South Asia slow to hop on broadband bandwagon (AFP)

The region has embraced telephones, mobile phones and computers and India has a flourishing software and outsourcing industry, noted industry watchers at the first South Asia Broadband Congress here earlier this month. But South Asia has lagged behind in hopping onto the broadband bandwagon, observed Sanjay Gupta of India's Midas Communication Technology. "There's not enough local language content and affordable connections. Currently, broadband penetration is very low — estimated to be less than three percent in the region — and it boils down to cost," Gupta said. Home users in Pakistan pay the most in the region, with annual broadband prices of 2,660 dollars, followed by Bangladesh at 2,066 dollars, according to Colombo-based LIRNEasia, a regional telecom think-tank. The same service costs 242 dollars in Sri Lanka, 223 dollars in India and 112 dollars in Maldives, said researchers at LIRNEasia, who are studying reasons for poor broadband penetration in South Asia. In March, India logged 40 million Internet subscribers, which included 2.3 million broadband users, according to India's Department of Telecommunications. "India needs to target 100 million broadband users by 2015 to connect homes in remote villages. To do that, operators must bring down prices," said Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala of the Indian Institute of Technology. "Rural broadband expansion throughout South Asia will help in education, provide remote healthcare and promote call centres in villages so computer literate people will not be forced to migrate to urban areas," he said. However, telecommunications operators need to cooperate to make broadband economically viable in developing countries, said Mallikarjun Rao, a director at Canadian telecoms giant Nortel Ltd. "To leapfrog to the next generation, dominant operators must allow other operators access to its telephone exchanges — so-called local loop unbundling," Roa said. "The local loop is the crucial link between telephone exchanges and homes," he said. Unbundling the local loop or sharing the copper wire allows other operators to plug their equipment into the telephone exchange and offer faster services. Holding back the development of broadband in Sri Lanka, for instance, is the fact that the country only allows the dominant operator, state-run Sri Lanka Telecom, to lay copper. There are just under 40,000 broadband customers among Sri Lanka's 19.5 million inhabitants, according to Sri Lanka Telecom. Figures for broadband users in other South Asian countries were not available but officials at the conference said penetration was low. "Right now, many people don't have much of a choice when it comes to broadband" as the monopoly on laying wire to homes and offices remains with Sri Lanka Telecom, said Rohan Samarajiva, LIRNEAsia's executive director. "There should be more serious policy and regulatory attention for broadband infrastructure in the region, to make services more affordable," he said.

Microsoft faces crucial EU judgement in cliffhanger court case (AFP)

In a bid to close the book on its struggles with competition authorities, Microsoft has asked the European Court of First Instance to annul a 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission. After a five-year probe, the top European competition regulator hit Microsoft at the time with a record fine of nearly half a billion euros and ordered the company to make crucial concessions to rivals. If a special panel of 13 judges at the Luxembourg-based court upholds the 2004 ruling it would deal a painful blow to a business strategy that has made Microsoft one of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world. Likewise, a defeat for the Commission could seriously jeopardize its credibility, especially after a series of court rulings against it in recent years. Despite the huge stakes in the case, most observers are not expecting the judges to give a black-and-white victory to one side or the other when they hand down their eagerly awaited judgement at 9:30 am (0730 GMT) on Monday. "All who have followed the Microsoft case agree this judgment is a cliffhanger," said lawyer Alec Burnside with law firm Linklaters. "Possibly, the court may choose to craft a narrow judgment specific to the facts of the case, but it may seize the opportunity to deliver a judgment dealing with some quite fundamental questions. "Either way, the repercussions of the judgment are likely to be felt for quite some time after next Monday," he added. Both sides will have a little more than two months after the verdict to decide whether or not to lodge a new appeal with Europe's highest tribunal, the European Court of Justice. While Microsoft emerged in 2001 from a similar case in the United States relatively unscathed, EU regulators have taken a much harder line towards the company than their US counterparts. In March 2004, the Commission took its biggest antitrust decision ever by ruling that Microsoft was using it 95-percent share of the market for personal computer operating systems to elbow rivals out of other more competitive markets. "If Microsoft can abuse its PC operating system monopoly to exclude competitors from other markets without constraint, consumer choice and innovation will suffer," Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said. In particular, the Commission has accused Microsoft of using its near monopoly in PC operating systems to grab share of the markets for operating systems on back-office servers and for media players that can run video or music. As part of the ruling against Microsoft, the Commission ordered the company to reveal secret computer code to rivals so they could develop competing products and to sell a version of its ubiquitous Windows operating system without its media player programme. While the court has considered the case, the battle between Microsoft and the Commission has rumbled on with EU regulators consistently turning up the pressure on the company to comply with its demands. Brussels fined Microsoft a further 280 million euros in July 2006 after finding that it was not respecting its original ruling, and the company faces further penalties that could bring the total well past one billion euros. However, the Commission is waiting to see whether the court backs its original ruling before pushing ahead with further action against Microsoft.

First Look: 16GB iPod Touch (PC World)

Don't get me wrong, the Touch is an amazing piece of technology. Mobile Safari is the best portable Web browser around, Cover Flow works great on a device with limited storage capacity, and the new iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is extremely slick for a first generation product. But in these first two days, I've run into a screen anomaly that makes dark movies scenes difficult to watch, software bugs that halt music playback when browsing pages in Safari, and an issue that on many in-ear headphones. If Apple can work out most of those kinks, it will have produced the first portable video player I'd actually want to own. Until they do, I'd recommend taking a wait-and-see approach with the Touch.

The iPhone Slims Down

Run down a list of the iPhone's features, and you'll find that almost everything has made it over to the iPod Touch. The Touch is available in both 8GB and 16GB capacities. At.31 inches deep, it's substantially thinner than the iPhone, but it's got the same 802.11b/g wireless support. It also features a 3.5-inch Multi-touch screen with 480-by-320-pixel resolution. The single button on its face brings up the main menu, and a small button on top turns the device on and off. The only missing bits of hardware are the phone (plus the mic and speakers that go with it), the camera, and the physical volume buttons and locking switch on the side. The non-standard headset jack that prevents you from plugging most headphones directly into the iPhone is gone as well–your normal headphones will fit just fine. The touch works just like the iPhone, too. We've spent plenty of time dissecting how that device works, so I won't dig deeply into it here. The tap, scroll, and pinch gestures that make the iPhone a joy to use work just as well on the Touch.

Music Highs (and One Low)

The iPod Touch's beautiful interface and large, attractive screen help make it easily the most fun media player I've ever tested. Cover Flow, Apple's unique touch-based interface for flipping through the albums on your player, performs much better on the Touch than on the Nano or the Classic. Album art loads efficiently enough that it's nearly impossible to outrun the player and end up with the dreaded gray placeholder graphics while the player catches up. I've always been a fan of music players that can hold my entire library, so the Touch was more attractive to me as a mobile video player and Web browser. But the Touch's limited capacity forced me to come up with some new ways to listen to music, and after awhile I was having a blast adapting to the smaller confines and the Touch's interface. I've loaded my test unit with a library-wide best of playlist, along with some classic discs and the last 20 or so albums I've ripped. My favorite new trick: I'll put the best of playlist on shuffle and let that play until I hear something I haven't heard in a while. When I do, a quick tap of the album's track listing lets me go back and listen to that disc. Apple's new iTunes Wi-Fi Music store works great as well. Its search function updates while you type, helping you drill down to the correct artist, album, or song title with a minimum of typing. Provided you have an iTunes Music Store account, you can purchase songs directly from the device using the Touch's Wi-Fi connection. (This feature is now available to iPhone users as well.) Tracks download as quickly as your 'Net connection can manage, and are immediately playable. The next time you sync the player, those songs will be downloaded to your PC's music library. Much like the iPhone, the iPod Touch to a last-generation iPod Nano. That's not bad for a flash-based MP3 player, but there's a critical difference between the sound of the touch and any of the Nanos I've tested. As noted in on Friday, the Touch doesn't play so well with many high-end in-ear headphones I've tested. The problem goes away if I use an attenuator (a tiny adapter that shipped with my Ultimate Ears 5 Pros), but I'd prefer not to have to plug an adapter into the player if at all possible.

The Dark-Scene Video Blues

As I mentioned, I'd really like to use the Touch primarily as a portable video player. One of my favorite features of the iPhone is playing videos on its gorgeous 3.5-inch screen. With the iPod Touch supporting up to 640-by-480-resolution videos in both H.264 and MPEG-4 compression, I was all set to load up some movies from the iTunes store and start watching. Unfortunately the 16GB unit I picked up at the San Francisco Apple store has a display problem that makes many dark scenes almost unwatchable. Video looks reversed out in dark areas, creating a very distracting negative effect. Several other users have reported the same problem on Apple's forums, so I know I'm not alone, but other posters have mentioned that their displays work just fine. Perhaps this defect is confined to a small portion of Apple's initial iPod touch shipment and those of us experiencing the problem will be able to get replacements.

Safari, Apps, and Some Rough Edges

Thankfully those display woes don't distract from viewing most Web pages in Safari, which remains the best mobile Web browser I've ever seen. For the most part, it works great on the iPod Touch, except when you try to multitask. If you start up some music and tap your way over to Safari for some Wi-Fi-enabled Web surfing, you may encounter problems. If I opened up a complex page or a second tab, the Touch would often stop playing music, forcing me to go out to the main screen, tap over into music, and start it up again. I've also experienced the occasional crash after loading up three or more pages. I'd bet that these problems will be fixed in a future firmware update, but until they are they're two more reasons this player feels a little rushed to market. Not all of the iPhone's apps made it to the iPod Touch. I can begin to see the rationale for omitting the Mail and Google Maps applications–both would work better with the iPhone's always-on data connection–but why leave off the Notes app or the Weather and Stock widgets? The implementation of the Calendar app is also a bit confusing: While you can sync events from your PC's calendar, you can't edit them on the Touch or add new events.

Overall Grade: Incomplete

We'll update this review shortly with results from our objective audio and battery life tests. (Apple rates the Touch as good for 22 hours of audio playback and 5 hours of video). I also hope that by the time we update, Apple will have responded to our questions about the Safari and screen issues I experienced. Until then, the Touch remains a bit of an enigma. It's a beautifully designed player that's incredibly fun to use. If Apple can resolve these initial quality control issues, I'd gladly recommend it to anyone looking for a mobile video player, a portable Web browser, or a high-class way to cart around the highlights from your music library.

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