RE: Teleconferences

Hi,

First of all, congratulation to W3C to this initiative, specially to the 
opportunity to watch the congress here at São Paulo, Brasil. I am sure 
that this type of discution will break quicly some barrers and the 
technology will help the developmtent of world, maily developing 
countries. I live in Brazil and we have two distinct scenarios: one is 
similar to developed countries, where we use high tech devices (iPhone, 
powerfull smart phones, etc...)  to navigate, to make digital signature, 
to send and receive e-mails, and so on. In other hand, we have the 
majority of users with simple devices in a pre-paid model. This model 
limit the usage only because the idea is to receive call no to make call.

Just to put more pepper/salt  in this discution, it is important to 
consider the business model used in countries such as Brazil and  Mexico 
(in fact, i believe that is in all Latin America). Here, most part of 
mobile devices is pre-paid and have limited access to internet (not ont 
the band but the traffic).

As a company, we are trying to use mobile devices in two ways: to make a 
broadcast of information (SMS) and star simple application (simple 
navigations), but we are having problems to deal with more complex apps.

Thus, considering the use of this device to navigate on Internet is not 
totally real or acceptable. I do not know how countries from Africa (that 
I believe has a similar business model, considering economic aspects) deal 
with this. Does the mobile user only to receive (acting as a passive 
device) or it is really used to navigate (acting as active device)?

I hope I could help in this discution.

Thanks,






Lauri.K.Hirvonen@nokia.com
Enviado Por: public-mw4d-request@w3.org

RAMAL: 
27/06/2008 06:10
        Para:   <gillis.bill@gmail.com>, <nadeem@cewit.org.in>
        cc:     <boyera@w3.org>, <janusz@eumx.net>, <public-mw4d@w3.org>
        Assunto:        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