Weekly news roundup - Asia, 30 September 2007

Created By: vignesh on 29-Sep-2007 12:00 AM

* UN sponsored meeting to link remote Asia-Pacific communities to the web
* ICICI Bank plans to demonstrate its rural smart card in Sri Lanka
* 4th Meeting of the SASEC ICT Working Group
* OLPC announces 'Give 1 Get 1' programme
* Remote Vietnamese village gets Internet access via WiMax

 

UN sponsored meeting to link remote Asia-Pacific communities to the web

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) has organised a two-day long meeting on 29 - 30 September 2007 at UN Conference Centre in Bangkok. The meeting aims to establish a regional knowledge network of e-Centres in Asia and the Pacific. The community e-Centres (also known by different names such as telecentres or community information centres) serve the people living in remote areas to get much needed information and knowledge to improve their lives. The proposed regional knowledge network of e-Centres to improve their effectiveness as a development tool and to maximise limited resources by networking with each other to share experiences and products, including content such as market information and training materials.

ICICI Bank plans to demonstrate its rural smart card in Sri Lanka

ICICI Bank, India's second-largest bank, is planning to demonstrate in Sri Lanka its rural smart card technology that helped create innovative products and take banking to rural India. According to Chanda Kochhar, Deputy Managing Director, ICICI Bank “Banking in rural India still offers very low returns and most borrowers depend on local money lenders paying higher interest rates than in the formal banking sector, similar to parts of rural Sri Lanka where farmers rely on local money-lenders as they are unable to borrow from banks. Its technology partner Financial Information Network and Operations (FINO) will be brought down in October to demonstrate the products that helped the bank penetrate un-banked areas in the sub-continent.” FINO's biometric smart cards enable people to identify themselves by their thumbprints at ATM and other terminals. The card also offers a variety of products including savings, loans, insurance, fixed deposits and remittances and has helped ICICI take banking products to farmers in rural areas with  out a costly branch network.

4th Meeting of the SASEC ICT Working Group

The fourth meeting of the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Information Communication Technology Working Group (ICTWG) will be held in New Delhi, India on 8-9 October 2007. The meeting is expected to discuss and finalise the project design of the SASEC Information Highway Project which aims at establishing regional information exchange including in-country gateways and cross border links; expand rural access to ICT through village networks; and establish a regional research and training centre. The meeting will also finalise the various multilateral and bilateral agreements essential for project implementation. Secretaries and senior officials from the finance and ICT ministries of the four SASEC participating countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal will attend the meeting. SASEC was established by the Asian Development Bank in 2001 and aims at promoting the sub region’s economic cooperation initiatives.

OLPC announces 'Give 1 Get 1' programme

Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) will offer "Give 1 Get 1" programme in which individual donors will be able to purchase XO laptops for personal use when also buying one for a child in a developing nation. The mission of the project is to provide a means for learning, self-expression and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. "For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops - one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home," writes OLPC project founder Nicholas Negroponte in an open letter on the new XO Giving web site.

Remote Vietnamese village gets Internet access via WiMax

Ta Van, a small village located in Vietnam's northern Lao Cai province, has a wireless network that uses Wi-Fi and WiMax technology. This wireless network is connected to the Internet over a link to Shin Corp.'s IPSTAR satellite that offers 2 mbps of bandwidth on the downlink connection and a 512 kbps uplink. The project is a joint initiative of Intel Corporation, Vietnam Data Communication Co. (VDC), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The first site in Vietnam to host such a network was in Lao Cai, the provincial capital, where 19 sites are connected to a WiMax network that uses a satellite link for Internet access.

572 people have read this article