Flow of Digital Information

Even though there is an internet blackout imposed by the Egyptian government, the digital information is still flowing out from protesters in Egypt.

Google and Twitter launch this service to circumvent internet service provider completely. Users leave a phone message which is then posted as an audio file on Twitter. However, users can only use this service for a while until the Egyptian Government completely cutoff all telephone line.

As reported  HERE, there are other ways being used to get the news information from the troubled areas.

Another Effort to Reduce the Digital Divide

According to Star, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) will build more communication towers in Sarawak to ensure more rural people get connected to the Internet.

Thank you to MCMC for trying to closing the digital divide even further especially in this part of the world. Hopefully, the effort to increase the usage of ICT among the rural users will be beneficial to all. The most important aspect of the ICT is to open up the users to online advantages especially in the aspect of education.

According to the news, the MCMC will build 257 more towers from next year to 2013 to provide for wider coverage.

So far they have built more than 400 towers state-wide under the broadband and community broadband centre initiatives.

Cyber Cafes

Image by respres via Flickr

Due to the prevalent gap of digital divide, most users are dependent on cyber cafes to get connected to the internet. Cyber cafes managed to pay for the internet connection by imposing fees to the users. In major cities, the cyber cafes are being licensed and being monitored closely from conducting illegal activities by the authorities.

The cyber cafes are required to stop operating at certain hours of the day. Local authority will impose severe penalties to the operators for failing to obey the stipulated rules. Also, the cyber cafes are prevented from conducting online gambling games.

Due to the intense enforcement effort by the authorities in the urban areas, illegal cyber cafes are mushrooming in the rural areas. The operators are targeting youth to frequent their cyber cafes by offering them the illegal online gambling games. The operators of the illegal cyber cafes are interested only on gaining huge profits and they do it through the illegal online gambling games.

Thus, the authorities need to beefed up their efforts in battling the illegal cyber cafes in order to prevent youngster from wasting their time and money on such illegal activities.

Broadband Service

It seems that the long waited broadband service is back in this area. That what they have been promising when we kept on complaining about the service before that within a month they should correct the problem associated with the service.

Refer to my previous post here about the connection problem in this area.

Now here is what the service look like.

The 3G bar dwindles between 2 or 3 bars. Sometimes the bar goes down to only one bar. The HSDPA high speed broadband is available as shown by the letter "H".

Well we are glad that the service is being resumed even though the connection strength is only two or three bars. Hopefully, they will keep improving the service from time to time. With that kind of service will improve on the digital divide within the area. Also, hopefully that they will improve on their customer support aspects which problem has been highlighted in my previous post.

No Service

For the past one and a half months, I am having problems connecting my computer to the Internet. I am using a wireless USB modem using one of the service provider broadband services. For the past one and a half month, it will be a very lucky day if I could successfully connecting or dialling up my USB modem to the network. Once connected, the line sometime get cut off and made you feel irritated because most of your work was lost.

For your information, the place that I am staying did not have fixed line telephone service and to opt for Streamyx service is out of the question. The only way for communicating to the world is through their wireless services.

Feeling cheated because of paying exorbitant Internet connection fee monthly but cannot get the service, I had made several call to their online help service. As usual they will ask you about the problem that you are having and they will jot something down. They insist that there is nothing wrong with their network and they will promise that some technical people will call me within the next 48 hours. After waiting for a little bit of 48 hours, still the call that you are waiting is not in sight. Thus, I made another call repeating what I had said earlier and they also repeat what they had said earlier saying that another technical person will call me back within the next 48 hours.

I just cannot figure it out where does that 48 hours come from. Is that indicate their level of service to their customer by keeping their customer in the dark about the problems that they are encountering. This time they promise that they will ask the technical people to call me immediately on the same day. Yet I did not receive any call that day but they called the following day late in the afternoon. Well, after I described to the technical person what was my problem, they suggested that I use their recommended USB modem which is Huawei model E220.

Fine enough, I bought the modem which is as shown in the following picture.



Unluckily, I still have problem with the Internet connection and the following message always popping up my computer screen. I purposely blackout the network provider because I don't want you to know which network provider that was.

I don't think the connection problem has anything to do with my account because I always pay my bill on time. Also, I don't have any problem connecting to the Internet while I was at another location as shown in the following figure.

After tired of waiting, I have no choice but to call the customer service number again and explaining to them that I had followed what they had been advising me to do and still I cannot get the connection. This time after hearing my explanation, they filed another report and now they requested my street address for further investigation.

Wow, after several days of calling, then they realised that it might have something to do with their own network. As usual, I had to wait for another 48 hours for the technical person to call me back. It seems to me that their technical persons are so busy with technical problems that is why they have to wait for that 48 hours long. I wonder why there is too many technical problems for them to handle. Are they short of staffs? Or are their customer service so lousy? It has been their motto to call back their customer well after the 48 hours period had expired.

Well, just getting upset with the network connection, finally after more than 48 hours later, I received a call from their technical persons saying that indeed their network within the area do experienced some problems i.e. their network is too congested since the past one and a half month.

That is the last thing that I wanted to hear actually because after waiting for several series of 48 hours and they tell me that yes indeed they do have problems. Do they have some kind of mechanism to detect that kind of problems instead of relying on a customer like me who had been waiting or wasting several 48 hours just to let them know that they have problems.

The good news is that they promise to look into the matter for the next three weeks in order for them to sort things out. What are they thinking actually? Do I have to pay monthly subscriptions fee just to let them say for the next 48 hours or for the next three weeks than hopefully I will get my problem solved.

To tell you the truth, I don't have a choice and I have to pay them the subscriptions fee upon due because it is so pathetic that the Internet connection is so bad and there is no other service provider for me to turn to as an alternative. Thus, that is the real answer why they can afford to take them 48 hours to respond to you and then to promise for the next three weeks because they know that there is no competitors around for me to turn to.

But I hope that they start to learn to treat their customer accordingly.

A typical telecommunication tower within the area.


The telecommunication tower.

DIGITAL DIVIDE

The digital divide is the inequality in access to information and communication technologies (ICT) services. There are several reasons for the digital divide such as class, region, age, gender, Race&Culture, and Nations.

The number of Internet users is found to be directly related to the class of society. Younger population has more Internet connections throughout the world. Surprisingly, as found out by the study, female users is less than male users. European and Asians are found to be more frequent users of the Internet services than the Africans. As expected, there are more number of Internet users in USA and UK.

I agree that part of the reason for the digital divide is the basic resources available for providing the ICT services. For example, the basic infrastructure for the ICT services should be readily available and this is the main problem for the developing countries to find the money and resources to provide such a facilities.

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