Coming "late spring" is Al-Jazeera International, an English language channel of the famous Arabic news channel
It's already sending ripples through the so-called mainstream media, which is largely corporate and special-interest owned/influenced and provides a very one sided view of world happenings with a few off-the-script interviews and comments thrown in just to show they have a "balanced" approach towards news
Our cable service provider does not show the channel, saying it has been "instructed" by higher authorities - I wonder if the scene is the same elsewhere in the country
The channel is based in Kuaula Lumpur, Malaysia and has signed up a star cast of news commentators including the veteran Jewish, American anchor David Marash, Josh Rushing, a former US Marine who conducted journalist briefings at CENTCOM HQ in Qatar during the attack on Iraq, David Frost (the "Breakfast with " guy) and Veronica Pedrosa & Riz Khan from CNN. The channel is headed by a 33-year veteran of British journalism, David Foster
An interesting news item about the new channel can be read here
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
fon
FON is a Spanish company that recently received $20M investment from VC's, Google and Skype
"FON is a global community of people who share WiFi connections. We call these people "Foneros", as a tribute to our heritage as a Spanish company. In order to become a Fonero, you go to FON, to download software that you install in your router, you place your antenna by a window and you share bandwidth with other Foneros from anywhere in the world. You can also buy the FON Ready router from our web site, plug and play. FON creates a free WiFi roaming environment for those who contribute WiFi signals, namely those who have already signed up with a local ISP and downloaded our software into their WiFi routers.
The success of FON, like the success of all online communities -- such as eBay, Skype, ICQ, IM -- depends on many people joining.
FON was launched just 90 days ago and we already have over 3,000 registered Foneros." - link
What got me interested was their idea of this working in developing countries like Pakistan
"While in Europe, Japan and United States FON´s motto is share broadband at home have broadband everywhere in Argentina for example our motto will be, team up with your neighbors to share bandwidth...through wifi. In order for broadband to have a similar impact on people´s budget the sharing will have to be on an approximate 10:1 ratio. Initially ISPs may be against our model but we will probably prevail when they see that we will work with them, deploy our model in low income neighborhoods and the result will be that more connections are sold." - link
I wonder if it is really feasable in a place like PK, where broadband is prohibitively expensive, costing Rs 1K per month (about US $15) for a 256KBPS (allegedly) connection with a 1GB/month limit - broadband licenses are only handed out to a select few, there is no level playing field - Spider Magazine has debated this issue many times
"FON is a global community of people who share WiFi connections. We call these people "Foneros", as a tribute to our heritage as a Spanish company. In order to become a Fonero, you go to FON, to download software that you install in your router, you place your antenna by a window and you share bandwidth with other Foneros from anywhere in the world. You can also buy the FON Ready router from our web site, plug and play. FON creates a free WiFi roaming environment for those who contribute WiFi signals, namely those who have already signed up with a local ISP and downloaded our software into their WiFi routers.
The success of FON, like the success of all online communities -- such as eBay, Skype, ICQ, IM -- depends on many people joining.
FON was launched just 90 days ago and we already have over 3,000 registered Foneros." - link
What got me interested was their idea of this working in developing countries like Pakistan
"While in Europe, Japan and United States FON´s motto is share broadband at home have broadband everywhere in Argentina for example our motto will be, team up with your neighbors to share bandwidth...through wifi. In order for broadband to have a similar impact on people´s budget the sharing will have to be on an approximate 10:1 ratio. Initially ISPs may be against our model but we will probably prevail when they see that we will work with them, deploy our model in low income neighborhoods and the result will be that more connections are sold." - link
I wonder if it is really feasable in a place like PK, where broadband is prohibitively expensive, costing Rs 1K per month (about US $15) for a 256KBPS (allegedly) connection with a 1GB/month limit - broadband licenses are only handed out to a select few, there is no level playing field - Spider Magazine has debated this issue many times
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