IPHONE as a remote of my TV

I would like to see a simple technology to integrate iPhone to TV. As always, Apple is the leader of the products that “wow” the customer by providing the “user experience”. Obviously we want more now and our expectations are thereby going up.

I would like to see a TV with blue tooth and additional software capability in iPhone to list schedule and program my TV so that I could watch my clips from YouTube. Now a day you can watch latest news clips, hit TV shows from any virtually country in the world (DirectTV or Dish ro Cable does not have them all).

I know the resolution of YouTube clips are very low 300 pixels or so. I think that should not dictate the interacting capability. Once we have the higher bandwidths to support the higher resolution then we will make that transition. But now I would like to have this ease of use and “wow” factor between my TV and iPhone. I will make a list in my iPhone, select the order of play and send it to my TV. I may login to YouTube and prepare the list and schedule the time and order of play. Then when I am in front of my TV, I turn my iPhone as a remote control of my TV, voala, I watch my shows.

Apple, Samsung, Google wake up.
Happy New Year 2008!

Information Communication Technology related Project Ideas and paths to Startup

There has been a lot of talk and enthusiasm going on in Bangladesh now a day with respect to Equity Entrepreneurs Fund aka EEF to establish IT industries in Bangladesh.

I tried to come up with some ICT project ideas which I would like to share with you. These ideas may not directly fall in the EEF category; however if any of my expatriate friend want o go back to Bangladesh to start a new venture or my old pals in Dhaka would like to start something different, they may like this list. This is not at all a complete list. I will try to add to it every now and then.

1. Security monitoring and first response initiation over the internet.
2. Online Math and Science Tutoring for High school students in US.
3. Online trucking/goods shipping reservation facility for nationwide faster goods movement.
4. Micro-credit for laptop purchases for every University admitted student in Bangladesh.
5. RMG intranet for capacity and recourses sharing for maximizing throughput.
6. Online auction of excess or minor rejected RMG products. (Govt. need liberalization)
7. Consumer Pricing Interactive Information broadcasting system.
8. Intranet for Universities and dedicated network for all students.

Consumer Pricing Interactive Information broadcasting system: The ultimate goal of this project is to have self sustaining free market price stability for consumer goods. This system will share instantaneous market valuation of major consumer good in major shopping zone throughout the country and thereby adjust the price fluctuation or price hike. In a very high level, the system will be integrated in the following architecture.

Each vendor will have a secure ID and product code. At any point of time during the business hour, the vendor will enter his asking price of a specific item. That information will store in a server and broadcasted to multiple billboards throughout the country to major market place like Sowary Ghat, Moluvi Bazzar, Chalk Bazzar, Kawran Bazzar, Gabtoli and likes. Now the vendor’s security ID may be his personal cell phone. Once he called to that specific server and entered his product code, the program will pick up the bid and broadcast it to the billboard as a cron job. Now if you paid careful attention you already figure out that any customer will be able to access that bid through their cell phone from that server. The transaction will happen as usual with the vendor and customer in the respected business site or over cell phone. You have the luxury to scale the system based on your investment or availability of funding. How you make money out of this? That is a trade secret. Be innovative or hire innovator.

Security monitoring and first response initiation over the internet: The availability of submarine cable enable us to video monitoring in real-time. Bangladesh can utilize the cheap labor to compete this field with countries around the world. Let us consider a case study. A specific business area/entity in Santa Clara, California USA, needs to monitor 24/7. There are 100 security cameras in the facilities. In the security control room there are 12 monitor screens each displaying 9 cameras per screen. Assume there are 2 security officers in the security control room, each responsible for 6 monitors. There are two security patrols in the field. If any suspicious activity takes place, then security officers in the control room dispatch massages to the patrolling guards.
In this case study, you can relocate the entire security control room Khulna, Bangladesh.
You may train and setup security monitoring cells. They will watch the facilities 24/7 and in any suspicious activity they will dispatch to the security patrols for immediate action. You can do it profitably in less than 25% of that operating cost of Santa Clara, California.
Once you have one customer happy and satisfied, you will get 20 more customers to be a mega security center and may further reduce the cost and enlighten your customer. In addition, companies that could not afford security center will be able to do it as the cost is down. Hence the market will get bigger.

I will continue to add more details on the remaining projects.

Blue Card and Talents

Last week in a Washington Post Column, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett emphasize the need to streamline the H1-B visa processing and compared it with European Union’s recent endorsement of Blue Card. The Blue Card is designed to attract highly educated workers to work in EU. The link to the full column is: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/21/AR2007122101919.html

Through out the world we all should encourage the talented engineers, scientists and innovators and remove any obstacle whatsoever from their path.

The flows of talents are in couple of directions. One between developed countries in the western world, such as EU, USA and increasingly Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai etc. The other category is the flow of talents from developing world to the developed one. Some may argue that it may cause brain drain and those country continue to remain under develop; however opponent would argue that the flow of talent in long term benefit the originating country by creating a bridge between them and open future opportunities. On top of that, in the economic development, these talented individual may contribute to the originating country bringing the gained expertise and win-win business deals among the two nations.

I would like to encourage the thriving talented students in science and engineering as well as economics and public policy to sharpen their competence. There is more reason to bring new innovative ideas and develop new methods or tools to take this world to a better place. Please continue to do what you do best and that is your studies, experiments and research.

NBR conference 2007 and Nursing jobs

In the NBR conference 2007 the President of US-Bangladedh Advisory Council Sabbir Ahmed said, "At present there are 400,000 vacant posts for nurses in the US, and Bangladesh can export skilled human resources against those posts". I could not agree more. I believe that management and entrepreneurs in that sector should pay a serious attention to this matter.

US-Bangladesh Advisory Council President's comment remind me to one of my essay I wrote during 2003. I remember I had to be very cautious and sensitive about the topic. Hence the introduction was very lengthy (1st 3 paragraphs) or may be boring to the context of a short history of migration and some historical imperatives. Here is a complete copy of that essay:

Author: Abu Abdullah
Date: 01/11/03
Nursing: an opportunity overseas

Nursing is noble profession. Every country, every civilization there will be always demand for them, unless the world one day in future come up with a technology or innovation which protect human kind from any disease or cut and bruise. The globalization brings the countries of the world closer day by day. For Bangladesh this is an opportunity to participate in the global nursing work force. Let me explain in a bit what I mean by that.

From the early history of mankind, people travel or migrate to other part of the countries for better living, to pursue their dreams, to contribute the continuous development of the world, create arts, music, innovation and solution for growing needs for mankind. In early days conqueror invade countries for fortunes, over the period of time they went back to their homes. Then Europe went to America for land, gold and food. They brought the hard working people from Africa and use them for their own fortune and growth. Then they treat them as subhuman. Next batch of migration from Europe specially Ireland, Italy and others worked on the development of America on roads, freeways, industries, agriculture along with the early migrants. They enjoyed better life and also contribute America. There were a lot of reverse migration as well. In late 20th century and now, people from Asia, specially China and south-east Asia came to America for High Tech jobs. The contributed in development of electronics, microprocessor, internet, networking, communication and anything related to innovation and technology along with the Americans and early immigrants. What puts them in that position are their keen interest for education and dedication on learning. Education was their only hope for better life. They had to make them valuable. For few years the world economy slowed a little bit; but the innovation continues. The next phase would be in Bio-technology, medical science and genetics. The success of humane genome project opens a whole new world of research and innovation. There is room for everybody to participate on that front. Next time I will try to write how we can participate in that movement though we are far away from High Tech.

The biggest resources Bangladesh has for the globalization is its people. We are in better position because with a little effort we can produce a large number of English specking workforces. The toughest challenge for us is to utilize that work force for the betterment of them. They and their families enjoyed better life, brings better life for the country. We have very little opportunity in the scope of our country because of our little economy and little purchase power. But we can develop focus expertise and channel that expertise for globalization. We did that already for middle eastern countries. A few from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, pursue their graduate education in America and contributing in Global High Tech area as well as helping taking care of their families in Bangladesh, creating purchase power and indirectly creating jobs. We need to have more of these models. Until recently I did not thought of Nursing as compare to High Tech jobs. America is hiring foreign English speaking experienced nurses from all over the world, specially now from South Africa.

There is a risk of loosing our existing nurses to serve the country. I am not proposing to export them and have our hospitals and nursing homes helpless. This is why this is a very sensitive and risky venture. We have to plan and execute keeping in mind that we only pursue the win-win projects. One of the guideline may be as follow.
Schools that train nurses could create additional capacities. Students, which are good at English from Universities or colleges, are trained with a commitment of serving 1-2 years at Nursing homes or hospitals. This should not be free. They should get paid for their job. This is a win-win situation for them as well for their experiences. Students who are not good at English may improve their skill and also get the opportunities to participate. Once we have enough nurses, we may give the opportunity for Global jobs.
Jobs in America are high paying (ranging $25K to $50K per year) and very fast, we should not deprive anybody from the competition. The nurses who, has been serving for a long time, if they want to explore the opportunity, they should no get punished. At the same time new nurses should pay their due service to the authority. The point here is that we should only produce enough to first serve our local needs and then for revenue.

For the graduates from Universities or colleges who want to venture themselves, may as well pursue on their own. Use the Internet for research and information. The students from BUET pursued their better life in High Tech on their own; but their advantages ware, they had earned their Bachelor degree from BUET almost free of cost. I may write another article on that.

Not to mention about the profitable business in Dhaka commonly known “Couching” center. They may cash out on this venture. So we have to watch out for that unless they are really competitive. Just for an example, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston has hired nurses from Philippines. Philippines are a logical choice because their training programs are much like US. The nurses got themselves adapted smoothly and sending their hard cash to their families who still live in Philippines. Look for information on National League of Nursing (http://www.nln.org/) and for Boston opportunity examples visit (www.massnurses.org) or St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center (http://www.semc.org/).

The Job opportunities for Resident Nurses are expected to grow more then 36% through 2010. This field has been rated “grow faster then average” by the US Department of Labor. For more information on that, please visit the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics on Internet. I hope to write more on the Nurse Training and Education requirement in my future writings. I would like to give another data; the median annual earnings of RN were $44.840 in 2000. Please keep in mind that a significant part of that salary goes to taxes (about one third) and a third goes to housing or rent.

ICT Teachers Training

There are approximately 3000 lecturers in all the colleges around the country to teach ICT courses in 11th and 12th grade students. The ICT course is comparatively new member of the higher secondary education curriculum. It is often said that ICT is key for the country to close the gap of digital divide with the rest of the world.

There are 68017 college teachers in Bangladesh according to the directorate of secondary and higher education’s most recent data available to the public in its website. Out of them 58508 (86%) are from private college (non-government). Among them only 4% are ICT.

I am sure there are tens of thousands of students enroll in these highly demanding ICT course and are not being successful to pass satisfactorily. There may be multiple reasons for that failure. However, lack of training for those helpless lecturers is the most intriguing one. I salute them for their courage to enter into the classroom with very little resourses. Not to mention their no access to any up-to-date knowledgebase of ICT teaching material.

These teachers are the key to our success for the future. What they produce are the asset of the nation and its development in the era of information technology. Therefore it is imperative that they teach a quality ICT curriculum. It is our responsibility to educate them and strengthen them with the best of knowledgebase. We should provide them the quality study material. We need to ensure that their understanding of the subject matter is nothing but the best and current.

Microsoft and Intel Corporation have many programs for teachers’ training to teach to the future. These programs are win-win for everybody. Not to mention that more people learn to use computer, more computer will be sold and both Microsoft and Intel Corporation will make money; however a noble cause being get fulfilled for those developing countries who could not provide proper training for those teachers. Students also get benefited as they acquire quality education in their disposal.

These two global companies delivered tens of millions of trained teachers in India, Vietnam, and Brazil.

If you just look at the evolution of microprocessor from last year to this year, this itself justify a training or a “touch point” for the ICT teachers. Because these duel core, core2 duo, multi-core products are coming to the shelves of the computer stores and students are buying those. At least our teachers get that knowledge upgrade to deal with those students. This kind of training could be avoided if our ICT teachers were connected to the information super highway through broadband.

To give a jump start, I have a training proposal. There are several authors of the ICT text books offered their voluntary service. For the rest of the project rough estimation, to train 3000 teachers from all over the country for a week of training in Dhaka could cost around USD$ 50,000, less then USD$ 20 per teacher. Major cell phone operators or ICT companies may tap this opportunities to extend their’s brand’s good will and future market opportunities. Moreover global corporations looking business opportunities may as well get involved.

Brac or Grameen provide microcredit for Laptop

For every 100 university going students in the West Pakistan, Bangladesh (East Pakistan) had 247 university going students during the years of 1951-52. The West paid much more attention to their education and almost flipped the number within 14 years. During 1963-64, in the East we had only 9,984 students enrolled in Universities where as many as 14,425 students in the West Pakistan, which is 144 for each 100 from the East. In my personal opinion this institutional discrimination is more then enough reason for a separate independent Bangladesh. We are proud that we have Bangladesh.

Winter morning in Portland, I was enjoying “Collected works of Rehman Sobhah” published by Center for Policy Dialogue. I was intrigued by his article on Economic basis of Bangali Nation where he put a table of Pakistan Economic survey. I was 2 years old when people of Bangladesh said “Enough” and started claiming their self-governance and independence in a painstakingly hard way.

For every student in the East who experienced that his academic potential has been shunned due to the unequal treatment of the West to provide equal growth in the East, freedom fighting was like Jihad to him. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts today in the month of December. Today in Bangladesh we have as many as 50,000 students, enrolling each year in the Universities around the country. Thank you 1971.

We still have a long way to go for our higher education, both quality and capacity wise. According to BANBEIS data for 2001-2005, Bangladesh had a tremendous growth in private Universities. The number of such universities grew from 22 to 53 during that 5 year period almost 240% growth; however number of teachers serving those institutions grew from 2205 to 3487 to 154% in those 5 years. You can see, there is some disproportional relationship which may cause some quality issue. And after the inspection of University grant commission and other oversight committees’ survey, we all know now about the quality of education of these private Universities except few.

On the other hand after the inception of our beloved Bangladesh, the growth of the Public University is stunningly poor and almost flat. This is unacceptable. Our generation should at least setup one University in each district with equal infrastructure, staff, recourses and quality of education by now. Let us plan on doing that by the year 2021 at the half century of our nation. In today’s world higher education become more important then ever. In the advent of technological revolution on information technology and computing automation, Bangladesh has more reason to educate its massive population to transform them from liability to resources. We do not have natural resources; our people are our resources. In my opinion there is no alternative of easily accessible Broadband in order for a rapid mass level education.

I believe, it is high time for this generation to pay a close attention to the delivery methods and quality of education in Bangladesh. First and foremost our educators at the Universities have to acknowledge the true reality. Our Universities do not have any respectable position in any of the ranking done by any respected ranking authority around the world. We are no longer the Oxford of the East which once we claimed. However, we can turn it around, we just need to set our priorities and act on it.

If every student in both public and private Universities has easy access to internet, then they can browse the portal of any Universities around the world. They can get their syllabus, course material and could compare where they stand. This will put our educators in a challenging environment. Student will get exposed to the real world and demand no less. This will trigger hard work and competitive stings for a better outcome. There is one regulatory obstacle here, which is standing between students and information superhighway. We need an easily accessible if not free broadband available for every student.

There are 74 universities in Bangladesh. Out of these, 21 universities are in the public sector, while the other 53 are in the private sector. Out of 21 public sector universities, 19 universities provide regular classroom instruction facilities and services. Each of them may take initiatives to get grant and design their intranet as well as the gateway to internet. BTTB may just drop the extension of submarine cable and fiber to the nearest node. Again, government may impose a mandatory 5% revenue contribution from the entire telecom provider operating in Bangladesh including BTTB to fund such a connectivity project.No University will benefit from the online capability more than the National University of Bangladesh. The National University caters the general education at graduate and post-graduate level in colleges/institutions which were affiliated to different public universities since independence. About one million students are studying in more than 1600 colleges/institutions affiliated to this university. The National University is expanding in terms of number of students, courses and institutions day by day. To day this university plays the most significant role to provide opportunities for higher education among the students living especially in rural and semi-urban areas. A dedicated connectivity and access to the internet with a computer in students possession may do more then the education. The student will have the vision.How do we find the funding? I already discussed 5% telecom revenue for the connectivity solution. Let’s say, we need USD$ 40 million for 200,000 laptops (University Grant commission or ministry of education can strike a deal with ASUS Taipei or Lenovo China) which will ensure a piece for every university enrolled student of Bangladesh. June 2007, Intel and ASUS partnered to bring a US$199 laptop called “Eee PC” an inexpensive laptop designed to help spread computing to poorer regions. The hardware funding may come from various foundations and NGOs. Universities need to research for that. Again you need a dedicated internet access to even to search the funding. It is feels like the chicken and egg problem. There is a lot of funding available to close the digital divide.

BRAC or Grameen could take a lead on working out a micro credit loan with Universities for the funding of these PCs. Moreover, University governing body can work with various bank and financial agencies for a package of installment payable by each student in absence of funding from non profit organizations. A student may pay as low as 500 Taka per month for a laptop during his full length of study. I am sure, these creative students will innovate a lot of usages of these toys at their disposal for generating lot more then 500 Taka to pay for it. For this scheme we do not need any grant, we can work out with a bank for this venture.

There may be hundreds of other ways to improve quality of education; however my prescription to jump starts is the following equation:

The quality of higher education = land students to information superhighway + guidance of their professors.

Let us not under estimate our students, let them expose to the reality and truth. I am sure they will aim for higher standard. This will make our founding fathers happy in haven.

We are proud that we have Bangladesh – let’s take it to the next level. –Abu Abdullah
sohel1569@yahoo.com

Bangladesh vs Vietnam

Although the culturally Vietnam and Bangladesh are two different country; however they possess somewhat similar value system with respect to education, industrilization and economic development.

Economy:
According to CIA world fact book estimate Bangladesh has per capita GDP $2300 (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bg.html) and growth rate 6.6% compare to Vietnam which has $3100 and 8.2% accordingly with same inflation rate.

Education:
Vietnam, being a Confucian country, places a high importance on education. Vietnam has 22 million students. That's a quarter of the population, so at any given time, a quarter of the population is in class.

Bangladesh value education along that line and we have 18 million enroll in elementary schools, about a million appeared in HSC, SSC every year and at a given time there may be 20-30 million students in a class through out the education system.

Industry:
Vietnam has long been known as a low-cost manufacturer of Nike (NKE) sneakers, blouses for Liz Claiborne (LIZ), and wooden furniture, not to mention its huge exports of coffee, catfish, and rice.

For more than two decades, Bangladesh has been exporting readymade garments (RMG) to Europe and USA for customers like Walmart (George), Target, JC Panney, last year’s world cup soccer’s outfit and merchandise for mega-store IKEA.

Prospect: Intel Corporation in Bangladesh – What can we learn from Vietnam?

If you are a policy maker for the future direction of Bangladesh, you might want to look at the following five facts:

1. 
   Starting a tiny sales office during 1997, Intel Corporation becomes the biggest foreign direct investor with 1 Billion USD in Vietnam in 2006.
2. 
   Employee growth exploded from few sales and support to a staggering ~4000 heads of high paying skill jobs.
3. 
   Intel Corporation directly investing to the local companies and incubators as well as the stock market.
4. 
   Partnering with NGO’s and Government to improve education sector and helping PC ownership.
5. 
   Indirectly bringing many more business as upstream and downstream partners and suppliers and customers are coming.

Intel Corporation entered the Vietnam market in 1997. Initial engagement was a sales office staffed by few employees and few thousand USD. Now in Vietnam Intel has Assembly and Test facility which will employ 4000 employee by 2009. Feb. 28, 2006 – Intel Corporation announced it will invest $300 million (US) to build a semiconductor assembly and test facility in Ho Chi Minh City. However, Nov. 10, 2006 – Intel Corporation raise its investment from the USD$300 million to USD$1 billion. The investment growth is phenomenon.

"Intel has enjoyed a strong, constructive working relationship with the Vietnam government, both at the local and national levels," said Rick Howarth, general manager of Intel Products Vietnam. "We were very pleased that the discussions with the local authorities went smoothly so we could significantly expand the facility's size." The size increased from 150,000 square feet to 500,000 square feet.

For its part, the government of Vietnam is offering Intel incentives to locate there, including the promise of inexpensive electrical power and upgraded local transportation networks to get the plant's thousands of workers to and from their job. The result will be a highly cost-effective facility for Intel.

Intel’s investment triggered a domino effect of FDI. "The real 'Intel effect' is starting to occur," says Henry Nguyen, managing partner at IDG Ventures Vietnam. "Upstream and downstream partners and suppliers and customers it needs are coming."

"In February 2006, Canon, Inc. announced it was spending $110 million on an ink jet printer factory near Hanoi," Business Week reported. "Nidec Corp of Japan plans to build two plants to make electronic components, at a total cost of $940 million. Fujitsu Ltd. has invested $200 million and employs 3,200 people making circuit boards for PCs and phones. Virginia-based utility AES Corp. is negotiating to build a 1,000-megawatt power plant in the northern province of Quang Ninh that could cost as much as $1 billion. And Cisco System, Nortel Networks and Motorola are installing telecom equipment."

Foxconn of Taiwan, also known as Hon Hai, the world's largest contract manufacturer -- with clients like Hewlett Packard (HP), Dell [DELL], and Apple [AAPL] -- has applied for a license to invest up to $5 billion. It plans to manufacture electronics and computer products including digital cameras, personal computer printed circuit motherboards, and music players. Compal Electronics has unveiled plans to invest $500 million to build notebook PCs in Vietnam. It also plans to expand into LCD TVs, said Chairman Rock Hsu Sheng-Hsiung at an annual shareholders meeting in June. Compal is expected to receive its investment license this month.

A June report by industry research group iSuppli predicts that contract manufacturing in Vietnam will grow more than 100% annually between 2006 and 2011. The sector is expected to explode from $36 million in 2006 to as much as $1.8 billion by 2011 as more major manufacturers move in, making it the fastest-growing sector in the area. The most recent example of this trend is Jabil Circuit (JBL) of St. Petersburg, Fla., which in June began operations at its facility in Saigon Hi-Tech Park in Ho Chi Minh City, where it makes laser printers for HP. Jabil plans to spend up to $100 million on its operations in Vietnam, which is increasingly seen as an alternative to China.

At the end of July 2007 South Korea’s direct investment in Vietnam reached 10.33 billion dollars, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. Singapore was second with 9.69 billion dollars, followed by Taiwan with 9.1 billion dollars.

If you follow the domino effect above, you will notice that starting from microprocessor packaging, motherboard, components, system, display, accessories all upstream and downstream partners are coming to the proximity to work collectively which will deliver a highly cost effective profitable product. That is globalization at work fueled by capitalism.

To summarize, with in a decade starting from a tiny investment Intel Corporation become the biggest foreign direct investor with 1 Billion USD in Vietnam in 2006. Employing talented citizens locally and indirectly bringing enormous amount of foreign direct investment which employing even more.

During Intel CEO Craig Barrett's visit to Vietnam in August 2002, he challenged the country to "awaken the sleeping dragon" by increasing technical literacy in its young population. In my opinion Vietnam beat that challenge by setting up an investment friendly atmosphere which attracts this outstanding investment of Intel Corporation. In my heart I have no doubt that Chairman Craig Barrett will through similar challenge to the Bengal tigers if he visits Bangladesh near future.

Disclaimer: This document is prepared from published data from Business Week, isuppli, http://www.intel.com/, http://www.thanhniennews.com/, and other public sources. The opinion expressed here are authors own, not Intel Corporation’s or any others.

Broadband Vision --A perspective

I would like to share my passionate thoughts regarding the broadband penetration in the country and how it could empower the fellow citizen including common people. In this first essay I would like to introduce the “vision” in a simple language. I would like to expand the vision though my next two essays to elaborate the prospective. These essays are geared towards the policy makers and stake holders for the technological advancement of the country such a way that empowers our abundant man power towards pro growth.



Let me introduce a key catalyst that has the potential to incubate a global service industry in Bangladesh, as well as utilize our abundant human capital to earn foreign currency through export of IT services. To begin with, I would like to present two data point published June 2007 to your attention.

1. According to the survey of Japan External Trade Organization (Jetro) the monthly basic payment for broadband internet service in Bangladesh is continuously the highest in Asia.

2. In a joint statement, Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS), Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS), ISP Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) and Bangladesh Computer Association (BCA) said now local users use only 10 percent of the SEA-ME-WEA-4 bandwidth.

Due to globalization, this in fact, means relocating service and manufacturing jobs and facilities to an Asian country to improve profitability and capacity. Being the country with highest Broadband cost is not going to attract companies that need high speed broadband 24/7 (24 hours a day and 7 days a week) for all the employees. Moreover poor utilization (10% of SEA-ME-WEA-4 bandwidth) will not generate the “human capital” needed for budding broadband dependent IT service shops.

As a rule of thumb, for any high tech company, availability of affordable basic resources is a must. Corporations make investment decisions to tap those cheap resources. Hence improve the profit margin of that corporation. For Bangladesh, I believe that, we may have talented work force (or we could easily train them); but we need free (or affordable) high speed broadband. To me as technologist, guaranteeing these two basic resources will act as a catalyst which will trigger the most waited industry boom. IT service startups will burgeon from these two seeds.

How do we make it affordable? One way of making is to let it spread, let the people drive it, just remove the obstacles (uncertainty) from the path. No need for new policy or new regulation. Make thousands (abundance) of cheap licenses available to business community; only regulation you need to check that they are not sub-leasing or making money directly out of the license; hence the rate will be affordable due to the competition. Local cable connection service provider may hook up to the nearest fiber optic node through a router.

I am proposing nothing new here. A high-powered government committee on legalizing voice over internet protocol (VoIP) March 4th 2007 recommended allowing VoIP license to all operators, including the providers of mobile, land phone and internet services.

BTRC and BTTB may setup mirrored servers and gateways and bring the high speed node drop them at the major usages areas based on demand analysis. Fund to do that may come from ICT budget or national development budget. This will result in huge ROI (return on investment) for years to come from export of broadband based IT service industry.

Once we do that corporations around the world would evaluate the feasibility, competitive value and probability of being more profitable. If one customer “move in” then his competitor would like to reap the benefit as well. Similarly, incubators of Service Company from expatriates, foreign investors will send service contract to those local service companies to tap the potentials of local talent and human resources; hence will bring export currencies to the GDP. One example would be tax Preparation Company. This type of broadband based IT Service Company may serve USA customers 1:1 over phone. Bangladeshi service provider will enter all the financial data to the software in real-time to calculate the tax return.

Some other potentials for new business would be service order or new order preparation for new service. For example, a USA household wants to setup a cable TV service. A service company from Bangladesh can take that order and enter all the information after talking to the customer. Then generate a work order and send it to local service provider in USA. There may be hundreds of outsourcing business opportunity will open up for our English speaking and computer savvy broadband connected human resources.

To have a better vision of the possibility let us look at our neighboring country, this remains the destination of choice for global information-technology sourcing because of its talent pool, management capability and security and quality focus. This year they cashed in 31.4 Billion USD of software and related service export and expected to grow to 60 Billion by 2010. If we setup a cost friendly environment, we could very well attract some of that growth traffic toward Bangladesh.

What could be a better broadband policy?
Just ask for it and get it. Make the fiber optics network and gateway to SEA-ME-WEA-4 available to thousands of customer. They will then take it to the doorsteps of business, Universities, Colleges, Schools, homes and to everybody who wants for a competitive fee. This is just like any other long term investment. Revenue will not directly come from the license fee or access fee; but evolve many times more in the form of new business growth and new products.

In conclusion, I would appeal BTRC and BTTB to bring the infrastructure to tap the most benefit out of the submarine cable. You could design a compelling network once you know your customers. In this case your customers are the small business of local cable service providers. They can easily convert into IT service shop when the moment is right. Empower them and enlighten them to close the “digital divide”. They will setup the momentum to take off the awaited “IT outsources shops” in Bangladesh, like the RMG industry did early 80s.

Every University student in Bangladesh deserves a computer

In one of my early posting, I was expressing my joy, congratulating any University student in Bangladesh. By simple math each of them is “one in a hundred”. We have 44 lac 1st graders enrolled in 2005 and about 50 thousand 1st year students around the country based on BANBEIS http://www.banbeis.gov.bd/ statistics. So every University going student made the biggest hurdle, he secured a place in one of the Universities. Now he will prepare himself on how to be a better human being. He will argue and learn how to prepare him for the challenges of life in Bangladesh. He will learn how to resource himself to be able to earn a decent living. This process will continue and will contribute to the nation building in one way or other.

The moment a student walks into the University to study, the university opens up the doors of unlimited study materials. He goes to his area of specialization and starts building his growth of knowledge in a specific area of concentration and the lecturer guides him along the way. In this writing, I would like to concentrate my focus on how to bring the world of knowledge and information to him. We all know the answer: bring the internet to him; but it is expensive and infrastructure need to be there, are not available, student will be exposed to porn sites, student will learn bad thing more than the good things. Though there is plenty of parental control software available to limit the porn site access. These are some of the challenges.

Let’s jump to 10 years from now. Let’s visualize what is happening around the Universities in Bangladesh. Students of Statistics and Marketing of Dhaka University are modeling the NASDAQ indexes. They are predicting comparative growth of DOW chemicals and NASDAQ. A group of students is proposing a real time market analysis tools for Technology companies or Manufacturing sectors. Another group of students from the Institute of Business Management, researching on portfolio managements for some hedge funds. They are ready to serve customers in the geographically other part of the world.

Let us visit Dhaka Medical College. DMC in collaboration with North South University researched and developed a managed healthcare scheme. They did extensive research with National Institute of Health (http:// http://www.nih.gov/) using their dedicated backbone of mirrored network of servers (which is full of their research material freely available through the internet). Policy makers of Bangladesh made a commitment to train world class Nurses to capitalize the future growth of medical tourism in Bangladesh. The policy encouraged the medical professionals and business entities to invest in better health care facilities and nursing institutes. They provided education to gain respect of Nursing as a profession. Bangladesh now outsource Nurses around the globe, not to mention their outstanding service in the country as well.

In another development, Bangladesh Agricultural University students working along side with the students of BRAC University on a promising bioengineered seed to grow in barren lands of Sahara. They developed a new drink from pineapple (available in abundance in Bangladesh), which turned into a world wide sensation because of its use in weight management in the developed world. The students of these Universities published numerous articles in Amber Waves magazine (http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/) and doing joint research with USDA (http://www.usda.gov/).

Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) have pioneered innovative schemes of database mirroring. This innovation came from the students’ extensive research on internet data sharing. Their expertises attract Google and myspace to setup student research centre in the Robert Noice simulation lab building. In the software arena Students of Shahjalal University of Science and Technology developed a program suits which gives you a generic package of application forms for various schools and colleges, archive of all the exam papers for various schools and colleges for various grades. They are text based and thereby easily searchable. They also developed an online schools system partnering with free online Global Education and Learning Community (http://www.curriki.org/). There mission is to improve education around the world by empowering teachers, students and parents with user-created, open source curricula and it's all free! They believe that access to knowledge and learning tools is a basic right of every child. Their goal is to make curricula and learning resources available to everyone.

Let me return from my dream to reality. The vision that I just travel through could become reality with proper planning and execution. It may not be easy; but it is very possible. To begin with, we have to guarantee easy access to global media to every University going students.

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and BTTB need to ensure dedicated broadband service to every student in every University of Bangladesh. They may enforce to contribute 5% of the revenue from all the telecom companies in business in Bangladesh to fund this initiative.

Universities may offer each student a PC or Laptop like classmate PC or the equivalent during their registration process. Universities may work with various funding agencies, NGOs or foundations for the funding of these PCs. They may as well work with various bank and financial agencies for a package of installment payable by each student in absence of funding from non profit organizations. A student may pay as low as 500 Taka per month for a laptop during his full length of study. For this scheme we do not need any funding, we can work out with a bank for this venture. For funding example, Dhaka University has 30000 students. Dhaka University may search for a grant of 6 million dollars from Intel Corporation, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Ford Foundation etc for closing the digital divide. They may purchase 30,000 PCs, one for each student. BTTB will ensure the WiFi or broadband connectivity though its submarine fiber optic networks.


There are 73 universities in Bangladesh. Out of these, 21 universities are in the public sector, while the other 52 are in the private sector. Out of 21 public sector universities, 19 universities provide regular classroom instruction facilities and services. Each of them may take initiatives to get grant and design their intranet and the gateway to internet. BTTB may just drop the extension of submarine cable and fiber to the nearest node. Again, government may impose a mandatory 5% revenue contribution from the entire telecom provider operating in Bangladesh including BTTB to fund such a connectivity project.

No University will benefit from the online capability more than the National University of Bangladesh. The National University caters the general education at graduate and post-graduate level in colleges/institutions which were affiliated to different public universities since independence. About one million students are studying in more than 1600 colleges/institutions affiliated to this university. The National University is expanding in terms of number of students, courses and institutions day by day. To day this university plays the most significant role to provide opportunities for higher education among the students living especially in rural and semi-urban areas. A dedicated connectivity and access to the internet with a computer in students possession may do more then the education. The student will have the vision.

How do we find the funding? I already discussed 5% telecom revenue for the connectivity solution. We need USD$ 40 million for 200,000 cheapest laptops. The hardware funding may come from various foundations and NGOs. Universities need to research for that. Again a dedicated internet may help the research process. There is a lot of funding available to close the digital divide. One of the cheapest laptop designed for educational purpose is classmate PC designed by Intel Corporation. There are 700,000 of them will be delivered to Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) with fully-functional Intel-powered PCs into the hands of students all across Pakistan by 2009.

I thereby propose, let us make a policy decision to hand an internet enabled PC or laptop to every University going students in Bangladesh. We can do it in small steps or a big stride. We have ~200,000 students currently studying in any Universities in Bangladesh. The Universities may collaborate and make a consortium for such computerization project. May I suggest the honorable Vice Chancellors of All the Universities around the country to exchange emails regarding the formation of such consortium? Call a meeting to distribute the task of funding proposal. We already laid out the plan as you read through the blog.

Cheers for every University going students of Bangladesh

The moment a student walks into the University to study, the university opens up the doors of unlimited study materials. He goes to his area of specialization and starts building his knowledge growth on that area and the lecturer guides him along the way. Can we give the student more? How about bringing the internet to him? How about ensuring that his access to the internet is guaranteed? What policy maker can do for this student? I will write more on this in my posting later sometime. In this posting I would like to acknowledge the achievement done by every University going students in Bangladesh.

Let me give you a little bit back ground of our education ladder and how our children climb up to the University. Based on 2005 statistics from BANBEIS (http://www.banbeis.gov.bd/), in primary education level, net enrolment rate of children from age 6-10 is 87%. Outstanding job! Congratulation Bangladesh! You showed you can do it and we are proud of this achievement.

In 2005, we had a population of (170 lac) 17 million children of that age group (6-10) and 87% of them enrolled in primary education. I know you may have questions about quality of education, end of the year how many remain, etc. These are valid questions; but I will take a moment just to enjoy the enrolment success. This is a huge step. If it continues we will pull our literacy rate from 45% to 87% within this generation.

Now the nest step is to keep them in the school. We loose 50% of these kids at the end of fifth Grade, which has an enrolment of 2.6 million. That is a very big loss. We have to do a socio-economic research to identify the root cause of these losses. I intend to write my thought about it in near future. The similar trend is followed in secondary schools, 50% drop outs until they reach to tenth grade, 2 million in 6th grade down to 1 million in 10th grade. Total enrolment of secondary education age group is little more than (70 lac) 7 million.

Based on 2005 BANBEIS data, total number of students studying among 74 universities (21 public and 53 private) 207577; about 24% are female 49867. 1st year University students may be 52 to 70 thousand, which accounted for 5% of the students of the 10th grade. My forecast at this rate by the end of year 2009, we will have 359646 (35 Lac) in University enrollment.

Now to summarize the education ladder fall offs (or should I say climb up!), in 2005 we have more then 44 lac students enrolled in 1st grade and in the same year in Bangladesh we have around little more than 50 thousand enrolled in any University in Bangladesh. Each of the students in any University in Bangladesh came from a thousand of kids going to 1st grade.
I waited few minutes to think about, “what should write next?” It is a catastrophic loss. 99 students who enrolled in 1st grade fall off to the path to University. On the other hand I have one student who is out of 100. Outstanding! I would say cheers for any student in any University in Bangladesh, no matter what; you are one in a thousand! Celebrate!!

A journey to basic specification of Voter ID digitization project:Update

I investigated the feasibility of getting classmate PC customized with a built-in camera and a biometric ID detection device snapped into the keyboard. These are very simple addition to the system configuration and platform designer can easily do it.

However it may require 12-18 months of design-validation-testing-production-delivery cycle. Moreover for a big company to develop this would require an order of million pieces to do it cost effectively.

This brings me to a concept of a basic dedicate interface for ID verification system. UN can be a partner of this initiative. We have election around the African continents as well as the developing countries in Asia and South America, where election rigging is a common phenomenon. The ID verification part will solve at least one part of the problem.

Now let’s get back to immediate challenge of the voter ID detection system for the upcoming election in Bangladesh. We can still use classmate PC, along with USB attachment of finger print detection device and a digital camera.

I am recommending classmate PC, because it is durable and dust, dart proof, no hard drive in it, has 2 GB flash (which will be able to get 1 GB of data collection and 1 GB of OS). However it can be upgraded to 4 GB or more. I don’t think we need more to collect data. In one day period an agent may not be able to collect more than 1/2GB of data.

However for the polling station we need to have all the data of that specific polling station in our fingertips. So the polling stations need a computer with hard drive and access to the central data base for back up.

I look forward to write more once the EC publish their requirements. Please refer to my initial posting to get more below.
http://abuabdullah-sohel.blogspot.com/2007/05/specifications-of-voter-registration.html

Human Capital: Easy access to Broadband may help

Human capital, a common asset among China India and Bangladesh, how can we turn this asset into revenue generation machine?
A friend of mine brings my attention to a Silicon India Article “Free broadband within 2 yrs”. The report writes that. “The Indian government plans to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed connectivity by 2009, through the state owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL” I ask myself why do government plans to give such free service when it can collect tons of revenue issuing licenses and selling bandwidth.

Immediately I visited BTTB http://www.bttb.gov.bd/ and scanned through their pages to get myself educated regarding their approach towards providing internet connectivity. “BTTB is entrusted with all the tasks related to the submarine cable in the national and international level”. Yeah, this makes sense, while Indian government is planning on free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2 MB per second, BTTB is making more then 50 lacs (5 Million) taka for the same bandwidth available in 41 districts for “Leased Internet Access” per port. A smart move indeed! However Educational institutions will get 50% discount listed in their website “Rates”.

I should be fare when I compare an apple to (not an) apple. As Indians are multilingual they adopted English along with Hindi to break the language barrier. Not to mention that as a nation they pay more attention towards their education. That education helped the overwhelming manpower resources to capitalize the internet revolution. Hence translate in the bottom-line of their earning. Now India become the wholesale nation of outsourcing and IT support. To satisfy the basic rule of economics, a nation has to do what it can do most cost effectively compared to the countries around the world. Thereby to secure India’s position in the global outsourcing market and to empower the innovation of the next generation of Indians, India has to provide its citizen easy access to the Internet community. What are the alternatives of guaranteed internet access other than providing it free? Free, as it is like air and the sky, accessible to every citizen.

In Bangladesh, we have one thing in abundance, people, too many of them. We do not have natural resources for this highly dense country; however, we can turn our population into natural resources. I am not proposing anything radical or outrageous here. We have example in our next door. Look at China; they turn their people in to natural resources. China is the foundry of (almost everything or anything) the globe. They import all the natural recourses such as iron ore and turned into a finish product like steel. Today they are one of the world’s biggest producers of steel; not to mention one of the world’s biggest consumers of metal as well to make other finished product. If you just compare the product made in China in shopping malls and hardware markets around Bangladesh for last 10-15 years; you will be amazed by the improvement they made ensuring the quality of any specific product. Along with the quality, they are climbing the value chain. Demanding more buck for their quality products.

Look at India; they are getting highest return on investment per IT professional. Outsourcing and data entry are just becoming cash cow for India. In economic sense, I would compare them with the service provided by our Garment Industry. Garment industry receives an order, processes it and sends it back to the originating country which needed the service. Similarly any back office, payroll, IT service request from the developed world like USA, UK send to India. Indian IT professionals analyze and solve the problem. Send the requested service with a resolution. Only difference is that IT professional receives a big buck for their services. Well they deserve it; they prudently invested on human resources development and this human capital delivers high margin products. We at times, quick to conclude that, the expatriate Indians and the private business are the one who contributed to India’s leadership in IT industry.

Exploration, planning, development and production are the four steps to make a product. India’s IT industry is now in production mode and I am sure the expatriates and the private sector are the main driving force in this stage of production. However the exploration, planning and development phases are done prudently by the consortium of government, dedicated technocrats, visionary and influential leaders of various cadre including professionals, educators and political leaders. The IITs, technical colleges and institutes and comprehensive academics curricula practiced by the Universities and Schools around India contributed to the development phase. Government helped them not by forcing; but by eliminating road blocks from their path of progression. The continuation of the government encouragement is in action as of today. All telecom operators in India have to contribute 5% of their revenue to a special fund call “Universal Service Obligation Fund” (USOF). USOF will pay for the free broadband connectivity at a speed of 2MB per second across the country.

Everyday is slowing us down because we are not adapting technologies to develop human capital. There is a lot more to write about human capital development. I look forward to write some more thoughts about this issue. However, If you are still reading then, consider we are surfing the exploration phase. Please join me, put your ideas about the planning phase. The biggest challenge is the language barrier. We have done enough damage by removing English from the everyday education. We have to get out of the mean idea of learning only one language. Human being has innate capability of learning multiple languages. Look at any European country. There will never be a perfect time. Everyday is a good day to start. Lets say ~10-20% population has some exposure to English to communicate and surf Internet. We could start with our limited capacity of English. Start demanding more English, more access to Internet, free access to broadband. Do this wherever you study, wherever you work, wherever you pass time. Put your idea into a plan. Those plans will push us to the next phase of development, the development of human capital in Bangladesh.

A journey to basic specification of Voter ID digitization project

I go to my polling station during the Election Day, tell my name and address to the polling agent, he verifies that with the voter list. Then I cast my vote. I exercise my fundamental right of a citizen, done. What are all these fuzz about it? Ok I get it. Somebody intentionally compromise the voter list and now it does not have my name and address; however it has the names of “Tom, Dick and Harry” in a factious address and “Dobir, Sabir and kabir” in my address. Somebody in my polling station cast those votes for a specific candidate. Aa-ha, this is election engineering. I am screwed; I don’t get to exercise my fundamental rights.

Hmm, we need to fix this; but should it take 18 months to do a voter registration with photo ID and execute election? 18 months is a long time, 550 days. If I were to employ 1000 registrar with a digital camera and a laptop to shoot a digital photo and collect their name and address then lets say each of the registrar collects 50 of the voter details in the list, then end of the day I have 50,000 enlisted. Suppose there are 94 million qualified voters, (according to sept 1, 2006; http://www.ecs.gov.bd/aboutbec.php3) then it would take 1880 days; ops that is 63 months. I got my math wrong, which is way too long; let me redo the math, I would hire 10,000 registrars to do the job. This will take 6 months 10 days. Then use next couple of months to test the system, do a mock practice, publish the entire voter list and set the date for election.

However the task of compiling a voter list with photo ID is not as simple as it sounds. In Bangladesh, we have diverse population and cultural sensitivity that we have to acknowledge. Let us take an example of shooting a digital camera to capture the photo for the voter ID. Female voter may cover their hair or may wear a lot of makeup. These changes may confuse the polling agent during the day of election. Similarly for male voter, long hair, beard, long beard, various types of beard may as well confuse identification.

As far as I know, there are 96980 voter areas in 4500 Union of 83 district election offices. Based on this number, assume that we have the same number of agents to collect the voter information and to enlist the voter. Suppose, in the morning they start door to door. They came to my home. We are three brothers, three sisters and our parents. We all live in the same house and are at home during the time agent came. Agent captures a photo for each of us. Then he downloads the photographs to his laptop. He enters the address of our house. Next he brings up my photo; the address automatically comes up and he then asks my name, date of birth etc. Everything about me listed (hashed in database terms) against my photo. The agent then enters my brother’s details into his laptop and so on. The agent saves all the information in his laptop. End of the day he uploads all the data in a server; which is accessible from his office.

I just portrayed above a simplified version of voter registration. Let us add one little complexity which I mention in my second paragraph about condition of photograph; long hair, beard, makeup, hair cover etc may challenge visual identification verification process. Let us assume that the laptop, agent is using can capture finger prints. When the agent brings up my photo, he asked me to roll my thumb or the middle finger to the finger print capturing device or biometric device. This process enters one more identification entry to my hashed data. During the Election Day, I go to the polling station to cast my vote. I roll my finger to the same biometric device of the laptop; it brings up my photo, address, date of birth from the database. The attending Polling officer looks at my photo and asks my address for further verification. What happens here is that I sweep my finger to search the database for my photo along with all my information. However, this database can be mirrored and accessed directly from the server instantaneously or for simplicity, may be downloaded to the attending polling officers’ laptop.

Embracing technology to digitize Voter registration and Identity verification during the election at the polling station is a very simple process. All you have to do is two things, (1) Enlisting every voter during voter registration as explained; (2) Error proof identification verification of every voter at the polling station during the Election Day. I know the consultants hired by the election commission have not started their office yet, they have not had a meeting to understand the requirements of the election commission. Once they understand the requirements of EC, I have full confidence at least one consultant that I know of that they will provide us a comprehensive specification of the entire infrastructure. However, based on what I just sketched above, what are the specifications of the computing infrastructure that we need?

1. A human interface, capable of capturing finger prints, digital photo and relevant data (name, address, dob etc). A similar laptop like Intel World Ahead programs’ classmate PC with added feature like biometric identification device embedded with the keyboard and a built-in digital camera.
2. A set of mirror servers which could be LANed utilizing our fiber optic network where available; For places where LAN is not available, adoption of few Wi-max antennas can be use to complete the connectivity gaps.
3. A searchable database, which could be locally developed as I already mention the simplified specification.


That’s it we are done. I intentionally left out the national ID part. It is the responsibility of the constitution experts to come up with the specification of what they want to list under the national ID. It will be hard to avoid the temptation of becoming a Military (Police) state with all this information freely available at fingertips. However, in technical point of view, national ID can be easily done during the voter registration process. All the relevant information with the photo is available in the database, there by the agent may ask the citizen to collect a laminated national ID from the distribution center.

Economic way to computerize the voter identification for EC

April 22, 2007 Election commission (EC) requested the government to allocate Tk 450 crore in the next budget for its projects to prepare a voter list and national identity cards. The request was made when Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) ATM Shamsul Huda and Election Commissioners Sohul Hossain and Brig Gen (retd) Sakhawat Hossain met Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed at his office on that day.

CEC said the EC has begun the task of preparing the voter list and is trying to get funds in this regard. "We have also requested the chief adviser for coordinating the issue of finance as to how the money will be made available."

About the appointment of foreign consultants for the voter list project, CEC said the foreign consultants have already been selected while local consultants are yet to be finalized.
I am sure EC is reviewing all the options carefully and will try its best to provide a complete solution, nothing less and nothing more. I repeat nothing more. I would focus on the computerization part of the project in this writing. As foreign consultants has been already selected, I am sure EC has the specification of the type of the computing system they want with the necessary firmware and software. We have to be very cautious here that we do nothing more, thereby do not pay premium for unnecessary software and features with the hard earned tax payers money. We have 30, 000 polling stations, that translate into at least 30 thousand computers. Here is an option to bring it down the computerization project to ~200 Cr or less.
Recently a university in Pakistan has agreed to a very large purchase: 700,000 Intel-powered Classmate PCs. Leaders from Intel and Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) signed a memorandum of understanding which will put fully-functional Intel-powered PCs into the hands of students all across Pakistan. Allama Iqbal Open University is not a small school; it serves more than 1 million young people. But with the lowest price of a laptop in Pakistan about $600 relatively few of those students can afford to own one. Similarly in Dhaka a budget laptop nearly cost USD$600 US Dollar. The interesting part of the deal is that the Classmate PCs for the Pakistan deal will offer some additional features such as a larger screen and a 20Gb hard disk, but will still be priced about half of those least expensive machines.
What it means that for a bulk government purchase EC may get their computers with their specification (nothing more), a customized laptop which may cost ~USD$300. It could be very well customized with finger print recognizing technology so that all voters in the polling station may get their finger print captured along with their digital photos. Assuming that these features are in the EC’s specification.
I would also like to present it as an real time example that The Classmate PCs for Allama Iqbal University will be manufactured by a local company of Pakistan with the help of Intel world ahead Program. Any Bangladeshi company simply can do that. The Intel World Ahead Program is company's comprehensive approach to bring uncompromised technology to people all over the world. Intel World Ahead integrates and extends the company's efforts to advance progress in four areas: accessibility to PCs, connectivity, education and content.
In the same sprit, small individual projects may be initiated for the national universities to eradicate digital divide. DU may take one initiative where it will provide a generic specification for such a classmate PC, which will be used for class assignments, communication, and online research. Students may lease these PC in exchange of monthly installments. Other university may get the same architected PC and build their customization. One thing I am emphasizing here is the similar specification. This is a trade between cost (for bulk purchase) and customization.
There are a good number expat Bangladeshi’s working in companies like Intel Corporation, Dell, and Cisco. I am sure they are as well asking themselves why EC of Bangladesh or DU can not get a deal like this from “Intel World Ahead Program”? The question is if the EC willing to talk to them?
Replying to a question, Sakhawat said the EC would sit with the members of the civil society on April 26 to discuss the draft proposal on election laws. "The Commission will sit with 50-60 members of the civil society and the meeting will take place in Dhaka."
In the same sprit I would urge EC to include expatriate Bangladeshi technocrats and professionals along with the in house consultants that they have now. Then sit with them as they would do with the civil society to get a review. So end of the day they will have a broad spectrum of options to make a flawless specification and options.