC joins the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development;
• Mali K7: an African Record Company aims at the Global Market;
• Training on e-Commerce targets SMEs in Tehran;
• Interview with Mr. Walid Kooli, e-Commerce focal point in Tunisia;
• Report from the field: ETDU in Iran;
• Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) event mobilizes African firms;
• Helping Developing Countries migrate towards Paperless Trade;
• Paperless trade - how does it work?
• Bangladesh designs a strategy for its technology sector.

Interpol proposed on Wednesday the creation of global and regional anti-crime centres to fight criminal activity online and respond quickly to emergency cybercrime alerts. During an international cybercrimes conference in New Delhi, Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble said that the Internet should not be allowed to become a place where criminals have the upper hand and can escape punishment. Officials from 37 countries discussed identity theft, online bank fraud, Internet gaming and the risks of online terrorist activity during the two-day conference organized by Interpol.

To read the full article, click here.

At the first Regional Conference on Literacy taking place in Mali this week, Angola's Minister of Education underlined the importance of literacy skills to foster health prevention in Africa as the Angola Press Agency reported yesterday via All Africa.

In order to reach the objectives of the National Plan of Education for All by 2015, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are now used as tools to promote autodidactic learning and to train citizens on matters related to health primary care, personal hygiene, HIV/Aids and environment.

To read more, click here.

A new mobile system where one makes calls directly between phones, for free, is being trialled by TerraNet, a Swedish company, in hopes of dramatically improving communications in the developing world. "TerraNet has developed the idea using peer-to-peer technology that enables users to speak on its handsets without the need for a mobile phone base station. The technology is designed for remote areas of the countryside or desert where base stations are unfeasible. Projects backed by TerraNet recently launched in Tanzania and Ecuador. The TerraNet technology works using handsets adapted to work as peers that can route data or calls for other phones in the network. The handsets also serve as nodes between other handsets, extending the reach of the entire system. Each handset has an effective range of about one kilometre. This collaborative routing of calls means there is no cost to talk between handsets. When a TerraNet phone is switched on, it begins to look for other phones within range. If it finds them, it starts to connect and extend the radio network. When a number is dialled a handset checks to see if the person being called is within range. If they are, the call goes through. While individually the phones only have a maximum range of 1km, any phone in between two others can forward calls, allowing the distance to double. This principle applied many times creates a mini network. However, TerraNet founder Anders Carlius admitted that this has created big problems with having enough available frequencies. The system can also be used to make calls to other TerraNet mesh networks via a net-connected PC fitted with an inexpensive USB dongle."

Currently, this new system only works with a special handset, but "Mr Carlius said he hopes that it will eventually be a feature available on all phones, like Bluetooth. He said that were this to happen, it could potentially spell the end for the current Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications model which is used by about 70% of all mobile phones." Most large mobile companies seem skeptical at the moment, but according to Mr Carlius, mobile phone manufacturer Ericsson had invested around £3m in TerraNet.

Read the full article on BBC News.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) accepted the role and responsibilities of facilitating activities related to the action line under C.7 ICT Applications - e-Agriculture at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) follow-up meetings held in February 2006 in Geneva.

In May 2007, a pilot web-based platform, www.e-agriculture.org was launched providing a dynamic space for those interested in shaping e-agriculture policies and practices to network, share information, experiences, and opinions, and to find out about new and useful systems, tools, and methodologies.

From 12 September to 3 October 2007, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) invites all e-Agriculture Community members to participate in its online consultation on "Opening Access to CGIAR Research and Knowledge: From Data, Information and Collaboration to Food" at the online forum. The objective is to make it easier for CGIAR staff, partners and potential partners to access, use and add value to the research and to the scientific outputs of the CGIAR.

With the objective to support the use of ICTs and knowledge management in the agricultural sector, a strategy has been drafted on global public goods.

• Integrated access to global public goods stewarded by the CGIAR (technical standards/portal work);
• Networking and capacity building to ensure the best possible linkages between CGIAR, NARS and other partners for public goods generation and sharing;
• Value-added information products and services.

Eric Bangeman of Ars Technica reports on the growing power of PSP on the internet today. According to a new survey from ipoque, a German traffic management and analysis firm, P2P traffic is dominating the Internet these days with ipoque's "preliminary results" showing that P2P applications account from anywhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of all Internet traffic. The final survey results are not yet available and will presented at the Emerging Technology Conference at MIT later this month.

During the last year, BitTorrent accounted for between 50 percent to 75 percent of all P2P traffic, with eDonkey coming in second at between 5 percent and 50 percent. ipoque's data appears at odds with that of Ellacoya Networks, a company that makes deep packet inspection gear. The company said in June that P2P traffic accounts for just 37 percent of North American traffic, compared with 46 percent for HTTP traffic. Of that 46 percent, over a third consisted of streaming video, à la YouTube.

Despite the differences in how the traffic is broken out, ipoque and Ellacoya's data both illustrate much of the P2P traffic reported by both firms is video. With the surge in traffic of YouTube and other video sites, as well as the official upcoming launch of Joost, demand for high-bandwidth applications like video is definitely increasing. This has resulted to ISPs' interest in deep packet inspection and other traffic-shaping tools.

Read full article here.

Vanguard Media reported today on planned subsidies for telecom operators to erect base transceivers stations in Nigeria with the support of the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF).

The Fund would receive parts of the annual operating levy that all operators pay to the Nigerian Communications Commission. Finally, subsidies would allow telecom operators to expand their services to isolated and under-served areas, which would enable rural communities to have access to the information society through internet and telephone.

Click here, to read more.

Internet bandwidth could become a global currency under a proposed model for the future of e-commerce that exploits a novel peer-to-peer video sharing application designed by a trans-Atlantic team of computer scientists according to an article by Vidura Panditaratne on Wednesday, 29 August 2007. This application is being used by researchers from Delft University of Technology and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to explore a next-generation model for safe and legal electronic commerce that uses Internet bandwidth as a global currency. An enhanced version of this application called Tribler is now available for free download online.

A version of the Tribler video sharing software serves as a model for an e-commerce system because of its flexibility, speed, and reliability. The researchers envision this model to connect users to a single global market, without any controlling company, network, or bank with bandwidth as the first true Internet "currency" for such a market. "By studying user behavior within an operational 'Internet currency' system, with a particular focus on understanding how and why attacks, fraud, and abuse occur and how trust can be established and maintained, the researchers imagine future improvements to everything from on-demand television to online auctions to open content encyclopedias."

Read more by accessing the full article.

The VietNamNet Bridge yesterday published an interview with the Ministry of Information and Communications of Vietnam. According to the Deputy Minister, developing e-government would support the government to operate more effectively, more transparently and to better serve citizens.

Planned activities based on experiences in Vietnam and other countries would aim to integrate ICT applications into public administration agencies by 2010. Doing so would require digitalizing administrative systems and procedures, and providing ICT training. To overcome the reluctance to change, the programme would seek the support and involvement of civil society, private industry and local and regional administrations.

To read more, click here.

GigaOM, on an article by Om Malik, "All Hail SMS," discusses the growing popularity of Short Message Service (SMS), aka text messaging, despite rumors of its pending demise. The technology's relative simplicity and ease of use, despite the high tariffs imposed by carriers around the world, makes SMS usage more and more popular. According to Paul Ruppert, a veteran of mobile business and now a consultant, every year, 2.1 billion global mobile users send 3 trillion SMS messages. Even in markets like the U.S., which lagged in embracing the ease and power of texting and seemingly preferred email and Instant Messaging, text messaging has become an intimate aspect of daily lives, especially for those 15 to 25. Commonly used communications applications embedding direct-to-SMS functionality, such as the new Yahoo Mail, which comes with free text messaging to mobile phone numbers (available in the U.S., Canada, India and the Philippines), have also become apparent nowadays.

Om Malik also writes that "some (mostly entrepreneurs and venture capitalists) believe that like email, SMS is the vehicle for add-on-innovation. There are gaming companies that have turned SMS-based voting into a big business. Voice SMS is being talked about as the next big thing."

To read the full artcile, click here.

The FBI has chosen the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to host a new law enforcement cybersecurity research center. The bureau said it would provide $3 million to support the first two years' operation of the National Center for Digital Intrusion Response.

The bureau said the state university's IT security scholars would work with FBI cybersecurity specialists to understand what new capabilities are required to better detect and investigate cyberattacks, develop new tools and ensure that FBI agents in the field can use them effectively. The bureau's expansion of its work with the university team reflects changes in the patterns of crime and national security threats, the FBI said. "While cyberattacks were once considered a specialized niche in law enforcement, today there are digital aspects to many crimes and national security threats; all investigators must be able to pursue criminals operating in cyberspace," the FBI said. "NCDIR will provide training, including intensive summer workshops, so all FBI agents have the opportunity to use these new tools in the field."

Some of the projects and IT security tools developed by NCSA through the funding of the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies include MyProxy, a tool for grid credential management; Framework for Log Anonymization and Information Management, an app that facilitates sharing of log data among secure systems; GridShib, at tool that supports identity federation for grids; Trustworthy Cyberinfrastructure for the Power Grid; and Illinois Terrorism Task Force's First Responder's Credentialing.

Read the full article at Government Computer News (GCN).

On 22 July 2007, the New York Times reported on Rwanda's current Internet connectivity situation. According to the article, in 2003, Greg Wyler, an American businessman, promised the Rwandan government fiber optic cables and connectivity among schools, government institutions and homes through low-cost, high-speed Internet service. His company, Terracom,was granted a contract to connect 300 schools to the Internet, and later, the company bought 99 percent of the shares in Rwandatel, the country’s national telecommunications company, for $20 million. However, after nearly four years, the government criticizes Terracom for not having delivered and materialized most of the benefits they have hailed.

The technical, political and business realities of Africa are said to have caused this slow progress of the venture. Apart from the failed and delayed attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses in the continent, the lack of infrastructure is also being blamed to be the biggest drawback. Some other difficulties mentioned were insufficient bandwidth capacity on satellites, poor management and intermittent power failures. Rwandan officials also say that the company seems more interested in tapping the more lucrative cellphone market than in being an Internet service provider.

With Terracom’s new chief executive, Christopher Lundh, a former executive of Gateway Communications in London, government officials say Terracom’s performance has improved. The government, meanwhile, is moving forward with its own plans to build a fiber optic network. It also has granted Internet service licenses to South African companies and plans to issue several more. A reduced price of Internet service to about $10 a month is also aimed for according to Nkubito Bakuramutsa, director general of the Rwanda Information Technology Authority.

To read the full article, click here.

According to an analyst report, the internet is heading for a crash unless it increases its bandwidth capabilities. A study conducted by ABI Research claims that cable firms face the biggest challenge as their technology will reach saturation point first.

Stan Schatt, research director at ABI, told Ars Technica: "Uploading bandwidth is going to have to increase, and the cable providers are going to get killed on bandwidth as HD programming becomes more commonplace." He adds that the solution to the problem is to change to digital switching and move to IPTV.

Researchers from Cisco Systems seem to agree with this claim. Cisco found that American video websites currently transmit more data per month than the entire amount of traffic sent over the internet in 2000. The company estimates that file-sharing makes up at least one-third of today's internet traffic. The Cisco report predicted that video streaming and downloads will increase to make up to 30 percent consumer internet traffic in 2011, up from the 2006 figure of nine per cent.

With the release of the BBC's iPlayer online television service in the UK, bandwidth concerns with internet service providers increase even more. However, Orange reports that the internet overload does not appear to have started yet.

Continue reading the article here at vnunet.com.

Technicians and engineers from Telecoms sans Frontieres started deploying telecommunication centres in Peru to restore communications in the areas hit by the earthquakes last week, as the BBC reported. Well operating and reliable telecommunications are vital for coordinating emergency relief work and humanitarian assitance.  The technologies brought by the non-governmental organization include satellite telephones and internet modems, and equipment to set up wireless connectivity to the internet. More on BBC News. 

The Russian government plans to introduce full-scale e-government services by 2010, as The Moscow Times reports. This would create a single point of entry to government services substantially reducing administrative costs and time to access information by citizens, public institutions and private organizations in the country.

To read more, click here.

Two Ethiopian hospitals have been linked with a specialist hospital in India, which allows doctors to obtain real-time second opinion over the internet, as BBC News reported on 16 July 2007.

The pilot project focusing on a hospital in Addis Ababa and on a provincial one located 300 km away from the capital would likely be followed-up by connecting a total of 20 more hospitals into the network. For the first five years, India will run the project free of charge.

The technical platform facilitates sharing of patients' data between healthcare professionals (such as X-rays, laboratory tests, etc.); health workers in remote areas have better access to medical expertise without moving over long and time-consuming distances.

In order to improve secondary education and access to medical expertise, 23 African countries are already in the loop for a similar project agreed between India and the African Union.

To read the full article, click here.

Information technology flourishes in northern Indian states, as the Financial Express reports on 13 August 2007. In order to better evaluate the capacities of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) in India to participate in a globally networked economy, the department of information technology and the National Council of Applied Economic Research released its latest e-Readiness Assessment report in January 2007.

States and union territories ranked at the top have implemented, among others, some e-Governance initiatives for land and property records, transportation, birth and death registration, and ICT applications for agriculture. Further activities to boost the level of e-Readiness as well as e-Governance are mentioned in the article such as providing an enabling political and regulatory environment, infrastructure, capacity building and sharing experiences with other states.

To learn more of the national e-Governance plan, click here.

The first Global Information Society Watch 2007 report was released at the United Nations' Palais des Nations in Geneva on 22 May 2007 and during the The Third Annual SANGONeT "ICTs for Civil Society" Conference and Exhibition in Johannesburg, South Africa on 18 July 2007. The report discusses the state of the field of information and communication technology (ICT) policy at local and global levels and particularly how policy impacts on the lives of people living in developing countries.

Studies of the ICT policy situation in twenty-two countries from four regions are featured: Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda); Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and the Philippines); Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru); and Eastern Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania), with one report from a Western European country (Spain).

The report concludes that when it comes to ICTs for development, there are some conspicuous similarities between the countries. Excluding Spain, the other twenty-one countries each show obvious evidence of the "digital divide" which impacts on the majority of people negatively. The report also includes provocative, analytical essays on five international institutions (including ICANN and the World Intellectual Property Organisation) questioning the extent to which they allow all stake-holders to participate in their processes. There is a special section on how to measure progress as well.

Read more on the Global Information Society Watch.

The Journal Record reported on a hospital group in Oklahoma City, USA that is developing a technology program to better connect its hospitals and clinics in the metropolitan area with its seven rural hospitals. This program uses the existing hospitals’ infrastructure, and will cost USD 30,000 to develop. It will initially focus on fetal monitoring and on sharing records amongst hospitals, which will allow doctors to assist patients at different locations in remote areas. 

Read the full article here.

An Informational draft RFC by John Curran was recently published, outlining an IPv4 to IPv6 transition plan. The paper provides a clear guidance to organizations regarding specific expectations that change over time, and vary greatly by organization. A timeline of the different phases was set with the intention of allowing enough time for the necessary planning and deployment steps which each organization must undertake. The author proposes the transition to predominantly IPv6-connectivity by Januaray 2011 in response to meeting the overall requirements of allowing the Internet to scale as specified in "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol" [RFC1752].

On the contrary, Randy Bush provides a very informative presentation, IPv6 Transition & Operational Reality, regarding the reality of such a transition. The presentation discusses the different myths about IPv4 and IPv6, the emergence of a market for IPv4 addresses, and the transition from allocation to entitlement among others.

For more background data and interesting comments from Geoff Huston, read his IPv4 Address Report or his ISP column articles on The End of (IPv4) World, and Transition to IPv6.

The Africa Health Infoway is a World Health Organization (WHO) project supported by the Department for International Development (DfiD) that aims to provide a technology platform that supports the collection of sub national health data and statistics for analysis, dissemination and use to facilitate decision making in health, and strengthen capacity of African countries to use information in decision making. It is a district-based public health information network for African health which focuses on infostructure and connectivity, district health information systems, and knowledge translation into policy and action.

For more information on the Africa Health Infoway, click here.

The OECD's Ministerial meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy has been opened to an Online Public Consultation, providing an opportunity for all stakeholders to comment on the topics and issues to be discussed at event. The public consultation is scheduled to be open until 14 September 2007, and stakeholders and players may share their views and opinions with the OECD through their Online Questionnaire.

"The Ministerial represents an opportunity for high-level stakeholders from government, business, the technical community, and civil society to consider broad social, economic and technical trends shaping the development of the Internet Economy, and to discuss policies that can respond to evolving societal needs. The participation of all players in the dialogue is important to ensure that the Ministerial is able to benefit from a wide range of viewpoints and expertise."

For more information on the public consultation, go here or visit the OECD website.

On 25 June 2007, Malaysia released a notice for Tenders for the Provision of Consultancy Service for Strategic Study and Drafting of Anti-Spam Legislation for Malaysia. For more information, visit the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission website.

The Internet Society of New Zealand (InternetNZ) released the ISP Spam Code of Practice in May 2007 for public consultation, and it had been open to comments until 18 June 2007. The Code was developed by the InternetNZ / Telecommunication Carriers' Forum (TCF) / The Marketing Association (MA) Working Party which has representation from a cross section of service providers and other interested parties.

The ISP Spam Code of Practice was created in keeping with the requirements of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 of the New Zealand government. It had also been developed with regard to the MA’s Code of Practice for Direct Marketing and the TCF’s SMS Anti-Spam Code, which both deal with Spam related issues, as well as to the TCF’s Customer Complaints Code.

Both consumers and service providers are expected to benefit from the adoption of this Code. The Code aims to establish practices that will lead to the minimization of Spam in New Zealand. It also aims to provide information to end users about both preventative and curative steps against Spam. Anticipated benefits to the service providers include the generation of higher levels of customer satisfaction and improved operational efficiency due to the reduced volumes of spam.

Public submissions on the Code can be found here.

Visit the Internet Society of New Zealand website for further details.

With the rise of innovative use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) cites the "challenges and threats" that go with ICT development and gives emphasis on the importance of information security and risk management in chapter 5 of its Information Economy Report (IER) 2005.

The chapter elaborately presents an appreciation of the following policy points:

• Information Security (IS) needs to be conducted from a Risk Management process perspective; managing IS from a technological, problem-response, reactive perspective is sub-optimal for firms and public institutions.
• Information Security threats mainly come in the form of "social engineering", thus purely technology based defenses are misguided - i.e. they are the Maginot Line of cybersecurity.
• Information Security threats regularly and easily transcend national boundaries, and thus the need for international cooperation and coordination, both at a technical and a policy level, is unambiguous.
• Information Security policy should be a component of the national e-policy and should be appropriately incentivized to adopt a Risk Management framework through regulation.

An overview of international policy discussions on information security concludes this chapter together with a discussion of policy recommendations for Governments and some insights to future developments and relevance for intergovernmental processes and the international community.

Read the full chapter of the IER 2005 here.

28-31 Aug 2007 The ITU, in collaboration with the Viet Nam Ministry of Posts and Telematics and with support from the government of Australia, will be hosting a workshop 28-31 August 2007 entitled Regional Workshop on Frameworks for Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure Protection in Hanoi, Viet Nam.

The description of the event, draft agenda, invitation letter, and practical information for meeting participants is available on the event website. Further information is available from cybmail@itu.int.

The ITU will be hosting a workshop on 17th Sepember 2007 entitled ITU Workshop on Frameworks for National Action: Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure Protection:

At the start of the 21st century, modern societies have a growing dependency on information and communication technologies (ICTs) which are globally interconnected. However, with these growing dependencies, new threats to network and information security have emerged. There is a growing misuse of electronic networks for criminal purposes or for objectives that can adversely affect the integrity of critical infrastructures within States. To address these threats and to protect these infrastructures, a coordinated national framework is required - combined with regional and international cooperation. This workshop will review several related ITU initiatives and present two case studies by expert speakers from the United States of America and the European Union on their respective approaches. Attendance at the workshop is open to all interested participants within available space. Further information is available from cybmail@itu.int.

According to a recent Press Realease by The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), Singapore is already looking into a new five-year infocomm security roadmap (2008-2012) as it embarks on the final year of the current three-year Infocomm Security Masterplan (2005-2008). The Infocomm Security Masterplan was launched on 22 February 2005 as a strategic roadmap to chart Singapore's national efforts in developing capabilities to prevent cyber-security incidents and protect the critical infrastructure from cyber-threats. According to Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore "cannot afford to be complacent, especially with new and dangerous threats evolving and growing at such an alarming rate. Instead of simply taking one step forward, we need to be many steps ahead in our efforts to combat cyber threats."

Providing a glimpse of the new five-year Masterplan to be launched in 2008, Dr. Balakrishnan shared that the new infocomm security roadmap will build on Singapore's existing efforts to focus on more international collaborations to improve Singapore's ability to combat cyber threats. The collaborations will look into knowledge exchanges and regular communication between governments on cyber threat trends and protection of critical infrastructure. When launched in 2008, the new security roadmap will also secure Singapore's ultra high-speed and pervasive Next Generation National Infocomm Infrastructure (NGNII) to provide a secure and trusted environment for the creation of new value-added services such as location-based marketing, goods tracking and localised information services and the pervasive adoption of online services such as those in the area of banking, healthcare and education.

Under the current Masterplan, the government has developed various security initiatives to equip public officers with more timely information and knowledge to assess and improve on their cyber defence. This allows them to better protect, detect and respond to cyber threats. An example is the Cyber-WatchCentre which monitors cyber threats real-time and round-the-clock. By mid 2008, the centre will ensure end-to-end security for all public officers, allowing government agencies to better anticipate cyber attacks and respond to them speedily.

For more information on these inititiatives, view the IDA Press Release.

Kaspersky Lab, a developer of secure content management solutions, recently announced its annual report on malware and spam evolution. The report, authored by Kaspersky Lab analysts, surveys the trends of 2006 and looks at what 2007 may bring.

Malware Evolution: 2006. The report provides an overview of the most important incidents in the malware world, highlights the main trends, and examines how the situation will evolve. Particular stress is laid on the continuing increase in the number of Trojan programs, particularly those designed to steal online gaming account data; the first viruses and worms for MacOS; and Trojans for J2ME, which are designed to steal funds from mobile user accounts. The number of new malicious programs was up 41% on 2005. As for the future evolution of malicious programs, Kaspersky Lab virus analysts believe that virus writers and spammers will work ever more closely together; the number of Trojans will continue to increase; and that virus writers will be on the lookout for exploitable vulnerabilities in Vista.

Spam Evolution: 2006. Data provided by the Kaspersky Spam Lab shows that in 2006, between 70% and 80% of mail traffic on the Russian Internet was spam. The majority of spam sent to Russian users originates in Russia, the U.S.A. and China. Spammers actively used graphics in order to evade spam filters. They are also continued to send spam masquerading as personal correspondence in order to get the recipient to read the whole message and then act as the spammers intended, whether by calling a designated number or clicking on a link. The report on spam evolution also highlights how mass mailings differ from each other according to language: most Russian language spam offers education and training, and a wide range of goods ranging from busts of the Russian president to a device which will 'translate' a dog's bark. English language spam, on the other hand, tends to focus on advertising for stocks and shares, viagra and cheap software. The report also notes that spam became increasingly criminalized in 2006, with spammers actively using SMS to spread spam.

The company's analysts believe that technologies currently in use will continue to evolve in 2007, together with further development of graphical spam, and increased criminalization of mass mailings.

Read the executive summaries here: Malware Evolution: 2006 and Spam Evolution: 2006.
The full annual report can be found here.  

This news item was accessed through Russia Newswire.

ITU-T Study Group 2’s February meeting saw work continue on harmonizing numbering resources for child helplines. Study Group 2 is looking at the issue following a request from Child Helpline International (CHI). CHI is a global network of telephone helplines and outreach services for children and young people.

Specifically Study Group 2 is looking at the logistics of providing a global number. It previously conducted a survey which discovered that a wide range of numbers are in use globally and that there is support in many countries for studying a more harmonized solution. A review process will be an initial assessment of all of the various options for introducing childrens’ helplines. The fundamental question is whether a single number can be deployed worldwide. Other issues include how regulators will handle migration from existing services and who pays for the services.

See the Study Group 2 website and ITU-T Newslog for further information.

In today's interconnected world of networks, threats can now originate anywhere − our collective cybersecurity depends on the security practices of every connected country, business, and citizen. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency within the United Nations system, would like to draw Safer Internet Day participants' interest to a number of information resources dedicated to cybersecurity and spam.

The ITU Cybersecurity Gateway is an easy-to-use online information resource on national and international cybersecurity related initiatives worldwide. A vast number of resources and links are available and organizations are invited to join in partnership with the ITU and other stakeholders to build confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The StopSpamAlliance is a joint initiative to gather information and resources on combating spam. This initiative was undertaken by Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the EU's Contact Network of Spam Authorities (CNSA), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the London Action Plan, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Seoul-Melbourne Anti-Spam group. The StopSpamAlliance.org website contains an overview about each of these organization’s activities in countering spam and related threats.

The outcome documents from the two phases of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) emphasize that building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a necessary pillar for building a global information society. ITU has been asked to play the main facilitator role for to assist stakeholders in building confidence and security in the use of ICTs. To stress the importance of the multi-stakeholder implementation of this task, ITU has named this the Partnerships for Global Cybersecurity (PGC) initiative.

In commenting on the Safer Internet initiative, newly elected ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure stressed the need for greater cooperation between regulators, government, security firms, communication service providers, and end users in dealing with the challenges to building a safe and secure information society.

The International Telecommunication Union wishes you all a very successful Safer Internet Day 2007!

Enquiries related to ITU activities in the area of cybersecurity can be directed to cybersecurity@itu.int.

 

About ITU

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is an international organization (specialized agency) within the United Nations System where governments and the private sector coordinate global telecommunication networks and services. Through its standards, development, and policy research activities, ITU has a long-standing track record in security for information and communication systems. There are currently more than seventy ITU recommendations focusing on security.

According to a recent article in The Register, two young Dutch hackers who built a large botnet were sentenced to prison earlier this week. The main suspect, now 20, was handed a two-year sentence and a €9,000 f($11,800) fine, while his 28-year-old partner was given 18 months and ordered to pay €4,000 0 ($5,200).

As stated by the article, the men, part of a larger hacking ring, and one other suspect, were arrested in 2005 for extorting a US company, stealing identities to purchase cameras and games consoles, and distribute spyware. The operation netted an estimated €60,000 over a period of six months.

Read the full The Register article here.

ITU held a workshop entitled The Future of Voice on the 15^th and 16^th of January 2007 at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. This workshop organized under the ITU New Initiatives Programme focused on the role of voice communications in the future ubiquitous network environment.

For a long time, voice services have been the principal driver of telecommunication revenue and will probably continue to drive demand for some time. Nevertheless, it is becoming harder to sustain traditional models of per-minute pricing for voice as the service is increasingly carried over data channels that are priced on a flat-rate basis. Some of the key issues discussed during the event include:

• How are voice services evolving and what does this mean for users, providers and the telecommunication industry as a whole?
• How will fixed, mobile and internet-based phone services converge?
• How does messaging, gaming, multimedia fit in?
• Are voice services of the future most likely to be billed by the minute, by volume, or on a flat rate basis?
• What regulatory freedom should be given to operators to bundle voice with other services (e.g., multiple play: voice, video, internet and mobility)?
• What form of licensing, if any, will be necessary for voice service providers?
• What will be the new business models and revenue streams?
• What are the residual universal service obligations (e.g. emergency calls) that should be imposed on voice providers?

All presentations and background papers as well as a web archive of the event (video and audio) are available on the workshop website.

Several Internet-related Decisions and Resolutions were adopted at the ITU 2006 Plenipotentiary Conference. These include:

• DECISION GT-PLEN/A (Antalya, 2006): Fourth World Telecommunication Policy Forum
• RESOLUTION 101 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): Internet Protocol-based networks
• RESOLUTION 102 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): ITU’s role with regard to international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet and the management of Internet resources, including domain names and addresses
• RESOLUTION 130 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): Strengthening the role of ITU in building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies
• RESOLUTION 133 (Rev. Antalya, 2006): Role of administrations of Member States in the management of internationalized (multilingual) domain names
• RESOLUTION GT-PLEN/7 (Antalya, 2006): Study on the participation of all relevant stakeholders in the activities of the Union related to the World Summit on the Information Society

The text of these resolutions and decisions can be found here.

The eighth edition of the ITU Internet Reports, entitled "digital.life" was prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World 2006 (December 4-8 2006, Hong Kong)and is available now online. The report examines how innovation in digital technology is radically changing individual and societal lifestyles.

Chapter one: going digital outlines the meanings of "digital" and reflects on the many ways of being digital. Around one in every three people on the planet now carries a digital mobile phone around with them wherever they go. Globally, more hours are spent consuming digital media, such as the internet, than any analogue media, including television and radio. Digital technologies are transforming businesses and governments, and changing the ways we live and interact. We are witnessing what has been termed a “digital revolution”, which had its beginnings in the early 1980s and refers to the replacement of analogue devices and services with their digital successors. This technological shift has brought about considerable change in the human condition itself, especially in its socioeconomic and cultural aspects.

The transition from narrowband to broadband digital networks (figure below) is now well-advanced in the fixed-line world where there were some 216 million broadband subscribers across the world at the end of 2005, amounting to just over half the total number of internet subscribers and around one-fifth of total fixed lines.

As the world becomes increasingly digital, new challenges and important dilemmas arise for businesses and policy-makers. Private individuals, too, are faced with a bewildering number of choices for their information and communications needs.

If you are eager to discover more about these challenges as well as about the importance of being digital and digital ubiquity, you can download chapter one: going digital.

The full text of the report is available online at the digital.life website.  For more information about the report, contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int.

In conjunction with the Forum at ITU TELECOM WORLD 2006, 4-8 December in Hong Kong, China, ITU is organizing a one day event on 8 December entitled "Countering Spam Cooperation Agenda". Key international and regional organizations involved in the fight against spam will gather to discuss greater collaborative efforts to combat spam and related threats. The event is open to all ITU TELECOM WORLD 2006 participants.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

According to a recent Forbes article a new kind of spam is rapidly invading users’ e-mail boxes: image spam.

To the human eye, image spam looks like regular junk email, but for anti-spam software, the image spam is very hard to detect. Usually anti-spam programs scan messages for certain key phrases but do not analyze pictures, so the same word saved as an image file goes undetected. Anti-spam technology is trying to adapt to this new phenomenon. However, for now, image spam is on the growth and is consuming much more bandwidth and storage space in consumers’ e-mail boxes.

To read the full Forbes article, please click here.

For more information, see Secure Computing’s Report on Image Spam.

In his remarks at the First Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Athens, Greece, 30 October 2006, ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi, encouraged meeting participants to "welcome open debate in the great spirit of Athenian democracy".

See the transcript of Secretary-General Utsumi's speech here.

United Kingdom's telecommunications regulator Ofcom criticized a proposed European Union law regulating the internet, warning that "it could devastate the continent's internet-TV, mobile-multimedia and online-games industries". Under the EU proposal, many internet broadcasts would face the same requirements on advertising content and production quotas as traditional television.

The U.K. regulator hired Rand Corp. to conduct an impact-assessment study, which outlined the possible negative effects. There are major uncertainties about the future "trajectory" of Internet TV, the regulator said in a note accompanying the study. "Creators will simply distribute their own material via the open Internet, bypassing the need for any form of commercial relationship with other distributors," the regulator said, adding that internet broadcasters would move offshore to escape the regulation. The U.K. position is crucial.

When the EU proposal was first floated last year, London opposed all extension of broadcasting rules to new media. Ofcom spokesman Simon Bates said the U.K. has realized that some new services will fall under the regulation. The key is to gain exemptions for particularly vulnerable services. "We understand that some TV-like services that look like TV and feel like TV warrant some protection," he said, adding that fledgling services should remain exempt. "Our worst fear would be if blogs are required to be regulated like mass-media television services, with rules for example about offensive content." If infant industries are regulated, Ofcom says they risk being pushed offshore. Even though mobile-phone operators could restrict their services available on the open Internet, the EU regulation would give them "incentives to artificially structure businesses so that the regulatable activity of making and creating content takes place outside the EU." The regulation could devastate Europe's online-games industry, the report added. "Rand Europe finds that this industry is global, and that the added value activity of creating and developing games is highly 'portable,'" the regulator writes. "This industry is therefore highly susceptible to increases in regulation in one territory, however small, especially when that regulation does not have parallels in other territories." The regulator recommends "excluding online games altogether from the scope" of the EU regulation.

The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on the proposal by year end. EU governments meeting in the Brussels-based Council of Ministers also must approve it. Intellect, a U.K. trade association, recently said the regulation threatens to stifle services such as on-demand and interactive-video content.

Please see William Echikson's article in Wall Street Journal Europe for more details.

On 16 October 2006, Mauritius officially launched their Anti-Spam Awareness Campaign. On this occasion the Minister of IT and Telecommunications also presented a dedicated Anti-Spam Website with resource aimed at raising awareness and sharing information on spam, malwares, etc.

In Mauritius, the spamming problem is gaining in magnitude and there is a need to have a concerted approach to address this issue. Without remedial action to address the problem of spam in Mauritius, the country runs the risk of being seen as a safe haven for spammers and there is the risk that legitimate email traffic from Mauritius to other countries which have anti-spam legislation, could be blocked. In this context, the National Computer Board has set up a National Anti Spam Committee to co-ordinate activities at the national level with regards to combating spam.

The Anti-Spam Co-ordination Committee consists of representatives from the following national organisations: National Computer Board; IT Security Unit, Ministry of IT and Telecommunications; Ministry of Education and Human Resources; Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Small and Medium Enterprises and Cooperatives; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Cooperation Joint Economic Council; Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI); State Law Office; ICT Authority; Mauritius IT Industry Association; Internet Society; University of Mauritius (UOM); University of Technology; Telecom Plus/Mauritius Telecom ACT.

For further information see the newly launched Anti-Spam Website and Mauritius' Anti-Spam Action Plan.

The Journal du Net states in a recent article that organized cybercrimes represent a growing risk for internet users. Hackers use new techniques to hide and make their attacks more efficient. Their main goal is not to destroy computers. With the rapid development of e-commerce, hackers want to take over personal data and make as much profit as they can with it.

To achieve this, they use different forms of worms or trojans send from servers hosted in countries where the legislation is less strict. To protect their economic interests, businesses need to include employees in their security policies so they do not become the weak link in the security chain.

See Journal du Net for the full article in French.

The first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will be held in Athens, Greece from 30 October - 2 November 2006.

The current programme is available here.

A couple of related websites have been unveiled:

• Australian academic Jeremy Malcolm has established IGFWatch at igfwatch.org.
  
• Jeremy Malcolm and also joined with UK journalist Kieren McCarthy to establish the IGF Community Site at www.igf2006.info for interaction before, during and after the event.

CircleID has a related article asking What Will Be the Outcome of the Internet Governance Forum Meeting in Athens?

Business Week Online shows in a recent article entitled "Needed: A National Cyber Security Law'" that more and more people have their personal information lost, stolen or compromised. Security breaches are eroding their trust in the capability of the Internet to deal with their private personal information. This growing confidence-deficit represents a serious threat to the economic growth of each country, according to the article. Therefore, it is time for officials to act by passing strong data-security laws. These national laws must aim to both prevent further data breaches and address leaks once they occur.

"To accomplish these goals, lawmakers should establish reasonable security measures, create a consistent and recognizable notification standard, encourage best practices such as encryption, and include effective enforcement capabilities".

See Business Week Online for the full article.

Computer World released an article entitled “Ten security trends worth watching”, based on Bruce Schneier’s speech at last month’s Hack in the Box Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Mr. Schneier identified 10 trends affecting information security today:

1. Information is more valuable than ever.
2. Networks are critical infrastructure. "If the Net goes down, or part of the Net goes down, it really affects the economy".
3. Users do not necessarily control information about themselves. For example, Internet service providers have control over records the Web sites that users visit and email messages they send and receive.
4. Hacking is increasingly a criminal profession. More and more, attacks are organized and led by criminals who are driven by a profit motive.
5. Complexity is your enemy. "As systems get more complex they get less secure". Mr. Schneier mentioned that the Internet is "the most complex machine ever built".
6. Attacks are faster than patches. New vulnerabilities and exploits are being discovered faster than vendors can patch them.
7. Worms are more sophisticated than ever. 
8. The endpoint is the weakest link. "It doesn't matter how good your authentication schemes are if the remote computer isn't trustworthy".
9. End users are seen as threats.
10. Regulations will drive security audits.

See Computer World for the full article.

"The existing identity infrastructure of the Internet is no longer sustainable. The level of fraudulent activity online has grown exponentially over the years and is now threatening to cripple e-commerce. Something must be done now before consumer confidence and trust in online activities are so diminished as to lead to its demise." A recently released paper by the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada, Ann Cavoukian, tries to address this: 7 Laws of Identity: The Case for Privacy-Embedded Laws of Identity in the Digital Age. 

See more information on the 7 Laws in the related news release and brochure.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is a composite index that has been developed by the ITU/Digital Opportunity Platform to measure countries' progress in ICTs and digital opportunity, as part of the endorsed methodology for WSIS evaluation and follow-up. It is a flexible methodology that has been used in many different ways. Every day this week, SPU will demonstrate a different application of the DOI, to show its flexible and versatile applications for policy analysis.

The urban/rural digital divide is one of the most obvious divisions in many countries (depending on their geography, degree of urbanisation and industrial development, among other factors). ITU has traditionally sought to monitor the urban/rural divide in telecoms using the indicators of % of main lines in urban areas and mainlines in the largest city. For example, in China, as recently as 2004, just over two-thirds of all mainlines were to be found in urban areas (World Telecommunication Indicators).

However, the urban/rural divide extends far beyond connectivity. Differences in digital opportunity between urban and rural areas are also evident in the price of access to ICTs (often more expensive in rural areas), speed and quality of access (what the Nigerian blogger Oro calls "plug and pray") and technology in e.g., coverage of population with a mobile signal. The Digital Opportunity Index measures all these different aspects to access to ICTs.

For most countries, detailed data on urban/rural differences for all these aspects are difficult to come by. However, at the recent Digital Opportunity Forum held in Korea, the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology presented its expert analysis of the urban/rural divide in Egypt (see figure below). Taking into account differences in price, coverage, Internet availability and usage, the Ministry calculated that the rural population in Egypt has one quarter less opportunity to access and use ICTs as in urban areas. This points to a measurable and significant urban/rural divide in connectivity in a country where the vast majority of the population (95%) live in the fertile Nile valley. The DOI provides a means not only of quantifying the extent of this urban/rural divide, but also of monitoring its future evolution.

The urban/rural divide in Egypt

Source: Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, presented to the Digital Opportunity Forum, 1 September 2006.

For more information about the Digital Opportunity Index, click here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 70,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR) since July.

The World Information Society Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The Digital Opportunity Index can strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The DOI has been cited by the US Federal Communications Commission to measure the state of broadband in the United States, monitored in Ireland to track the price of broadband and used by the Egyptian Government to measure the urban-rural divide in Egypt.

Every day this week, SPU will profile a different practical application of the Digital Opportunity Index, to demonstrate its genuine use for policy purposes and to show how it can monitor WSIS follow-up. The Digital Opportunity Index is relevant for policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

To find out more, please click here.

As a result of a British documentary, India is now under pressure to strengthen its laws combating data theft and other electronic crimes in the country. Amendments to India’s IT Act of 2000 have been proposed and should be enacted by the national parliament in its upcoming winter.

Read the full Information Week article here.

See also Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies for more information.

The OECD's Information, Computer and Communications Policy Committee (ICCP) organised a one-day international Forum on "Next Generation Networks: Evolution and Policy Considerations", which was held on Tuesday, 3 October 2006 in Budapest, Hungary.

For more information about the event see the OECD website.

A recent BBC article shows how vulnerable XP Home really is. "Using a computer acting as a so-called 'honeypot' the BBC has been regularly logging how many potential net-borne attacks hit the average Windows PC every day. With a highly protected XP Pro machine running VMWare, the BBC hosted an unprotected XP Home system to simulate what an 'average' home PC faces when connected to the internet."

The majority of the incidents were merely nuisances. "Many were announcements for fake security products that use vulnerabilities in Windows Messenger to make their messages pop-up. Others were made to look like security warnings to trick people into downloading the bogus file." "However, at least once an hour, on average, the BBC honeypot was hit by an attack that could leave an unprotected machine unusable or turn it into a platform for attacking other PCs. Many of these attacks were by worms such as SQL.Slammer and MS.Blaster both of which first appeared in 2003. The bugs swamp net connections as they search for fresh victims and make host machines unstable. They have not been wiped out because they scan the net so thoroughly that they can always find another vulnerable machine to leap to and use as a host while they search for new places to visit."

Read the full BBC story.

This article was accessed through Slashdot.

Wired News in an article brings attention to the insecurity of some of the new technologies online. “VOIP and Ajax -- are dangerously insecure, and likely to only get worse as they become more prevalent, according to security researchers presenting their findings at the ToorCon security conference.”

"Voice over internet protocol is going mainstream, available to consumers and increasingly replacing the private phone systems in businesses of all sizes. Like the traditional phone, a VOIP call is broken into two parts, or channels. The first is signaling, which negotiates things like when to start and stop a call, what to do if another call comes in, and what to do if something about the call changes. The second part is media, the bit where we talk. In most VOIP systems neither of these channels is actually encrypted."

"According to Dustin Trammell, VOIP security researcher at Tipping Point, this leaves most VOIP calls vulnerable. Calls can be hijacked without either party's knowledge anywhere along the route over the net that connects the call, and nearly all VOIP systems can fall victim to signal-channel attacks that can fake caller ID, degrade call quality, end calls suddenly, and crash the end device -- either your VOIP phone or computer. Internet telephony can even fall victim to denial-of-service attacks that flood a phone with fake requests to start a call, rendering it useless."

Read the full Wired News article on VOIP and AJAX security issues.

‘Teledensity‘, or the number of phones per 100 inhabitants, is one of the more useful measures of an economy’s ICT infrastructure. In the early 1990s, ITU carried out research on the progress of Asia-Pacific economies in achieving the ‘teledensity transition‘ in their fixed-line networks (see left chart). The ‘teledensity transition‘ may be defined as passing from a teledensity of 10 lines per 100 inhabitants to 30 per 100. Below a teledensity of 10, access to telecommunications is restricted to a small part of the population and few businesses and therefore the impact of telecommunications on the economy and society is limited. With a teledensity above 30 per 100, access to telecommunications is available to a majority of households and virtually all businesses. Thus, the use of telecommunications can be expected to have a comparatively greater impact on the economy and society.

For the developed economies in the Asia-Pacific region, it took between 8 and 35 years (average 16 years) to make the transition between 1935 and 1995, with a progressive acceleration over time. However, for a sample of developing economies in the same region, it took only between 2 and 6 years (average 3 years) to make the transition between 1995 and 2006 (see right chart).

The main difference between the two charts is that the developed countries made the transition using fixed-line networks, whereas the developing economies have invariably made the transition using mobile networks. Mobile networks can generally be rolled out much more quickly, and more cheaply, and are more convenient for users (e.g., through pre-paid cards). Furthermore, mobile networks are relatively ‘development-neutral‘, in the sense that developed economies made the mobile teledensity transition only marginally more quickly (2.6 years) than developing ones (3.1 years).

For more insights from telecom transition and digital opportunity in the information society, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

Europe is the most advanced region with a DOI score of 0.55, considerably higher than the world average (0.37), followed by the Americas (0.4). DOI scores show that basic telecom access and affordability are the main areas of achievement for most countries.

European countries, which are mostly developed economies, provide good digital opportunity for most of their inhabitants, with extensive infrastructure, generally low prices and widespread use of new technologies. Poorer European countries generally have medium DOI scores (e.g. Albania, Belarus, Turkey and Ukraine). Poland and Russia are among the top 15 gainers in the DOI worldwide over the period 2000-2005, making significant progress in ICT infrastructure.

The economies from the region are also leveraging their investments in infrastructure well in order to widely introduce new technologies and yield more advanced forms of usage. One interesting aspect of mobile Internet usage is the wide variation in access among countries of similar economic or geographic circumstances. Almost a third of Slovenian households and one fifth of Finnish households use mobile phones to access the Internet, while in other countries, less than five per pent of households use mobile phones to access the Internet.

Despite the favourable global picture, disparities in connectivity within the region persist and many are concerned about the European digital divide, which is likely to result from the sometimes modest convergence between the economies.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

The Finnish Regulatory Communications Authority Ficora launched .8.5.3.e164.arpa user ENUM into public commercial operation after a successful pilot phase that started in 2003. The database was cleared between the pilot phase and commercial operation and thus there are no delegations at the moment. A Ficora representative says: "Our next aim is to get as much support from telcos and registrars for ENUM as possible. Currently I'm optimistic for their support since we are having good discussions with all major Finnish telcos."

User ENUM is currently in commercial operation in Austria, Poland, Romania, Germany, Netherlands, and Finland. Ireland is still in negotiations.

This article was accessed through Richard's Blog on VOIP and ENUM.

What is ENUM?
ENUM is a protocol that is the result of work of the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF's) Telephone Number Mapping Working Group. The charter of this working group was to define a Domain Name System (DNS)-based architecture and protocols for mapping a telephone number to a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) which can be used to contact a resource associated with that number. The protocol itself is defined in RFC 3761: The E.164 to URI DDDS Application (ENUM), which obsoletes RFC 2916. The protocol provides facilities to resolve E.164 telephone numbers into other resources or services on the internet. ITU-T Recommendation E.164 is the international public telecommunication telephone numbering plan and current ENUM delegations can be found here. More information on ENUM can be found here.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

The map illustrates the strong lead taken by Asia, together with Europe and North America, in realizing digital opportunity. Two Asian countries top the world rankings – the Republic of Korea and Japan, and the average DOI scores for the region are higher than the world average of 0.37. Central Asian countries are catching up fast with large infrastructural investments and strong gains in mobile and internet subscribers, including 3G mobile technologies (CDMA 2000 1x and W-CDMA). It is worth noting that five out of the top 15 gainers in the DOI come from the Asian region: these are India, China, Indonesia, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

The Asian Tigers, together with Scandinavian countries lead in internet subscriptions, with around a third of their population subscribing to the internet, but only half of these subscribed to broadband services. This is in contrast to the Republic of Korea, where virtually all internet users are broadband subscribers, with access to faster, advanced services such as video, teleconferencing, multiplayer gaming and triple play. These different profiles of internet usage could result in the development of more varied skill sets and contrasting rates of innovation and, over the longer term, may shape the Information Society differently, according to the type, speed and capacity of internet access available. However, there are often large differences in the level of development within the region - the Asia-Pacific region contains both high-income and Least Developed Countries. In many economies fixed line telephony has been challenged by the worldwide growth in mobile phones.

However, there remains a strong need for basic connectivity in Asia, where connectivity is the main factor driving the digital divide and limiting access to ICTs.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

"The ICT industry is expected to grow by 6% in 2006 and, looking ahead, highest growth will be driven by Internet-related investments, Linux servers, digital storage, personal digital assistants and new portable consumer products." But any return to the heady days of 20% and 30% growth in many products and market segments in the 1990s are unlikely, according to the 2006 edition of the OECD’s Information Technology Outlook 2006.

For more information, see the OECD Information and Communications Policy website.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

The Americas are the second most advanced region in terms of ICT development, following Europe. DOI scores show that basic telecom access and affordability are the main areas of achievement for most countries. In low income Latin American countries, digital opportunity mostly derives from access to cellular service and affordable telecoms. Meanwhile, high-income North-American countries are successfully realizing digital opportunity through high-performance infrastructure (e.g., broadband) and the use of advanced technologies.

In North America, the economies provide good digital opportunity for most of their inhabitants, with extensive infrastructure, generally low prices and widespread use of new technologies. From the Latin American countries, Chile is the highest-ranking Latin American country at 40th place in the DOI for 2005, followed by Argentina at 51st place.

Four of the Top 15 gainers in the DOI over the period 2001-2005 are from Latin America – Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Peru – the latter two are also among the very rare cases where Utilization exceeds Infrastructure. The strong gains in Utilization in Chile and Venezuela resulted from early policies for privatization and a vibrant private sector has successfully promoted telecommunications and the higher-margin broadband segment in these countries.

Caribbean states also generally do well in the DOI. This may be due to an ‘island effect’, where small islands may specialize in ICT intensive offshore industries reliant on telecommunications. Barbados, Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda all have high DOI scores.

The DOI registers a steady expansion in the number of mobile Internet subscribers, reflected in the steady increase in Utilization over time. Most notably, the DOI shows that mobile Internet and 3G services are no longer the preserve of high-income countries and are now offered in many developing countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in central and eastern Asia. The 2005 Mobinet study on global mobile usage reports an upward trend in the percentage of multimedia phone users in Latin America browsing the internet or using mobile e-mail at least once a month on their phones, which jumped from 32 per cent in 2004 to 64 per cent in 2005.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

The International Telecommunication Union along with the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organization (CTO) organized a three-day Forum 26-28 September on Using ICT for Effective Disaster Management. The meeting at Ochos Rios, Jamaica adopted a road map for better coordination in the use of state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICT) aimed at improved disaster preparedness and mitigation.

The roadmap includes: formulation of appropriate policies deployment of appropriate technologies ratification and implementation of the Tampere Convention for free movement of technical equipment in case of disaster capacity building for users of ICT services and applications establishment of national platforms that help countries to be ready to use ICT when disasters strike development of common regional strategies on integrating ICT in all phases of disaster mitigation: early warning, preparedness, response and relief

At the Ochos Rios meeting, comments from Jamaican government officials and several regional Caribbean representatives focused on the ability, or lack of ability, of governments, telecom carriers, IT backup service providers, businesses enterprise customers and other private-sector organizations to cope with their most comment peril: tropical hurricanes. The intense 2005 hurricane season brought a record 27 storms (including Emily, Katrina and Wilma) into the region. "Following the 2004 Ivan hurricane disaster and Emily in 2005, it became evident that the lack of communications was one of the significant weaknesses of the regional disaster management framework," says Philip Paulwell, Jamaica's Minister of Industry, Technology, Energy Commerce. "Intra-agency communications as well as public information have been identified as requiring improvement." "There's an urgent need to establish effective and comprehensive communication links between the affected areas, national disaster response facilities and with the larger international community.

For further details, see the ITU press release on this topic.

The United States National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), a consortium of government agencies and private industry sponsors, aims to educate the public about core security protections this October, during the national cyber security awareness month, with its campaign on 'Cyber Security: Make It A Habit'.

U.S. National Cyber Security Awareness Month is a national campaign designed to increase the public’s awareness of cyber security and crimes issues, so that users can take precautions to avoid these threats on the Internet. The month will feature public relations activities, educational programs, events and initiatives throughout October that targets Home Users, Small Businesses, Education audiences (K-12 and higher education), and Child Safety online.

See the U.S. National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2006 website for further information on this collective effort aimed at protecting the public from internet threats.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

The DOI scores for 2005 are sharply differentiated according to region. Africa, the region with some of the poorest countries in the world, is greatly impacted by the digital divide. Europe, the Americas and Asia all have average DOI scores higher than the world average of 0.37, while Africa has an average DOI score of 0.20, mainly due to limited Utilization and fixed line infrastructure. When compared to other regions, Africa ranks last with an average regional DOI score of barely one-third that of Europe (0.55). The African strong-performers are Mauritius, the Seychelles and North African countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt).

The DOI map of Africa here below shows a pattern of high scores among the North African economies (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia) - Egypt is also the only African country in the Top 15 gainers in the DOI, having realized a gain of 32 per cent in digital opportunity over the period 2000-2005. By contrast, low-ranking economies are mostly inland, in the Sub-Saharan region, and also include economies such as Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Niger and Sierra Leone.

Nevertheless, despite the overall situation, many African countries are making progress in reducing their internal gaps. As a region, Africa has the highest growth rate in mobile cellular subscribers of any region, with a 66 per cent growth rate in 2005, with Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa accounting for 60 per cent of the new mobile subscribers added in the region. In 2005, Nigeria alone added 9.7 million subscribers, which represents about 7 per cent of its total population. Mobile phones provide more than three-quarters of all the phone connections in 19 countries in Africa. As Africa shows, the tendency of developing countries to promote mobile coverage and utilization over fixed services makes the DOI’s mobile components particularly useful for monitoring advances in regional markets.

From a telecommunication policy perspective, high-ranking countries illustrate the influence of liberalization and competition in promoting opportunity and infrastructure deployment. Most of the North African countries, as well as Senegal and South Africa, have opened their fixed and mobile markets to competition and are rapidly increasing high-speed network deployment. Competition is helping to reduce tariffs and introduce service packages that respond better to the needs of the population. In Algeria, for instance, the entry of a third wireless cellular provider triggered new strategies for prepaid services that had not previously been offered by the incumbents.

For more analysis on these and other issues related to measuring digital opportunity, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

"Yahoo has announced it will give away the browser-based authentication used in its email service, considered to be the company's 'crown jewel', in a bid to encourage software developers to build new applications based on e-mail". 

"Yahoo is a very large company but we can't build every applications that a user might want," a Yahoo representative said in an interview. "You can imagine tens of thousands of niche applications (springing) from Yahoo Mail." "Software developers have traditionally kept careful control of the underlying programming code of their products and allowed outsiders to make only incremental improvements. In recent years, Web developers have opened up that process to encourage outsiders far deeper access to the underlying code. Open applications like Google Maps and Yahoo's own Flickr have inspired a new wave of programming in which developers can combine software features from different companies to create what are known as 'mashups' -- hybrid Web products"

"Yahoo made the announcement ahead of a 24-hour Yahoo Hack Day, where it had invited more than 500 mostly youthful outside programmers to build new applications using Yahoo services. Considering the different needs of its huge user base (257 million people use Yahoo Mail), Yahoo has decided it can't build or buy enough innovation, so they are enlisting the worldwide developer community. The code will be released late in 2006. Yahoo notes that there are 'no security risks' since they keep absolute control of usernames and passwords."

Read the full article in Yahoo News.
This story was accessed through Slashdot.

A Strategic and Coordinated Approach Needed for Cybersecurity In a recent GovTech article, the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) calls for a more strategic and coordinated approach from the U.S. government to ensure the nation's cybersecurity.

CSIA’s Executive Director Paul Kurtz emphasized that "the level of attention given to securing our information infrastructure is inadequate considering the reliance of Americans on the nation’s cyber systems." "In testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Kurtz highlighted the importance of the nation's cyber systems, calling them the newest and most pervasive portion of our critical infrastructure, and discussed the federal government's role in its protection. At the core of CSIA's recommendations is the need for a Strategic National Information Assurance Policy that would outline the key roles that relevant government agencies should play in the protection of our cyber infrastructure."

"No single entity owns our information infrastructure and no single government agency is solely responsible for its protection." "While the Department of Homeland Security clearly plays a critical role, many other agencies share responsibility for the overall well being of our cyber systems," said Kurtz. "Yet the government has shown little strategic direction or leadership when it comes to ensuring the resiliency and integrity of our information infrastructure and the protection of the privacy of our citizens. This is baffling when one considers that nearly every service we use, from our communications and utility networks to our financial and medical systems, is in some way reliant upon our nation's digital networks." Kurtz called out the need for a cyber early warning system that provides the nation with situational awareness of attacks.

Read the full story here.

The ITU has unveiled a new website Partnerships for Global Cybersecurity dedicated to moderation/facilitation activities related to implementation of WSIS Action Line C5: Building Confidence and Security in the Use of ICTs.

Background

The outcome documents from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) emphasize that building confidence and security in the use of ICTs is a necessary pillar for building a global information society (see extracts). The Tunis Agenda describes the establishment of a mechanism for implementation and follow-up to WSIS and requests ITU to play a facilitator/moderator role for WSIS Action Line C5: Building Confidence and Security in the Use of ICTs. In order to stress the importance of the multi-stakeholder implementation of related work programmes, ITU has named this the Partnerships for Global Cybersecurity initiative.

Here's how to participate and how to contact us if you would like to contribute to the work programmes.

Work Programmes

Based on the first facilitation meeting held in May 2006 and the related Chairman's Report, work programmes in three focus areas have been initiated:

• Focus Area 1 (National Strategies): The development of a generic model framework or toolkit that national policy-makers could use to develop and implement a national cybersecurity or CIIP (Critical Information Infrastructure Protection) programme. More information on activities, mailing lists and events.
  
• Focus Area 2 (Legal Frameworks): Capacity-building on the harmonization of cybercrime legislation, the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime, and enforcement. More information on activities, mailing lists and events.
  
• Focus Area 3 (Watch, Warning and Incident Response): Information-sharing of best practices on developing watch, warning and incident response capabilities. More information on activities, mailing lists and events.

For general information on WSIS implementation as a whole, including other action lines and themes, see here.

 

As part of the ITU's work in follow-up to the WSIS, the World Information Society Report 2006 is addressed to all stakeholders and intended to provide insights as well as useful benchmarks for building the Information Society. The Report gives practical examples of how the DOI can be used, and highlights projects around the world that are working to meet the commitments made at the WSIS.

Chapter five, Beyond WSIS: Making a difference globally, focuses on WSIS implementation and follow-up in different countries. The WSIS called for governments to move from principles into action. There are many efforts underway, both large and small, to implement the WSIS goals, involving a range of stakeholders at the community level, regionally, nationally and internationally. This chapter of the report highlights some of these initiatives to implement the WSIS Plan of Action, from national strategies to grassroots projects. A variety of initiatives have been launched to promote digital opportunity, infrastructure and advanced ICT applications and these highlight fresh approaches and innovative new solutions to ICT development.

One of the biggest challenges for the uptake of ICTs and for building a people-centered and development-oriented Information Society is the affordability of the services. The Digital Opportunity Index monitors the mobile communications that promise to bridge the digital divide in many parts of the world, as well as more recent technologies such as broadband and mobile Internet access. The price of broadband continues to fall worldwide, by as much as twenty per cent a year over the last two years according to ITU’s analysis, while broadband speeds continue to increase. The lower cost of ICTs greately facilitates their diffusion and utilization, and contributes to increased digital opportunity.

Internet affordability (cost of 20h internet connection as a % of monthly GDP per capita)

Note: 1 means affordable; 0 means that the price of lower-user basket is in excess of average GNI per capita.

These positive trends are not restricted to developed countries, and many valuable multi-stakeholder initiatives are underway to further promote ICT development worldwide in the wake of WSIS. 

The DOI has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, the Digital Opportunity Platform, comprising ITU, UNCTAD and KADO (the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion) and which is open to new partners. It will be reported annually in order to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets, and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society, by 2015.

"Chapter Four: From Measurement to Policy-Making" considers the changing telecommunications policy landscape, in areas of universal access/service, affordability, digital inclusion, broadband and wireless, amongst others. It shows how policy-makers can use the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to inform policy-making and policy design to achieve the WSIS goals. The DOI is not an abstract mathematical construction, but has real ‘hands-on’ applications for policy-makers, particularly in the context of the commitments made by governments at the World Summit on the Information Society.

Chapter Four uses the DOI for analysing digital gaps between regions at the national and international levels, for assessing gender gaps and for monitoring digital inclusion. The DOI is a useful policy tool that can be adapted to assess all of these data requirements. Chapter four of the World Information Society Report uses the DOI to analyse digital opportunity throughout the continent of Africa; perform a benchmark comparison of India’s performance relative to its neighbouring countries (see Figure below); examine regional disparities in digital opportunity in Brazil; and examine the gender gap in the Czech Republic. The chapter also outlines the next steps in ICT measurement for policy-making that the Digital Opportunity Platform plans to undertake.

Using the DOI for Policy Purposes

To find out more about the World Information Society Report, please click here.

"Chapter Three: Information Society Trends" tracks the shifting dynamics of the Information Society worldwide. It monitors the changes in digital opportunity across different countries and regions, and investigates those that have made the strongest gains in digital opportunity.

The Asian economies of the Republic of Korea and Japan continue to lead in digital opportunity, mainly due to their pioneering take-up of broadband and 3G mobile services. Nearly all Internet subscribers in the Republic of Korea are broadband subscribers, whilst Japan is the only market where Internet subscribers are most likely to access Internet over their mobile. Dramatic progress has been achieved by developing countries, however, which made the greatest progress in digital opportunity - notably India, where digital opportunity nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005, and China, which experienced remarkably strong gains in infrastructure. Some countries are leveraging their investments in infrastructure more successfully than others, however.

Major Gainers in digital opportunity (2001-2005)

Note: Component indices of the DOI are represented by O = Opportunity; I = Infrastructure; U = Utilization.

Chapter three analyses trends in digital opportunity, broadband speed and price, as well as the price of other telecommunication services. Find out more about the WISR here.

"Chapter Two: Measuring the Information Society" introduces the structure and methodology of the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). It explains why the component indicators were chosen and how they measure different aspects of digital opportunity, in: opportunity to access telecommunications (including basic access to telecommunications and affordability, with detailed price information); the basic infrastructure available in a country; and actual utilization of ICTs, in the use of the Internet and broadband technologies (fixed and mobile).

This chapter reviews trends in the individual indicators making up the DOI, including: the growth of mobile coverage (both 2G and 3G); a comparison of Internet and mobile prices; household penetration of ICTs and broadband and mobile Internet. It illustrates these trends with a wealth of country information and regional comparisons, to show how the DOI captures the growth in digital opportunity around the world.

The DOI is a flexible and forward-looking index, which includes measurement of the promising technologies of tomorrow in broadband and mobile Internet subscribers (as a proportion of total Internet subscribers and total mobile subscribers). It is the major index to date that includes up-to-date and current price information for both mobile and Internet access. Find out more and download the DOI as part of the World Information Society Report here.

Structure of the DOI:

The DOI is currently being updated for 2006 information, as part of the ongoing work programme of the Digital Opportunity Platform.

 

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" outlines the background to the World Information Society Report (WISR). It sets out the background to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the origins, aims and achievements of the Summit. In particular, it considers the call by member governments for an effective means and methodology for follow-up to monitor progress in building the Information Society through implementation of the Summit's recommendations.

The Geneva Plan of Action calls for a composite ICT Development (Digital Opportunity) Index to be published annually, or every two years, in a report on ICT development to clarify the magnitude of the digital divide in both its domestic and international dimensions.

Chapter One of the WISR reviews WSIS implementation since the Summit concluded in Tunis in November 2005, and explains why composite indices give a more complete picture of the development of the Information Society in any given economy than a single indicator. It gives an overview of the main composite Indices for measuring Digital Opportunity, and how they differ. It concludes by explaining the main virtues of the Digital Opportunity Index, especially for developing countries: it evaluates digital opportunity in 180 countries, the most of any index published to date; it is based on standard indicators (as defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development); it uses objective data rather than survey data; it can be split into its fixed and mobile components, so developing countries can be measured on the basis of their strengths; it uses household penetration data (which favour developing countries, on the basis of their large average household size); and it is simple and easy-to-use.

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" of the World Information Society Report can be downloaded for free here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 17,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR), over the two months since its publication.

As part of the ITU’s follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The DOI is part of the agreed evaluation methodology endorsed during the WSIS and will be published annually in the World Information Society Report to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society by 2015.

The WISR shows how the Digital Opportunity Index can be used to strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The Report is addressed to policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

Starting next week, SPU will profile a different chapter of the World Information Society Report each day, to show how the Information Society is evolving and how you can contribute to WSIS follow-up. 

For more information, please see the WISR website. 

A recent APDIP e-Note goes into the discussion of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and Internet Governance.

As the number of non-English speakers on the Internet grows exponentially, the limitations of the Domain Name System have become evident to many.

The APDIP e-Note examines "how IDNs relate to cultural diversity and the basic human right to communicate in one's own language on the Internet. While the bulk of the content on the Internet has been in English, this is rapidly changing. In China, for example, over 60 million of the nation's 100 million-plus users browse the web only in Chinese, yet top-level domain names remain in Roman script for all users. The APDIP e-Note further discusses the ongoing debate on how best to allow users to navigate the Internet in their own language. Different systems available for multilingual domain names and future scenarios are also explored.

Download the full APDIP e-Note.
View other APDIP e-Resources here.

The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region.

A select committee has recommended a major change to New Zealand's anti-spam bill, suggesting anyone should be able to send unsolicited emails that are of an entirely non-commercial nature and need not desist even if asked to do so by the recipient. The original anti-spam bill said that organisations that sent unsolicited emails to promote their aims or ideals - such as school newsletters and messages from political lobbyists - would fall foul of the spam bill. This is if they did not stop sending messages when asked to do so, by letting recipients "opt-out". The select committee dropped this requirement in amendments it proposed early September 2006.

The proposed amendments also drop the legal requirement that spam be reported to a customer's internet service provider before Internal Affairs could take action. Other proposed amendments eliminate the distinction between emails whose prime purpose is commercial and ones that are primarily promotional, but which contain a commercial element, and lift a ban on possessing or supplying email harvesting software, but bans New Zealanders from using such software to send spam.

This news item was retrieved through the APCAUCE Newslog.
The full article is available at stuff.co.nz.

In a recent press release, Gartner, Inc. says that the number of households around the world subscribing to Internet Protocol television (IPTV) services offered by telecom carriers will reach 48.8 million in 2010. Buoyed by new service launches, IPTV subscribers will more than double in 2007 from an expected 6.4 million in 2006 to 13.3 million according to Gartner.

Despite the eight-fold increase in users between 2006 and 2010, Gartner says that carriers will struggle to turn IPTV into a mainstream Pay TV distribution platform on par with established cable or satellite services. "The difficulty in carving out a distinctive proposition that will clearly differentiate early IPTV services from other established TV options will lead many service providers around the world to drive adoption by competing on price in the next few years", said Elroy Jopling, research director at Gartner. "As a result, the global picture for IPTV revenue is much less impressive than for subscriber numbers."

"Global IPTV revenue during the period will grow from $872 million in 2006 to a still relatively modest $13.2 billion by 2010. IPTV will not be a panacea to replace diminishing voice revenue for carriers, but in the medium term it can be a powerful tool for carriers in helping retain customers on their existing voice and broadband services."

Gartner defines IPTV as the delivery of video programming (either broadcast or on-demand) over a carrier’s managed broadband network to a customer’s TV set. It does not include streaming media over the Internet to a PC.

See the full press release on the Garner website.

At the invitation of the Government of Cameroon and Cameroon's Telecommunications Regulatory Board (ART), FTRA-2006, on the theme "IP networks and related services: Challenges for African regulators", was held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on 7 and 8 June 2006. Eighty-three participants from 23 countries and 11 organizations attended the forum.

Participants emphasized the need to review the telecommunications-ICT political, legal, administrative and regulatory issues with a view to their inclusion of aspects relating to the Internet and related services, and the need for human capacity building for regulators in a rapidly changing telecommunications environment. After the successful establishment of sub-regional African Telecommunication Regulatory Associations, the Forum discussed the creation of a PAN African Regulatory Association building on the achievement of the African Telecommunication Regulators Network (ATRN) with the aim of putting in place an efficient mechanism capable of decision-making at the continental level. They finally agreed in principle on the establishment of such an association and its integration in the African Telecommunications Union (ATU). The recommendations agreed on may be found in the final communiqué.

FTRA-2007 will be held in Nairobi, Kenya with the exact dates announced at a later date.

[via the ITU-D Newslog]

"As cell phones and PDAs become more technologically advanced, attackers are finding new ways to target victims. By using text messaging or email, an attacker could lure you to a malicious site or convince you to install malicious code on your portable device."

The U.S. CERT (Computer Emergence Readiness Team) recently published a list of tips for users on how they can protect themselves against these increasing threats.

What unique risks do cell phones and PDAs present?

Most current cell phones have the ability to send and receive text messages. Some cell phones and PDAs also offer the ability to connect to the internet. Although these are features that you might find useful and convenient, attackers may try to take advantage of them. As a result, an attacker may be able to accomplish the following:

• Abuse your service;
• Lure you to a malicious web site;
• Use your cell phone or PDA in an attack;
• Gain access to account information.

What can you do to protect yourself?

• Follow general guidelines for protecting portable devices;
• Be careful about posting your cell phone number and email address;
• Do not follow links sent in email or text messages;
• Be wary of downloadable software;
• Evaluate your security settings.

Read the full article on the U.S. CERT website.

A forthcoming ITU-T IPTV Global Technical Workshop will review and examine IPTV standardization, political and regulatory aspects, business models and various case studies as well as technical developments and service provider’s operational aspects.

IPTV represents a convergence between the traditional telecommunication and broadcast industries. And, as with any convergence a lot of work is needed to ensure interoperability. Globally accepted standards are clearly a key enabler for this. With many of the conditions necessary for IPTV rollout in place - global IP connectivity over managed broadband infrastructure with such guarantees as QoS and security, and broadband connectivity with enhanced network capabilities - there is a strong demand for standards to ensure smooth service rollout and interoperability.

The workshop will provide a review of the current status of IPTV work as well as an examination of where to go next.

See the meeting website for further information.

[ITU-T Newslog]

Study Group 17 (Security, languages and telecommunication software) has been instructed by Resolution 48 of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (Florianópolis, 2004) to study Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). It is considered that implementation of IDN will contribute to easier and greater use of the Internet in those countries where the native or official languages are not represented in IRA (International Reference Alphabet) characters.

To meet this obligation, Study Group 17 developed new Question 16, Internationalized Domain Names tasked in particular to investigate all relevant issues in the field of IDN. The mandate for Question 16 is available on the Study Group 17 website.

Question 16 was approved at the April 2006 Study Group 17 meeting in Jeju, Korea. At this meeting Question 16 drafted a questionnaire for a Circular to Member States, requesting information on their experiences in the use of IDN. TSB Circular 96 was issued on 31 May 2006.

The ITU-T has unveiled an IDN resource site to share information on work progress, achievements and acquired knowledge in the field of IDN. It includes an introduction to IDN, information about related events, standards materials, news, information on national and other IDN developments and a FAQ.

[via the ITU-T Newslog]

"To protect Internet users from online fraudsters and defend the Internet against scammers commandeering network resources, the two most influential global trade associations combating Internet crime have jointly released an explicit new set of Best Practices to combat “phishing,” a major cause of online identify theft and fraud. The recommendations will help Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mailbox providers better police their own infrastructures and filter traffic traversing their networks."

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Group (MAAWG) jointly developed the recommendations outlined in "Anti-Phishing Best Practices for ISPs and Mailbox Providers." The paper provides technical and business practices to help ISPs and mailbox providers thwart phishing attacks and other malevolent network abuses and also includes practices to respond constructively when these attacks occur. “Phishing” employs deceptive technology such as spoofing and social engineering to steal consumers' personal identity and financial account data, and has become a major concern."

To download the full recommendations, click here.

Implementation of the outcomes of the recently concluded World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) gathered momentum with the launch of the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS). High level representatives of twenty-two UN agencies met on Friday, 14 July 2006 at ITU Headquarters in Geneva under the chairmanship of ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi to facilitate the process.

UNGIS will serve as an interagency coordinating mechanism within the UN system to implement the outcomes of WSIS. The Group will enable synergies aimed at resolving substantive and policy issues, avoiding redundancies and enhancing effectiveness of the system while raising public awareness about the goals and objectives of the global Information Society. UNGIS will also work to highlight the importance of ICTs in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

See ITU Press Release for full text. 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations has announced the convening of the Internet Governance Forum, to be held in Athens on 30 October - 2 November 2006.

The Secretary-General's message is available in all UN languages: [English] [Français] [中文] [عربي] [Русский] [Español]. The message in English reads:

"The second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in Tunis on 13-15 November 2005, invited me to convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue -- called the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The Summit asked me to convene the Forum by the second quarter of 2006 and to implement this mandate in an open and inclusive process.

The Government of Greece made the generous offer to host the first meeting of the IGF and proposed that it take place in Athens on 30 October - 2 November 2006.

I have asked my Special Adviser for Internet Governance, Mr. Nitin Desai, to assist me in the task of convening the IGF and I have also set up a small secretariat in Geneva to support this process. Two rounds of consultations open to all stakeholders held in Geneva on 16-17 February and 19 May have contributed towards a common understanding with regard to the format and content of the first IGF meeting. I have also appointed an Advisory Group with the task of assisting me in preparing the IGF meeting.

The Advisory Group held a meeting in Geneva on 22 and 23 May 2006 and made recommendations for the agenda and the programme, as well as the structure and format of the first meeting of the IGF in Athens.

As the IGF is about the Internet, it is appropriate to make use of electronic means of communication to convene its inaugural meeting. The document adopted by WSIS -- the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society -- calls on me "to extend invitations to all stakeholders and relevant parties to participate at the inaugural meeting of the IGF". Therefore, it is my pleasure to make use of the World Wide Web to invite all stakeholders -- governments, the private sector and civil society, including the academic and technical communities, to attend the first meeting of the IGF in Athens. The overall theme of the meeting will be "Internet Governance for Development". The agenda will be structured along the following broad themes.

• Openness - Freedom of expression, free flow of information, ideas and knowledge
• Security - Creating trust and confidence through collaboration
• Diversity - Promoting multilingualism and local content
• Access - Internet Connectivity: Policy and Cost

Capacity-building will be a cross-cutting priority.

The meeting will be open for all WSIS accredited entities. Other institutions and persons with proven expertise and experience in matters related to Internet governance may also apply to attend.

In its short life, the Internet has become an agent of dramatic, even revolutionary change and maybe one of today's greatest instruments of progress. It is a marvelous tool to promote and defend freedom and to give access to information and knowledge. WSIS saw the beginning of a dialogue between two different cultures: the non-governmental Internet community, with its traditions of informal, bottom-up decision-making; and the more formal, structured world of governments and intergovernmental organizations. It is my hope that the IGF will deepen this dialogue and contribute to a better understanding of how we can make full use of the potential the Internet has to offer for all people in the world.

(Signed) Kofi A. Annan" 

[via the Internet Governance Forum]

The European Commission recently published the draft of the new roaming regulation to bring down the high roaming charges within Europe.

What will the regulation mean for consumers?

• "Prices paid for international roaming when travelling within the European Union will not be unjustifiably higher than the charges for calls paid within the user’s country.
  
• Consumers will benefit from lower prices for making calls in the visited country, back home or to any other EU Member State.
  
• Consumers will make considerable savings when receiving calls.
  
• Prices operators charge each other (wholesale charges) will be considerably lower than what they are today. This ensures all operators will be in a position to offer lower retail tariffs.
  
• Transparency of roaming charges for consumers will be enhanced. Mobile operators will be required to provide customers with full information on applicable roaming charges when subscriptions are taken out and to update consumers regularly about these charges. Consumers can ask for information on roaming charges free of charge either via SMS or voice call.
  
• National regulators will also be tasked to monitor closely the development of roaming charges for SMS and multi-media message services (MMS)."
  
• Etc.

Read more about the roaming regulation on the EC website.

This article was accessed through Richard's Blog for VoIP and ENUM.

The high cost for developing countries in accessing the Internet backbone was a hot-topic at a recent, Geneva held meeting of ITU-T’s Study Group 3 focusing on tariff and accounting principles including related telecommunication economic and policy issues.

Study Group 3 will submit a paper, outlining its activities and future work plan on international internet connectivity (IIC) to the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to be held in Athens, Greece in October 2006

It has been claimed that some charging arrangements for IIC disadvantage smaller networks and developing countries. In June 2004 an amendment to ITU-T Recommendation D.50 was made to set out general considerations for parties to negotiate Internet interconnection. These considerations can be used to assist two parties to an interconnection agreement to negotiate in a more harmonized way.

"27.  We recommend improvements and innovations in existing financing mechanisms, including:
 Providing affordable access to ICTs, by the following measures:

i.  Reducing international Internet costs charged by backbone providers, supporting, inter alia, the creation and development of regional ICT backbones and Internet Exchange Points to reduce interconnection cost and broaden network access; 

ii. Encouraging ITU to continue the study of the question of the International Internet Connectivity (IIC) as an urgent matter to develop appropriate Recommendations."

See the ITU-T Study Group 3 website for more information.

In a new scam, called vishing, identity thieves use bogus phone numbers instead of Web sites, reports PC World in a recent article featuring phishing scams on VoIP phones.

< show to starting increasingly is users, telephone or internet trick numbers Protocol) Internet over (voice VoIP easy-to-obtain using thieves with scam, theft identity of kind new A>"Related to phishing scams, the new scheme uses cheaply obtained VoIP numbers as bogus credit card or financial services telephone numbers", the article continues.  "With Internet users being warned about clicking on hyperlinks in unsolicited e-mail, the new scam includes a phone number instead". "It's a natural elevation of the art to move it to the telephone. People are getting nervous about clicking on links", the article states.

< show to starting increasingly is users, telephone or internet trick numbers Protocol) Internet over (voice VoIP easy-to-obtain using thieves with scam, theft identity of kind new A>

The articles gives examples of how these new scams take place: "In one vishing case, scammers targeted PayPal users by including a telephone number in a spam e-mail. In the other case, the criminals configured an automatic telephone dialer to dial phone numbers, and when the phone was answered, played an automated recording saying their credit card has had fraudulent activity. The recording asked the telephone customer to call a number with a spoofed caller ID related to the credit card issuer. Once users call, they are asked for personal account information."

VoIP numbers are easy to obtain anonymously, but an industry expert interviewed for the story did not fault VoIP providers for vishing scams. "A larger problem is the ease of obtaining credit online or over the telephone. Consumers are comfortable with obtaining credit online or by dialing automated telephone services to get credit, but if credit-granting businesses required physical contact, phishing and vishing scams would be almost eliminated. In today's environment, it's absurd," the industry stated.

Read the full article on the PC World news website.

 

A presentation entitled Networks in Transition: Emerging Policy and Regulatory Challenges of Next Generation Networks (PDF) was made by Robert Shaw, Deputy Head, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, at the Masters of Communication Management (MCM) Annual Conference, Goodenough College on 6 July 2006 in London, England.

"South Korea has commercially launched its mobile broadband internet service WiBro. South Korean internet service provider KT and mobile phone operator SK Telecom have begun the service based on Intel's WiMax standard in parts of Seoul and surrounding areas. KT claims that WiBro users can get wireless access to the internet even when travelling at speeds of 120km/hour".

"Subscribers can access the service by using a PCMCIA card provided by Samsung Electronics. The telcos plan to cover the entire country with the service by 2008".

For more information, please see the article featured in Digital Media News for Asia (DMasia.com). 

This story was accessed through the SmartMobs blog.

The International Herald Tribune in their recent article on Wireless: From zero to 3G: A cellphone utopia? , noted that "Executives in the cellphone and computer industries are fond of speaking about bridging the digital divide, the gap between people with access to technology and those without. But translating the talk into action is not easy. In addition, the benefits of high-tech gadgetry for the poor often are not evident. How do you bring Internet access to remote villages in Africa? And are people's lives going to improve once they can get online? The GSM Association, a trade group that represents mobile phone operators in 213 countries, has a plan for the first question and responds with a resounding yes to the second."

"This month, the association introduced a "3G for All" program that aims to make multimedia phone services and mobile Internet access available to people on the fringe of the digital world. Bringing cellphone services to the two-thirds of the world's population that does not yet use them has long been a goal of the association, which last year promoted a project to build the cheapest possible telephone. Thanks in part to that initiative, the wholesale price of the cheapest cellphones has dropped to less than $30, but now the association wants to take that a step further by encouraging the production of a low-cost mobile phone that works on third-generation networks. Those phones today are typically expensive and advanced, nearly mini-computers themselves."

The aim is to have a group of GSM Association members to define a core set of requirements that the low-cost 3G handsets must have, and then several manufacturers will compete to design the phone that best meets those requirements at the most competitive price.

Read the full story on the International Herald Tribune website.

Access the GSM Association Press Release on the 3G for All program.

ITU and infoDev, recently launched a new module of their collaborative online ICT Regulation Toolkit. This module is dedicated to the Legal and Institutional Aspects of Regulation

"This is the single most helpful regulatory tool that I have seen", said Dr. Salomão Manhiça Chairman, Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicações de Moçambique, Mozambique. "It has such a tremendous potential to assist all the staff at the INCM, as well as to help me too", he added. Tracy Cohen, Councillor of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, agrees: "The ICT Regulation Toolkit is a critical resource for regulators, both in developed and developing countries. With its origins in the well known 2000 Telecommunications Regulation Handbook, its credibility and usefulness is already established. The revised toolkit builds on this reputation and is essential reading for all regulators needing to gain access to the leading thinking on effective regulation, especially in a converging environment." The ICT legal and institutional framework determines how rapidly markets grow in different countries and how many users have access to ICT. An enabling environment is key to reaching the goal of connecting all the world’s villages to ICT by 2015, as agreed by world leaders at the World Summit on the Information Society.

For further information, access the Legal and Institutional Framework Module and other modules of the ICT Regulation Toolkit.

According to a recently released article by CircleID, the United Kingdom today is one of the main attack targets by phishing organized crime groups, globally. Worldwide it is estimated (CircleID) that phishing damages will amount to about two billions USD in 2006 -- not counting risk management measures such as preventative measures, counter-measures, incident response and PR damages.

In most cases, phishing is caused by the fault of the users, either by entering the wrong web page, not keeping their computers secure or falling for cheap scams. Often this is due to lack of awareness or ability in the realm of Internet use rather than incompetence by the users.

For more information see CircleID article on Phishing: Competing on Security. 

Winners of the Prix Ars Electronica 2006, one of the most important awards for creativity and pioneering spirit in the field of digital media, have been announced. The competition called for entries in 7 categories, including a youth competition and a grant for young creative talent:

• Digital Communities

• Computer Animation / Visual Effects

• Digital Music

• Interactive Art

• Net Vision

• u19 – freestyle computing

• [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant

The 2006 winner for the Digital Communities category was "canal*ACCESSIBLE". Canal Accessible was chosen because it addresses the accessibility or inaccessibility inherent in the topographical surroundings of people who have difficulty walking. The city of Barcelona was taken as an example:  handicapped individuals document the problems they encounter on their way through the city by using images and, in a few cases, sound recordings. This material is posted to the website, and the places at which each one was created are specified on a city map. These locations can then be accessed using a built-in “find” function. ITU's Lara Srivastava was Jury Member for the Digital Communities category, which explores the promotion of the social use of ICTs and the creation of common public goods, the sharing of knowledge, and the narrowing of the digital divide. This category was introduced to the Prix in 2004 by Jury Member Andreas Hirsch and Howard Rheingold. The other Jury members were: Steven Clift (Chairman, e-democracy.org) and Peter Kuthan (Founder, Tonga Online).

The prizes will be awarded at the annual Ars Electronica Festival (31 August - 5 September 2006). More information about the winners can be found here.

On 1-2 June 2006 the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in collaboration with London Business School (LBS) will hold a joint conference on the measurement of ICTs and the macro-, micro- and meso-impact of ICTs in the Information Society.

The conference will explore the impact of ICTs in industry, firms, growth and productivity. What is the real meaning of the digital divide? Can investment in ICTs help to reduce the productivity gap? Are countries really at a disadvantage through falling behind in take-up of ICTs?

For more details on this event please click here.

ITU has just released its new statistics on global broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants as of 1 January 2006. Iceland has taken over as this year's leader from Korea with Netherlands, Denmark and Hong Kong, China rounding out the top five.

On 17 May, World Information Society Day, ITU together with other partners (including UNCTAD and the KADO) launched a new series of reports entitled World Information Society Report. The summary of the report is available on the website at www.itu.int/wisr. The report itself will be published in June 2006.

The partners involved have created the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to measure digital opportunity for 180 economies. It is a composite index created from a set of eleven internationally agreed core ICT indicators (established by the Partnership on Measurement of the Information Society). The DOI has a flexible and versatile structure, based on three categories: opportunity, infrastructure and utilization.  This classification is intended to help policy-makers in determining where countries are strong and weak in order to focus attention on priority areas. The top ten economies for Digital Opportunity are shown below on the left with Korea and Japan leading the rankings. The top major gainers in the DOI during the period 2001-2005 is shown on the right with India and China leading with the most gains. The rankings of all measured economies is shown on page 17 of the World Information Society Report summary.

  

17 May 2006 On 17 May, World Information Society Day, ITU together with other partners (including UNCTAD and the KADO) launched a new series of reports entitled World Information Society Reports. It is intended to be an annual report, tracking progress in implementing the outcomes from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The reports will include a new benchmarking tool, the Digital Opportunity Index, which is a composite index for measurement of the information society, endorsed by the Tunis Phase of the WSIS. The summary of the report is available on the website at www.itu.int/wisr. The report itself will be published in June 2006.

The World Information Society Day ceremony is being webcast live (audio and video) in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish by ITU's internet broadcasting service. The related press release is available here.

ITU Press Release: First World Information Society Day focuses on WSIS implementation & ITU World Information Society Award presented to President Wade of Senegal and Professor Yunus of Bangladesh

Geneva, 9 May 2006 — The first World Information Society Day will be commemorated on 17 May 2006 to mark the inception of the International Telecommunication Union in 1865, over 140 years ago.

On this important occasion, the first ITU World Information Society Award will be presented to two distinguished and eminent personalities whose outstanding personal contributions have furthered the cause of building a more inclusive and equitable Information Society and helped close the digital divide. The inaugural ITU Award will be given to President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Professor Muhammad Yunus, Managing Director of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh.

The award ceremony will begin at 11h00 on 17 May 2006 at the International Conference Centre Geneva (CICG). There will be an opportunity after the ceremony for the laureates to meet the press.

For more information, see here.

Workshop: Optimization Technologies for Low-Bandwidth Networks, ICTP Workshop, Trieste, Italy, 9 - 20 October 2006:

Bandwidth in developing countries can be so expensive that some universities cannot afford speeds equivalent to the average Western household with ADSL connection. The reasons for this situation include: Internet access available only via satellite connections and lack of communications infrastructure in many remote areas. Bandwidth and computing equipment are expensive as a result of weak currencies, high transport costs, small budgets and high tariffs. Universities cannot afford a decent link, or in some cases still do not see its value or are unaware of existing alternatives. By applying optimization techniques based on Open Source technologies, effectiveness of available connections can be highly improved.

The Workshop will provide information and practical training on how to gain the maximum benefit from existing connections to the Internet, exposing participants to the latest techniques to optimise the use of low-bandwidth network connections.

The Workshop will consist of theoretical lectures, laboratory hands-on sessions and demos. Linux will be used as primary O.S. Case Studies by Participants are also welcome, describing their computing and networking environment and connectivity related problems, issues on content delivery, etc.

From Newsweek's international edition: The Internet Breaks Up.

Now underway is the ITU/UNESCO Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet which is a follow-up to Phase 2 of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, adopted at the Tunis Phase of WSIS, highlights the importance of multilingualism for bridging the digital divide. It identifies ITU as taking the lead role in the implementation of information and communication infrastructure (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C2), ITU/UNESCO for access to information and knowledge (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C3), and UNESCO for cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C8).

The event is being audiocast live in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. The programme is available here and contains links to all the presentations and speaker biographies.

The Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has released a summary of the discussions and contributions for the substantive agenda of the first meeting of the IGF, to be held in Greece later this year.

"As the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) prepares to celebrate this year's World Telecommunication Day, Nigerian experts on information communications technology, mobile telecommunication firms and industry regulators will converge in Abuja to brainstorm on the strides the nation had taken in the sector over the last couple of years and take stock on the level at which the government and the citizenry have embraced the new technologies as a tool for economic and social development."

"In keeping with the theme of this year's celebration - 'Promoting Global Cybersecurity'- an international symposium has been scheduled to held (in Abuja) where issues such as internet governance, financing of ICT development and universal access to the information superhighway will be discussed."

"Experts and technocrats will also compare notes on the theories and realities of Information Communication Technology in terms of achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria. The symposium is also expected to explore avenues of strengthening bilateral and multilateral development and economic cooperation for ICT expansion in Nigeria."

For the full story featured in This Day Online  and shared through All Africa.com, click here.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler, Yale University Press.

Information, knowledge, and culture are central to human freedom and human development. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the way we see the state of the world as it is and might be; who decides these questions; and how we, as societies and polities, come to understand what can and ought to be done. For more than 150 years, modern complex democracies have depended in large measure on an industrial information economy for these basic functions. In the past decade and a half, we have begun to see a radical change in the organization of information production. Enabled by technological change, we are beginning to see a series of economic, social, and cultural adaptations that make possible a radical transformation of how we make the information environment we occupy as autonomous individuals, citizens, and members of cultural and social groups. It seems passé today to speak of "the Internet revolution." In some academic circles, it is positively naïve. But it should not be. The change brought about by the networked information environment is deep. It is structural. It goes to the very foundations of how liberal markets and liberal democracies have coevolved for almost two centuries.

A series of changes in the technologies, economic organization, and social practices of production in this environment has created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge, and culture. These changes have increased the role of nonmarket and nonproprietary production, both by individuals alone and by cooperative efforts in a wide range of loosely or tightly woven collaborations. These newly emerging practices have seen remarkable success in areas as diverse as software development and investigative reporting, avant-garde video and multiplayer online games. Together, they hint at the emergence of a new information environment, one in which individuals are free to take a more active role than was possible in the industrial information economy of the twentieth century. This new freedom holds great practical promise: as a dimension of individual freedom; as a platform for better democratic participation; as a medium to foster a more critical and self-reflective culture; and, in an increasingly information dependent global economy, as a mechanism to achieve improvements in human development everywhere.

The rise of greater scope for individual and cooperative nonmarket production of information and culture, however, threatens the incumbents of the industrial information economy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in the midst of a battle over the institutional ecology of the digital environment. A wide range of laws and institutions—from broad areas like telecommunications, copyright, or international trade regulation, to minutiae like the rules for registering domain names or whether digital television receivers will be required by law to recognize a particular code—are being tugged and warped in efforts to tilt the playing field toward one way of doing things or the other. How these battles turn out over the next decade or so will likely have a significant effect on how we come to know what is going on in the world we occupy, and to what extent and in what forms we will be able—as autonomous individuals, as citizens, and as participants in cultures and communities—to affect how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be.

Following a decision by ITU Council during Council 2006 held 19-28 April, the following documents are available: Council Document 2006/04: ITU activities related to Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks and management of Internet domain names and addresses; including activities related to Internet governance (PDF), Addendum 1 (PDF), Briefing Note (PDF).

References to related materials can be found here and here.

Juries began deliberating at the International Competition for CyberArts 2006 (Prix Ars Electronica) in Linz, Austria this morning. Over 4'300 projects from around the world are being considered.

Since 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica has served as an interdisciplinary platform for everyone who uses ICTs as a universal medium for implementing and designing their creative projects at the interface of art, technology and society. The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important awards for creativity and pioneering spirit in the field of digital media.

The event calls for entries in 7 categories, including a youth competition and a grant for young creative talent:

• Computer Animation / Visual Effects

• Digital Music

• Interactive Art

• Net Vision

• Digital Communities

• u19 – freestyle computing

• [the next idea] Art and Technology Grant

ITU's Lara Srivastava is Jury Member for the "Digital Communities" category, which focuses on the promotion of the social use of ICTs and the creation of common public goods, the sharing of knowledge, and the narrowing of the digital divide. This category was introduced to the Prix in 2004 by Jury Member Andreas Hirsch and Howard Rheingold. The other Jury members are: Steven Clift (Chairman, e-democracy.org) and Peter Kuthan (Founder, Tonga Online).

The Net Vision Jury includes Marko Ahtisaari (Director of Design Strategy at Nokia) and the Digital Music Jury includes Rob Young (Editor-at-large, The Wire Magazine).

The Computer Animation Jury includes such names as Mark Dippé (Director of Spawn and Visual Effects Supervisor for Jurassic Park, The Abyss, and Terminator 2), Rick Sayre (Visual Effects Supervisor for Pixar's Toy Story, A Bug's Life and The Incredibles), and Shuzo Shiota (President and CEO of Polygon Pictures).

Results from all categories will be released during the third week in May. Awards will be handed out at the Ars Electronica Festival in September 2006. Check this blog for further news!

 

In a press release, the European Commission has indicated its views on follow-up to the international policy commitments made at WSIS:

To keep up the momentum of the successful World Summit on Information Society (Tunis, 16-18 November 2005), the European Commission has set out today its priorities for implementing the international policy commitments made at the Summit. These priorities include safeguarding and strengthening human rights, in particular the freedom to receive and access information. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) should be used to contribute to open democratic societies and to economic and social progress worldwide. The Commission calls for continuing international talks to improve Internet governance through the two new processes created by the Summit: the multi-stakeholder Internet Governance Forum and the mechanism of enhanced cooperation that will involve all governments on an equal footing.

The EC has also issued a FAQ on Internet Governance.

The IEEE 802.11 Working Group has passed a major milestone in the development of IEEE 802.11s(TM), "Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications: Extended Service Set Mesh Networking", by voting to confirm a single proposal as the initial basis for the IEEE 802.11s standard. Many additional steps, which will include technical changes, are necessary before this standard becomes final; but this vote sets the baseline from which the group will work. Once completed, IEEE 802.11s will provide an interoperable and secure wireless distribution system between IEEE 802.11(TM) mesh points. This can reduce backhaul and installation costs. It also will extend mobility to access points in IEEE wireless local area networks (WLANs), enabling a new class of IEEE 802.11 applications that require untethered infrastructure.

See the IEEE website for more details with regards to this development related to wireless mesh networks (Wikipedia).

World Telecommunication Day (WTD) commemorates the founding of ITU on 17 May 1865. This year, WTD could carry added significance as 17 May has been identified by the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society as “World Information Society Day”.

While World Information Society Day is yet to be proclaimed, ITU, as the leading ICT agency of the UN system, upholds the idea and looks forward to its members to raise awareness of the role of ICT in achieving the development goals of all people.

For WTD 2006, the ITU Council chose the theme of Promoting Global Cybersecurity to highlight the serious challenges we face in ensuring the safety and security of networked information and communication systems.

In today’s interconnected and increasingly networked world, societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on our economies and on our societies. In order to safeguard our systems and infrastructure and in order to instill confidence in online trade, commerce, banking, telemedicine, e-government and a host of other applications, we need to strengthen the security practices of each and every networked country, business, and citizen, and develop a global culture of cybersecurity.

The urgency of promoting cybersecurity has been called for by the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in 2002, the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-2004) as well as the United Nations General Assembly (resolutions 58/199, 2004, and 57/239, 2002).

Invitations to organize national programmes in the context of promoting the theme Promoting Global Cybersecurity for WTD 2006 were sent to all ITU Member States and ITU Sector Members. Sector Members represent over 647 public and private companies and organizations with an interest in telecommunications. Also in conjunction with WTD 2006, the ITU is conducting a survey of cybersecurity trust and awareness. A list of links to the related materials includes:

• Message from the ITU Secretary-General, Yoshio Utsumi
• Circular Letter sent to ITU Member States
• Circular Letter sent to ITU Sector Members
• Cybersecurity Trust and Awareness Survey

 

On 23-24 March 2006 at ITU headquarters, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit hosted a high-level experts workshop entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? focused on the policy and regulatory challenges related to the deployment of IP-enabled NGNs. The following materials are now available:

• The original workshop concept document providing details on the objectives of the workshop
• Final Agenda
• Background papers:
  • Ruling the New and Emerging Markets in the Telecommunication Sector by Christian Wey, Pio Baake and Sven Heitzler 
  • Interconnection in an IP-enabled NGN Environment by Scott Marcus
  • Universal Service in an IP-enabled NGN Environment by Patrick Xavier
• All presentations and contributions
• Webcast archives

The 4th International Conference on Communications Convergence was held in Mumbai (India) and hosted by the Indian Merchants Chamber on the theme "Connecting India: The Global Challenge".  Lara Srivastava (ITU) spoke on the topic of connecting rural communities in India in a talk entitled "Connect! Developing Rural Perspectives".

The March 2006 edition of ITU News focusing on “ICT for Development: Making it Work for All”, brings attention to ICT penetration in Qatar, the host country for the 2006 ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC).

A peninsula on the western coast of the Arabian Gulf, Qatar is home to about 813 000 people. Despite its small size, it is a high-income economy with a well-developed communications infrastructure.

The ITU News article explains that "The expansion of information and communication technologies (ICT) in Qatar has taken the country to a leading place in this field among its neighbors in the region. It comes fourth in ICT penetration rates among the Arab States, behind Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. The incumbent telecommunication operator, Qatar Telecom (Q-Tel), was partially privatized in 1998, and the Supreme Council for Communication and Information Technology (also known as ictQATAR) was created in 2004 with the mandate of regulator and enabler of the country’s ICT sector."

Qatar has seen particularly strong growth in the number of mobile phone subscribers, which overtook the number of fixed telephone lines in 2001.

Source: ITU World Telecommunication Indicators Database.

Read the full article featured in the March edition of ITU News.

ITU hosted a consultation meeting on WSIS Action Line C2 (Information and Communications Infrastructure) on 9 March 2006, from 2-5 pm, in Doha, Qatar, during the ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference 2006 (WTDC-06). The meeting was chaired by ITU Secretary-General, Yoshio Utsumi.

The summary record of the meeting is available here. For more information, see the WSIS implementation page for action line C2 at: http://www.itu.int/wsis/implementation/c2/index.html.

At a workshop on ICT Indicators for performance benchmarking, held in Delhi 1-3 March, under the auspices of LIRNEasia and TRAI, representatives from the region's national statistical offices and regulatory agencies committed themselves to developing a set of ICT Indicators for the region based around "core set of ICT Indicators" defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development. This methodology means that they will be able to apply the composite "Digital Oppoportunity Index", which has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, including ITU, KADO and UNCTAD, for the measurement of the digital divide within the region and within individual countries.

The proceedings of the conference, which included presentations from TRAI, LIRNEasia, ITU, OECD and NRRI, are avaialble on the LIRNEasia website.

Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Khalifa al-Thani said in his opening speech to ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference 2006 on Tuesday 7 March that "communication, especially information technology, has become a major pillar of the economic and social development of all countries."

"Sheikh Abdullah said WTDC 06 had a key role to play in bringing peoples together and help them live in peace and with mutual respect. However, he cautioned against misuse of communication technology and said a legal and regulatory environment must be set up to secure the optimum use of the resources of knowledge."

WTDC, held for the first time in the Arab region, is organized by International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and hosted by Qatar’s Supreme Council for Information and Communication Technology (ictQATAR).

For the full article featured in Gulf Times, please click here.

ITU and UNESCO are organizing a Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet in Geneva from 9 - 11 May 2006.

Participation in the meeting is open to any organization or individual from ITU or UNESCO member countries. Written contributions are invited on the themes of the event and should be sent to multilingual (at) itu.int before Tuesday 25 April 2006.

The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, adopted at the Tunis Phase of WSIS, highlights the importance of multilingualism for bridging the digital divide. It identifies ITU as taking the lead role in the implementation of information and communication infrastructure (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C2), ITU/UNESCO for access to information and knowledge (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C3), and UNESCO for cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content (WSIS Tunis Agenda Action Line C8).

The symposium will examine issues highlighted in paragraph 53 of the WSIS Tunis Agenda, including:

1. Options for advancing the process for the introduction of multilingualism in a number of areas including domain names, email addresses and keyword look-up; 
   
2. Options for implementing programmes, also in cooperation with other appropriate organizations, that allow for the presence of multilingual domain names and content on the internet and the use of various software models in order to fight against the linguistic digital divide and ensure the participation of all in the emerging new society;
   
3. Options for strengthening cooperation between relevant bodies for the further development of technical standards and to foster their global deployment; In addition, the event will review technical solutions and current experiences, identify open issues and discuss a roadmap for further steps in the direction of promoting internet multilingualism.

The draft agenda of the symposium, background information and other information are available on the event website.

This publication, with a foreword by Nitin Desai, provides an overview of the key debates on Internet governance. It presents the work of the Open Regional Dialogue on Internet Governance, an Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) initiative that has collected perspectives from regional experts and end users.

  The Golden Book — a record of work undertaken to implement the goas of the World Summit on the Information Society and build the future Information Society — was launched on 24 February 2006 during the Consultation Meeting of WSIS Action Lines Facilitators/Moderators, convened by ITU, UNESCO and UNDP in Geneva.

This Golden Book highlights some of the valuable work being done around the world to promote ICTs in projects, large and small, by governments, individuals or team effort, for the benefit of all. It provides illustrative examples of new and innovative projects to build infrastructure, promote ICTs in education, health and governance, ensure fair access and enhance online security.

The Golden Book has been published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as a permanent record of the new commitments and resources pledged by stakeholders during the Tunis Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). All WSIS stakeholders at the Summit were invited to submit an online questionnaire with details of their activities announced during the Tunis Phase. These activities have been planned or are already being undertaken to implement the WSIS Plan of Action. The Golden Book also serves as a tool helping to coordinate the action taken to implement the 11 Action lines and avoid duplication.

More than 375 submissions were made to the Golden Book by governments, international organizations, NGOs, companies and individuals, describing their work towards promoting ICT activities. ITU estimates that the activities announced during the Tunis Phase to promote WSIS goals represented a total value of at least € 3.2 billion (US$ 3.9 billion). Governments committed to implement projects for some € 1.9 billion, representing nearly two-thirds of estimated total value of all commitments, while international organizations pledged to carry out activities for around half that amount, i.e. 0.83 billion Euros. Business entities announced plans to realize projects for around 0.35 billion Euros and civil society projects amount to least 0.13 billion Euros.

Amount of financial commitments by stakeholder

Breakdown by anticipated expenditure

For more information on the Golden Book, please see here.

The proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries has the potential to bring a wide range of financial services to an entirely new customer base. This report explores the use of mobile phones to expand financial services in the Philippines.

The proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries has the potential to bring a wide range of financial services to an entirely new customer base, according to a new report commissioned by the Information for Development Program (infoDev) in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the GSM Association.

For more information on the Report, please click here.

Click here to read the Report.

In line with paragraph 108 and the Annex of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, a consultation is being held on 15-16 May 2006, at ITU Headquarters in Geneva, on WSIS Action Line C5: Building Confidence and Security in the use of ICTs. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the WSIS multi-stakeholder implementation process for Action Line C5.

The meeting is open to all WSIS stakeholders that are interested and involved in the implementation process in the field of building confidence and security in the use of ICTs.

A draft agenda for the consultation on WSIS Action Line C5 Facilitation and the invitation letter to the meeting from ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi can be viewed on the WSIS C5 Implementation website.

More information on the activities related to WSIS implementation and follow-up can be viewed here.

Eli Noam: Moore’s Law at risk from industry of delay:

"So, in technology, Moore’s Law is alive and well. But technology does not operate in a vacuum. No business or government institution can change at 50 per cent a year. While stability and tradition are important, if a fundamental technology progresses far beyond society’s ability to absorb its impacts, a growing disconnection occurs. When, in the 19th century, technology proceeded at a rapid pace while social institutions did not, the results were upheavals and revolutions. Today, again, the key elements of the information economy are progressing at a scorching rate, while private and public institutions are lagging behind.

Examples include the way the US lost leadership in mobile wireless and broadband internet because of interminable governmental processes in spectrum allocation. Around the world, it has taken more than a decade to set the rules on interconnection among telecommunciation carriers, and they are still far from settled. This has slowed the entry of new-style carriers.

The question of whether new broadband services should be treated in the same time-consuming way as traditional telecommunication has tied regulators in knots and recently created a confrontation between Brussels and Germany. In South Korea, video over the internet requires a broadcasting licence, which has slowed how much the network is used. Patent offices every­where are falling behind their workload. It may soon take more than five years to get a patent in the US."

In line with para 108 and Annex of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, a consultation on WSIS Action Line Facilitation for WSIS action line C2, i.e. information and communication infrastructure will take place in conjunction with WTDC-06 in Doha, Qatar, on 9 March 2006, in the Convention Center, Room Al Majlis, to benefit from the presence of many WSIS stakeholders present at WTDC-06. The meeting will run from 14.00 – 17.00 hours. The meeting is open to all WSIS stakeholders that are interested and involved in implementation process in the field of information and communication infrastructure. The meeting will be held in English.

The purpose of the meeting is for information exchange and to discuss the WSIS multi-stakeholder implementation process in field of information and communication infrastructure.  ITU, UNESCO and UNDP are holding a consultation meeting to establish the nature of the coordination process, its outputs, modalities and logistics, of the work to be undertaken on WSIS implementation on 24 February 2006, in Geneva, and the outcome of this meeting will be reported. A draft annotated agenda is attached, together with a registration/badge request form for those not registered for WTDC-06. Further information is available from the implementation website.

Measuring Broadband's Economic Impact, William H. Lehr, Carlos A. Osorio, Sharon E. Gillett, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Marvin A. Sirbu, Carnegie Mellon University (Revised January 17 2006):

Abstract: Does broadband matter to the economy? Numerous studies have focused on whether there is a digital divide, on regulatory impacts and investment incentives, and on the factors influencing where broadband is available. However, given how recently broadband has been adopted, little empirical research has investigated its economic impact. This paper presents estimates of the effect of broadband on a number of indicators of economic activity, including employment, wages, and industry mix, using a cross-sectional panel data set of communities (by zip code) across the United States. We match data from the FCC (Form 477) on broadband availability with demographic and other economic data from the US Population Censuses and Establishment Surveys. We find support for the conclusion that broadband positively affects economic activity in ways that are consistent with the qualitative stories told by broadband advocates. Even after controlling for community-level factors known to influence broadband availability and economic activity, we find that between 1998 and 2002, communities in which mass-market broadband was available by December 1999 experienced more rapid growth in (1) employment, (2) the number of businesses overall, and (3) businesses in IT-intensive sectors. In addition, the effect of broadband availability by 1999 can be observed in higher market rates for rental housing in 2000. We compare state-level with zip-code level analyses to highlight data aggregation problems, and discuss a number of analytic and data issues that bear on further measurements of broadband’s economic impact. This analysis is perforce preliminary because additional data and experience are needed to more accurately address this important question; however, the early results presented here suggest that the assumed (and oft-touted) economic impacts of broadband are both real and measurable.

Pan Asia Networking (PAN) at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is pleased to share two interactive maps with you. The first of these maps provides information about the ICT market structure, regulatory functions, and the national regulatory agency for countries in Asia. You can access the map here.

The second map provides a list of indicators (including population, GDP per capita, main telephone lines, mobile cellular subscribers, radios, televisions, and internet users) in Asia since 2001. In addition, this map allows one to compare an indicator across up to three countries. An animated instruction guide for this map is attached. You can access the map here.

It's just not major telecommunication carriers who appear to want to build separate "internets" with guaranteed QoS and security (aka NGN). Today's UK Times Online has an article on rumours that Google intends to build its own "tiered" internet.

Link Center has released new report on Towards an African e-Index: Household and Individual ICT Access and Usage across 10 African Countries.

Based on the 2004 e-Access & Usage Household survey that was completed during the course of 2004 and 2005 by members of the researchICTafrica! network under the direction of Prof Gillwald, this report is the result of a demand study of individuals and households and how ICT's are used across 10 African countries. 

For more information on the report, please click here. For the full report in pdf format (6,7mb), please click here.

WSIS E-Flash No 30 dated 30 January 2006 has been published and includes news on:

• WSIS Executive Secretariat maintained
• Meeting on WSIS Action Lines Moderators/Facilitators on 24 February 2006
• Internet Governance Forum - consultations on 16 - 17 February 2006
• WSIS Golden Book
• WSIS Stocktaking
• The ITU development initiative "Connect the World"
• WSIS Outcome documents
• New general WSIS contact e-mail address

A practical guide to planning and building low-cost telecommunication infrastructure.

This book was created by a team of individuals who each, in their own field, are actively participating in the ever-expanding Internet by pushing its reach farther than ever before. The massive popularity of wireless networking has caused equipment costs to continually plummet, while equipment capabilities continue to sharply increase. We believe that by taking advantage of this state of affairs, people can finally begin to have a stake in building their own communications infrastructure. We hope to not only convince you that this is possible, but also show how we have done it, and to give you the information and tools you need to start a network project in your local community.

Wireless infrastructure can be built for very little cost compared to traditional wired alternatives. But building wireless networks is only partly about saving money. By providing people in your local community with cheaper and easier access to information, they will directly benefit from what the Internet has to offer. The time and effort saved by having access to the global network of information translates into wealth on a local scale, as more work can be done in less time and with less effort.

At an early December meeting of ITU-T's Study Group 2, agreement on the allocation of a high-revenue international short message service (SMS) number to two international organisations for the purpose of fundraising was made. An official announcement in ITU-T's Operational Bulletin will be made following the decision of the Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau.

The number +979 0767 was granted following a request from the United Nations International Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). It will allow the two organizations to launch relief campaigns across national boundaries, and will encourage regular donations by introducing a recognisable and non-changing number. The 767 portion of the number spells out SOS.

Texting emerged as a popular way to contribute to relief efforts during fundraising for the earthquake in Bam , Iran , 2003 and the 2004 Asian tsunami. [via the ITU-T Newslog]

ITU Press Release: World Telecommunication Development Conference 2006 to agree on telecommunication development priorities to bridge the digital divide Geneva, 24 January 2006 - The first world development conference following the landmark World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is due to open in six weeks in Doha, Qatar. The purpose of the conference is to focus on development priorities in telecommunications and agree on the programmes, projects and initiatives to implement them. It will take into account the WSIS Geneva Plan of Action and Tunis Agenda, which aim at bridging the digital divide. A key objective is to promote international cooperation, regional initiatives and partnerships that can sustain and strengthen telecommunication infrastructure and institutions in developing countries. The Doha Action Plan will set out ways to implement these goals over the next four years.

The official website of the 1st Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), to be convened later this year in Greece has been launched.

This UN study on the construction of knowledge societies puts forward "the idea that if societies desire to follow the path of knowledge-based growth and development, a very thorough reconstruction of their institutions must occur. It suggests to political leaders, public administrations and the public at large that a broad, well-informed debate about this institutional shift should be undertaken. The magnitude of such a shift would require the cooperation of all segments of society and their sharing not only of the risk and cost of change, but first and foremost, of common goals and values. It is hoped that this study will inform this debate or at least sketch its parameters." In an experimental Index of Knowledge Societies, it rates the following countries the highest: Country Name IKS Index 1  Sweden 0.776 2  Denmark 0.763 3  Norway 0.719 4  Switzerland 0.706 5  Finland 0.704 6  Japan 0.696 7  Germany 0.696 8  Austria 0.692 9  New Zealand 0.692 10 United Kingdom 0.688

Two recent articles on the growing influence of national governments over the internet.

1. Legal Affairs has just published Digital Borders By Jack Goldsmith and Timothy Wu. The article is an excerpt from the book Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World

In this provocative new book, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu tell the fascinating story of the Internet's challenge to governmental rule in the 1990s, and the ensuing battles with governments around the world. It's a book about the fate of one idea--that the Internet might liberate us forever from government, borders, and even our physical selves. We learn of Google's struggles with the French government and Yahoo's capitulation to the Chinese regime; of how the European Union sets privacy standards on the Net for the entire world; and of eBay's struggles with fraud and how it slowly learned to trust the FBI. In a decade of events the original vision is uprooted, as governments time and time again assert their power to direct the future of the Internet. The destiny of the Internet over the next decades, argue Goldsmith and Wu, will reflect the interests of powerful nations and the conflicts within and between them.

While acknowledging the many attractions of the earliest visions of the Internet, the authors describe the new order, and speaking to both its surprising virtues and unavoidable vices. Far from destroying the Internet, the experience of the last decade has lead to a quiet rediscovery of some of the oldest functions and justifications for territorial government. While territorial governments have unavoidable problems, it has proven hard to replace what legitimacy governments have, and harder yet to replace the system of rule of law that controls the unchecked evils of anarchy. While the Net will change some of the ways that territorial states govern, it will not diminish the oldest and most fundamental roles of government and challenges of governance.

2. First Monday has published The filtering matrix: Integrated mechanisms of information control and the demarcation of borders in cyberspace by Nart Villeneuve.

Increasingly, states are adopting practices aimed at regulating and controlling the Internet as it passes through their borders. Seeking to assert information sovereignty over their cyber–territory, governments are implementing Internet content filtering technology at the national level. The implementation of national filtering is most often conducted in secrecy and lacks openness, transparency, and accountability. Policy–makers are seemingly unaware of significant unintended consequences, such as the locking of content that was never intended to be blocked. Once a national filtering system is in place, governments may be tempted to use it as a tool of political censorship or as a technological "quick fix" to problems that stem from larger social and political issues. As non–transparent filtering practices meld into forms of censorship the effect on democratic practices and the open character of the Internet are discernible. States are increasingly using Internet filtering to control the environment of political speech in fundamental opposition to civil liberties, freedom of speech, and free expression. The consequences of political filtering directly impact democratic practices and can be considered a violation of human rights.

Let There Be Wi-Fi: Broadband is the electricity of the 21st century—and much of America is being left in the dark, by Robert McChesney and John Podesta Two decades ago, the chattering classes fretted about economic upheaval rising from Japan and the Asian Tigers. They feared an invasion of cars, microchips, and Karaoke that would take away American jobs, take over U.S.-dominated industries, and shift cultural norms. In the 1990s, America responded with a boom in high technology and Hollywood exports. But a revolution is again brewing in places like Japan and South Korea. This time it's about “broadband”—a technology that, in terms of powering economies, could be the 21st century equivalent of electricity. But rather than relive the jingoism of the 1980s, American policy makers would be wise to take a cue from the Asian innovators and implement new policies to close the digital divide at home and with the rest of the world. The article cites ITU broadband research such as this and this.

At the second phase of WSIS in Tunis, the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society called for the establishment of an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in paragraphs 72 - 79. The first meeting of the IGF will take place in Greece in 2006.

The first consultations on the convening of the IGF will take place in Geneva, Switzerland on 16 and 17 February 2006. The meeting will take place at the United Nations and be chaired by Mr Nitin Desai, the UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser for WSIS, who will assist the Secretary-General in preparing the convening of the IGF. Additional information can be found at www.intgovforum.org.

Malaysia has recently launched its latest 5 year ICT master plan called MyICMS 886.

[Via James Seng's blog]

The European Regional Seminar on Regulatory and Economic Aspects of VoIP and Broadband Promotion for Central Eastern European countries (CEE), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Baltic States took place from the 29 to 30 November 2005, in Istanbul, Turkey. The agenda and presentations made at the meeting are available.

The internet as we know it is set to transform radically, according to a new ITU Internet Report entitled The Internet of Things, specially prepared to coincide with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005. From an academic network for the chosen few created in the late 1960s, the internet is now a mass-market, consumer-oriented network being accessed by over 900 million people worldwide, through personal computers, mobile phones and other wireless devices. But this is only the beginning. According to ITU’s report, we are standing on the brink of a new ubiquitous computing and communication era, one that will radically transform the Internet, and with it, our corporate, community, and personal spheres. The new ITU report looks at key enabling technologies for ubiquity (e.g. RFID, sensors and sensor networks, telematics, robotics, nanotechnology) and how they might impact the future human and technological landscape.

At WSIS, the report was launched at a Press Conference and Panel Debate moderated by Kenn Cukier of The Economist. The lively debate included the following speakers and panelists: Nicholas Negroponte - MIT Media Lab, Olivier Baujard - CTO of Alcatel, Hitomi Murakami - VP General Manager of KDDI (Japan), Jonathan Murray - VP and CTO, Microsoft EMEA, Walid Moneimne, Senior VP and Head of EMEA Networks - Nokia, John Gage, Chief Researcher and Director of the Science Office - Sun Microsystems, and from the ITU, Lara Srivastava, lead author of the report.

Internet governance: A tale of community structure and individual initiative by David Allen.

On one side, the Internet community argues for the informality and flexibility necessary for innovation – that is, for individual initiative – to flourish. On the other side, some governments call for more formality and the stable base – that is, for community structure – upon which ongoing operations and change can both occur.

The European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate General has commissioned a series of four monitoring reports at nine-monthly intervals on the market for electronic communications networks and services in 8 EU candidate and potential candidate countries. The first Country Comparative Report is now available.

For the Report, please click here.

The University of Masschusetts Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution's Cyberweek 2005-2006 Conference on ODR, eLawyering and ethics in the internet law age, was held 23-28 October 2005.  

Cyberweek is the Center's free online conference. Each year individuals and organizations from all over the world come together online for a week of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) simulations, demonstrations, presentations, discussions, experiments, and resource sharing.

Presentations, and material from this year's event can be viewed here.

The Development Gateway is launching a new special report - Information Society: The Next Steps.

The Information Society has produced a tantalizing array of new information and communication technologies (ICT) that have transformed today's approach to development. Access to these technologies is spreading rapidly. This year, the number of Internet users in developing countries is crossing the 500 million mark, surpassing industrial nations for the first time. By some estimates, more than 75% of the world's population now lives within range of a mobile network. Yet the long-heralded promise of ICT remains far out of reach for most of the developing world. For the information poor, economic and social gaps are in fact widening - both within and between countries. Following on the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) of December 2003, WSIS Phase II in November 2005 will assess progress and prompt further global action to capture the promise of ICT for all. This Special Report "Information Society: Next Steps" looks at how the ICT landscape is changing in the developing world and what lies ahead. Experts from governments, donors, NGOs and the private sector speak out about effective policies, promising applications and innovative business models.

The online report includes:
- Interviews with experts on how to create an effective enabling environment for ICT for development and how to finance it;
- collections of documents, research and statistics on tools and applications that can benefit developing countries, found on the Development Gateway portal and other websites; and
- a unique section devoted to the "voices" of those developing and using ICT from both the North and South, relating stories contributed through a recent Development Gateway survey of our members.

Interviews with the following people, among others, will be featured:
- Charles Geiger, Executive Director, WSIS Executive Secretariat
- Pierre Guislain, World Bank Group
- Aimal Marjan, Afghan Ministry of Communication
- Sam Pitroda, Indian Knowledge Commission
- Danilo Piaggesi,  Inter-American Development Bank

Read this Special Report.

The WSIS Stocktaking Report has been officially launched during the World Summit on the Infrmation Society in Tunis. The report has been prepared on the basis of activities entered to the WSIS Stocktaking Database that by November 2005 contained more then 2500 entries. 

For the launch presentation see Stocktaking.pdf (1.47 MB).

For the WSIS Stocktaking Database see here. 

The final documents submitted to the second phase of WSIS being held 16-18 November 2005 in Tunis have been posted. They are:

• Tunis Agenda for the Information Society
• The Tunis Commitment

In The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, paragraphs 3-28 related to Financial Mechanisms for Meeting the Challenges of ICTs for Development, paragraphs 29-82 relate to Internet Governance, and paragraphs 83-122 relate to Implementation and Follow-up.

 

An article on BBC News discusses the new UNCTAD Information Economy Report 2005 and says the costs of fast net access and linking up to the internet's global infrastructure hits poorer nations much harder than developed countries. Chapters in the report include:

1. ICT indicators for development; Trends and measurement issues
2. International Internet backbone connectivity: Issues for developing countries
3. E-credit information, trade finance and e-finance: Overcoming information asymmetries
4. Taking off: E-tourism opportunities for developing countries
5. Information technology and security: Risk management and policy implications
6. Protecting the information society: Addressing the phenomenon of cybercrime

From Infodev: This document is a guideline for replicating the Village Phone program in a new country. infoDev along with several other partners, supported this publication.

The Study draws on Grameen’s experience in both Bangladesh and Uganda and establishes a template for creating sustainable initiatives that simultaneously bring telecommunications to the rural poor, create viable new businesses for micro-entrepreneurs, and expand the customer base of telecommunications companies. No two implementations of the Village Phone program will be exactly alike. Each country will have unique variables, participants, and environments. However, it is expected that there will be common structures, applications, and processes – all of which are described in detail herein.

The information presented in this replication manual is shared in the spirit of international cooperation. Grameen Foundation USA will continue to act as a clearinghouse for Village Phone Replication information. As people share the lessons from future replication efforts, Grameen Foundation USA will publish updates to reflect additional learning.

Click here to read more (7 Mbyte PDF file).

A book written by members of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) will be launched at WSIS in Tunis and made available on the WGIG website on 16 November 2005. The preface, introduction and conclusions are already available.

For the upcoming Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) to be held in Hammamet, Tunisia, 14-15 November 2005, just before the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the ITU has released a paper by Tracy Cohen, Olli Mattila and Russel Southwood, entitled VoIP and Regulation, which will be presented at the GSR:

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is generally viewed as a “disruptive technology”. All the current market indications show that IP networks and services like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) will replace traditional PSTN networks and services. ITU estimates that by 2008, at least 50 percent of international minutes will be carried on IP networks and that many carriers will have all-IP networks. Recent trends are certainly headed in this direction. For example, in the United States, residential VoIP subscriber numbers have increased from 150,000 at the end of 2003 to over 2 million in March 2005. It is predicted that subscribers in the US will exceed 4.1 million by 2006, generating over USD 1 billion in gross revenues for the year. In March 2005, the Chilean broadband operator VTR launched the first telecommunication network for residential services based on IP technology. The operator expects to expand its platform and reach 2 million customers in five years. There are approximately 35,000 residential telephones that use IP technology in Chile, either through Chilean operators or through Vonage...

This paper examines how VoIP services will affect future regulation. Due to the starkly contrasting global perceptions of VoIP however, it is difficult to present a unified approach to regulatory treatment of VoIP and this paper aims to reflect regulatory experiences from a wide range of countries that are grappling with the transition to VoIP. The three sections of this paper are structured to answer both the broad and specific questions raised by VoIP services, including the overall approach to regulating VoIP as a mainstream service; how VoIP has changed voice business models and the various ways of classifying the services it has created; and finally, other related issues frequently raised in connection with VoIP, such as quality of service; network integrity; emergency calling, numbering, communication security and lawful interception.

For the upcoming Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) to be held in Hammamet, Tunisia, 14-15 November 2005, just before the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the ITU has released a paper by John Palfrey entitled Stemming the International Tide of Spam: a Draft Model Law, which will be presented at the GSR:

This discussion paper primarily takes up the question of what – beyond coordinating with technologists and other countries’ enforcement teams and educating consumers – legislators and regulators might consider by way of legal mechanisms. First, the paper takes up the elements that might be included in an anti-spam law. Second, the paper explores one alternative legal mechanism which might be built into an anti-spam strategy, the establishment of enforceable codes of conduct for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Third, this paper also examines a variant of the legal approach where ISPs are formally encouraged by regulators to develop their own code of conduct. ISPs should be encouraged to establish and enforce narrowly-drawn codes of conduct that prohibit their users from using that ISP as a source for spamming and related bad acts, such as spoofing and phishing, and not to enter into peering arrangements with ISPs that do not uphold similar codes of conduct. Rather than continue to rely upon chasing individual spammers, regulators in the most resource-constrained countries in particular would be more likely to succeed by working with and through the ISPs that are closer to the source of the problem, to their customers, and to the technology in question. The regulator’s job would be to ensure that ISPs within their jurisdiction adopt adequate codes of conduct as a condition of their operating license and then to enforce adherence to those codes of conduct. The regulator can also play a role in sharing best practices among ISPs and making consumers aware of the good works of the best ISPs. While effectively just shifting the burden of some of the anti-spam enforcement to ISPs is not without clear drawbacks, and cannot alone succeed in stemming the tide of spam, such a policy has a far higher likelihood of success in the developing countries context than the anti-spam enforcement tactics employed to date.

These comparative pie charts demonstrate an ongoing shift in Internet demographics from the Americas to the Asia-Pacific region. In 2001, the Americas had 38% of the world's Internet users and Asia-Pacific had 32%. In 2004, this is essentially reversed with Asia-Pacific having 37% and the Americas with 31%. Europe has kept a relative 29% share but Africa has seen a slight gain from 1% to 3%. Because of their much larger populations and potential for growth, the Asia-Pacific region will continue to take a larger and larger percentage of the world's Internet users.

Dr. Tim Kelly, from the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit recently spoke on South Africa’s Position in Global Telecoms, at the 2nd Colloquium on Telecom Prices in Johannesburg, South Africa. For the presentation given by Dr. Kelly, click here.

The South African press also quoted Dr. Kelly; "According to Kelly price is an easy variable to measure. The ITU use a formula based on 30G per month with an average of 30 hours per month."

When measuring South Africa against 40 other economies South Africa is ranked 38th. China for example, typically offers this type of package (30G with 30 hours of usage per month) for around $10 (R66). South Africa is ten times more expensive with figure of $100 (R660) per month for the same service.

Kelly said, "South Africa is paying far too much for broadband.” A good way of measuring the cost of broadband is to use the average income of the population (GMI). The percentage quoted by Kelly as an internationally acceptable measure is for broadband to cost 1% of the average income per capita for a 1Mbps service (currently the fastest service available in South Africa). South Africans are currently paying around 100% GMI for their 1Mbps service. When considering the exorbitant prices South Africans are forced to pay for an ADSL service it is no wonder penetrations sits at 0.2%. Another factor inhibiting broadband usage according to Kelly is bit caps.

"Wherever bit caps are applied it deters the use of broadband," said Kelly. He stated clearly that South Africa needs to abandon bit caps and that there is no reason why residential ADSL users should be subject to a bit cap. Kelly highlighted that the price of broadband and the enforcement of bit caps are the two factors that deter South Africans from using the service. With government and the private sector becoming increasingly restless regarding liberalization of the telecoms sector and specifically broadband provisioning it is time to start addressing some of these issues. 

For the full article, click here.

The Economic Impact of Telecommunications on Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction: A study of rural communities in India (Gujarat), Mozambique and Tanzania. Project managed for the UK's DFID by Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation.

The last five years have seen tremendous growth in telephone ownership and use in developing countries. Until the mid-1990s, telephones were only available in the urban centres of poor countries. Some African countries had telephone densities as low as one per thousand people. Since then, mobile telephone networks have spread rapidly in most low income countries. Many people, even in low income communities, now own telephones; and most adults make some use of them, wherever they are available, usually relying on public kiosks, phone shops or airtime bought from individual phone owners. The mobile phone has become a symbol of the use of new information and communication technologies (or ICTs) in the developing world.

But what impact has the telephone had on livelihoods – on how people live their lives, protect themselves against vulnerability and take opportunities for a more prosperous future? Do people use the telephone for social or business purposes? How important is it to them in emergencies? Does it make a difference to how they obtain the information they need to run their lives? And how does it fit into the pattern of other communication channels they have available?

ITU has handed over "55 Inmarsats satellite phone sets to Pakistan to be used for communication in the Quake-disaster zones. Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari Friday lauded the help received and coming in from world agencies, particularly the ITU to restore and re-install telecommunication links in earthquake hit areas."

"Restoration of telecommunications links is extremely critical for supporting the disaster relief operations in the earthquake struck region", said he. "We are doing all we can with the help of world agencies to put these links back in place."

For more information on the story, see Pakistan Times.

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Communications, the Ugo Bordoni Foundation and the Aosta Valley regional authority, organized a Workshop on “Tomorrow’s Network Today” on 7-8 October 2005.

The workshop considered five broad themes:

• International Visions of Ubiquitous Networks and Next Generation Networks
• National Visions of Ubiquitous Networks and Next Generation Networks
• Creating an Enabling Environment
• The Italian Path Towards Ubiquitous Networks
• An example of Italian best practice: "Being Digital in the Aosta Valley"

Now available on the workshop website  are the agenda, with links to presentations as they were delivered and the two Case Studies on Italy – “Bridging the Gap: Taking Tomorrow’s Network Today” presented by Marco Obiso and “Ubiquitous Networks Societies: The Case of Italy” presented by Cristina Bueti - as well as background papers and voluntary contributions produced for the workshop.

During the event, Tim Kelly, Head of the Strategy and Policy Unit (ITU) presented “Tomorrow’s Network and the Internet of Things”, showing some of the outcomes of the forthcoming ITU Internet Reports publication that this year will be dedicated to the theme of the “Internet of Things “.

A final report of the workshop will be available in the next few weeks at the workshop website.

The WSIS Executive Secretariat has announced that under the Chairmanship of the President of PrepCom of the Tunis phase of WSIS, a Negotiation Group will meet in two consecutive sessions from 24 to 28 October 2005. In its first session, on 24 and 25 October 2005, its objective will be to finalize the negotiation on the Political Chapeau and on the paragraphs remained in brackets of Chapter two of the Operational Part.

In its second session, from 26 to 28 October 2005, the Negotiation Group will aim to finalize the negotiations on Chapters one and four of the Operational Part of the final documents of the Tunis phase. It will be an intergovernmental negotiation process, to be held every day from 10.00 - 13.00 and from 15.00 - 18.00 hours in the Palais de Nations, Room XX, Gate 40. Interpretation in the six UN working languages will be provided. After each session, the President of PrepCom will inform the observers on the advancement of the work. Participants without badges should contact the Executive Secretariat with a completed badge request form by Friday 21 October 2005 at the latest.

The resumed PrepCom-3 will be held back to back to the Tunis Summit. The Prepcom Bureau decided that PrepCom-3 of the Tunis phase of WSIS will be reconvened on 13 November 2005, at 10.00 hours, in Tunis, for a three-day session (13-15 November 2005). Information about the venue will be provided at a later stage. The resumed PrepCom-3 will start with a short organizational Plenary meeting. The modalities of work of the resumed PrepCom-3 will follow the Rules of Procedure of the PrepCom, including the participation of observers in Plenary and Subcommittee meetings. Interpretation in the six UN working languages will be provided.

More information will be made available here.

A debate on the emerging agenda for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was staged in Geneva on 30 September 2005. An invited audience of ICT movers and shakers fired questions at a distinguished panel of experts. The resulting programme, Digital Dividend, will be broadcast on BBC World Television on 22 and 23 October 2005, in advance of Phase II of WSIS, which will take place in Tunis, Tunisia on 16-18 November 2005.

The transmission times for BBC World Television are as follows:

Saturday 22 October 2005 - 12:10 GMT
Saturday 22 October 2005 - 19:10 GMT
Sunday 23 October 2005 - 07:10 GMT
Sunday 23 October 2005 - 17:10 GMT

These times are all in GMT. For you local time, please check the BBC website.

 

The October 2005 English edition of ITU News is now available. Headlines include:

• ITU at a Glance
• ITU's Connect the World Initiatives
• Eye on development
• SPAM
• Pioneers Page
• In Brief
• Industry Watch

Links to documents from WSIS Prepcom-3 (19-30 September 2005) Sub-Committee A, which dealt with the topic of Internet Governance, can be found on the WSIS website. The key documents from Prepcom-3 include:

• Report of the Work of Sub-Committee A [WSIS-II/PC-3/DOC/11 (Rev. 1)]
• Chair's "Food for Thought" (Section Five) [WSIS-II/PC-3/DT/15]
• Internet Governance proposals [WSIS-II/PC-3/DT/17] to [WSIS-II/PC-3/DT/25]
• Chair's paper (after fourth reading): Chapter three [WSIS-II/PC-3/DT/10(Rev.4)]
• Report from the WGIG [WSIS-II/PC-3/DOC/5]
• Compilation of comments [WSIS-II/PC-3/DT/14(Rev.2)]
• All Chair's Papers
• Contributions

According to the Report of the Work of Sub-Committee A, in order to complete the work in time for the Summit, document DT/10 Rev. 4 is offered as basis for further negotiations. The following documents elaborated during PrepCom-3 are offered as a further input to future negotiations:

• DT/15 containing a food for thought paper from the chairman;
• DT/17 (African common position, submitted by Ghana
• DT/18 (Argentina)
• DT/19 (Brazil)
• DT/20 (Canada)
• DT/21 (European Union position, submitted by United Kingdom)
• DT/22 (Islamic Republic of Iran)
• DT/23 (Japan)
• DT/24 (Russian Federation/Azerbaijan/Belarus/Moldova)
• DT/25 (position of Arab Group, submitted by Saudi Arabia).

PrepCom-3: Highlights 22-23 September 2005

The Chair of WSIS Phase 2 Prepcom-3 Sub-Committee A dealing with Internet Governance has released a chair's draft of Chapter 3: Internet Governance for consideration of Sub-Committee A.

Highlights from the discussions at WSIS Prepcom-3 19-21 September 2005 can be found here.

The video archives (Real Video) of yesterday's (20 September 2005) opening discussions on Internet governance in WSIS Prepcom-3 Sub-Committee A which is handling Internet Governance have been made available. They are available in English and in the original language from the Floor.

Access to the all real-time Prepcom-3 streams and archives can be found here.

Update: The archives of the 21 September 2005 discussions on Internet Governance in Sub-Committee A can be found here in English and in the original language from the Floor.

The third meeting of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom-3 of the Tunis phase) for the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The meeting takes place at the United Nations in Geneva from 19-30 September. The primary topics of discussion are finalizing texts for the WSIS and Internet Governance and the event is being webcast. Some quick links to related materials:

• Documents and contributions
• Webcast
• Newsroom
• Speeches at the Opening Ceremony
• Reports to PrepCom-3 on Regional and Thematic Meetings
• Information for Participants
• List of Participants
• Announced list of participants
• List of participants (present)
• Participants finder
• List of accredited NGOs, civil society and business sector entities
• Invitation letters
• Internet Governance
• The Golden Book: Stakeholders Commitments
• Information session for governments on the drawing of lots to establish the list of speakers of the Summit
• Parallel and Side Events
• Registration
• Media accreditation and registration

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is organizing a lunchtime parallel session on Developing a Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) that will take place in Geneva on Thursday 22 September 2005, from 13.30 – 14.45 hours at the UN Palais des Nations, Room IX, during PrepCom-3.

The Digital Opportunity Index is specifically mandated in the WSIS Plan of Action (para 28a). In this session, ITU will present a proposed methodology for the DOI, tested on 40 economies. The initial results are shown in the report Measuring Digital Opportunity, which was presented at the recent WSIS Thematic Meeting on Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Bridging the Digital Divide, in Seoul, Republic of Korea. More information on the methodology is available on the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) website.

The second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) takes place this November in Tunisia. The third meeting of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom-3 of the Tunis phase) will be held in Geneva from 19-30 September under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and is certain to attract many high-level participants from the world of ICTs (information and communication technologies).

With support from SDC, GKP, and UNDP-APDIP, dev.tv intends to take advantage of this gathering to stage a one-hour televised debate on whether ICTs can effectively help lift people out of poverty. The debate will be broadcast on BBC World to 275 million homes worldwide, and will also be streamed over the internet during the week of the WSIS.

An article recently published through China Radio International (CRI) states that China is working on a program to launch a telecom popularization service fund.

According to an official of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry, a common understanding on the launch of the fund has been reached, but there is so far no related timetable. This statement was made public at a seminar jointly sponsored by the ministry and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The article went further on to stating some of the outstanding questions that will need to be considered, including; "Where are the sources of the fund? How to use the fund? Who will benefit from the fund?"

"The telecom popularization fund means any person is able to afford telecom services at any place, and such service should take identical charge. China's Telecom Regulations also provide that telecom service operators shall implement telecom popularization services according to related stipulations of the state. The country has earlier set a goal of making all villages have access to telecom service by 2010 and making all households have access to telecom service by 2020. The telecom service access project was kicked off at the beginning of 2004, and by the end of July 2005, telecom service had reached 19,609 villages formerly without such access, which represented 52 per cent of the total task volume."

"China at present has six telecom operators, namely China Telecom, China Mobile, China Netcom, China Unicom, China Railcom, and China Satcom. They jointly shoulder the task of making all villages have access to telecom service. According to the plan, telephone service will reach 95 per cent of all administrative villages in the country by the end of 2005. But it still remains a question as to how telecom service will reach the remaining 5 per cent of villages. Some experts have proposed the establishment of a telecom popularization service fund to undertake the task."

To access the full article, click here.

China Radio International (CRI) is one of the "three central media organizations in China" along with China National Radio (CNR) and China Central Television (CCTV).

 

Lessons from broadband development in Canada, Japan, Korea and the United States by Rob FRIEDEN, Telecommunications Policy Volume 29, Issue 8, September 2005, Pages 595-613:

Broadband network development does not always track closely a nations overall wealth and economic strength. The International Telecommunication Union reported that in 2005 the five top nations for broadband network market penetration were: Korea, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Denmark and Canada. The ITU ranked the United States sixteenth in broadband penetration.

Aside from the obvious geographical and demographic advantages accruing to small nations with large urban populations, broadband development thrives when it becomes a national priority. Both developed and developing nations have stimulated capital expenditures for infrastructure in ways United States public and private sector stakeholders have yet to embrace. Such investments have accrued ample dividends including the lowest broadband access costs in the world. For example, the ITU reports that in 2002 Japanese consumers paid $0.09 per 100 kilobits per second of broadband access compared to $3.53 in the United States.

Economic policies do not completely explain why some nations offer faster, better cheaper and more convenient broadband services while other nations do not. This paper will examine best practices in broadband network development with an eye toward determining the optimal mix of legislative, regulatory and investment initiatives. The paper will track development in Canada, Japan and Korea as these nations have achieved success despite significantly different geographical, political and marketplace conditions. The paper also notes the institutional and regulatory policies that have hampered broadband development in the United States.

The paper also will examine why incumbent local exchange and cable television operators recently have begun aggressively to pursue broadband market opportunities. The paper will analyze incumbents's rationales for limited capital investment in broadband with an eye toward determining the credibility of excuses based on regulatory risk and uncertainty. The paper concludes with suggestions how national governments might expedite broadband infrastructure development.

From ScienceDirect via Ewan Sutherland's weblog.

The Chairman's report (PDF) from the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity held June 28 - July 1 2005 has been released.

The event was organized in the framework of the implementation of the Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action adopted on 12 December 2003, at the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and in preparation for the Tunis phase of WSIS, to be held from 16 to 18 November, 2005. The event website provides links to the final agenda, all background papers, presentations, electronic contributions, the Chairman’s Report and audio archives.

The four-day meeting was structured to consider and debate six broad themes in promoting international dialogue and cooperative measures among governments, the private sector and other stakeholders as well as promotion of a global culture of cybersecurity. These include information sharing of national and regional approaches, good practices and guidelines; developing watch, warning and incident response capabilities; technical standards and industry solutions; harmonizing national legal approaches and international legal coordination; privacy, data and consumer protection; and developing countries and cybersecurity.

The first day of the meeting focused on countering spam as follow-up to the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Countering Spam, held in July 2004.

The WSIS Executive Secretariat has released Draft Agenda and Time Management Plan for Prepcom-3. On this latter page is a link to contributions on Internet Governance.

Apples and Oranges: Problems in the Analysis of Comparative Regulatory Governance by Martin MINOGUE

Interest in regulation as a mode of governance is now a central feature of the literature on regulation in developed economies. Extending this area of study to developing and transitional economies gives rise to problems in comparative analysis which are explored in this paper. Four categories of problem are considered:

• The problem of contested concepts, arising in part from the intervention in the traditionally economic literature of disciplines such as law and political science
• The problem of scope, which remains ambiguous because of the difficulty of separating out regulation from the normal range of state activities
• The problem of comparisons, in which cross-sectoral or cross-national studies display familiar weaknesses
• The problem of measurement, where quantitative studies too often rely on weak data and untested assumptions, and qualitative studies are rarely in evidence

The paper emphasises the crucial significance of legal, political and administrative structures in determining the design, implementation and outcomes of regulatory reforms, and brings into sharp focus the analytical problems set out above in relation to the application of this approach to regulation in developing countries, in particular in relation to the notion of ‘independent’ regulation.

From Centre on Regulation and Competition and http://3wan.net/v-web/b2/index.php?p=6101&c=1

The East African Centre for Open Source Software (EACOSS) is a specialised Free and Open Source Software training centre focusing on the East African region. Their mission is to promote the use and access to Free and Open Source Software in the East African community and contribute to the development through empowering people with skills to use ICT. The centre was founded in April 2004 and opened its doors in August 2004 on Port Bell Road in Nakawa - Kampala Uganda. The training center is located at the premises of Uganda Institute of Information and Communication Technology.

As part of their OSS Training programme, they have released an Introduction to Computers and Computer Literacy based on OSS.