Dear GKD Members: It is interesting to note the emphasis on policy. I for one, based on my education and experience base have come to believe that the Governments must not make technology choices and it should be best left to the forces that are well experienced in using it to the purposes they get paid for.
However, who creates the policy? The government? Do they have adequate capacity to develop a policy framework for all their citizens or optimising global goals? Yes and NO! That is precisely why policies differ across governments and international organisations. We have not been able to create an agreed framework that may make policy-making itself a task that yields expected results. So the policy ends up becoming largely dependent on who in particular wrote it, who backs it up and who takes more than a fair share of interest in it. Having said that, there are a few intriguing developments that some of us may like to note: All international calls out of India begining 20th Nov are going to be charged @ $0.14 (14 cents approx but less than 15 US cents). This is way below what is available to anyone living in the heaven of telecom (fixed lines only) users called the USA. They will still be paying upwards of 49 cents a minite to call India and more for calling the rest of the developing world! So when a villager from India can call his alien US resident kids for 15 cents instead of the usual $3 they have been used to and that had come down to 40 cents lately, it will bring in a different kind of knowledge transfer, behavioural changes, and contribute its few cents worth to development. Once again made possible by a very competitive market where "notoriously bad investment" made by a government will profitably make it competitive vis a vis the leaders of technology such as AT&T and the likes. Sincerely, satish jha ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For the GKD database, with past messages: http://www.GKDknowledge.org
