CROSSED WIRES IN SOUTH AFRICA SOURCE: NEW YORK TIMES

Author: Donald G. McNeil, Jr.; Issue: International Description: Over

the years SA Telkom had become known for its high prices, slow

service, a bloated work force, and a network engineered for white

neighborhoods. After two years of debate, the South African government

decided that it would be better to open the market up to competition,

hoping that the new entrants would wire the neglected black areas.

Last year, South Africa put 30 percent of SA Telkom up for sale. In

March it was bought in a joint bid by SBC Communications International

and Telekom Malaysia. Now, six months later, the company is making

huge strides. Company officials said that Telkom has installed 171,000

new lines -- almost triple the pace of before -- with over 115,000 of

them going "into previously neglected areas." Telkom now fixes "57

percent of all home phone problems within 24 hours, up from 42 percent

in April." It promises to have 35 percent black managers within five

years and plans to have the whole network digital by 1999. Jay Naidoo,

the Posts and Telecommunications Minister, said he is "philosophically

very satisfied" with the monopoly-for-investment deal.

*********************************

DEVELOPING AN INTERNET TELEPHONE

MITSUBISHI and OzEmail to Develop

Internet Phone -MITSUBISHI Electric Corporation and OzEmail Interline

will team together to join an international consortium developing

Internet Phone in Japan. The Mitsubishi subsidiary Dream Train

Internet (DT Internet) will market Interline's telephony gateways to

a number of Japanese Internet service providers. This agreement adds

DT Internet to a global consortium of European, North American and

Asian Voice-over-the-Internet ("VoIP") service providers who are

using Interline's VoIP technology. Plans include extending the

consortium to South America, the Middle East and Africa. 'Interline

Phone' comprises voice digitization and compression and Internet

transmission technology, together with a global call management and

inter-member financial settlement facilities and delivers a

comprehensive VoIP solution. Bydelivering telephone calls through the

Internet, the Interline consortium can offer substantially reduced

rates on long distance and international services.

*****************************************

NOTICE ABOUT THEGLOBAL KNOWLEDGE FOR DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE INTERNET

LIST DISCUSSION

The "Global Knowledge 97: Knowledge for Development

in the Information Age" Conference was held in Toronto, Canada, June

22-25, 1997. The Conference drew an estimated 2,000 participants:

senior government officials, local knowledge builders, the NGO

community, business leaders, and other experts from around the globe.

It focused on three core themes: · Understanding the information

revolution and its implications for developing countries and the

world's poor · Sharing strategies, experiences and tools in

harnessing knowledge for development · Building new partnerships

that empower the poor with information and knowledge, foster

international dialogue on development, and strengthen the knowledge

resources of developing countries.

The Conference explored each of these themes along six tracks:

1. Empowering the Poor with Information and Knowledge

2. Establishing Policy and Regulatory Frameworks that Support an

Information Economy 3. Harnessing Information and Knowledge:

Infrastructure, Capacity-Building and Applications 4. Fostering

Science and Technology in Developing Countries 5. Using Information

and Knowledge to Support an Informed Public, Effective Governance,

and Civic Dialogue 6. Expanding Life-Long Learning and Distance

Education Opportunities

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is sponsoring this

Internet List, GKD97, to facilitate broad discussion of the

Conference themes at all levels of civil society. The List offers a

major forum for the exchange of ideas, and it provides an important

channel for input into the Conference itself. UNDP and the other

Conference sponsors encourage those from around the world, especially

those in the South, to use the List to express their own needs,

experiences, and suggestions related to Conference themes.

Our hope is that the List participants will discuss:

· Proposed policies, strategies, tools, and partnerships to improve

access to and use of information resources by the poor in rural and

urban areas alike · Case studies, best practices, and other examples

of activities that have expanded access to information and knowledge

among the poor* Success stories of efforts, including public-private

partnerships, to build "knowledge for development" capacity in

developing countries · Research findings of relevance to the

Conference discussions

It is hoped that the List will focus on particular tracks and themes,

although members are free to discuss any issues related to the

Conference. The objective is to develop a body of suggestions, cases,

examples, and other material that can be made available to donors,

multilateral organizations, businesses, and NGOs to assist them in

their decision-making.

RULES OF THE LIST DISCUSSION

In order to make this discussion most productive, there is a

moderator for the List, and we have adopted two simple rules: 1.

Messages must be relevant to the topics of the List, i.e., the themes

of the Knowledge for Development Conference 2. Profanity and personal

attacks are not acceptable.

Messages violating the rules will *not* be posted to the List, but

will be returned by the Moderator, who will note which rule has been

broken and changes needed to post the message.

REQUESTS

1. Please introduce yourself in your first posting, including such

information as experience with the GKD97 issues, activity in related

groups, interest in particular topics, etc. 2. Please tell others

about this List. If you are an NGO umbrella organization, please

inform your members about GKD97. Also, let us know of others we

should inform about the List. 3. For our members in developing

countries, access and down-loading are expensive. Therefore, please

do *not* keep the body of the original text in your replies, except

as absolutely necessary. 4. Make the subject header as descriptive as

possible about the message content. In that way, people can more

easily decide what messages they want to read. When you respond to a

message, keep the original subject heading intact unless it is no

longer relevant to the message content. 5. This List has a global

membership. Please exercise tolerance and respect toward other

participants whose views may differ from your own. Please remain

courteous at all times. 6. When you would like to have a personal

discussion, or feel offended by a particular message, please send a

message to the individual involved only.

POSTING TO THE LIST

To post to this List, send your message(s) to:

GKD97@MAIL.EDC.ORG

Messages can be posted in any language that uses the Roman alphabet.

However, messages will not be translated, so only those who can read

the language of the message will respond.

UNSUBSCRIBING FROM THE LIST

To unsubscribe from the List, send a message to:

MAJORDOMO@MAIL.EDC.ORG

Do *not* enter a subject. In the body of the message, type the text:

UNSUBSCRIBE GKD97 Do *not* put anything after GKD97.

OTHER LIST RESOURCES

All messages posted to the list are archived. To view the archive,

a full-text search, or sort the messages by date, subject, author, or

thread.

You may, if you wish, receive messages in digest format. If you

choose this option, you will receive a full-text compilation of all

messages several times each week. This means that you can read all

messages posted to the list, but you receive fewer individual

messages. To subscribe to the digest, send a message to

MAJORDOMO@MAIL.EDC.ORG with "SUBSCRIBE GKD97-DIGEST" in the body of

the message.

WORLD WIDE WEB SITE FOR THE CONFERENCE

A Global Knowledge for Development WWW site

information on the conference, including on-site activities and

"virtual" events and meetings. It also contains the GKD97 mailing

list archives, which are completely searchable.

OTHER RELEVANT RESOURCES

conference themes and tracks, such as poverty, governance, and

information and knowledge. The GKD97 List will post messages

informing List members of other Web sites that may be of interest.

The Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) is a UNDP

initiative to provide connectivity, content and capacity-building in

developing countries, as well as access to information sources

related to Sustainable Development. As a decentralized and

distributed network, SDNP is maintained by national institutions and

organizations that provide access to information at the national

and/or regional levels. SDNP is aware that Internet-related

initiatives are often based on high-end technology and concentrated

in large urban areas. SDNP is trying to fill the resulting "access

gap" by fostering the development of national information

infrastructures and providing communities with access to public

Internet sites. For more information on SDNP see

LIST ADMINISTRATOR

This List is administered and monitored by Education Development

Center, a nonprofit organization. EDC is working collaboratively with

the UN system and is directly supported by UNDP for the activities in

this project.The UNDP Contact Person for this project is Hans

D'Orville hans.dorville@undp.org

The World Bank Contact Person for this project is the Conference

Secretariat, Global Knowledge 97, Economic Development Institute

GlobalKnowledge@worldbank.org

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information about GKD97, please contact: Janice Brodman

Your answers to the following questions are very important to helping

us make this List successful. Please be sure to complete the questions

and send them to <janiceb@edc.org> as soon as possible. Please note

this information will be confidential.

1. Please type your full name.

2. What is your home country? What country do you currently live in?

3. Do you live in a rural or an urban area? 4. Do you have

difficulties getting Internet access? If so, what are they? 5. Are

you a member of a NGO? Business? Government agency? If so, what is

the organization? 6. Do you know of other Internet Lists or WWW sites

that discuss issues related to the GKD97 Conference?

Thank you.

EOF

**********************************************

NEW INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN AFRICA: A

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ON-LINE REFERENCES A new project and site has just

been released on the Internet. The site, titled "New information and

Communication Technology in Africa: A Bibliography of On-line

References" is the most complete bibliography of on-line references

concerning telematics, Internet, New Information and Communication

Technology, Networking and connectivity activities in Africa.

Visitors interested in this area will find bibliographic references

(articles, reports, papers, etc.) in the seven main sections of the

site:

· Discussion Lists and Newsgroups

· Conferences, Workshops, Symposiums, Forums

· Journals, Newspapers, On-line books, Periodicals

· Projects, NGOs, Research Institutes, International Organizations - ·

Donors · Technology · Metalynx · Indicators: Internet Connectivity and

General Information

Spanish and French versions of the project are available.

The Site is developed and hosted at the United Nations Trade Point

Development Center (UNTPDC) of The United Nations Conference on Trade

and Development (UNCTAD).

comments to the author of the project, Olivier Coeur de Roy [E-mail:

coeurderoy@untpdc.org] DISCUSSION AND NEWS FORUM FOCUSING ON NETWORKED

LEARNER SUPPORT (NLS) IN HIGHER EDUCATION Welcome to NLS-forum - a

moderated discussion and news forum focusing on networked learner

support (NLS) in higher education.

The list is for anyone involved or interested in NLS - the use of

networked technologies to provide training or other forms of help to

users of networked information resources. We expect nls-forum to be of

particular interest to library and information staff who are involved

in user education, information skills training or enquiry/reference

work, but it is also aimed at people working in IT support,

open/distance learning using networked approaches, teaching/learning

support and anyone else interested in learner support in the networked

environment. Please feel free to raise any topics or questions

relating to NLS, and to share information and ideas - the list is all

about making contacts and getting to know about what is going on in

NLS across the higher education sector generally. Kicking off with an

introduction to yourself and to your particular interests and

activities in NLS is very helpful for other list members - so you are

very welcome to jump in at any time with a personal introduction. If

you want to see who else is a member of the list, you can check the

"list members" file on the list's mailbase site - and you can also

conduct an informal survey, you are asked to summarise the results and

send them to the list as a shareable resource.

An additional feature of nls-forum is the programme of discussions (or

mini-conferences) on topics of interest to the NLS community. These

occasional discussions are led by "guest speakers" and are archived at

the NetLinkS site. We are always keen to hear from you if you have any

suggestions for topics, or would like to lead a discussion yourself.

We want to make the programme as relevant and interesting as possible

to list-members, so your input is valued! You can read the guest

NetLinkS, an Electronic Libraries (eLib) project which aims to

encourage the development of NLS in the UK higher education sector. We

will be using the list to keep people informed about the project's

activities and events, and we hope you will want to get involved and

worth highlighting. When you want to reply to a message, you'll notice

that the default reply option is "reply to list" - which means that

unless you set your own "reply to" details to an individual, any reply

you make to a message will automatically be sent to the entire list.

We've set the system up this way because we want to encourage

information-sharing and debate - but it is always worth

double-checking that the message you are sending to the list isn't

intended to be a private one!

You may notice a slight delay between the time that you send a message

to the list, and the time that you actually see that your message has

been distributed to all the list members. This is because nls-forum is

a moderated list. This means that any messages addressed to the list

are not forwarded automatically to everybody who is subscribed to

nls-forum. All messages are routed through the list moderators. If the

message is within the scope of nls-forum, the moderators will then

send your message to the list. This will be done as quickly as

possible, although please do contact the list moderators if you think

that there has been a problem. This process means that you should not

receive any junk email or irrelevant postings. The list moderators of

nls-forum are: Nick Bowskill (N.Bowskill@sheffield.ac.uk), Sarah

Ashton (S.J.Ashton@sheffield.ac.uk), and Colin Goodier

(C.Goodier@sheffield.ac.uk). The list moderators are also the

nls-forum list owners.

Finally - we hope you'll find being a member of the list both useful

and enjoyable. If you encounter any technical problems, please contact

the list owners (see above), and they will do their best to sort them

out for you. Please feel free to contact me with any general feedback

about the list.

Phil Levy

NetLinkS Project Manager

Department of Information Studies

University of Sheffield

SHEFFIELD S10 2TN

p.levy@sheffield.ac.uk

Tel. 0114 282 5088

IMPORTANT INFORMATION -

PLEASE KEEP FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

The two most important things to remember with Mailbase are:

A. Mailbase doesn't use underscores, it uses hyphens, as in nls-forum.

B. Send your messages for public consumption to the list

nls-forum@mailbase.ac.uk and other messages, for example commands, or

administrative-type requests and so on, to: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk If

your administrative-type query is intended for the list owners, you

can send it automatically by mailing it to:

nls-forum-request@mailbase.ac.uk

The rest of this message is really based around those two central

golden rules!!

1. Messages for distribution on nls-forum should be sent to:

nls-forum@mailbase.ac.uk

Your message will first go to the list moderators. Providing that it

is within the scope of nls-forum, your message will be sent to the

list.

2. To leave nls-forum, send an email to:

mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk

with the message:

leave nls-forum

(the subject line will be ignored, so there's no need to enter a

subject).

3. To subscribe to nls-forum, send an email to:

mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk

with the message:

join nls-forum Yourfirstname Yourlastname

For example

join nls-forum Josephine Bloggs

Remember not to send commands, or requests to join, or admin.

queries,to nls-forum - your problem will be broadcast to all members!

If your mail address changes, send a message to:

nls-forum-request@mailbase.ac.uk

and your message will be forwarded automatically to the list owners.

If something goes wrong - perhaps you get two copies of every message

- send a message to: nls-forum-request@mailbase.ac.uk and again your

message will be forwarded automatically to the list owners.

If mail from nls-forum is regularly rejected for some reason (perhaps

because you have run out of file space or your computer mail service

has been renamed) you may eventually be deleted from the list. If you

find you are not getting mail, you may have been deleted from the

list, for example because of the circumstance mentioned above. In that

case, either send a message to: nls-forum-request@mailbase.ac.uk

or resubscribe by sending to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk the one-line

message: join nls-forum Yourfirstname Yourlastname For example: join

nls-forum Josephine Bloggs Remember, you can always get help from:

nls-forum-request@mailbase.ac.uk or by mailing the list owners direct

(n.bowskill@sheffield.ac.uk, s.j.ashton@sheffield.ac.uk,

c.goodier@sheffield.ac.uk)

provide a lot of useful advice on Mailbase commands and options, and

how to get help and User Guides. Apart from the Web pages, though,

your User Guide explains the Mailbase commands, and this is obtainable

by mailing to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk the single text line: send

mailbase user-card

Finally, welcome again to nls-forum and enjoy the list!

******************************************

IN AFRICA, REALITY OF TECHNOLOGY FALLS SHORT SOURCE: NEW YORK TIMES

Howard W. French; Issue: International Description: As new

technologies like cellular telephones and the Internet spread around

the world, conventional wisdom in the West held that predominantly

poor countries throughout the continent of Africa would be able to

make great leaps forward by using these tools to overcome one of the

most crippling legacies of underdevelopment: unreliable and

prohibitively expensive communications. While in some areas these new

technologies are proving to be indispensable, in most of the continent

these tools are haunted by the same stubborn facts of life as their

predecessors, the automobile and the telephone: with the number of

have-nots greatly out-numbering the haves, many modern innovations are

passing millions of people by. Currently, Manhattan has more telephone

lines than exist in more than three dozen countries of sub-Saharan

Africa. In the Ivory Coast, getting a new telephone line can take two

to three months, and 80 percent of all of the computers purchased

there are bought by the government or private businesses. Alin

Ahounou, commercial director of Globe Access, said, "People are very

interested when you explain the Internet to them. But then they tell

you that they are still waiting for a telephone line, or that the

computer they want to buy is too expensive. In the end you realize

that what we really have here is a lack of equipment." "Whether for

the equipment of the services themselves, price stands out as the

major inhibiting factor throughout Africa, and the continent's

difficult economic straits present a cruel barrier to the very

technologies that many expected would help create an economic

takeoff."

********************************************

[Wired News, 1/23/98]

THE INTERNET WILL EAT THE GLOBAL NETWORK BY 2004 SAYS WORLDCOM

A senior WorldCom executive has predicted that the Internet will have

virtually eliminated conventional circuit switched traffic by 2004,

and warned that the growth of IP traffic could outstrip the

communications industry's capacity to supply bandwidth. The

predictions, made by WorldCom chief operating officer, John Sidgemore,

reaffirm his company's long-stated view that IP networks will take

over from conventional switched telephone network in the 21st Century,

but contradict other predictions by bodies such as the World Bank

which says bandwidth will be so plentiful by 2010 it will be supplied

***********************************************************

Telematics for African Development Consortium
P.O. Box 31822
Braamfontein
2017
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: +27 +11 403-2813
Fax: +27 +11 403-2814

neilshel@icon.co.za