Global Village or Digital Island?
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010The PiPP report, “Social and economic impact of introducing telecommunications throughout Vanuatu”, offers numerous examples of the inordinate lengths that rural merchants go to just to keep stock on their shelves, putting paid (one hopes) to the stereotype of the indolent islander waiting patiently for the cargo to come. If it serves no other purpose, it is invaluable for this insight alone.
But there is a great deal more to it than that. The image it conjures up is not so much of new entrants to the Global Village as of residents of Digital Islands: While communication has improved –and social and economic well-being along with it– the distance from one island to the next has diminished only slightly.
Mobile telephony in and of itself is a boon in most regards, but without complementary infrastructure and services, it is of limited value.
Communications as Survival
Sunday, October 11th, 2009The September 29 tsunami took between 5-8 minutes to reach the coast of Samoa, and only a few minutes more to strike Tonga and American Samoa. Thursday’s false alarm provides an object lesson on the importance of timely, accurate and systematic information sharing, both in acquisition and dissemination of geohazard data.
Communications is, after all what makes us human. And what keeps us safe and alive.
The Coming Change
Sunday, October 11th, 2009The expansion of Internet use is not likely to follow the rocket-like trajectory of mobile services, but it will hit quickly and run deep. Too deep for some, I fear. Having lived on the bleeding and the trailing edge of technology (sometimes both at once), I find the contrast between the two is enough to cause a kind of cognitive whiplash.
Heaven alone knows what will happen when it reaches the village.
Open Season
Sunday, September 27th, 2009With the recent passage of a new telecommunications Act (awkwardly titled the TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND RADIOCOMMUNICATION REGULATION ACT), Vanuatu has taken another important step in ensuring continued success in building openness and fairness into the business of communications.
Parts of the Act, currently awaiting the President’s signature, validate and give force of law to terms and conditions already included in the licenses issued to our two incumbent telcos. It also provides an overall framework for continued growth, expansion and innovation. Most importantly, it makes permanent the office of the Telecommunications Regulator.
Digicel Mobile Internet - GPRS Modem First Impressions
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009I did a quick and dirty write-up of my first impressions of using Digicel’s Mobile Internet Service via a USB GPRS modem for VITUS. You can read about it here.
Fibre Optics
Thursday, July 16th, 2009[This week's Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]
Last weekend’s announcement by Minister Rialuth Serge Vohor of an agreement to participate in the SPIN fibre-optic project had been met with cautious optimism from observers. While nobody doubts the desirability of having an undersea cable linking Vanuatu to the rest of the world, some questions remain.
The devil, [...]
Tit For Tat
Sunday, July 5th, 2009Digicel seems to be swamped by its own success. Scarcely more than half a year after their launch, they reported that they had over 70,000 active accounts to TVL’s 30,000. Anecdotal evidence has that number is closer to 100,000 now.
As TVL has learned from bitter experience, maintaining a communications network in the conditions which Vanuatu imposes on its inhabitants is decidedly non-trivial. In spite of years of experience in similar circumstances in the Caribbean and Central America, Digicel seems to be learning the lesson anew.
To what purpose, then, did the decidedly soot-stained pot decide to begin denouncing the kettle’s tarnished nature? Surely it must have occurred to someone that their time might be better spent actually cleaning up their own act than pointing out the other’s mess?
Selling Democracy - ctd.
Sunday, June 28th, 2009Farhad Manjoo says the Revolution will not be digitised. His recent Slate column, subtitled “How the Internet helps Iran silence activists” makes the obvious point that technology makes all aspects of communications easier - even the unpleasant ones. But his lazy analysis misses the import of his own observation.
The key to all this is his failure to distinguish between the network and the protocol. Manjoo says that the Internet helps Iran’s repressive efforts. That’s not true, at least not nearly to the extent he thinks. The network - the physical infrastructure of cables, switching and routing equipment, is what’s trapping people right now. If it weren’t for the end-to-end nature of the software protocols that make up what we conveniently call the Internet, little if any news at all would have emerged from Iran.
Masters of our own Domain
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009The role of a ccTLD administrator is not to arbitrate public morals. While simple rules can be set concerning appropriate use of the domain, they need to be kept to a minimum. The approach we need to take is a minimalist one. There are some terms, for example, that do little or nothing to enhance the public dialogue. Swear words, for example.
But that does not mean that a domain administrator should have any direct role in defining what topics can or should be discussed in the public sphere.
A ccTLD administrator is neither pastor, policeman nor politician. It does not exist to make rules about public morality, nor should it be given powers beyond the minimal set necessary to ensure the smooth operation of its part of the Internet Domain Name Service (DNS).
Vanuatu has laws, and everyone has to respect them. A national domain administrator has a responsibility to uphold those laws, and to the extent that it’s reasonable to do so, it should ensure that those laws are upheld by its stakeholders and clients.
A domain administrator’s role is primarily technical. Most of what they do is make the registration of domains by multiple parties practical, simple and conducive to the conduct of a public exchange of information, for whatever purpose.
Digicel Mobile Internet Service – Take Two
Saturday, April 18th, 2009This week, Digicel Vanuatu officially unveiled their new GPRS mobile Internet service. Their first event was held on Thursday last week at the Port Vila market house. Digicel staff demonstrated their service to passers-by and helped those with compatible phones to activate the service.
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