RE: Teleconferences

I have been visiting several "developing countries" and the problem in
most of them is, that they don't have good Internet connections.
 
The country might have only Internet connection via satellite -data
links. Those are slow and bandwidth limited. It means only few users can
have access same time to Internet from that country. Often mobile phone
networks are working quite well. But to use mobile phone to access
Internet has the same limitation as the operator has to use the same
satellite data link to get to Internet.
 
We in the western countries are spoiled with good optical fiber networks
providing wonderful fast Internet services with reasonably low cost.
 
In many developing countries they don't have the optical cable
connections to the Internet.
 
Often it is the university in the developing country which have the
Internet connection and it is controlled who can use it.
 
This is improving but slowly.
 
Br. Lauri



________________________________

	From: public-mw4d-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-mw4d-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of ext Bill Gillis
	Sent: 26 June, 2008 17:17
	To: Nadeem Akhtar
	Cc: Stephane Boyera; Janusz Lukasiak; public-mw4d@w3.org
	Subject: Re: Teleconferences
	
	
	Nadeem,
	 
	This is an important observation.   It is possible that this is
another good example of a mismatch between cultural context and ICT
application.   The context for many 'developing countries' is
	1) limited communications budgets
	2) English is often a second, third or even fourth language
	3) Often there is a strong tradition of personal face-to-face
communication.  Conference calls are not necessarily a part of that
tradition.
	 
	Stephane, I do not mean this be critical..but when one enters
the W3C page to sign up to learn about becoming an official member, it
states that it is required to participate regularly and accept the cost
of participating in an international conference call conducted in
English.  Also it is necessary to read through and agree to several
statements written in rather complicated legal language that can be
difficult even for a native English speaker.
	 
	I can only guess, but these may be potential unintended barriers
to participation.  It would be useful to hear from those who are from
'developing counties'.   I may be making incorrect assumptions as to the
importance of cost, language and tradition as barriers to "official
membership".
	 
	We came across the same challenge of lack of participation when
we attempted to encourage regular 'conference calls' among African
university colleagues discussing opportunties to utilize ICT for higher
education collaboration.   In that case, there was better participation
when we changed meetings to use Internet chat rather than voice
conference.
	 
	Ciao,
	 
	Bill
	
	 
	On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Nadeem Akhtar
<nadeem@cewit.org.in> wrote:
	

		
		Stephane,
		
		 It's ironic that the list of official participants in
MW4D group has hardly
		anyone from 'developing' countries! Maybe the call for
participants needs to
		be circulated wider.
		
		Regards,
		Nadeem