The country’s 30 percent areas will be brought under the Internet network by 2015, Abdul Awal Majumder told a briefing on ‘digital Bangladesh’ at the Information Directorate.

He said about 4.6 million mobile phone subscribers are now getting Internet service and 0.4 million people access the service through public and private companies.

The government plans to bring the entire country under Internet network by 2021, Majumder said and added some 77 access points have been set up across the country to bring the rural population under Internet coverage.

On allegations that the government websites are not updated regularly, the secretary said: “Each ministry has assigned a joint secretary to monitor these activities and review them every 15 days.”

He said his ministry will monitor whether the assigned officials are properly doing their jobs.

The Awami League-led coalition government in its election manifesto pledged to build a ‘digital Bangladesh’.

Explaining the theme Majumder said: “Digital Bangladesh does not mean availability of computer everywhere.

“It’s a modern philosophy to apply modern technologies in education, health and employment generation, alleviation of poverty and dealing with the impact of crises created due to climate change.

“Computer is only a tool here,” he said.

“Talking only about digital Bangladesh will not do. We need to build a corruption-free society to fulfill it,” Majumder added.

Source: BD News Service

FriendFeed, an up-and-coming social media startup, lets people share content online in real time across various social networks and blogs.

The service is similar to, though less popular than Twitter, the microblogging site that Facebook tried to buy for $500 million in 2008, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed on Monday, but Facebook said FriendFeed would operate as it has for the time being as the teams determine long-term plans.

Facebook’s big gain in the acquisition is the engineering talent at FriendFeed, rather than the actual product, which has won critical praise, but lagged in popularity compared to Twitter, said Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang.

“These guys now how to build scalable, social applications,” said Owyang.

In a statement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he admired the FriendFeed team for having created a service he described as simple and elegant.

“As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use,” said Zuckerberg.

FriendFeed’s four founders are former Google Inc employees who count well known products like Gmail and Google Maps among their accomplishments.

Facebook said the founders will hold senior roles on its engineering and product teams.

FriendFeed had talked with Facebook “casually” for a couple of months, and that it became clear that the teams were “cut from the same cloths,” FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor told Reuters in an interview.

He declined to say whether FriendFeed had been in talks with other companies.

One bridge between Facebook and FriendFeed might have been Matt Cohler, Facebook’s former management vice president. He joined FriendFeed backer Benchmark Capital last year.

Asked what role the connection played in the deal, FriendFeed’s Taylor said the decision to be acquired by Facebook was made entirely by the team at FriendFeed.

Facebook has more than 250 million registered users. In May, the social networking company announced a $200 million investment from Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies that pegged the value of its preferred shares at $10 billion.

Facebook has said its revenue is on track to rise 70 percent this year, and board member Mark Andreessen has said the company will bring in more than $500 million in revenue in 2009.

But Forrester’s Owyang said that Facebook must make the content generated within the site more accessible to the public instead of only to closed networks of Facebook friends, so that the company can sell more ads.

Earlier this year, Facebook announced changes to its privacy controls to allow people to make their status messages and posts viewable to a broader Internet audience.

Source: Reuters

With 92 percent software piracy in Bangladesh, the first in the Asian Pacific region and the second highest in the world, the country’s experts urged the government to initiate a move for use of open sources software.

A report, Global Software Piracy Study 2008, published in 2009 and conducted by IDC, the IT industry’s leading global market research and forecasting firm, warned that the software piracy in Bangladesh is crippling the local industry and costing the local retailers US$102 million a year.The report revealed that the worst offender is Georgia at 95 percent. It’s followed by Armenia and Zimbabwe at 92 percent while the US is the country with the lowest piracy rate at 20 percent. Then follow Japan and Luxembourg at 21 percent each.

In Bangladesh the piracy rate actually remain same at 92 percent for last two years. The report’s data measure piracy for all of 2008 and do not include data from 2009.

State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafesh Osman, Prof Dr Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, and Science and ICT secretary AKM Abdul Awal were, among others, present at the seminar chaired by BCC executive director M Mahfuz Rahman. A2I Programme Implementation Specialist Munir Hasan and Deputy Director of WTO Cell at the Commerce Ministry Sharifa Khan presented two papers at the seminar.

State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafesh Osman said the government would take all possible initiatives to incorporate latest technology and remove the obstacles to getting maximum ICT services.

Maker Communication, an event management company, organised the fair titled “Laptop Fair Chittagong 2009”, providing loan facilities to purchase laptops for first time, at the Institution of Engineers Bangladesh (IEB) Chittagong Centre.

A number of renowned laptop brands, including Asus, BenQ, Posh.Book, Compaq, Apple, Dell, HP, Gigabyte, Toshiba, Acer, Great Wall and Deluxe, participated in the fair.

The official sponsors of the fair were brands like BenQ, Asus and Poshbook.

Radio Foorti, Bdnews24.com, Bdjobs.com, The Daily Azadi, Nescafe, wheelsbd.com and Hotel Tower Inn were the partners of the event.

Bank Asia offered loans to the customers for buying laptops at the venue. Different kinds of game shows, fashion shows and quiz competitions were also held.

Chittagong City Corporation Mayor ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury inaugurated the fair as the chief guest, where Chittagong University Vice Chancellor Professor Abu Yusuf and Bangladesh Computer Association President Mostafa Jabbar were present as special guest and guest, respectively.

Source: The Daily Star

Newspapers are full of stories of customers walking out of banks and getting robbed. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to not have to carry a lot of money, instead just carry a means to be able to give the money to others? Rest of the world does this with cheques, electronic funds transfers (EFT) and credit/debit cards. But in Bangladesh, we are still a cash-based society. The Governor of Bangladesh Bank recently stated that only 13 percent of the country (19 million accounts) utilizes banking services. Cheques are not trusted, EFTs require too much time, and the infrastructure for wide acceptance credit cards do not exist.

We used to wait for hours to pay an electricity, telephone or gas bill. What if those bills could be paid from the comfort of our home?

For small business owners or microcredit borrowers, going to the bank means loss of productivity. Buying something often means carrying large sums of cash across unsafe areas–the list of risks and inconveniences is endless.

The solution does not lie in the develop world’s credit card or web-based e-payments, since Bangladesh lacks the vast infrastructure required for that. The answer lies in our pockets: our mobile phones. With extensive adoption in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, etc, mobile payments have been proven to be a mature technology, and can open the door to electronic money transfer and solve all these problems. Want to pay your electricity bill? Pick up the phone, enter your password, enter the account number and amount of the bill. Instead of 5 hours in a line, you are done in a minute. Want to buy a TV? Just pay using your phone.

The microcredit borrower can get account balances, pay a merchant, repay the bank, and receive payments, all through her mobile phone.

During the last 16 months, Bangladesh received US$685 million per month in remittance from abroad. (Source: Bangladesh Bank). With the convenience of Mobile Payment, it would be simple to send and receive funds, saving trips to the banks.

The technologies involved are simple and available today. We will discuss some of the common ones here.

To start, the payer (mobile subscriber) registers with a mobile payment service provider (MPSP), and deposit funds in a bank account. When registering, s/he also selects a personal identification number (PIN).

Payments can work over SMS. A SMS message could say, “Pay GAS 123-456 500” and the MPSP would know that the payer is paying his gas bill of Tk. 500 for account 123-456.

Software loaded on the phone or SIM can also do the transactions, but that will require high-end phones or new SIMs, which are expensive. Browsers running on mobile phones also work, but that means additional cost.

USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) is a SMS-like solution that is available on all GSM phones. Using USSD, the payment process works like SMS, but be more secure.

The last option is interactive voice response (IVR). The payer dials a number, the system recognizes him from his caller ID, and calls him back. Then he enters his PIN, and responds to the prompts to make the payment.

A very important question with any electronic transaction is, how secure is the account-holder’s funds? The answer changes with the technology involved.

It is possible to fake SMS messages or caller ID. Requiring the use of a PIN solves this issue.

A well-designed IVR system will note the caller-id, hang up, and call that number back. If caller-id has been faked, the call will go to the actual phone.

Mobile payment is a true win-win situation for all concerned. The merchants win: they do not have to store large amounts of cash or provide change. The utilities win: they get prompt payment of their bills. Of course, the biggest winner is the consumer: no risk of robbery because large amount of cash is not carried, and bills and other payments can be made quickly and efficiently.

We expect that Bangladesh Bank will regulate this business. The model to adopt already exists: debit and credit card payments. Instead of a piece of plastic, people will be carrying an electronic device, their mobile phone, that can act like a debit card.

Technology Selection: Any company that proposes a solution that requires specialized software loaded on the phone or SIM will greatly limit its user-base. MPSP licensees should only partner with companies that can serve any mobile phone customer in any network. It is also vitally important to pick companies certified against international security standards.

We recognize that banks will be critical for the success of an MPSP. They have the expertise, structure and trust of their customers. Hence is it natural for banks to become MPSPs.

Mobile operators are not licensed to perform financial transactions, rather to provide telecommunication services. They control access to the mobile sets, and as such would enjoy an unfair advantage, creating a conflict of interest. A mobile operator that is also a MPSP can hamper connectivity to a competing MPSP to force its customers to switch. It may provide preferential routing and better quality for its own MPSP, or provide bundled pricing for its mobile customers.

Only financial institutions have the regulatory and compliance framework necessary for providing safe and transparent financial transactions. As such, it is important that Bangladesh Bank excludes MNOs from the MPSP license, and that Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission compel them to provide equal access to all MPSPs.

Competition is good for consumers, and more choices will keep the prices low and services better. For this reason, current ATM, Credit/Debit card networks should also be excluded from the MPSP licenses.

Bangladesh Bank has a huge role to play in shepherding this process. We hope it will soon come out with guidelines for MPSP licensing that sets the criteria for capability and security. With a well-balanced mix of free competition and consumer right, the guidelines would pave the path to wide adoption of mobile payments in Bangladesha path that will lead us to a Digital Bangladesh.

Author: Javed Ikbal
The author is a financial technology, mobile & electronic payment and information security expert based in the USA.
Courtesy: The Daily Star

In an hour-long presentation, Pavan Mahajan, business head building, Belden, SAARC, highlighted different types of products and features.

“From industrial automation to data centres, from broadcast studios to aerospace and from cutting-edge wireless communications to consumer electronics, Belden is sending all the right signals since 1902,” said Mahajan.

Belden was established under the leadership of Joseph C. Belden. The company’s first major breakthrough occurred in 1904 when they began supplying products for Thomas Edison.

And, through the years working in close cooperation with many industry leaders, they have become industry standards.

“Our 8,000 associates worldwide work in copper cable, fibre, wireless technology, connectors, switches and active components to bring voice, video and data to your mission-critical application.” Mahajan added.

Belden currently offers thousands of wire and cable products such as multi-conductor, paired, coaxial, flat and optical fibre cables, plus portable cordage, moulded cable assemblies, hook-up and lead wire.

Belden has supplied cables to leading networking companies such as Cisco, Intel and IBM. They have supplied in excess of 200 million feet of DataTwist 350 cable to the Cisco since 1993.

“The standard Belden product offering also includes a complete selection of data network connectivity products and structured cabling systems and services, enclosures and racks, and cable management accessories,” Sumit Deb, key account manager of Belden, East, told The Daily Star.

“Every week Belden make enough cable to go around the world 18 times,” Sumit informed.

Express System Ltd (ESL) is the local master distributor of Belden in Bangladesh.

Source: The Daily Star

In the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), it was decided that a knowledge-based society would be developed throughout the world by 2015, which is in line with the government’s decision of building a digital Bangladesh by 2021.

There has to be a transformation to a digital system in infrastructure, governance and education, the three most vital areas for the growth of a nation. The government has to be prudent in taking steps to empower the citizens. All Bangladeshis must have access to ICT, and the skills to use it, in digital Bangladesh.

To transform the government, we have to have e-readiness. The issues impeding the growth of the hardware and software sectors must be resolved. Bangladeshi businesses, especially SMEs, need to be able to transact through credit card over the internet and/or mobile phone. New technologies such as WiMax can be integrated into the overall system.

In digital Bangladesh, we envision that the government will have the capacity to deliver services to citizens through the Internet, radio and TV, and also to make its internal operations more efficient and transparent through the use of ICTs. In the health sector, we hope that ICTs will be used for connecting relevant healthcare service providers and for connecting doctors with patients in remote areas.

In the education sector, utilisation of information technologies and communication networks for dissemination and exchange of knowledge must be present. The agriculture sector can grow phenomenally with proper implementation of IT. Land management can be properly done through IT as well.

In digital Bangladesh, we hope a transformation will occur in the realm of commerce and industry. ICT can be used for marketing and promotion of products, for increasing internal efficiency, and for communication and transaction between businesses.

It is essential that the software and hardware industry of Bangladesh becomes a part of the global supply chain for ICT products and services, while serving as a platform for enabling the above goals in the digital age. A communication infrastructure that allows ICT-based services to be deployed equitably throughout the nation will make digital Bangladesh a reality.

Essentially, there has to be implementation of ICT in virtually every sector — agriculture to government budgeting, port management to National Board of Revenue’s tax management, and media to security management.

In recent times, we have witnessed growing security threats in our country. Information technology can be a very useful tool in preventing a large catastrophe from taking place. A digital database containing fingerprints can be a tool for fighting possible threats.

In order to create digital Bangladesh, the present government can start by looking closely into all the previous ICT policies and take prudent steps. The ICT ministry and its subsidiary, Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC), should be strengthened. Skilled manpower needs to be developed. We need to train our teachers. We need to look at the best practices around the world when it comes to using ICT for development to better understand how we can incorporate those in to our system. Estonia is a great example, which we can follow in terms of ICT usage in different aspects of government and social life.

The government’s promise for a better tomorrow though the promised ‘dinbodol’ can be fulfilled through an honest desire for the creation of a digital Bangladesh. All the relevant stakeholders must be brought to a common platform. A chief Information officer should be appointed for the proper and successful management of the project.

Making digital Bangladesh will take united effort. The private sector, NGOs and grassroots organisations need to be involved in this endeavour. Only through joint effort can we create a truly digital nation. Public-private partnership must be present.

The Millennium Development Goal of the UN suggests the making of an IT village. In accordance with this goal, we have to be a strong member of the global society. For that, we must synchronise our plans with global initiatives and work hard. Our actions plans need to be time bound and specific, and strong and accountable program management has to be present. The future awaits us with all its wonderful opportunities; the onus is on us to take the right step.

Author: T I M Nurul Kabir
The author is the former Senior Vice-President of BASIS and CEO of Spinnovision.

Source: The Daily Star

The approval was given at its regular meeting held at the cabinet room at Bangladesh Secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

Briefing to the reporters, Prime Minister’s Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad said the ICT act has been amended for legalising the ICT, safety of the computer network system, making it universal, and using in preventing crimes, preservation and dissemination of information.

Describing the new OIC charter, the press secretary said the original charter was adopted in 1972 and Bangladesh got OIC membership in 1974. The original charter of OIC has been changed making it time befitting considering the reality of the current world, he said.

Azad said, 28 member countries out of total 57 members of the OIC, signed the new charter and six countries including Malaysia ratified the charter.

He said the next Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM) of the OIC would be held in Damascus, Syria on May 23-25 next.

At the beginning of the meeting, the press secretary said, the Prime Minister exchanged new years greetings with her cabinet colleagues, saying the security measures on the first day of Bangla New Year were excellent.

She thanked the countrymen for celebrating the New Year in a disciplined way and also thanked the members of the law enforcing agencies for ensuring safety and security across the country.

To celebrate the next year’s Bangla New Year, the Prime Minister said, special bus services would be introduced so that the people could take part in the festivity with enthusiasm.

Members of the council of ministers, advisers to the Prime Minister, state ministers attended the meeting.

Among others, concerned secretaries including Cabinet Secretary and Prime Minister’s Press Secretary were present.

The training programme has been initiated by Sightsavers International a UK based International organization along with Dhaka University Central Library. The training was conducted by Sightsavers partner Young Power in Social Action (YPSA, a pioneer organization on ICT , based in Chittagong, Bangladesh. YPSA has been working for the Visually Impaired persons for the since long with a good reputation in nationally and internationally. Due to the continuous working in ICT section, YPSA has become expert on ICT promotion for visually impaired person.. A total of 36 students from different department (and 4 staff of Central Library have participated in the programme out of which 20 are male and 16 are female.

Information and communication technology (ICT) has become, within a very short time, one of the basic building blocks of modern society. Because, its play an important role for economic and social development. The people of Bangladesh are now getting the benefits of the ICT for their day to day life. But still, we are far behind in the high way of ICT. Especially visually impaired and the people living in the village are deprived of benefits of ICT.

This training programme is one of the major initiatives of ICT activities in our country. The main objective of this training programme is to empower Visually Impaired Student through ICT as well as encouraging them to fight against the forth coming challenging in future. Now a days ICT becomes one of the best solutions to empowering the VI people. Due to unavailability of source and resource, most of the students are deprived of getting the benefits of ICT.

In order to make the training programme a success, YPSA has provided with internationally recognized trainer (Namely Mr. Vashkar Vattacharya trained from Japan, Thailand and India, Md. Rashed Chowdhury, Trained from Japan, Mr. Madob, Ex-trainee of YPSA IRCD and Henry Hebol Roy) training manual and software as well as other facilities. All VI students are divided into three batches in equal number so that the students can get proper training and can have sufficient time for practice. The main component of this programme is to acquaint VI students to Computer Screen reading software, speech synthesizers, self-voicing software, using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint with JAWS (Job Access with Speech), using DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) Talking Book, Visually impairment friendly Electronic Books, Novels, Stories and different Policy and Legislations of Bangladesh. The training is conducted in six days per week from 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM considering the benefits of the students.