Cook’s Collaborative Edge

This morning’s mail brought news of a 3 minute 45 second video clip of very candid and very outstanding remarks from Vint Cerf. Vint says very clearly what needs to be said and what needs to be grasped and acted on by the new president and congress next year. The clip was captured, blogged and up loaded to YouTube by Tom Foremski proprietor of IMHO for ZDNet.

Foremski writes: ” I spoke with Vint Cerf at the Fortune Brainstorm conference in Half Moon Bay. I asked him about net neutrality and the problems created by Telcos in trying to own the gateways to the Internet. Here is the video, the quality is very high contrast because of the lighting but the content is fascinating. Mr Cerf talks about how he was misquoted on the subject of net neutrality and offers a solution to the current issues around broadband Internet.”

My observation is that in my opinion it is not the lighting that is unusual but rather the camera angle. It looks like Foremski is seated with his camera pointed up. The camera is looking at Vint’s chin. If Tom were seated one would expect that Vint would look down at him every now and then. Vint does look in a direction where you would expect him to look if Tom were standing talking to him. A friend actually pointed this out to me.

Consequently I sent Vint an email: “you knew you were being recorded - surely? I hope: in any case the good deed is done…. thank you sir.”

Vint replied with permission to quote: “While I was not told that my informal conversation over cocktails was being recorded, and I am not happy about that, I believe that the points made are worth consideration and serious discussion”

I agree completely with Vint’s response. I have spent a few minutes trying to find a contact for Tom to offer him an opportunity to respond. I have been unable to find out how to promptly reach him.

My opinion is that it is very unfortunate that Vint didn’t know he was on camera. However I hope that good will come of this because what he did say is correct and needs to be said loud and clear from every street corner in the land.

Here is my transcript of Vint’s remarks

“My candid opinion of Verizon? I don’t know if you followed the network neutrality debates but those guys were misquoting me in full-page ads in the Washington Post, so I have very little warm feeling about those guys. When MCI was being sold into Verizon . . . [COOK Report: There is a break in the recording here and, in what is on YouTube, Vint does not finish the sentence.] Vint continues:

In the places where there is a strong regulatory control, it seems to be working. Although if you are watching the UK the BT guys are making the same kinds of arguments that Verizon ATT and the cable companies are making. Basically it’s like little kids throwing a tantrum - I am not going to build this system unless you give me three scoops of ice cream and a pony.

My reaction to this is quite negative. It is harmful to the national interest to behave in this way. Because this is serious infrastructure. It is very much like the road system and I have been ridiculed for suggesting that it be treated like the road system.

“Oh you want the government to take over.”

No. What I really want is a split in the regulatory framework for Internet service. I want to see a reintroduction of common carrier responsibilities. I want to see a horizontal treatment of regulation. I want to see the broadband providers split into two parts either literally or at least from the accounting point of view. I want wholesale broadband service to be required. I want them not to be able to interfere with anyone’s applications. I want them to charge themselves the same for their access as they charge everyone else.. All of those things. And they will say well we won’t build any more fiber.

I am not an economist and I do not know what the right reactions are other than to say we have to derive incentives that will cause these companies to behave differently or to create an incentive for a competitor to put in facilities that will compete with them.

We need to take away their monopoly management because what we did in the United States is to say okay we will not control you anymore because you are providing Internet access as an information service which is unregulated and in so doing we destroyed the common carrier rule and that we essentially told them do anything you want to. It is your investment and you can do anything you want with the higher-level applications and we don’t care because we think deregulation is wonderful. And frankly that’s [garbage] especially when we have a set of incumbents. If you have a tabula rasa - you remember the telephone system from the 1920s? There were dozens of them and that was bad too because you had to know which telephone company your friend was on. . . .

So we have to have a set of rules that makes sense out of attempts to build multiple infrastructure and in the absence of this we have to make it a privilege to build the infrastructure. There has to be a reasonable rate of return, but there cannot be a confiscatory rate of return and it can’t be abused by allowing people to throttle competitors.”

Here is a recent example of some of the very smart thinking that happens regularly on my Economics of IP Networks mail list. On July 21 Jaap wrote with regard to the NY Times article linked below:

Dear Gordon, Jan and Bill,

Yes, I read the article in CaNet below and also the expansion of it in the New York Times “Smaller PCs Cause Worry for Industry” The point is that this development of the appearance of ‘Internet Centric Devices’ involves more relevant issues that converge and will interlink into a forcefull motion, than only ‘energy efficiency’ and ‘continuity of storage’ for end users.

As Kevin Werbach points out often in his Super Nova conferences and I have described in 2005 in my paper about Telecom in Transition http://www.vantill.dds.nl/transitions.html the movement of intelligent functions in ICT is a bifurcation: left towards the user devices (networked) AND right towards more central services at colo-server farms. As David S. Isenberg pointed out in 1997 this leads to a vacuum in the network services “the STUPID NETWORK” between these two ends, much to the chagrin of the then hopefull telco industry.

What now is happening is that the leftside (in horizontal valuechain terms) trend towards ever smarter PCs software and hardware is disrupted too. Functions are moving leftward into smaller & less costly Netbooks/Smartphones/Net-Tops AND rightward intowards even bigger “online SAAS services for processing and storage lile Google Docs etc. Much to the chagrin of PC softwaremaker Microsoft and the makers of PC’s like Dell. In my opinion the dektop PC is taken apart in the appearing vacuum by this trend into a “STUPID PC”. The presetation and user interface is improved ( ie iPhone 3G) but through fast telecom& networking the storage and processing is moved elsewhere where cooperation and other functions can be non-personal again. This is a disruptive innovation and unstoppable worldwide.

Several issues converge and interlink to bring the trend about:
* The introduction of NETWORKED Smartphones like iPhone, better special devices like TomTom and Linux based Net-Tops. So there is much more behind these than only the gadgets the press describes.
* New and faster access- (3G, 4G and Fttx) and fiber optic backbone networks—–> making the location of central ICT hardware and processors unimportant; yes there should be upgrades made and obstacles removed here soon to meet demand;
* Demand for low power consumption of mobiles and netbooks AND more energy efficient colo’s for processing and storage;
* The more central facilities will be built distributed in the form of ‘Clouds’ (aka Grids) of computer centres;
* SAAS, including central SW development and flexible upgrading of business rules etc for the evolving business processes of corporations;
* telecom operators moving into IT services (not upward but to the right in my value chain models);
* the urgent need for faster and better cooperation in projects (aka collaboration in the USA) for value creation (~ N !);
* Hyperconnected Global 2.0 Middle Class workforces arising where you would not have expect them.

I have no doubt that Kevin Werbach will bring up these issues at his next Super Nova conference and hope that the “Networked Stupid PC” slogan will catch on :-)) And oh yes it has all the right attributes of a disruptive innovation as described by Christensen: - Industry sectors totally taken by surprise (see the articles mentioned above) - Disbelief ( only for 30- to 90-minute experiences) / less good than PC’s/ “only for second computer” - users can do it themselves allready through a browser (like with Google Docs and Apps) / only need a subset of functions - new markets will open which where underserved until now.

Faites vos Jeux !!

Jaap van Till

Cook’s Edge: Jaap is professor of Telecommunications & Networks
at the HAN University of Applied Science, NL

He is also responsible for a Master in Telecommunication Management (MSTM) course

The August issue offers an exhaustive examination of the development of changes n wireless technology and spectrum licensing from 2003 to mid 2008. Peter Ecclesine explains the development of increasingly sophisticated global spectrum regulation that is opening spectrum in excess of 3 gHz to innovative use.The interview forecasts likely developments over the next five years and closes with a look at Cisco’s announcement of Motion. Also March 17 to June 17 Symposium discussion. Click here to read the Executive Summary, Contents and Contributors to a 62 page August 2008 issue.

July is a special issue on the first seven years of Taiwan’s innovative National Digital Archive Program. It includes interviews conducted on site in April with four of the principals and explains how the program, that is the most cross disciplianry in the world, has not yet solved the IPR issues necessary to give it long term sustainability. Click here for the Executive Summary and Contents to a 59 page July 2008 issue.

The cowardly democrats have capitulated.

As a friend wrote: And here’s Glenn Greenwald with the latest - including a direct response to the “yeah but right after 9/11…” argument…

And yes its is the immunity for the telco’s that is especially inexcusable. And quite depressing to see that Obama threw in the towel - as my friend said about apple - too bad to see this from the company that is the gold standard - so its too bad that the gold standard for our next president does this.

As Dewayne Hendriks points out

DOMESTIC SPYING QUIETLY GOES ON

With Congress on the verge of outlining new parameters for National Security Agency eavesdropping between suspicious foreigners and Americans, lawmakers are leaving largely untouched a host of government programs that critics say involves far more domestic surveillance than the wiretaps they sought to remedy. These programs - most of them highly classified - are run by an alphabet soup of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They sift, store and analyze the communications, spending habits and travel patterns of U.S. citizens, searching for suspicious activity. The surveillance includes data-mining programs that allow the NSA and the FBI to sift through large databanks of e-mails, phone calls and other communications, not for selective information, but in search of suspicious patterns. Other information, like routine bank transactions, is kept in databases similarly monitored by the Central Intelligence Agency. “There’s virtually no branch of the U.S. government that isn’t in some way involved in monitoring or surveillance,” said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian and fellow at the National Security Archives at The George Washington University. “We’re operating in a brave new world.”

I received several comments that made it clear that I failed to adequately describe what happened.

I wanted to achieve a copy of my boot drive from the Macpro to the drive of the Macbook pro. I connected as per what I thought were the instructions. I did use migration assistant. I FAILED to disconnect external firewire and USB drives. This caused me to wind up with a laptop that did not match my current desktop on the mac pro - my main machine.

Matt J wrote: To be honest, the people on the lines are not prepared for someone who might have direct copies of month-old user accounts on a separate disk so I can understand why this would happen. Most people who would have installed multiple disks would also have a little more knowledge in the workings of the system. But there’s always exceptions and it’s cool to be exceptional.

I reply - no this is not the case. The drive in bay two of my four bay Macpro is a drive that I clone maybe every 6 or 8 weeks… after a month it is quite out of date. I merely wanted the data - all the data - os - account settings - everything transferred from bay one (the boot drive of the Macpro) transferred intact to the new laptop…. about 80 gig of data.

The machine did not do this and gave me a functioning Macbook pro that looked like my Macpro had looked maybe six weeks earlier.

Scott Schukert said: First, it sounds like you’re complaining that the desktop pattern of the cloned machine doesn’t match the original; then it sounds like you’ve inadvertently cloned the wrong drive.

I reply - yes. But I did not clone the wrong drive. Migration assistant is supposed to clone the drive that the source machine is booted from. Yes?

I repeated the same process three different times alone with reinstalls of the OS as i made repeated calls to apple and did what i was told.

AFTER the fact I began to recall that years earlier one of the FIRST things that the response person would ask is do you have any external devices plugged into your source machine? Over two days and perhaps six calls NO ONE ever asked me this question.

Scott misunderstood my remark about the Apple store… I actually did not go there, thank god.

Scott concluded: Kudos on determining that you had to disable some of the extra drives. That’s the SECOND thing i would have tried.

He is correct and if i had reached him I would have been saved much time and grief…. this however is a question that could have been asked and answeredvia phone.

I had comments about rudeness to support staff - again not clear writing on my part. The incident happened in mid March…. the giving the caller a piece of my mind happened in late June and that was only AFTER the second unsolicited call from Apple trying to SELL me Apple care — something that i did not want. I have it on my main machine. I take my chances on the laptop because i do not use it that much.

Eytan commented: I would say shame on you for not reading the prompt about which drive your new computer was about to transfer data from.

I did read very carefully - the transfer was from the boot drive in bay one.

Slothrop commented: You tried to transfer your data but you don’t explain if you used Apple’s Setup Assistant program to transfer stuff, or if you just tried to copy it over. If Apple couldn’t help you make Setup Assistant work, that’s a legitimate gripe.

I was using the target disk migration assistant.

Finally a couple of folk comment that it was unrealistic to expect Apple to have a data base of user problems.

Here i am curious becasue after many years of new machines and quite a few calls, I sure had the impression that with every case that was more than a simple “abc ” being given a case number that there was some kind of cataloging that gave the OS engineering staff feedback.

False?

And of course the problem turned out to be SO elementary that I am amazed that apparently it was not part of a basic flow chart used to guide the support staff.

Apple brags about its knowledge base yet no one ever pointed me there…. (i have no idea if there is a “problems with target disk mode transfer” document.)

For 22 years I have been a devoted Apple customer. In January I bought a new quad core Mac Pro. Getting the machine set up went reasonably well although, in service of profits and of upping ts stock price, all the documentation you get now is a pathetic shirt pocket sized (3 by 4) booklet rather than the hundred page 5 x 9 user manual of three years ago.

Then in March, experiencing from some economic good fortune and an upcoming trip to California and Taiwan I bought the most expensive Apple Computer I have ever owned- a 17 inch MacBook Pro with a high definition screen. However, getting it set up was a maddening travesty.

Target disk mode transfer of all data and programs from old machine to new usually works well. It did two months earlier with the new Mac Pro. But with the MacBook Pro my new desktop did not match the current desktop on the Mac Pro. It was about a month behind. I couldn’t figure out why. I called customer support of course told them what was happening and they could be no more creative than to suggest a complete reinstall of the operating system. Which of course I did with the same result. I called them back complained and asked to be escalated to a product specialist. The product specialist was no more help.. For the first two days of having my new deluxe laptop, rather than productive work, I was on the phone to Apple reinstalling operating systems and complaining bitterly.

Very quickly their tack became that they really couldn’t guarantee any kind of the disk transfer I was wrong to expect the new machine to make a copy of my old machine’s drive and all its software and if something wasn’t working I would have to get myself to an Apple store and ask at the genius bar for help. Now four years ago it was possible to get right in to an Apple store some 35 miles away from my house but a year ago when I had a question about another problem I found the Apple store had about a three day wait before they could give me an appointment if I bought a machine in. Getting something done on the spot was out of the question and I asked Apple whether if I went to an apple stored would they do it for free? Well we can’t promise anything. I paced up and down asked for his supervisor, the supervisor didn’t care — a customer for one year or 22 years made no difference to them.

They volunteered to give me to customer relations. I said okay. Customer relations said that they guaranteed nothing and just because target mode working January is no assurance you would work against 60 days later. Fly a kite they said and if you wanted to try to charge it back to your credit card and return it to us - go ahead.

By now I had wasted about a eight hours, and was absolutely furious, but in trying to analyze things for myself and thinking about the difference between January and March it occurred to me that when I went into target disk mode to transfer data from the Mac Pro to the MacBook Pro I had external drives operational and on the desktop. It slowly dawned that in years past, when Apple had some decent support for their customers, one of the recommendations was always to disconnect everything from the malfunctioning machine. So I did a software unmount of the drives from the Mac Pro and did yet another target disk mode transfer that also failed.

Thinking a bit more and wanting to be absolutely sure of my theory I re booted the Mac Pro with all of the drives turned off. In other words never allowed them to appear on the desktop. I did yet another target mode transfer and low and behold this time it worked.

Why in GOD’s name could no one at Apple tell me this?

In the years past escalating a problem to a product specialist always produced results. But in March going through three different product specialist never produced a suggestion about checking any external devices connected to the machine from which I was transferring data. In my opinion this says some rather astoundingly bad things about the quality of Apple’s support desk.

The following day and, hoping to be able to contribute something from my my bad experience such that they would put it in the database and other people would be spared my misery, I called back and succeeded in getting a product specialist who listened politely to what had happened and then told me that she was very sorry but their database had no means of capturing such information. I found that truly astounding. And since every Apple person I could get seemed either powerless or not to care, I resolved to write the example up for my blog when I got caught up.

Since 2000 I have always had AppleCare on one machine. I’ve not needed to call very often. I’ve learned a few things in 22 years. But about two years ago my boot drive developed serious software problems. I called in on that issue and the advice that I got caused the drive to disappear entirely from my desktop. It also caused me to lose a backup drive. Sweating bullets I ran disk warrior overnight and in the morning was an immensely relieved to see that it had repaired things to the extent where the drive appeared on my desktop. But OS X and many applications were severely messed up and it took another 24 hours before I was out of the woods. At this point I was finally lucky and found a wonderful product specialist who took mercy on me and stayed with me on the phone for 4 hours rebuilding the OS applications support files folder by folder.

Apple does a very nice engineering but its financial success over the last several years has gone to its head. And two weeks ago I had a real laugh. at almost 10:30 PM my phone rang and it was Apple on the phone wanting to know how I liked my MacBook Pro. Bad question to ask.

Did that poor guy ever get an earful. After about 20 minutes and much chagrined, he promised that I would hear about my maltreatment from a supervisor by the end of the week. Of course the week ended and I heard nothing and after another few days I got another call wanting to know how I liked my Macbook Pro and reminding me that I had owned it for 90 days now and my free support was handing unless I bought Apple care.

Amazing!! Let it be said that I fired off about six sentences in the poor guys ear and hung and up the phone.

Shame on utterly arrogant Apple!!

Update - I sent this to someone well known in the apple field who replied that my experience was not unique and that it was too bad when this was all we could expect from the company that is “gold standard” of the field.
Indeed!

I wrote about Mahabir here last December. He is performing miracles and deserves the widest possible support.

REQUEST FROM MAHABIR PUN ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE OF NEPAL FOR ONE DOLLAR A MONTH

“One Dollar a Month for a Wireless Nepal”

TO BUILD WIRELESS BROADBAND INFORMATION HIGHWAY ACROSS NEPAL

Dear Friends,

I am Mahabir Pun and I have been invited to attend the ANA (Associations of Nepalis in Americas) Convention 2008 being held in Baltimore, Maryland as “A Distinguished Guest.” I have accepted the invitation with pleasure and hope to see all of you there. I am going to request all the Nepalese regardless of your current residence as well as friends of non-Nepali origin around the world for $1 a month support for the next five years to build a wireless broadband information highway across Nepal. If you have children, I would also like to request all of you to encourage your younger and older children to initiate the campaign among their peers in schools and colleges so that they can learn from their early age to be involved in projects like these for good causes.

1. What have we done so far?

For the last 15 years I am working in the mountains of Nepal as a social worker. In 1993, I helped to start a community school, Himanchal Higher Secondary School in Myagdi district. With the school as the center for implementing development projects I am involved with education, healthcare, nature conservation, income generating programs and other community works. Along with the local village community I am moving ahead with a goal to build a 4-year college in our mountain village by 2015 and eventually a university later on. In 2003, Himanchal Higher Secondary School formally started a project called the Nepal Wireless Networking Project under its management committee. Its purpose was to build long-range wireless networks using Wi-fi technology in the mountain villages of Myagdi, Kaski and Parbat districts. We received technical support from foreign volunteers for this project. The wireless project has gotten significant exposure in the international media because of its simple and low cost approach to connect rural areas and provide education, healthcare, and communication services. With the technical support of Nepal Wireless Networking Project, the wireless network has been replicated on smaller scale by organizations in Makawanpur, Dolakha, Lalitpur, Palpa, Bajhang, Achham, Ilam and Solukhumbu districts of Nepal. Even if it is progressing at a slow pace, we are moving ahead with a definite goal to provide the benefits of wireless technology to 80% of people living in the rural areas in the mountains and plains of Nepal.

As recognition of introducing information and communication technologies in the Himalayan villages, I was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2007, the highest such honor in the Asian Region. I was also awarded an Honorary Degree; Doctor of Humane Letters, from my alma-mater the University of Nebraska in 2007. I wish to thank all volunteers involved with me, as it is recognition for all of them.

2. What is our main goal of introducing ICT in rural Nepal?

Our goal is not just to bring Internet to the rural areas as we have found that the contents available in English language on the Internet are not much useful for ordinary villagers. But, we want to provide maximum benefits of the wireless technology to the people of rural areas, regardless. To meet our

ONE DOLLAR A MONTH

“One Dollar a Month for a Wireless Nepal” goals we have been working with several institutions and organizations that are providing the following assistances;
1. Develop educational contents in local language for school children and rural people

2. Provide telemedicine services from city hospitals to rural clinics

3. Develop voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services for cheaper communication

4. Provide remittance service in villages to help people working abroad send money

5. Provide credit card acceptance services to tourist in the trekking routes

6. Start local e-commerce service through e-bulletin boards to help villagers sell products

3. What is my main agenda of this trip to the US?

As the team leader of the project, my only agenda for this trip to the US is to launch “One Dollar a Month” campaign to build wireless broadband information highway across Nepal. Our project wants to connect as many villages as possible and provide supplemental services as mentioned above. Therefore, we would like to request various individuals and Nepalese organizations across the world to contribute and help run the campaign. Our target for 2008 is to have 15,000 members signed-up with the campaign. We want 50,000 members in 5 years. We urge you to donate at least $1 a month for five years to give this priceless gift to the Nepali people, who live in remote areas and are cut off from outside world. You are also welcome to donate more than $1 a month if you wish.

4. What is our long-term goals and sustainability plan?

You might ask us why we need to build wireless broadband highway and how we can make it sustainable. Let us clarify with some examples. Nepal has built broadband information highway using fiber optic cable along the East West Highway in the southern belt with the help of the Government of India. Most of the major cities of Nepal will be connected with fiber in future. However, it will be very difficult and expensive to bring optical fiber lines to villages located on the mountains and isolated areas of the Terai region. In this scenario, wireless is the best, the cheapest and the fastest options to connect the isolated villages located in inner valleys, mountains and the Terai to the major cities of the country. Based upon our experiences in Myagdi and other districts through Nepal Wireless Networking Project, we have the following long term plans.

1. Build four major relay stations on average in each district to reach out to villages located on different slopes and corners of the mountains. We plan to provide an average of 5 Mbps local bandwidth to each village and connect the villages through the relay stations to the fiber highway in the cities. If necessary we will build secondary relay stations as well.

2. Build about eight regional base stations and a central control station with servers to monitor and maintain the network and provide connectivity to rural schools, and businesses.

3. Connect the network to government and private hospitals to provide telemedicine service.

4. Build a central data center to provide educational, healthcare, agricultural, e-commerce, and e-governance contents in local language for the use of students and villagers.

5. Introduce VOIP phone services and remittance services in the villages and generate income to pay for monthly operation and maintenance cost.

6. Work with public and private partners on district and local levels to find ways to make the highway financially sustainable and to introduce services that would be useful for the villagers.

7. Encourage local entrepreneurs to become rural Internet service provider.

8. Work with the government of Nepal for introducing e-governance programs in the Village Development Committees (VDCs). Keep requesting the government for funds to provide computers, telemedicine services, and contents in local language

9. Request international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and UNDP to provide matching funds for the rapid expansion of the network.

5. How can $1 campaign build wireless broadband highway?

Some of you might ask if $1 a month campaign will be able to create enough funds to build the electronic highway all over Nepal. That is an appropriate question. We would like to explain briefly how it is possible to build the highway in the following paragraphs.

The cost to build one major relay station for the highway ranges from US$8,000 to US$ 15,000 depending upon the availability of power at a relay station and the equipment we need to use. The cost for the wireless equipment to connect a village from the relay station is about US$1,000 to US$1,500. It costs from US$1,500 to US$2,000 to buy computers and hardware for setting up a computer lab with five computers and a printer in a rural school or a communication center. Villagers will also buy them from local resources. With 15,000 supporters we are targeting to enroll this year, it would mean US$180,000 in funding annually. That means in the first year, we can build about 12 major relay stations and connect about 40 villages.

If we have 30,000 supporters we can build 24 relay stations and connect 80 villages serving approximately 70,000 people on average. Think about that. With each supporter committing just one dollar a month, we can get to serving 50,000 people every year, who are seriously disadvantaged in many ways, and we can keep adding more and more. Using these metrics, we have submitted a proposal to Nepal Government recently to build wireless broadband information highway covering 19 rural districts of Nepal. The total estimated cost is approximately three million in US dollars that includes the cost for building computer labs in 190 schools for e-education and connecting 38 rural clinics for telemedicine.

The government is positive about the proposal but has indicated a shortfall in available funds. We would ask Nepal Government for matching fund every year for the project, of which we are very hopeful. Thus, we believe that its’ an achievable goal to build an information highway in rural Nepal. We believe that this is one of the ways we can narrow down the widely talked about digital divide.

6. How will we collect the contribution and use it?

In a few years we would like this project to be operated by a not-for-profit organization, owned by public and private partners, and sustained beyond the initial installation phase by revenues generated from services. Until we come to that point, my suggestion for now is to use the mechanism that we already have developed for managing, monitoring, reporting, and fund raising under Himanchal Higher Secondary School. This is a community school and it is partially supported by Himanchal Education Foundation (http://www.himanchal.org), based in Kearney, Nebraska. This is where I got my college education.

The foundation was established in 2000 by some of my American professors and friends to help our project in Nepal. It is a 501 (c3) not-for-profit corporation in the USA. You still might ask why Himanchal and why not other organization? The reason I am suggesting it is to leverage the existing setup in the US and Nepal. It will make much easier to get the funding, run the wireless networking project, keep the donors updated about the funds and progress, and provide transparent accounting updates on how and where the funds are being used. Additionally, donors can also get tax benefits You can go to http://www.himanchal.org/contribute-one-dollar-a-month.html to set up an annual recurring charge of $12 (i.e. one contribution of $12 each year) instead of having 12 separate monthly transactions of $1 each.

Or if you wish to set up your contribution of $1 on monthly basis, you can do it through http://nepalwireless.thamel.com. Please note that Networkforgood.org do not accept less than $10 per transaction. Either way, the money comes to our school’s bank account. For those, who don’t have credit cards or would like to donate cash, we would like to request you to collect money through your local community organization and contact us at contact@himanchal.org. We will assist you to send the money to our bank account through our remittance partners.

7. Our Utmost Request

Dear friends, as Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has”. The idea of one dollar a month had came from a small group of people working with Nepal Wireless Project. Now we want more people to join it. By participating in this campaign, you will become poorer by $1 a month, but Nepal will get richer by several thousands and eventually by millions of dollar a year. This is our combined effort to build the “New Nepal”.

With all of us, as a team, we can make this happen. What we should strongly believe is that, if drops of water can form an ocean, why can’t contributions of $1 a month from 15,000 or more Nepalese from around the world, build broadband information highway across Nepal? Let us make this happen in five years without just relying upon and looking for grant or loan from international agencies. Together, let us prove that Nepalese can unite and rise to the occasion and not only generate long speeches, and stage rallies and strikes but also can make positive things happen.

Let us initiate this exemplary endeavor that the people from around the world can learn from. Finally, Nepal is reborn as a republican country. Each and every Nepali, regardless of their current residence, is hoping for peaceful and prosperous “New Nepal”. However, the fact is that without economic revolution, only a political revolution will not be adequate. There are multiple examples of such political revolutions in the world history that have not worked well. On behalf of the people of Nepal, I would like to ask for your strong support for building one of the basic development infrastructures to bring economic revolution. Together, let us instate the economic revolution, by building wireless information highway to connect majority of rural Nepal with the global communities and to create new opportunities for our future generations. Your support can make this happen. Thank you very much.

8. For Further Information Mahabir Pun

E-mail: mahabir@himanchal.org
http://www.himanchal.org
http://www.himanchal.org http://-one-dollar-a-month.html

A hat tip and thank you to my Economic of IP Networks List that has just begun its fifth year. I saw the following in email today. Sprint and Clearwire to Combine WiMAX Businesses, Creating a New Mobile Broadband Company

The language of the press release was glowing: (What follows are just the headlines of the release.)

Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks to Invest $3.2 Billion in Combined Company, at Target Price of $20.00 per Share — Formation of New Company Brings Together the Nation’s Leaders in Communications, Technology Innovation and Entertainment — New Company to Speed Deployment of First Nationwide Next-Generation Mobile WiMAX Network — Transaction Designed to Unlock the Potential of Clearwire’s and Sprint’s 4G Assets — New Company to be Led by Seasoned Management Team from Clearwire and Sprint’s XOHM Business Unit; Board of Directors to Include Leading Wireless and Cable Executives

This did not sync with conversations I had in March with Peter Ecclesine of Cisco about 802.11y This link goes to the Wikipedia entry for 802.11y. I see now that it has been significantly updated since Peter first called my attention to it. It is well worth reading.

Consequently earlier today I asked my list: Any wireless folk or anyone else here willing to give their evaluation of this? i.e. the press release on Sprint and Clearwire’s new venture. I am trying to write up my Taipei research and have had other distractions - thus I admit that I have not dug into this to the degree i’d like to yet.

Is this viable because it uses licensed WiMAX? Most of Any wireless folk or anyone else here willing to give their evaluation of this? Is this viable because it uses licensed WiMAX? Most of WiMAX is licensed but not all? After Peter Ecclesine’s talk at the Cook-In more than one listener was ready to bury WiMAX, Presumably because of the alternative “licensing lite” and cognitive radio stuff 802-11y that Peter was talking about?

Is this for real or is it a prophalactic strike on the part of the WiMAX creators in an attempt to save it? Say in two years? Will there be essentially free alternatives around the time this new venture comes fully to market?

Within about two hours Harold Feld responded:

1) For Sprint&Clearwire: The universe has changed as a result of the 700 MHz auction. There is no question that AT&T and Verizon now rule the traditional wireless roost. Anyone hoping to get into mobile or stay in mobile if already there needs a strategy. So Sprint and Clearwire are desperate.

2) The cable guys also need a strategy against Verizon & AT&T’s ability to integrate wireline and wireless products. That’s not just about quadruple play to consumers, although there are elements of that as well. It is also about competing for enterprise customers and being able to respond if mobile becomes the primary growth market. In addition, Echostar’s acquisition of a serious footprint in the 700 MHz auction makes mobile television a much more likely market. While VZ and AT&T could respond relatively quickly to such a threat, Comcast and TW could not — despite their AWS spectrum holdings. Finally, with broadband maturing, and regulatory risk associated with the plans to monetize traffic by various tiering strategies, cable desperately needs an entry to the wireless world. When Spectrum Co. fell apart, Cox decided to go it alone (and did reasonably well in its effort to get a footprint). Comcast and TW have instead followed the usual path of cable wisdom and created a joint partnership. Share the risk, share the cost, and facilitate continued coordination among fellow cable operators.

3) Google lost its nerve in the 700 MHz auction. Now it finds Verizon is already playing games in C Block. They need someway to get a toehold into mobile before all the customers get grabbed. This is a much cheaper way of getting into wireless than actualy owning and operating a network, or even holding licenses and leasing spectrum.

4) Intel has already invested bilions in WiMax. Someone better start using it big time or they are in deep doo-doo.

So the parties all have incentive to make this real and make it work. But it still has a number of major hurdles to overcome, including the radically different business models and psychologies of the participants. That’s why I’m waiting to see what the FCC applications for license transfer actually say.

Relevant blog posts: Reserving Judgment on Sprint Deal

Spring Spectrum Fling http://www.wetmachine.com/totsf/item/1128

The 700 MHz Auction and the Cable/Telco War

A few minutes later Peter Ecclesine added: Here are Opinions on Clearwire deal from Deutsche Bank and Scott Moritz who is quoted here as saying “Building a network for one tenth the cost depends on who is counting.” Also, you might include the URL of the Clearwire slides

Finally Frank Coluccio offered a summation of this entire process:

This is the link to the MOMA web site on this theme.
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Note the first section on this page (URL above) devoted to John Sealy-Brown’s: Thinkering

“Many designers, scientists, and artists have turned to design to give method to their productive tinkering, or what John Seely Brown has called “thinkering.” They all belong to a new culture in which experimentation is guided by engagement with the world and open, constructive collaboration with colleagues and other specialists. Whether in the form of origami, nanofacture, or growth and aggregation, thinkering gives shape to the embryonic dialogue between design and science.”

The June issue offers an indepth examination of the stratregy behind BT’s move from its role as incumbent carrier to its new role of offering a multi-sided services platform from 1990s role of speculative capital that almost bankrupted it to a foundation of production capital where, although share holder returns will be smaller, the company will have a positive effect on the economy of areas it serves. interview with JP Rangaswami..Also March 18 to April 24 Symposium discussion. Click here to read the Executive Summary, Contents and Contributors to a 53 page June 2008 issue.