BDR Mutiny and Army honor

Like the nation I am disturbed and deeply shocked by the BDR mutiny and aftermath. During the aftermath, we should use our decency and judgment while sharing the shocking images as well as spreading the vivid details of the brutality. We have to ask ourselves what we want by doing those acts.

I have lost friends of my relatives; my heart goes out to those children who lost their parents, to those spouses who lost their loved ones. May almighty give them the strengths to overcome the losses. For the fallen army officers, may almighty rest their souls in peace.

Just think about the alternative of not taking the control immediately under civil administration; If Army were asked to conduct the hostage negotiation or rescue operation, in my opinion, there is higher chance it could result into more casualty.

Think about it a bit. I myself, not being in the Army, was shocked, angered after seeing too many higher officers, colonel, Lt Colonel were killed instantly. Think about the Army brethren and friends of those fallen soldier would react once they saw those while they are loaded with smoking armors, tanks. Pillkhana would have been a blood bath with all those culprit killed along with many more collateral damages. Chances of many more innocent lives along with the perpetrators’ would have perished.

Once the blood bath in BDR headquarter spread around the country, 46 other BDR camp would have experience the call to revolt and more lives would have perished for no higher purpose. However, if that happen, you never know which way public sentiment would go; if things goes out of control and uncontrollable massacre happen. In worst case it could trigger “emergency rule”!

My heart felt thanks to Bangladesh Army for showing their patience for the greater good of the country. My thanks to the chiefs of the armed forces for their trust in civil administration. I appreciate Gen Moen’s advice not to spread rumors as well as he advised to cross check the armed forces offices even if those information are given by the army officer. Because there are lots of emotions going around. Everybody needs a shoulder to lean during this time.

I would ask everybody to refrain from spreading instigating information, especially to the leader of the opposition party. I ask her, what she is expecting to gain by repeating how much brutality those disgruntle BDR men did to the dead body? I challenge her to take a moral position; not a political one, during this national mourning. Please advice a better path and be constructive during this defining moment.

I hope the investigating body takes quick action to hunt those perpetrators. I hope Army would continue to show trust and patience toward democracy and help civil administration professionally.

Honor is what counts. My salute to all the member of Army for their honor and dignity. Above all showing their commitment for the greater interest of the nation. I hope chain of command and senior officers should continue to help mourning officers and show their outmost restrain and respect while battling their emotions.

I am very glad that the chief of the opposition Khaleda Zia hold a grip on herself and made a political move of moral call on March 1st. During this unsettling time, the country need some sense of unity. While people are drowning with grief and pulling every straw of information out there to comfort the suffering, our national leaders and intellectuals should reflect to their senses.

What is happening to the TV media and the news media that, every expert trying to bring their expertise to explain the incident; but the irony of this comes with their own agenda. Hence in lot of cases it exacerbates the anger and frustrations further more. Although, there are people who “gets it” and trying to helpless people to help. We all needed some support to go through this national loss and grief.

This note also publised as a letter to daily newage in Bangladesh: http://www.newagebd.com/2009/mar/03/fb.html

Abedin-Abdullah proposal for short term job creation

The Proposal: Mandate every state to have mandatory full service gas station like my own state Oregon.At least 4 new jobs per gas station. There should be a recovery gas tax and the new jobs will be funded by this gas tax by the owner. This proposal is a temporary plan and may mandate for next two years only. After two years, this could be extended to fund alternative energy initiatives to reduce dependency on foreign oil.Based in 1997 statistics, there are 126,262 gas stations for the lower 48; hence this plan may immediately create half million jobs assuming on average 4 jobs per station. Although these jobs may be per time and low pay; however it may be better than pan handling or food banks or even social security checks.

Thanks to Abedin Bhai for bringing this up during lunch conversation at the Intel's cafeteria today.

All gas stations in U.S.: 126,889
Alaska: 267
Hawaii: 360
Gas stations with convenience stores: 81,684
The following are the 113,000 stations that have been open more than ayear:
Gas stations with sales less than $500,000: 18,802
Gas stations with sales $500K - $1 million: 24,103
Gas stations with sales $1 million - $2.5 million: 49,482
Gas stations with sales over $2.5 million: 20,465
The data comes from the U.S. 1997 Economic Census "Establishment &Firm Size, Retail Sector" (October, 2000)http://www.census.gov/prod/ec97/97r44-sz.pdf

Senate OKs $15,000 tax break for homebuyers (AP)

http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:y_news:a6e612dc8aee93d08e28b9c63c4047e6
I think Senate, House and White House need to think outside the box for a while. They should give a break to the current buzz word "Billion" for every bill addressing the economy. Why don't they talk about the "Confidence" and "Real Value" for a change?

There has not been any catastrophe since 2007. I don't see any house smashed down or burn down or leveled up. Farmers did not stop producing produce. It is not the end of the world. More you panic more damage you are causing to the moral of the survivor. Just focus on your job and do it more efficiently and cost effectively. Add more value to it. And that goes for everybody, house and the executive body, factories and industries, farm and most importantly the money managers, investment bankers. Come on how long you though these fake valuation could last? You enjoyed the ride, not stop blaming and get use to it.

I don't want to keep writing off my tax to my future and my children’s, how much more debt are we going to put on their back? It is easy for congress and those tax dodger to write off future tax today; but boy what happen to the good old citizenship to have the politician in check?

Number one job of the next government – Energy

Some of you may disagree and you have every right to do that. You may argue that Bangladesh is a poor country; people do not have the very basic of enough food, shelter. However I think the biggest catalyst for Bangladesh to infuse job creation and tap the enormous recourses of man power is energy. Energy should be the task one for the new government sworn in January 2009.
Analyze Bangladesh’s greatest achievements’:

Although agriculture and local industry contributed into the national economy and the quality of life; however two biggest foreign exchange earners are Garments and Wage earners. The contribution of these two sectors in our economy is phenomenal. They directly and indirectly created abundant jobs and purchase power. These two created enough liquidity to infuse local bossiness such that money gets circulated and overall national quality of life improved. All these happened due to global free market economy and because of the private sectors entrepreneurs’ who taped into the opportunity. However there is a lot of room to grow if we could improve “time to market” bottlenecks.

The same thing happens for India. India developed a maga project to computer literate one million Indian during 80s. With their English language skills along with computer literacy, the west seizes the opportunity of more profit margins employing the low wage Indian programmer. Indian kept the customer satisfied and business keep on returning.

Today’s global competition knows no limit. Due to the internet, consumers are well informed and want the best product sooner and cheaper. Bangladesh is almost in the lowest rank of the value chain in RMG; hence could not charge more than the minimum. Several factors are in play. I believe, the worst enemy is RMG’s inability to cope with the “time to market” philosophy.

Buyers have to channel only those products to Bangladesh which are less time sensitive and hence have very low margin. Continuous power supply or the cost of onsite power generation and political instability causing seamless transportation discourage buyer to send those high value and high margin product to Bangladesh to process. To get an edge, you not only have to satisfy the factory but support the infrastructure that works hand in hand with the factory.

Look at an example. When Vietnam asked Intel Corporation to setup a sort and assembly plant, Intel Corporation asked for a continuous supply of electricity and a large parcel of land. What Vietnamese government has done is more than what Intel Corporation asked for. They not only supply uninterrupted electricity; but build new roads to the facility, new bus service to the facility from major cities.

What these incentives did for Intel? A satisfied customer, who tripled the investment from 300M factory to USD$ 1B facility along with thousands of high paying Vietnamese’ job. A year later, couple of dozen high Tech company joined Intel’s lead. That is how you earn global business. This gives you a picture of how competitive today’s global business is. We have no choice; but have to be an active competitive member of the flat world. In economic downturn everybody focuses on core competency.

RMG and Man Power are our core competency. To utilize their full potential, we have to increase our electric energy production from 4 GW to 7 GW (7000 MWatt) ASAP. Otherwise your dream for digital country will be only a fairytale.


How can you increase production ?

The energy options you have are: coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewable, hydro and nuclear. You can not depend of imported Oil for all your needs. Look at the graph below on oil consuming countries and their per capita income.

[Courtesy of Andrews and Jelley]


Do you think you can compete with them for all your oil consumption need? You have to find other sources of energy. Grameen Sakti introduced some solar alternative. They are expensive; but may be useful for individual needs.

You may think about wind energy. You have to be little cautious here. Recently in Kutobdia island PDB spent 9 crore Taka to install tiny 50 windmills to generate a max of 1 MW electricity. This is a good start.

Moving forward we may ask help from the leading wind power generating countries. We have to take initiatives to energize pro-business diplomacy.

Let me show you the following graph where you can see the countries took bold initiatives to adopt wind energy. For example Germany is done with wind energy. This country max out the limit. Germany installed wind turbine every possible place to rip the benefit of clean electricity through out the country.



[Courtesy of wwea.org]

Wind Turbine Technology:
A paradigm shift in power generation: The growth of power generation capacity from wind turbine show in this picture for your amusement.

[Courtesy of Vestas.com]

This world's biggest wind turbine generator is currently undergoing testing in the North Sea 15 miles off the East coast of Scotland near the Beatrice Oil Field. This is the first time these enormous offshore wind turbines have actually been tested offshore, and the first time any wind turbine generator has been assembled in such deep water - 44 metres deep. Assembly took place in August 2006.

The German RePower turbines have a power output of 5 Megawatts with a rotor blade diameter of 126 metres sweeping an area of over 12,000 square metres. Maximum power output is achieved at around 30 mph, but a couple of MW are generated even in a fresh breeze. Rotors start turning at around 7 mph, and are automatically braked at 70mph.

We have a good diplomatic relationship with Germany, can we ask them to build operate and sell to this energy hungry country?


What Bangladesh can do immediately?

Coal power plant. We have to be realistic and use our natural recourses. I visited a coal field in Barapukuria couple of years back. We have to approve a plan to generate 1000 MW from the coal of this mine. Currently at the mine mouth 250 MW electricity is being hardly produced. Need to investigate why it is failing to run full capacity. If they can not run it, find a capable company. Let us not waste our limited natural resources with inefficient operation.

Phulbari was a mess. We aught to communicate transparently. Transparency is good for both the business that gets the deal and the government that handles the deal. Phulbari may be a failed example that we can learn from.

Country first is the motto that we should adopt. There will be thousands of people who will be affected and need to relocate to get the natural resources; however the wealth should be distributed in a fair, win-win agreement. The new businesses that the new plant would bring into the community will benefit everybody in that locality one way or other.

The country owns the natural resources underneath its land; not the owner of the land; hence we have an obligation to properly communicate that to the landowners. Landowners should be enthusiastic about the prospect of the overall development that a new industry brings to the area. Due to the secrecy and under the table deals in a non transparent manner, I bet landowners are suspicious and hence the tragedy.

I live in Oregon and Oregon gets 71% of its electricity from Hydroelectric and 21% from natural gas. The cost is 6.63 cents per kwh. There are four dams in Columbia river. McNary Dam, John Day Dam, The Dalles Dam and my nearest Bonneville Dam to generate hydroelectricity of ~6000 MW. These are not the biggest one here in Columbia river. My neighboring state Washington has Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia river, which could have meet the total electricity need of Bangladesh with its 6809 MW capacity.

Total Hydroelectric generating capacity in Colunbia river alone is 24, 149 MW of electricity.

However, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and North Dakota almost all the power comes from coal. You think coal is old. As you can see in the chart below, about 50% energy comes from coal in USA.

With Barak Obama’s leadership there will be five million new jobs in USA for the clean energy or alternative energy. There will be a “race to the moon” kind of innovation and research. We may pursue a partnership towards clean coal technology.

I believe a presence of US business in North Bangal is strategically very important. It will give a first hand experience to the USA on seasonal flooding and drought caused by the international rivers. This will give a free global media coverage on any injustices that are systematic in that zone.

I insist the energy ministry to take immediate action to formulate a scheme to “build operate and sell” of 1000 MW coal power electricity generating plant in Phulbari. Electricity in USA and in Bangladesh is almost same cost. I pay 6 cents KWH and my father pays 7-8 taka in Bangladesh. There should not be any scope for stealing in power generation in this age.

In summery, there will be 1000 MW from Barapukuria and 1000 MW from Phulbari to meet the immediate need of additional 2000 MW electricity for the nation. The other 1000 MW can come from natural gas, wind turbine, oil and productivity increase of the existing facilities.

For future growth, a nuclear plant in North Bangal jointly with India may be feasible. High level talk’s between the new government of Bangladesh and the Obama’s administration may bring this agenda for discussion in the near future. Obviously if it is owned and operated by USA, that would be preferable.


In conclusion:

I do not know how much productivity loss we write off each year due to power outages. Somebody should do a study on that and place it to the energy department. The human suffering, demoralize employee and heartbreak of the industrialists loosing competition due to disruptive power failure may be very hard to quantify. Not to mention the pain and suffering of students, children and frustration of parents for their inability to provide comfort to the loved one due to unpredictable power outage and load shedding.

We should search for more natural gas and coal. Although, there is a slim chance of getting more petroleum, we should pursue every bit of natural recourses that we get of. Strong diplomacy needed to resolve the technological learning curve.

Bangladesh solved the food problem, garment industry boom solved our clothing needs, and we are still working on shelter, primary education is work in progress. Time to address the electricity need of the country. Electricity is a basic human right of 21st century; not the cell phone or internet. If I have to prioritize then I would always pick an uninterrupted supply of electricity. Electricity brings predictability and confidence, which are key to stay competitive.

We need a visionary here, who can see through the hurdle of electricity generation. The one who could envision what uninterrupted electricity can bring to the economy, productivity and quality of life and happiness of the people of Bangladesh.

With the all cry and complain about global warming may discourage the law maker as well as the government to use coal to produce electricity; however you need electricity to grow the economy and a strong economy could only address the global warming issues and empower diplomacy. Nobody is suffering more than Bangladesh by global warming; however economy is top priority and you may trade off global warming with economy. Energy is your number one job. Make no mistake about it, country comes first.

My i7, the fastest processor of the planet

Do you know that there were Bangladeshi engineers and scientists worked on the fastest processor on the planet developed by Intel Corporation called i7? There were at least 10-15 engineers of Bangladeshi origin worked in various development and production phases of i7. To set the perspective on how big of a task this was, I must say that it took almost 4 years from 2004 to today. Moreover, about 300 to 1200 designers, architect, musk designer, debugger, design validators, test engineers, fault engineers, scientists, path finder and more worked on this project in various stages of product development. Over its life span, there may be five of the thousands of Intel experts that helped design and test the new i7.


Paradigm shift:
After completing my Potomac design task I joined Nehalem in late 2004. I recall the time when we were brainstorming on how to bring the new architecture, new features in most power effective, and high performance mix. During that time Intel introduced a Philosophy of “Right hand turn”. We just don’t go for speed or performance; but as a total experience and we think outside the box of traditional design philosophy.

It is not easy for me to write about my work and inside stories of how we designed the i7; because I should be very careful about intellectual property of Intel. Intellectual property is the most important asset of Intel. I have to follow Intel’s information security guideline and I will be limiting my scope on the press releases and public documents.

I7 Highlights:
As I already said, i7 is the fastest processor in the planet. The Core i7 processor is the first product of Nehalem processor design. This is the most sophisticated processor ever build. It has the technology to boost performance on demand and maximize data throughput. The Core i7 processor speeds video editing, immersive games and other internet and computer activities by up to 40 percent without increasing power consumption.

The key features at a glance:
· Four cores, or processing units, all on one piece of silicon.
· New Intel® Turbo Boost Technology that matches the computer’s energy use to its workload, automatically adjusting the number of cores and the clock speed depending on the application.
· Double the memory bandwidth of previous processors, thanks to an innovation called Intel® QuickPath Technology.
· Hyper-Threading technology that allows up to eight computing threads to run simultaneously.
· Processing speeds up to 3.2 GHz.
· Energy efficiency: Despite the extra computing muscle, the chips don’t use any more power than Intel’s previous top-of-the-line processors.


The Core i7 processor is the first member of the Intel Nehalem microarchitecture family; server and mobile product versions will be in production later. Each Core i7 processor features an 8 MB level 3 cache and three channels of DDR3 1066 memory to deliver the best memory performance of any desktop platform. Intel's top performance processor, the Intel® Core™ i7 Extreme Edition, also removes overspeed protection, allowing Intel's knowledgeable customers or hobbyists to further increase the chip's speed.

Shift in traditional design philosophy:
In mid 2005, Intel introduced its Intel® Xeon® processor MP processor-based platform with up to 8 MB of a third-level "L3" cache memory reservoir, codenamed "Potomac." Potomac was the top-of-the-line 32-bit Intel Xeon processor with Hyper-Threading technology performance. I joined the Potomac design team in 2003 after completing my assignments on VT (Virtualization Technology or Vanderbilt Technology). We introduced a lot of *T (what we called Star-T) in various products of Prescott. There was a lot of innovation going on because of the tough competition and ever hungry market of innovative high performance products.

Now going back to my early days of Nehalem, which is the codename of i7. I started my work in instruction queue (IQ). My job is to design circuitry so that the stream of bits can be converted into useful “instruction”. These instructions can be processed by the processor’s execution unit to deliver what the instruction is asking. Now if you are familiar with IA (Intel Architecture) Instruction set, then you know what an instruction means.

Let me back up a little bit and give a vary high level view of the activity here. To learn the most accurate science, please consult any good text book in library near you.

Think about the very basic electrical engineering that we all see everyday in our life. A flip in any switch in the wall turns on or turns off a light bulb in our home. Hence a switch works as a “gate” (or door if you will) of electricity flow. When the circuit is complete, than electrical voltage to the opposite nodes use material property of the filament of the bulb and the enclosed atmosphere to convert electrical energy to light and heat energy.

The similar thing happens in a fan. However the material is different and use different property. We call it magnetic property or you may call it electric field. The trick of opposing electric field is used to fool the drum of the motor and the result is the rotating motion of the fan. Hence we use electric energy to electro-magnetic energy to rotate the shaft and wings deliver wind. There is a lot of talk now a day to do the reverse; which is to use wind energy from wind tunnels to produce electric energy and store in battery or deliver to the grid.

Remember I called light bulb switch as “gate”? “Gate” is the most important basic building block of a microprocessor. Think of it like a “brick”, which is being widely used to build multistoried building now a day.
You may think each “Transistor” like a gate. There are 731 Million Transistors in a single core of this i7. You may recall i7 has 4 cores. Look at the attached picture of i7. Can you identify the 4 cores? There is also a huge uncore section in the picture which helps cores and the outside world to communicate.

Now we know that a transistor is like a switch. It can have two positions, on or off. Let us do coding. My code name “1” is for “on” and my code name “0” is for off. See how easy, we are doing software programming.

My design:
The processing speed of i7 is 3.2 Giga Hertz per second. What exactly does it means? The processor can produce 3.2 billion “0” and “1” in a second. Of course this is a mare simplification. That’s a lot of 0 and 1.
You know the microprocessor wants everything simple. We proudly call it a dumb machine as it will do the exact same thing over and over. It only understands various combinations of “0” and “1” in a string. Think about a mile long line of 0 and 1 with various combinations. From that mile long string, look at the following section:
000001110101010011100000000101010101010100000101111000001010101010000010110101010101010

This is a typical stream of binary data coming to instruction queue. The bold highlighted bits translate into: ”Add 32 bit of immediate data to the EAX register”. The 00000101 is what we call 1 byte opcode (05) for Addition operation. Hence these highlighted streams of 32 bit data and 8 bit opcode represent a complete instruction.

While I was designing, my job is to find those instructions in this type of stream of 0’s and 1’s and place them in a specific area. Hola! You have a queue of instruction ready for the execution unit to execute. My design is such that, I can place six instructions in one clock cycle, enough to keep the execution pipe busy to complete 4 instructions in one clock cycle. This is parallel processing in action. Even one thread of a core can simultaneously compute 4 instructions with in one clock cycle span of time.

What is one clock cycle in 3.2 GHz i7? It is 3.2 Billionth of a second. Hence, one core at any second may complete more than 10 Billion of IA-32 instructions. With 4 cores, possibilities are endless. Moreover with hyper threading in action, you may have as much as 8 core equivalent processing power. Yesterday’s mainframe computer become today’s desktop with i7. Did you realize that we are talking about circuit and logic design of a microprocessor? See how easy it is.

Hardware and Software Synergy:
Let me take a stab on how an application software work’s with operating system and get the job done from hardware. Although I do not claim myself to be an expert on software or operation system, here is what I think the synergy among them. Let us go from the lowest level of operation to the user level operation. We just learn that how a lowest level instruction worked in a core. With the help of combinatory logic and sequential control by the clock the execution unit can do all the operation and instruction of IA-32.

Let us try to put things into perspective. This 8 bit opcode 00000101 that we learned today is asking the machine to perform an addition of adjacent 32 bit of data with the data of the register file called EAX. You may think of a register file EAX, small memory storage very close to the execution unit. So we are adding two data. The output of this operation will be stored in the same register file EAX erasing old data after the operation is done. In everyday use, this result can be a fraction of digitized sound bits, or a pixel of an image or an intermediate stage of a mathematical computation. Then there should be another opcode to take the result to the proper destination or IO. Hold you though right there.

If you do not know how to read and understand English, than everything I wrote so far is gibberish to you. Similarly if the application software does not understand all the 0’s and 1’s that the code calculated and delivered, than there is no use. So they need translation in an understandable language.

What happen when you hit a key on your keyboard:
You hit a key in your keyboard of your i7 desktop. The driver program of the keyboard translates that key stroke to a form of instruction codes. Keyboard is considered to be an IO (Input Output device). There is a sequence of tasks follow through. The driver program may be written in C++ programming language. In the high level C++ code there may be lot of really easy understandable code. These codes are library modules. Those library modules may be in fact written in IA-32 opcode. Now the compiler takes those high level code of the keyboard driver and translate into machine level code of 0’s and 1’s. With the help of the operating system recourses and the motherboard, these code streams goes through the bus and enter the processor. The processor generates the output and returns it back to another IO, which is your computer monitor display. Now you see the letter you typed.

How music or video play in Computer:
The same thing happens when you play music in your desktop. The software application reads the code of the song with the help of OS. Send those stream of opcodes, compiler compile them, processor continuously load next stream of digitized bits to process and send it to another IO, in this case the speakers. Now think about the digital photo or movie. Processor sends the processed output to display. The demand for processing capacity dramatically increasing from key stroke, to song and movie. The next toughest job for processor is interactive extreme gaming. Processor has to do zillions of IO operation with multiple of driver, sound, video, console and mathematical calculation. Taking inputs from multiple IO and process it instantly to deliver to multiple IO requires a lot of processing power. The synergy of execution should be smooth enough to deliver ultimate user experiences. Do you want a processor that delivers just that?

i7 offers up 40% faster performance for immersive 3D games, video processing, music and other demanding applications. Through a sophisticated on-die power control unit and using new "power gate" transistors based on Intel's advanced 45 nanometer, high-k metal gate manufacturing process, Turbo Boost automatically adjusts the clock speed of one or more of the four individual processing cores for single- and multi-threaded applications to boost performance, without increasing power consumption.

Now you might wonder what Intel will do next? Is there really anything more to it? Wait for the next product.

Disclaimer: Opinion expressed is solely the author’s. Author does not speak for or represent Intel Corporation.

Some more i7 picture to share:

My "letters from USA" column at CNEWS

Time flies, it is almost one year that I am writting this column in the monthly magazine CNEWS.

My 2’cents on TV, DVR Ad:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000015/PISNODTL000000000424.pdf

To the kids of Today:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000014/PISNODTL000000000381.pdf

IT startup projects to get your hands dirty:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000013/PISNODTL000000000338.pdf

Cell phone for everyday transaction:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000012/PISNODTL000000000305.pdf

Return of the Golden fiber:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000010/PISNODTL000000000252.pdf

Healthcare in Singapore, my experience:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000009/PISNODTL000000000204.pdf

International Gateway licenses:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000008/PISNODTL000000000192.pdf

Nursing, serving the world, a manpower opportunity overseas:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000008/PISNODTL000000000192.pdf

Let’s take Bangladesh to the next step:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000006/PISNODTL000000000143.pdf

Human Capital:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000005/PISNODTL000000000099.pdf

Broadband Vision:
http://www.cnewsvoice.com/pdf/PISNO000000000000004/PISNODTL000000000075.pdf

An Expat's opinion on TV programming in Bangladesh and funding from Ad

Theme:
Bangladesh is enjoying the freedom of media as well as the competition, especially, in the television sector. A burden of responsibility comes along with the freedom. Although the country is going through the turmoil of “emergency rule and caretaker government”; however the continuity of popular TV channels may not feel any difference, except the flow of easy money to fund flashy shows. As an expatriate, I would like to express couple of my opinions on the TV serials and Advertisement.

Introduction:
First, let me give my audience a disclaimer. I was in Dhaka for about three weeks during the month of July.
If I think about it now, it surprises me that, I did not watched TV for a single minute during that three weeks trip. Having said that, I subscribe to four Bangladeshi TV channels for USD $32.99 per month, in my Portland home in USA. The channels that I have are RTV, NTV, ATN, Channel I.

For about a week, I started to record 3-4 hours of programming of each channels. That brings a total of 12 to 16 hours of deshi television to watch each day. How on earth I could possibly watch that many hours of TV programming after a day of full time job. The answer is the advantage of digital video recording or DVR. Although in USA, one study shows that in average Americans are watching 5 hours of television everyday; I personally watch average an hour or two. Watching Bangladeshi TV programs gave me some perspective on the corporate responsibilities of the media moguls and their business partners with the context of TV programming and Ad sponsors.

What is DRV:
Before that let me tell you what DVR is. This is simply a recorder, like you video recorder; but digital. Being digital, it has the advantage of scanning frame by frame video. The major hardware is the HDD or the digital hard drive. You have one in your computer.

DVR is a TV set top box with programmable digital recorder. You can program the DVR for certain time slot of a channel. In USA, I subscribe to America’s top 100 digital channels. The service provider gave me a set top box which has DVR and programming guide in that box. For USA channels, I look at the channel guide and select the program that would be aired next day or scheduled weekly. The DVR will trigger when the program is on and keep a copy for me in the hard drive. For Bangladeshi channels the guide does not get updated and there is no programming information available; hence we have to guess or select a time window to record those programs. This enables us to watch the shows at our convenience.

Bangladesh TV Serial/Drama/Soap:
From my west coast home, which falls under Pacific Standard Time zone (PT), Bangladesh is 11 hours ahead of me. For example, 6 PM in Dhaka is 5 AM in Portland Oregon. So if I could start recording 4 hours of prime time TV show from 5 AM to 9 AM, which is 6 PM to 10 PM of Dhaka’s time, than I get almost all the popular shows and news covered. One of my friend suggested that most of the TV channels repeat 4 hours of programming through out 24 hours a day. I must acknowledge that, without any verification, I took my friends word for that.

Readers, please email me if you find it otherwise. In the email, please include the 4 hour window of programming and the starting time of cycle that it starts. If that cycle is during the daytime of Dhaka, that will work better for me. Now, going back to the TV programming. My DVR allow me to simultaneously record 2 channels at the same time as I have 2 rooms DVR; however, you can get 4-6 room DVR, which will allow you to record 4-6 shows at the same time. I programmed my DVR to record NTV and Channel I from 5 AM to 9:00AM PST. For RTV and ATN, the recording starts 1:00 AM PST for the next 4 hours. That actually leaves all the primetime of my USA shows without any conflict of Bangla channels and worked out pretty well for my schedule.

As I mention earlier, how on earth I could watch 12 hours of TV shows. In reality with the help of DVR, I watch only 1-2 hours of entertainment if I have time. Rests of them are ad and programs that I don’t find interesting. Hence I skip them with the speed of 4x to 300x; which means 4 times to 300 times fast forward.

There was a time in my life, I watched a lots of nonfictions, drama, thriller and action based programs, be it a soap, cinema or documentary; but now a day, I watch most of the comedy as pass time activity. That brings me to shows like, Friends, Office or “Everybody loves Raymond” or “Will and Grace” and Seinfeld. Let me refresh your memory about these shows.

Friends: It is a show of six friends in the “city”; “City “is known to be New York City through out the world. These six individual possess uniquely six different personalities; however they are hanging out all the time and sharing supporting each other in everyway, be it emotionally, socially and literally. This soap captures all the nuisance of city living, living single, and living together, all the natty gritty details of dating and above all friendship. In a broader sense, “Friends” represents the culture of New York City with the context of six young adults living alone. It is the funny straggle of adjustment and constant try to mold into the city culture of the time.

Everybody Loves Raymond: It is a day to day story of two brothers and their parents. Raymond the younger brother is married and has 2 children. He with his wife Debra and the children moved into a house near his parents’ house. Raymond’s mother loves Raymond more than the elder son Robert and hence the jealousy between the brothers. Moreover, Raymond loves her mother more than her wife Debra. To make things even worse, Debra does not cook as good as her mother-in-law. This is a funny family pass time show.

Office: This show is a primetime hit with its eccentric mockery of corporate culture in a small branch office.
To spice things up, it introduces some affectionate love affair between colleagues and even subordinate and superior. This is not a norm in American corporate culture that I am exposed; where employee get fired for the everyday things that shown in “Office”. However, it is fun to watch. The show brings out the imagination of the corporate employee into a TV screen in a casual funny way. I think that is the source of its popularity. It is the craving of forbidden thing that you can not do but enjoying it watching others to do that, in your living room in front of you.

I will not talk about “Will and Grace” or Seinfeld here today; because the issue that I am going to raise today reverberate around “Friends” and “Office”. Last week, I saw two shows in one of the Bangladeshi TV channel, which are true copy of “Friends” and “Office”. Although, I believe that any culture can get enriched if it embraces other culture. In the embracing process two cultures may get integrated, adapted and molded into one living culture. This living culture over the time evolves into a living manifesto of people that it represented.

However, the process is not that simple. To me the show made me feel uncomfortable; sort of a feeling of “not getting alone”. May be I am not culturally savvy enough. In the same week, one of the talk show invited my Bangla Professor of Dhaka College, Dr. Abdullah Abu Said. He brings out an interesting point. One caller called him and asked, if he were given to do the budget, what he would do. Dr Abu Said mention that he would allocate 1000 Crore taka for Cultural sector. He indicated that last budget it was only about 35 Crore. According to him, the best thing that Bangladesh has is its culture. With all due respect, I don’t know how he comes to that conclusion with compare to Chinese culture, Indian Culture or British Culture; not to mention Egyptian, Inca or Mesopotamian culture.

However, the prescription that all the major TV broadcasting companies in Dhaka feed to their viewer is not the culture that he is talking about. I am sure of that. Present day TV culture definitely not the culture of Bangladesh that I knew of. I agree with Dr Said on this point that Bangladesh has some unique culture that we feel good about. We should practice, portray and nurture that culture so that it could thrive. We could expose those cultures and bring the best out of it so that it could expand our identity to the greater good.

If you look at any drama serial, almost all of them fall under one simple structure. There will be cell phone conversation for 50-80% of the episode. By doing this the director kills two birds with one bullet. Cell phone conversation is solo and cheap to shot. This makes his boss happy with respect to cost. Moreover it brings the Ad money from the Cell phone industry. It is hard to imagine how much dispensable money Cell phone operators have still today. If you follow any TV channel any given day, almost all the program runs by their money. I don’t blame them. Think about it, If you fund a program, don’t you expect that the program serves your interest? It is not healthy for an industry to 100% dependent on one industry; unfortunately in Bangladesh this is the fact.
Bangladeshi TV Ad:
This brings me to my second topic of this article, Ad. I know the Ad industry’s sole purpose to bring the Ad to your attention and introduce the product. Hence you will be interested on the product the Ad is representing. Ultimately sales will flow through the roof. The Ad I am about to mention at least attract my 100% attention.

Ad 1: A family is watching TV and the TV died, they put a fan behind it, slap few time; but still no picture. Then every body pitched in to buy a new TV, which fall short of 2000 Taka. Family chief put the dead TV to “Cell Bazaar” and claimed “just to fix the Knob and it will be fine”. Notice that by cooling and slapping they could not bring the TV to live. Is that our culture? May be today! What kind of moral value we are feeding?

Ad 2: This Ad portrays pure form of begging. To make things even worse, the begging comes from a little kid.
The little boy named “Shipu”. The boy friend of his elder sister came to visit and this boy sending all kind of massage to get 3 Taka. Finally he reaches the guest in absence of her sister and asks for 3 Taka. Sure Bangladesh once leveled as “Bottomless Basket” and “Miskin” in middle-east. And now we are proudly practicing it over free media. My kids get glued to the Ad every time it comes and I had to block the Ad. Thanks to DVR. In another similar Ad: couple of elementary kids hijacks a Senior citizen, claiming as their grandpa, to steal his candy. Can we do better than that? Unfortunately the Ad moguls are the one who brags about our culture and cry the most for its decline.

However, there are some good programmings as well as positive Ad. For example, “Shada Moner Manush”. Lots of positive energy present in this show. It is inspirational. It humbles us. It brings role models right in front of you. You feel good seeing them. One of the positive Ad that I can think of is this: A business man start from zero, do all the hard work with due diligence and discipline, count every penny and justify the expense; not a penny more, not a penny less. At the end the businessman appreciates the deal offered by a cell phone company; because it gets along with his value and ethics.

Conclusion:
In conclusion, as an expatriate I am immune to those immoral Ads or mixed up culture fed by corporate sponsor and interest group, because I have DVR. Moreover, I screen what my kids watch. As an expatriate, it makes sense to me why there are depression and frustration amount those young adults. These young adults do not have gym, sports field or any decent source of entertainment. What they do for “pass time” activity?
Watch TV or if they can afford, chat cell phone. It is boosting Cell phone industries bottom line, so they could not adopt social enterprise concept to fulfill their social obligation. Rest of the young adults get bored; thereby fall into depression and frustration. Although this may sound like very naïve explanation; however we can not deny that it is a major component. One may argue that past generation did not have all the facilities and infrastructure for sports and “pastime” resources; however they turned out fine without catastrophic depression and frustration. They are correct; however the past generation did no exposed to the media and internet to the extend that this generation is exposed to. This exposure brings the whole world in front of them. They see the disparity, discrimination and unequal distribution of wealth and resources before they are prepared to handle. These issues may fuel more of the negative energy.

Looking forward:
I hope that Ad industry and Corporate sponsors will assume more moral, ethical and social values for the betterment of the vary customer they depend on their business. We do not have laws to safe guard this type of TV program or Ad. More regulation means less freedom. I hope they will enjoy the free media and act responsibly. Free media like a sharp knife. It is the responsibility of the beholder to either use it like a thug or a surgeon.

Kids, everyday is precious

This week, one of my colleagues is going to sabbatical. We took him to a restaurant of his choice for a sabbatical send away lunch. He chooses a restaurant called “Thailand Restaurant” in Beaverton, a small town near Portland, Oregon. Sabbatical is an 8 weeks paid vacation after seven years of service. The root of the word sabbatical came from Arabic number seven (Sabba); hence sabbatical.

Our team carpools and meets at the restaurant. We are a small team responsible for designing couple of Units of today’s humongous microprocessor “Core”. We ordered our food and chit chatting between Olympic, current events and work. Our small team composed of two Russians, three Indian (One from Bengal, One from Bombay and the other one from North), One Brazilian, One from Taiwan, One from Laos, One from Bangladesh, One from Chicago area and the last one from Utah. Surprisingly, none of the team members are from Portland or even from the state of Oregon.

We are a team of eleven came from seven different country, where only two are from USA, working in a USA company, which has more than 80% market share of the global microprocessor market. How amazing is that? How innovation, competition and globalization shaped the form of a small component design team in a suburb of silicon forest, where none of them came from that state.

Let me back up little bit to set the ground of today’s writing. Last month, July 2008, I was in Dhaka to see family members. During that trip I had an opportunity to hang out with couple of bright musicians at their Gulshan residence cum studio. Although the composure is single; however he brings up an important point regarding raising kid for future. “Shaping the future of our kids in the direction of science and technology”, this is what I would like to bring your attention.

With all due respect to them, I will not reveal the musicians’ identity. My kids along with four other nephews and nice, rampaging the studio. They are strumming their guitars and “DoTara”, not to mention the piano concert of my kids with the mouth piece in their hands. Anyway, we were talking about music. I am out of touch of music for a while, trying to catch up the recent trends. I remember during my University days at Purdue in Indiana. I, with my friends from the Purdue, went to Lollapalooza feasible, where “Sound Garden”, “Metalica” smashing the stage in a hot summer day in Midwest. Sudden rain soaked everybody and justifies one more excuse to have less attire. I not only attended this type of crazy concerts; but also some decent one by Sir Elton John, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan etc.

In the middle of the discussion in their apartment, another prominent musician walked in. This third one has Master’s degree from a prestigious University in Massachusetts. We are in the middle of very talented people who happen to be musicians’. Going back to the “raising kids” discussion. One of them was talking about one of their friend in the west. Her friends are so concern about the kids future education, how to improve their intelligence and so forth. She also indicated that her friends bought all the gadgets’ by “Baby Einstein”, Leapfrog etc to tickle the tender little mind.
I can relate to their thinking. My friends here in USA, I mean, Diasporas’ are also concern about the future of their 3-6 year old kids.
At this point of the discussion, the top music composure made a comment. He said, “look at Sohel Bhai, did he ever play with Baby Einstein; but he is designing the most complicated microprocessor design of the world today.” How cool is that? This is a huge complement. The moment I started writing about it, to me, it sounds like I am bragging; however he has a point and a very good one. You don’t know what future holds; however you aim high enough to get best out of you. This does not mean that you get panic and give up everything. What it means is that you understand what you want, understand the challenges, plan a path to reach their and then start working on it. Be diligent, discipline and committed to the plan of action.

We see kids are deprived of being kids now a day. I must acknowledge that today’s kids are not the same as kids of the 80s. The expectation and demand profiles are not same as before and it should not be in a changing world. Look at Olympics at Beijing, there were accusation of extreme training from very early age. Even in the USA parents are pushing their kids to a limit to excel in Golf (to be Tiger Wood), to excel in Piano lessons (to be Mozart of tomorrow). These are reported in the major TV broadcasting. In Bangladesh, affluent children are being transported from one couching center to another.

The nightmare of parents during the admission season, irrespective of kindergarten, primary school or middle school pass down to the tender kids. Hence these kids are deprived of being a kid. I am not suggesting that you do not push your kid to excel; however you as parents need to get involve and plan ahead. Please take it easy and as smooth as you could be. There should be a balance and kids should be comfortable enough to communicate. They should participate spontaneously and trained to negotiate freely.

I have a wonderful childhood. Although, I went to a good primary school, which was by accident an English medium. However, we did not have tons of homework; most of the tasks were done at school. I had all evening to play and to be kid. I experienced a vacuum during the transition from primary school to middle school. My middle school was an average Bangla medium and enforcement of discipline was poor. Not much education was done in class and children are encouraged to attend the couching class. I did end up attending couching class in my 9th and 10th grade.

After my high school education, I went to Dhaka College for my HSC. Like almost all the students I was receiving stipend for my SSC. During my two years in Dhaka College I paid almost nothing; however I was paying a good amount for my dining hall (no subsidy there). I take no pride; on the contrary, it gives me shame that during those couple of years, like most of the students I did not attend the regular classes, there was no first year exam or second year exam. Attending class was not a cool thing those days.

There were attempts to schedule, conduct exam; but the macho students made every attempts to nullify those. And they were successful. The trend was to go to the batches at the professors’ residence to attend couching class. Students of well-to-do families had no trouble with that culture; however there are few students who had hard time to adopt that culture. They are tutoring high school students on Math and science. The remuneration that they received was directly changing hands form them to the professors.

I entered BUET after Dhaka College, thanks to my friends of Dhaka College and couching centers. I have no clue on how did I made that. I believe most of the credit goes to my friends. Hanging out with them and following the trend put me on the “BUET stream” and I sailed pretty good with the western wind of couching centers. BUET test exam is one of the horrifying life changing experiences for most of the students. For me it was like “whatever”. Because I was fool and did not really realize the true consequence of failing at that stage of life. May be that helped me to go through the process seamlessly without any tension at all. I recall couple of incidents on the day of the admission test. I was excited seeing lots of my friends going to the big exam room which was the second floor of the BUET library. I patted my friend; let’s call him T2, on his shoulder. Out of my surprise he did not return the same enthusiasm in response of my pat on his back. May be a little perturbation could disrupt his concentration of all the trick questions solutions that he piled in his mind. I should mention here that T2 did excellent in the exam and he secured his discipline of studies. Later in his life, he became a successful professor.
The second incident surprised the exam supervisor on my care free stupidity. She showed an outmost expression of irritation when I asked her if I could go to the restroom. Because nobody was wasting a single second in that time packed testing. These two incidents give some sense of seriousness of the test exam and my ignorance of the event.

Anyway, I end up with BUET. I will write about BUET some other time. Stress free environment and good association of friendship was key to my success during those days.
I had the opportunity to kid around as well as stress free guidance.

For the kids growing up today, my suggestion to them is to do what you do best and excel. Today’s children, who are aiming at science and technology, please use internet to dig what interest you. Read more and be discipline about it. More you know more you get interested. And the only way of knowing more is reading. Do not believe in “special talent or gifted child” or “sharp brain”; because they don’t exist. They are Myth. Spending time in a guided, well planned path and dedication to achieve that plan is the ticket to success. Finally the biggest advice that I can give to you is: “make your idle time into productive time”. I know my nice spent all night to study and she is not doing well enough in the study; But if you ask her how many hours she studies during her HSC days, the answer is two or at best three hours. Because her night starts at 1:00 AM and ends at 3:00 AM or may be stretched up to 4:00 AM. She wakes up at noon. You can not achieve a decent education if you don’t utilize your time in a discipline manner. Same goes with your passion or hobby, your sports or music.

So kids, have your parents in your team, get them involve with your web browsing and quest for knowledge. Respect your elder sibling and learn from their success or failure. Utilize every moment for meaningful activity that enrich your life experience. Let’s assume you have 70 years to survive then you only have ~25,000 days. Everyday is precious; do you want to waste a day doing nothing?

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 digital divide and technology adoption to uplift the standard of living. During last decade cell phone paved the path of technology adoption. More and more application is landing into the market to increase productivity and way of life.

There were some major direction changes done by BTRC over the past year. Eliminating illegal VOIP, auctioning broadband connectivity and delivering a policy on how to do it. Most recently they deliver the WiMax policy. I am not in a position to criticize if those actions are good or bad. However, I always view technology as a tool to enhance life experience in a positive way.
I have several ICT project ideas which I day dream about. These ideas may not directly fall in to profitable business entity; however they may be categorized as social business. Under the social business umbrella, these projects could be taken as NGO activity; moreover some of these projects may fall in to the development activity of smart nation building.

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.

Security monitoring and fast response initiation:

Bangladesh being one of the top UN peace keeping forces in the world deployed more then 9000 troops in various turbulent countries. They wear UN blue helmets to provide peace and security around the conflicting borders in the world. Bangladesh Military earned the honor outmost respect. One third of those troops are currently in Ivory Coast. Many of them returned home with experience and a solid track record of success.

New business initiative may capitalize these well earned expertises with evolving technology to solve the security surveillance challenge of the mid-east and may thrive to serve the west. Applying technology to the puzzle may deliver a robust and affordable solution of surveillances from a command center far from the object of interest.

Let us take an example of a Mega business center in Dubai. The management has to provide complete security of the facility. Now we have technological capabilities to provide the surveillance part of the solution from Kulna Bangladesh. The Mega business center will have complete wiring of the video monitoring and we will see them live via our submarine cable in the command centre at Kulna. I have chosen Kulna to get out of the big city dram doll and hassles.

To run that business, we need experienced man power, dedicate electricity and dedicated access to the information superhighway. We have ex military service men as expertise, electricity and access to the submarine cable can be managed if there is goodwill. The command centre will run 24/7. Let us assume that there are 100 cameras in that facility sending 3 fps each to 12 monitors each one capturing 9 cameras. We can safely deploy 2 people to visually scan through the screens and report any unusual activity to the direct voice line to the facility guards. The facility guard on site will take over from that point. Moreover, direct live data dispatch can be done to facilitate the guards during the operation from the Kulna command center.

In doing so, the Dubai Mega Business center may reduce 10 more people from surveillance duty and can maintain small secondary surveillance facility in site as a backup.

Now if we can integrate 10-100 more business entity as a customer around the mid-east, then we could replicate the model for any number of businesses or place of interest around the world. We could bring command center of surveillance for Airports, mass transit stations, museums, libraries, schools, major intersections etc.

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. One day the West may come to Bangladesh for their security solution for the affordability and reliability.

Online Math and Science Tutoring for High school students in US:

Dhaka probably one of the few cities in the world where “coaching center” is a necessary and integrated part of the education system. Moreover Dhaka also known for the other short term coaching business, such as TOEFL, SAT, GRE, Various University Admission including BUET, DMC, Cadet core, BMA Marin to name few. The “coaching business” is a matured enough to test for export. We have talented students, panty of medical college and engineering students who are very good in theoretical Math and Science and in “coaching center” business.

The next ingredient that we need is virtual presence; which could be done utilizing our developing broadband access to the internet or world wide web (WWW). Tutor student may meet at chat room or use web cam with audio to consult mathematical problems.

This could be done in a simple “24/7 coaching center” concept to serve a specific class of students with a monthly subscription fee for unlimited consultation. Let us assume for simplicity, a 24/7 coaching center is opened for students of “grade 8”. The coaching center has all the math text material for grade 8 math and offering unlimited tutoring for USD$ 10.00 per month or may be USD$100.00 per year. The center started with one school in the USA and there are 15 students signed up. If all 15 student of that school did pretty well during first month; then the coaching center may sell the success to get 100 more school with 1000 to 2000 students. There is a very good potential for rapid growth and the management should have the dynamics to handle the growth.

Online trucking/goods shipping reservation facility for nationwide faster goods movement:

With the fuel cost sky rocketing, you have to minimize your unnecessary drive and make the delivery quick and cheap. For simplicity let us assume that we have 10,000 trucks in Bangladesh. At any given time, 5000 are on the road making a delivery of goods. The remaining 50% are at some station or truck stand available for rental contract. Unless you have a regular contracted Truck Company to serve your need; than you have to go to that truck stand and make the contact and bring the truck to loading area to load it. Then the truck makes the delivery.

This problem of extra drive and waiting idle time can be solved by a smart locator program and a simplified GPS vs cross street database. First you have to build a database with the entire cross streets and their corresponding GPS entry. This is needed as we do not have a systematic street structure as well as corresponding digital map. However, couples of local tech companies in Dhaka are working on a digital map with every holding number or address entity included in the program.

A truck driver may text his location referring a cross street from his cell phone to a locator server. The servers take the text and translate it to GPS coordinate. A customer send a text of the cross street name of loading area. The servers translate the loading area coordinate and calculate 5 available trucks for hire. The calculation may be done through radial proximity or may be Manhattan length. There is no perfect solution here as because there is no digitized map of Bnagladesh integrated to the GPS servers. Now the customer has 5 potential bidders for the trip and everybody happy as less waiting, less overlap routing, less fuel cost.

Here for this business, the solution provider may charge a subscription fee or could be commission based. The transportation authority may sponsor the business and yearly charge the truck company during renewal of registration. Hence this business could be government, NGO, cooperative or an enterprise itself for profit.

Intranet for Universities and dedicated network for all students:

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 a tool to shape his/her future.

Micro-credit for laptop purchases for every University admitted student in Bangladesh:

Currently there are approx 200,000 students who are attending any of the Universities in the country.
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. Due to the competition price of laptop are going down everyday. 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.

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. This can be modeled after the stock exchange index. 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 New Market, 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.

RMG intranet for capacity and recourses sharing for maximizing throughput:

The proposal that I am about to unveil here may be analogous to knife. Doctors use them to save life and miscreants use it to harm life. This centralized database will be populated with all the RMG order that has been placed in the nation to various factories.

A standard form need to be developed for the database entry. The sensitive and competitive business information may or may not be required. If that sensitive information needed for statistical purpose to maximize the national RMG production, than proper guideline should be strictly enforced to guard that information. Binary coding may be introduced for that sensitive information.

Once we have such a system, than NBR at any point may estimate net tax earning accurately. BGMEA will be able to know the status of the national production statistics. More service may be customized to member factories to share recourses or sub contract a time sensitive critical order. This will help to reduce if not eliminate the contract cancellation due to “delay”.

Online auction of excess or minor rejected RMG products:

In every RMG factory, there is always some not so perfect left over products. These products usually handled secretly. They often used for appeasing local influential and so called “Mastans”. In some cases they are dumped in the local wholesale markets. In addition to those products there are some products that are abandoned due to delay in shipments and any other minor breach of contract.

If government acknowledges these products as legal merchandisable entity; then there could be a auction house which can handle these products in a market driven manner. This auction house may be modeled after “ebay” to get the global participation. Free market force of globalize flat world will shape the supply and demand to equilibrium. Bangladesh may earn valuable foreign exchange as a result of that.

To design the model, the end customer has to be the top priority. A rigid delivery and shipping procedure have to be ensured. We have a history of export cheating. In the past frog leg or shrimp has been shipped with metal attached to them to get high weight. Once the bid is done, the delivery process should be seamlessly done by one dedicated management. No exception on the method of shipping. To earn the expertise, we may hire UPS or DHL or FedEx.

To enlist your surplus product to the auction database, a standard form should be filled. A standard procedure need to chalk out for the payment methods and release of fund agreement.

Conclusion:

In this article I tried to provoke thoughts to several ICT projects start-up ideas. Any of the above ideas has tremendous potential to transform into a profitable business. Moreover, each of them has inherent nation building ingredients. I hope that visionary entrepreneurs may find these ideas interesting enough to take the challenge.

Can Cell Phone bring Credit to Credit less people?

Everyday technology redefining the way we do business. In fact technology in some cases dictate how we live, work and do things. I am delighted that BTRC is considering some financial transaction activity available through cell phone for licensing. This will enable business community to tap the new opportunity to increase productivity and ease of account payable. I foresee the outmost benefit for the day labor or street vendor as well as small business.

The only technical activity needed in the area is the software API (application programming interface) development for the cell phones, some infrastructure development or upgrade needed for the client server community. The cell phone industry in Bangladesh is well established to take this small challenge in house.

However a full scale financial transaction activity would require more liberalization of policy and active enforcement of the rules of engagements. There are several statistics on how many new customers can be reached for financial activity over cell phone. One data shows that there are 17% of the population has bank accounts. Another data point estimates that there is 30% of the population covered by the cell phone consumer. Thereby, roughly 13% new customers can be served by cell phone financial transaction.

What is transaction with cell phone: Financial transaction with cell phone technology is not a new phenomenon in Bangladesh. Truth of the matter is that, the technology was developed due to local demand and ease of cell phone penetration. To comprehend the idea, let us think about the “top up” concept. Your loved one may send some unused minutes from his SIM card to your SIM card. What is means is transferring some credit from one account to another account. Just simply substitute the word “minutes” with “money”; eureka, you get the idea! It is that simple!

So as a consumer point of view, if two party agree to transact financial activity between their accounts; than the technological capability is in place. The rest of the puzzle could be solved by the policy of Bangladesh Bank and BTRC. They will ensure that the consumer are protected, loop holes are guarded and enforced against misdeeds as well as corruptions or extortion.

Let me give you an example of simple checking service that can be done via cell phone. You want to buy something and you went to the store. You want to pay for the product that you picked with the click of few buttons of your cell phone, like placing a phone call. You can call the transaction as “mobile payment”.

Good for small transaction: In my opinion I consider mobile payment suitable for frequent and small transactions. We should take many baby steps before we consider for large transactions. For the poor credit less population this “mobile payment” could be a big boost to the credit flow. This scheme could bring this vast majority to the national credit activity. For example if the transaction amount is between 10 to 500 taka per day or up to 500 taka per transaction then if could be safely implemented with out a major money laundering or extortion.
A day labor may get their payment at the end of the day with a simple transaction of txting with secure code attached to it. The “Phone lady” or the Curd lady” may get their payment right at the place of exchanging goods. A basket maker or handy-craft artist may instantly top-up their “reserve account” and don’t have to handle cash, which could get snapped off by the patty theft.

Suppose you stopped a street vendor for some vegetables or fish at your door step. You chose your fish or vegetable and fix the prices. The vendor txt the invoice to the buyer and the buyer replied back through his “account reserve”. If the buyer has enough cash on his “reserve account” than transaction goes through and deducted from his account to vendor’s account.

This “reserve account” may be serviced by the subsidiary of Cell Phone Company or an intermediate banking company for small fee for their service. The vendor could get instant cash from their account from little street shops where SIM card is sold. The same simple SIM card transaction methodology may be implemented for this transaction.
If properly implemented it could emancipate the credit less hard working class of citizens who could get benefited of banking service without stepping to a bank. No new education is needed to get then landed in this liquidity market as they are used to cell phone in the first place.

You are in charge: Your son took his friends to a café for some ice cream or sandwiches to celebrate an accomplishment. They enjoyed the food and fun; however his wallet is empty. He called mom and mom called the café to pay for the bill. They could easily acknowledge the account payable and “top-up” the café’s reserve account. Now for the Tiffin at the school canteen, fare to the taxi cab, take out order for pizza all could be done through exchanging credit through your cell phone from your private comfort zone.

Credit Card vs. cell phone: Sometime I wonder if cell phone came before ATM or Credit Card, what the developed world would look like with respect to their daily transaction. How would the develop world would build their financial package around it? There are reasons to believe that lot more financial application might get done in the western world via cell phone if it were before ATM or Credit card. But the potential are huge for the poor people in so called least developed country to adopt latest technology to make a giant leap of progress. We in the developing world may learn from the fast world and think out side the box to get more efficient and compete for business.
In context of Bangladesh, it is obvious that cell phone could bring more monetary transaction than credit cards. Due to the absence of credit monitoring capabilities and limited tracking of credit history, credit cards are difficult to penetrate; however “mobile payment” delivered by cell phone may instantly accessible by everybody, including the less fortunate poor people.

Cell phone in developed country vs. developing country: I believe the cell phone, WiFi or WiMax technology as well as genomic or hybrid seed technology are blessing for the developing country. The developing world did not have to invest heavily to innovate these technologies in the first place; however they may get the productivity benefit as well as economic benefit out of it simply by embracing them. One thing they have to do however, to start adapting and customizing for their needs. They have to continuously innovate development around it, so that they don’t have to heavily depend on the developed country for the service and expensive new hardware.

In the developed world like USA or UK, cell phones are not as widely used as in Bangladesh. These applications around cell phone are not as broad as in Bangladesh. In the developing world these technology are being used for vehicle of more income, directly contributing to the bottom-line of household economic freedom. Less your credit worthiness is, more you get benefited from these new technology. Ironically it started a luxury gadget and now helps bring food to the poor families.

Individual vs. institution transaction: A set of policy need to put in place for small and institutional transaction. To foster the goodness of technology and improve productivity amount the credit less small individual entrepreneurs and street vendors, the policy should be simple and easily implement able as well as enforceable.
There should be two categories of transactions. First one is for the small frequent transaction, like 10 TK, 20 TK, as much as 500 TK exchange. This would enable the low income, daily labor, street vendor to actively participate in the broader economy. They would establish a credit flow and over the period will develop credit history.
The second category may be for business to business or medium level transaction. This should follow more strict regulation and enforcement.

Challenge: The biggest challenge is Extortion. With a clear simple policy and technology based enforcement may minimize some risk; however there is a learning curve that may be steep and error prone. As an engineer I know for sure that Engineering is always a trade off. I would definitely trade off the risk of extortion for the benefit for those 13% credit less low income population. They will get one more tool in their disposal to get out of poverty and gain economic freedom.

Summary: Cell phone is a productivity tool, although has some negative impact with respect to usage model of the user. Using cell phone to bring the capability of small financial transaction could help the less fortunate demography. That particular part of the population could participate in the credit flow without making a trip to the bank. The key to minimize extortion is limiting the amount of transaction or putting a cap. Moreover to bring the productivity advantage of the technology to low income population, it is prudent to have the minimum amount to 10Tk and maximum to 200-500 TK depending ton the users choice.