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Malaysia placed 28th in Global Information Technology

August 18th, 2011
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 According to the report we dropped one place due to Qatar moving up to 25th place from 30th place.  But the survey has expanded from 133 countries to 138, so still OK la.  But if nothing much down, we can be assured of sliding down the ranks.

We did well in most categories except for two which affected the ranking. 1st was infrastructure environment where we were placed 51st with a score of 3.7 (higher score is better).  In this category, we ranked average for phone lines, mobile network coverage and tertiary education enrolment.

The affected category was individual usage (4.3 score with rank 45th).  In this category, we ranked average for household with PC, broadband internet subscription,  and mobile phone subscription.

We did well in some sub-categories, getting top 5, top 8 and top 11 ranks.

And note that we were ranked badly under freedom of the press, positioned at number 103.

 

 

 

 

Malaysia slid from 27th to 28th in the 2010-2011 Global Information Technology report released yesterday after it was bumped down by Qatar which jumped 5 spots from 30th to 25th.

Malaysia’s placing this year is equal to its ranking in 2008-2009 and worse than the 26th ranking achieved in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008.

Sweden and Singapore retained their first and second placing respectively atop the rankings with Finland, Switzerland and the United States rounding out the top 5.

The Global Information Technology report (http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GITR_Report_2011.pdf) is an annual publication prepared by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and INSEAD which assesses the impact of ICT on the development and competitiveness of 138 economies worldwide.

The WEF said that this year’s report confirmed the leadership of the Nordic countries and the Asian Tiger economies in adopting and implementing ICT advances for increased growth and development.

It noted that Sweden, Denmark (7th) and Norway (9th) are all are in the top 10, except for Iceland, which is ranked 16th.

Singapore meanwhile led the Asian Tiger economies with Taiwan and Korea improving five places to 6th and 10th respectively, and Hong Kong SAR following closely at 12th.

A look at the sub-rankings show that Malaysia was helped by government readiness (11th) but hurt by the infrastructure environment (51st) and individual usage (45th).

It was also ranked 42nd for international internet bandwidth and 59th in terms of broadband subscribers.

The ICT rankings come after Malaysia dropped two spots in the WEF competitiveness index last year, coming in 26th out of 132 countries and marking the second year in a row Malaysia has dropped in the rankings after falling from 21st to 24th spot in 2009.

The WEF rankings in coming years however are expected to show how effective are the Najib administration reforms such as the New Economic Model, the Government Transformation Programme and the Economic Transformation Programme, all of which were launched between January and December last year.

 

source: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-slips-down-ict-competitiveness-ranking/

 

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Broadband definition

June 29th, 2011
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Just checked wikipedia on what is defined as broadband:

Broadband is often called “high-speed” access to the Internet, because it usually has a high rate of data transmission. In general, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s (0.25 Mbit/s) or greater is more concisely considered broadband Internet access. The International Telecommunication Union Standardization Sector (ITU-T) recommendation I.113 has defined broadband as a transmission capacity that is faster than primary rate ISDN, at 1.5 to 2 Mbit/s. The FCC definition of broadband is 4.0 Mbit/s. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has defined broadband as 256 kbit/s in at least one direction and this bit rate is the most common baseline that is marketed as “broadband” around the world. There is no specific bitratedefined by the industry, however, and “broadband” can mean lower-bitrate transmission methods. Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use this to their advantage in marketing lower-bitrate connections as broadband.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_Internet_access

So, the baseline is 256kbps, which is most commonly marketed worldwide.

I’m not sure which baseline is adapted by our country, but according to the minister, we have reached 60% penetration. If its 256kbps, well nothing much to say. Also need to consider the quality of the transmission.

 

This year’s national broadband penetration 60 per cent target has been achieved, said said Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.

The distribution of 1 Malaysia netbooks and launched village broadband facilities have contributed to the quick success said Dr Rais, according to Bernama Online.

He was speaking in Kampung Rumpun Makmur, part of the Kerdau state constituency in Pahang today.

The success has spurred the ministry to increase the target to 70 per cent penetration nationwide for 2011.

The minister also highlighted the efforts of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and respective telcos in improving access and quality.

source: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/2011-broadband-target-achieved-in-half-a-year-says-minister/

 

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Google Translate in Tamil

June 22nd, 2011
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Thank you Google! Its not perfect, but still useful to an extent. Can get hilarious results too!

 

http://translate.google.lk/#en|ta|

 

[click to view larger image]

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1Bestarinet Internet access project for schools

May 16th, 2011
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Again, another article for Teachers Day. The facilities that are being proposed in schools, does not seem to be able to provide a quantum leap. While other countries are going into Gigabytes, we are still in 10Mbps speed expectations.

 

WE can begin to leave SchoolNet behind us as a new tender to wire up schools with Internet broadband access is out.

This new project, known as 1Bestarinet, is supposed to wire up 9,924 schools in the country. The birth of 1Bestarinet dates back to the national key economic area telecoms lab days.

The tender bid was out on May 5 and a must-attend briefing was held on May 10. The closing date for the tender is May 31 this gives potential bidders three weeks to work on their proposals.

Some of those who want to be considered view the three weeks as too short for such a huge project that spans 10 years and can cost anything up to RM300,000 per year.

“Unless you had prior knowledge of this tender, it would be impossible for some parties to submit a tender as it covers a lot of areas and three weeks is just not enough,” one said.

Nearly a dozen companies have collected the tender documents. They include players such as Celcom Axiata, Jaring, HighTech Padu, Maxis Bhd, REDTone International, Time dotCom, Telekom Malaysia and YTL Communications.

This tender is called by the Ministry of Education and it is clearly stipulated that it is open to local companies and preference will be given to bumiputra tender bids that are registered with the Finance Ministry under some codes stipulated.

To recap, SchoolNet was born in 2004 to wire up schools using wireless or fibre technology. Several companies won the bids to provide Internet access to the schools and while the effort was put in, there is really not much to gloat about. The effort is fruitless if it does not achieve its objective and we can blame the lack of specifications to lack of integration, unpreparedness of teachers and find all the flaws but a key component that did not make it shine was the access speed and capacity.

Then comes 1Bestarinet.

There are two major components access and learning management system (LMS) module. Many did not expect the LMS to be included but it is there and details need to be furnished with the tender bid.

For urban areas the access speed is 2Mbps to 10Mbps, and for rural and remote schools 1Mbps to 4Mbps. All sorts of technologies can be used, be it fibre or wireless technology including Vsat.

The interesting part is that even before the tender came out some parties have been burning the midnight oil to get prepared. One company managed to get a LMS module in place and it is dangling its carrot to work with others. Two others the ones with the biggest fibre networks are likely to put in a joint bid and have been on it for a while now.

But those who only got wind of it days before the tender opened, they will be scrambling to meet the deadline.

The contention is on timing why only three weeks when it is such a big project? Three weeks happens to be the minimum time required for a tender to remain opened.

One of the flaws of SchoolNet was scalability. That apparently is also the issue with 1Bestarinet even though some claim that those making a submission should consider cloud computing as an option.

While the 1Bestarinet project is great, did it take into consideration themurid‘s perspective?

We are talking about a group of people who will be tomorrow’s leaders and they are the ones living in the era of social media, super fast Internet speed, smartphones, TouTube and so on, and for all that they need big capacity and super speed.

So 2Mbps or even 10Mbps is really not enough in a classroom of 30 to 40 students, the networks are going to be congested in no time. So should we pour money into networks that are only good for a year, two or three?

What we need to look at is the bare minimum of 1Gbps; there should be no compromises on speed and capacity. Taking U-turns can be a costly affair and it can delay us from reaching our destination.

Perhaps we ought to review our offering, make the change and give more time to those who are interested in the tender bid so that we can attract the best. While at it we should not consider players that don’t keep their promises.

 

  • Deputy news editor B.K. Sidhu wishes all teachers a Happy Teacher’s Day and thanks them for taking care of our children.

    • source: http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/5/13/business/8675705&sec=business

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    EduHelp@poobalan.com

    February 21st, 2011
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    Finally, after few months, I’ve managed to get the beta version of the eduhelp website up and running. Not being artistically inclined and busy with other work, it took about 4 months to work on the site little by little. Still got more features to add and another 30++ scholarships to be listed. Hopefully can improve on it by the time SPM results are out in few weeks’ time.

    Oh ya, the site is at poobalan.com/eduhelp

    Do drop by and give share your thoughts on the website.

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    Posted in Personal, TechStuff

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