A hoe for a keyboard.
With Mount Kilimanjaro as a backdrop, I was quietly chatting with my neighbour on our front lawn. The morning peace shattered, however, when a nearby transformer exploded in a shower of sparks. The pyrotechnics that would deny my household three days of electricity sent me ducking for cover in...

Spectrum policy: what next? A foreword.
Two significant processes are underway in the radio spectrum policy domain. In the Spectrum Sections of its "Proposed Changes" to the European Union Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications Networks and Services, aiming at the Fall 2007, the European Commission exposes a set of forward-looking spectrum policy principles, emphasising the...

Ed Richards, Robin Foster & Tom Kiedrowski (eds.): Communications--the Next Decade (*).
Ed RICHARDS, Robin FOSTER & Tom KIEDROWSKI (eds.) Communications--the Next Decade (*) The UK Office of Communications, London, UK, 2006, 323 pages This book is a compendium of articles on various aspects of public policy. It was commissioned by the Office of Communications...

India 2.0 (*).
For four days in July 2007, a delegation of IDATE Foundation member companies travelled to India to meet with players from the country's telecoms, IT and television industries (1). By way of an introduction, it is worth remembering that India has a population of 1.112 billion, and...

Phone calls to Cuba keep the dollars flowing.
Miami generates the pressure for U.S. sanctions to cut off hard-currency flows to Cuba. Miami is also the place that generates a great deal of hard-currency flows, which is why the administration tightened its sanctions in 2004 to reduce family visits and family remittances. One...

CWA abandons cause.
Net neutrality has become the battle cry for a diverse amalgam of social, political and business groups, from the left as well as the right. It is favored by companies such as EBay, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, all beneficiaries of Internet communication unencumbered. They face companies such as Comcast,...

Telecom trouble: Arab governments have been delaying announced plans to privatise state-owned telecom operations, hoping global equity markets will rebound and boost prices for the shares they plan to sell. But the strategy could backfire, leaving Arab telecoms financially and technologically bankrupt. (Communications).
From Morocco to the Gulf, Arab telecom markets are in turmoil. Although most show promising growth, the pressure is on for governments to relinquish direct ownership of this sector. That pressure is both economic and political. Many cannot afford to undertake the massive investments needed to bring systems up...

Rumpole, thou shouldst be living at this hour ...
Strauch, A. Bruce, ed. Publishing and the law: current legal issues. New York: Haworth Information Press, 2001. 203p price not reported soft ISBN 0789008122 (also published as The acquisitions librarian 26) THIS BOOK OF ESSAYS PRESENTS A STATE-OF-THE-ART VIEW OF PUBLISHING and the law. It does so...

E-rate under fire: is the schools and libraries program a bastion of fraud, or a well-intentioned initiative that can be repaired? (Policy).
From the beginning, the Federal Communications Commission's universal service schools and libraries program--better known as the e-rate program--has elicited passionate responses from both ends of the spectrum. When the Commission first approved the program in 1997, Vice President Al Gore hailed it as "a great step forward...

The Powell play: a fractured FCC may put the pieces back together with a new post-election chairman.
Hammered by critics and frustrated by technology developments that outpace its ability to regulate them effectively, the Federal Communications Commission stands at a crossroads, with its future direction largely dependent upon the outcome of the upcoming national election. The federal agency that oversees national telecom regulation has...