Municipal Broadband….It’s coming!!
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There are over 400 cities worldwide planning to deploy municipal broadband
networks and the number will double in 2006, making community broadband
initiatives a very real and significant trend. That is the finding of a report
published by industry research firm visiongain. Despite legal opposition and
intense lobbying from incumbent telcos and cable companies, municipal broadband
is coming and is here to stay. As of Q1 2006, there are over 100 city and
regional wireless broadband networks operational worldwide, more than 40 of which
are in the US.
Small town rural deployments were the beginning of the wave, but the tide is
now embracing large urban metropolises. New York,
San Francisco, Rome
and Paris are
among the major cities planning wide-scale deployments. While these networks
present yet another new competitive threat to the broadband market landscape,
there are opportunities to be grasped for service providers, whether fixed-line
or wireless, if these companies play their cards right. Major vendors, such as
Motorola, Cisco, HP and IBM are already reaping cumulative contract awards
running into hundreds of millions of dollars.
"Generally speaking, we believe resistance towards Muni networks is
futile," says lead author Pam Duffey. "Finer points of the debate
aside, it is fast becoming a city or state government duty to provide at least
the means for widespread broadband service to the citizenry. By 2010/2011, we
believe the majority of cities and townships in the US will have a municipal
wireless network in place and the focus then will be in uniting them into a
seamless, if not centralised, national network."
"New and emerging applications such as
digital libraries, virtual laboratories, distance-independent learning and
tele-immersion will require broadband speeds and reverse the digital divide. In addition,
applications such as LBS and gaming over city-wide networks could seriously
threaten existing carrier business models," adds Duffey.
For a large number of reasons, municipalities are considering the concept of
a Municipal Broadband Network as the "fifth utility." These
communities are choosing between deploying fibre and a wireless broadband
network using Wi-Fi hotspots, mesh networks or pre-WiMAX technology. There will
be a significant build-out, blending technologies and building on existing
service, both wired and unwired.
However, many technological and business factors
need to be considered, any one of which can better or worsen the outcome for
any given municipality. Often, cities lack sufficient experience and knowledge
of technologies to make the best choices and compound the problem further by
inadequately funding the effort or by employing a business model that can not
sustain the endeavor.
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Blackberry News……….
TORONTO (Reuters) - Competitors are muscling into the wireless
e-mail market dominated by Research in Motion (RIM.TO: Quote, Profile,
Research),
as the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail device grapples with a patent battle that
could shut down its U.S. service. While few analysts and none of RIM's
competitors believe there will be a BlackBerry blackout, the uncertainty has
put the spotlight on alternatives to its e-mail system.
The timing is perfect, says Clyde Foster,
chief operating officer of Intellisync (SYNC.O: Quote, Profile,
Research),
the wireless e-mail management firm bought by Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote,
Profile,
Research)
to boost the mobile giant's position in a market dominated by RIM.
A year ago, there were few alternatives to
the BlackBerry, which packaged its device with its own e-mail system, but which
now licenses its systems to mobile phone makers too.
The rest of the market is not only catching
up with RIM, but also offering more cost-effective choices on a wider range of
phones, Foster said.
"That general change in the market has
had a lot of people thinking about alternatives. On top of that, you have the
scrutiny over the court case. For us, it's a benefit that it's happening
now," said Foster, noting that inquiries about Intellisync's service has
soared in the past two months.
"Even if RIM settles, and they don't
have any injunction, those customers who weren't really looking for an
alternative have now seen what the other software can do and what other devices
can do."
Wipe Your Cell Phone's
Memory Before Giving It Away
Trading in a cell phone can pose an even greater privacy threat: People
store PINs, passwords, and other sensitive information on them, and are likely
to trade them in more frequently than their PCs. Also, wiping data off a cell
phone can be extremely difficult.
If your cell phone stores contacts and other information on a removable SIM
card, start by taking the card out. The SIM card doesn't necessarily store all
the data on your phone, though. It may store only your phone book, while call
logs, photos, memos, and other information might reside in the phone's internal
memory.
To get rid of everything, you may need to employ multiple reset
commands--and those commands aren't always easy to find in a modern cell
phone's complex menus. One Samsung phone I looked at requires you to enter ten
different commands to delete all data, including text messages, phone numbers,
call timers, and logs. But remember, if you want to keep the numbers stored in
your SIM card, by all means remove it before you delete anything!
The folks at ReCellular--a cell phone recycling service--have a great
solution: The Cell Phone
Data Eraser page lets you choose the brand and model number of your cell
phone, and then displays the precise commands you need to delete every piece of
data from it. (If you don't know your phone's model number, try checking
underneath the battery.) If you can't find the instructions on that Web site,
you'll have to find your manual. What do you do if you've lost that
page-turner? Fortunately, most cell service providers offer downloadable copies
of the instruction manuals for the phones they sell.
If you think you can circumvent the privacy threat by sending your phone
back to your service provider, you could be mistaken. According to one report,
a Cingular customer who received a refurbished phone as a replacement for one
that malfunctioned found the new phone was filled with the previous owner's
private data, including account numbers, user names, and passwords. (Read the full story
.)
Once you've taken the steps that are supposed to wipe all traces of data
from your phone, double-check to make sure your address book, call logs, and
other data stores really are empty. When you're sure everything is gone, you
can donate your old phone with peace of mind. Click Dialed
In offers a list of organizations and companies that accept phone donations
"We
learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we
do from learning the answer itself. "
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Mobile Phones Reduce Error Rate in Hospital Care
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Using mobile telephones in hospitals reduces the
error rate in medical care because of more timely communication and rarely
causes electronic magnetic interference, Yale School of Medicine researchers
report this month. The study published in February's Anesthesia & Analgesia
is believed to be the first to investigate whether use of cell phones by
medical personnel has a beneficial impact on safety. It was based on 4,018
responses from attendees at the 2003 meeting of the American Society of
Anesthesiologists.
Of those anesthesiologists who participated in the
survey, 65% reported using pagers as their primary mode of communications and
17% said they used cellular telephones. Forty percent of respondents who use
pagers reported delays in communications, compared to 31% of cellular telephone
users.
The senior author, Keith Ruskin, M.D., associate
professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Neurosurgery, said the
electronic interference from mobile telephone was a problem in the past because
of older telemetry equipment and analog cell phones.
"The new digital cell phones used much higher
power and operate at a different frequency," Ruskin said. "The small
risks of electromagnetic interference between mobile telephones and medical
devices should be weighed against the potential benefits of improved communication."
He said the
reported 2.4% prevalence of electronic interference with life support devices
such as ventilators, intravenous infusion pumps, and monitoring equipment is
much lower than the 14.9% risk of observed medical error or injury due to a
delay in communication.
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High Mobile
Termination Rates Discourage Usage - report
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| A new
report
from
Telecommunications
Management
Group
notes
that
while
mobile
telephone
subscribers
surpassed
fixed
line
subscribers
globally
in
2002,
mobile usage significantly
lags fixed line usage. The main reason is the high price of mobile calls, which
are often caused by high mobile termination rates (MTRs, the cost per minute of
terminating a call on a mobile network).
There is compelling evidence that mobile users in
countries with low termination rates or that charge the receiving party for the
call spend more time talking on their phones. For example, users in the United States,
where the receiving party pays for calls, speak on their mobile phones almost
600 minutes a month, whereas users in the European Union, where the calling
party is charged for the call, use their mobiles an average of 142 minutes
monthly.
The report
finds that the average MTR in the world was US$0.142 at the beginning of 2005.
MTRs among countries that have announced phased reductions are forecast to fall
below US$0.109 per minute by 2007, a decline of 19% a year. There is
significant variation in MTRs around the world, with Asian rates the lowest at
US$0.048 per minute.
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Welcome New Clients:
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**Bierlein Companies
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Spicer
Group
**Bucyrus Community Hospital
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E. Greene CEO
Amy
Suchy COO
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Harris VP
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