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World Telecommunication Day
Paul McCord writes "The International Telecommunication Union is asking everyone to join in for World Telecommunication Day 2003, Saturday, May 17. The ITU suggests that this is 'an excellent opportunity to launch public campaigns and advocacy activities in favour of greater access to [information and communication technology] and how the work of ITU helps all of the world's people to communicate.' It may be a bit late to join in on some of the official activities, but awareness if nothing else will help to serve the day's purpose. See the WTD2003 site or this Google News query for information, links."
Nice to see that Slashdot remains a relevant news source.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Here in .au, there's a story about plans to add submarine cable protection zones. Do other countries already have similar restrictions in place? I would be interested to know. Thanks. (Submarine cable is related to international telecommunications, so I'm not entirely Off-topic!)
Sorry folks, May 17th is taken! It's Norway's national day, and we don't wanna share it with some telecom day! Grr! :)
The Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America are asking consumers to join in for World Digital Rights Management Day 2003, Saturday, May 17. The MPAA and RIAA suggest that this is 'an excellent opportunity to launch public campaigns and advocacy activities in favour of greater access to [secure and protected digital media] and how the work of the MPAA and RIAA allows all of the world's consumers to better enjoy quality entertainment products.' It may be a bit late to join in on some of the official activities, but awareness if nothing else will help to serve the day's purpose. See the MPAA's and RIAA's site or this Google News query for information, links.
This "list of activites" doen't include anything in my tri-country area.
But don't forget, infact remind yourself often, that there are more telephones in new york city than there are in the whole of Africa
Long live global capitalism then eh?
How about all the telcos let us make free calls anywhere all day to celebrate it.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
can we start off by banning cell phones in public places ?
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Is this sanctioned by the official, self proclaimed, voice of the workers?
When we all have telecommunications like North Korea, Cuba and soon-to-be Venezuela then the workers struggle will be complete!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I live in Ottawa, Home of Nortel, which before telecom died was one of the bigger telecom companies. Now this city is filled with empty Nortel buildings, and all us geeks have to rely on something other than telecom to find us jobs. Oh well. I knew it would never last, Telecom doesn't interest me in the least
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I'm surprised that the ARRL isn't jumping all over this. I'd think many ham clubs would want to have field days and demonstrate free portable telecommunications. Of course, it's kinda late now. Maybe next year :-)
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
IAATM (I am a telemarketer) and I have probably reached more places around the globe and woken people up early on Saturday morning today than any of you will in your entire lives! mwahahaha!
(Please don't mod me as a troll. I'm sorry)
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
Assuming "monthly fee" is a viable alternative to paying by the call, MCI's Neighborhood is pretty decent for that. $50/month for all instate and state-to-state calls. International's damn near free too. Better call lots, though.
The coolest voice ever.
Helping all of the world's people to communicate
Today's telecommunication world would not be what it is without the untiring efforts of the ITU to help countries harmonize their national policies, bridge technological differences, foster interconnectivity and interoperability of systems on a global scale. Anytime, anyone makes a phone call, checks their email, watches television or surfs the Web, they benefit from the work of the world's first universal organization: ITU. For over 135 years, ITU has been helping people to communicate. But its mission is also to bring the benefits of information and communication technologies to all of the world's inhabitants.
The need for ITU to focus on a global policy perspective does not mean we intend to turn our back on the specific needs of Member States or on the telecommunication industry. However, we must acknowledge that the broader goals of humanity, such as those expressed in the UN Millennium Declaration, will be much easier to achieve once developing countries benefit from the same ubiquity of advanced information and communication technologies as developed countries.
World Telecommunication Day 2003 is therefore an excellent opportunity to launch public campaigns and advocacy activities in favour of greater access to ICT and how the work of ITU helps all of the world's people to communicate.
ITU Members are invited to celebrate this year's World Telecommunication Day by organizing national programmes that would address:
How the information and communication technology issues of your citizens can best be reflected in the declaration of principles and action plan that will be developed for the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society being organized by ITU and to be held in Geneva 10-12 December 2003.
How you might express a commitment to ensure that the 1.5 million villages who are unconnected to the information society are brought into the information age.
Helping all of the world's people to communicate
Today's telecommunication world would not be what it is without the untiring efforts of the ITU to help countries harmonize their national policies, bridge technological differences, foster interconnectivity and interoperability of systems on a global scale. Anytime, anyone makes a phone call, checks their email, watches television or surfs the Web, they benefit from the work of the world's first universal organization: ITU. For over 135 years, ITU has been helping people to communicate. But its mission is also to bring the benefits of information and communication technologies to all of the world's inhabitants.
The need for ITU to focus on a global policy perspective does not mean we intend to turn our back on the specific needs of Member States or on the telecommunication industry. However, we must acknowledge that the broader goals of humanity, such as those expressed in the UN Millennium Declaration, will be much easier to achieve once developing countries benefit from the same ubiquity of advanced information and communication technologies as developed countries.
World Telecommunication Day 2003 is therefore an excellent opportunity to launch public campaigns and advocacy activities in favour of greater access to ICT and how the work of ITU helps all of the world's people to communicate.
ITU Members are invited to celebrate this year's World Telecommunication Day by organizing national programmes that would address:
How the information and communication technology issues of your citizens can best be reflected in the declaration of principles and action plan that will be developed for the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society being organized by ITU and to be held in Geneva 10-12 December 2003.
How you might express a commitment to ensure that the 1.5 million villages who are unconnected to the information society are brought into the information age.
Helping all of the world's people to communicate
Today's telecommunication wo
There are those who would like to see the ITU take over from ICANN. I'm not sure that the ITU is the perfect organisation to do it. It is bureaucratic and is a group of telcos rather than including wider Internet interests. However, I do agree that it would be a lot better than what we have at the moment.
Perhaps World Telecommunications Day would be a good opportunity for the ITU to put this agenda forward.
Telecom as a whole isn't dead. Long-distance is what's dead, thanks in large part to the Internet. AT&T and MCI realized this, and with the help of some recent laws began poking into the local service market, reselling service over the local companies' lines. Local-LD Combo packages like AT&T's One Rate and MCI's Neighborhood are a real threat to ILECs, and now both of the big'uns are also branching into DSL territory (I believe MCI literally just started offering DSL in some states), ensuring their corporate relevance.
The coolest voice ever.
I hope the no-sense-of-humor dingleberry who modded parent as a troll gets metamodded into oblivion.
Ill take bureaucracy over pure unadulterated evil.
The ITU suggests that this is 'an excellent opportunity to launch public campaigns and advocacy activities in favour of greater access to [information and communication technology]
:)
The same ITU that refuses to drop the Morse Code requirements for ham radio licenses under 30Mhz?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
73 DE KE6ISF
This sig no verb.
I hope the no-sense-of-humor dingleberry who modded parent as a troll gets metamodded into oblivion.
Who is the more trollish? The troll, or the troll who lives like him?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Too bad Crime Warner can't get my cable modem to stay up for more than an hour at a time today...
Happy telecommunications day to all who can celebrate it..
I forgot Canada.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
While I agree that it's probably time to drop that requirement, I do think there should be a seperate code endorsement giving access to narrow slices (that's all it needs) of each band, kind of like archery and muzzleloader hunting seasons.
My code sucks, but it still always gives me a thrill to get through clearly when SSB is just a wispy modulation on the noise.
I for one could not imagine anything worse.
The ITU takes every available opportunity to put itself between enabling technologies and the people who could benefit from them.
Here's what the internet would look like under ITU:
Standards documents are copyrighted, redistribution is forbidden, and cost $1,000 and up from the ITU Publications office (go ahead, try to get a protocol definition off their site).
No individuals or companies have any representation or even a right to comment except at the request of their government.
Decisions are made by a collection of national telecom monopolies who have a strong vested interest in stifling any development that cannibalizes their core revenues (i.e., overpriced landline phone service).
Arbitrary complexity will be added to all communications protocols in order to ensure difficulty of reverse-engineering.
Absolutely everything will be regulated to death and beyond.
New technology adoption will languish several years behind competing environments. In fact, for this reason, I speculate that if the ITU does manage to gain any appreciable control over internet infrastructure, interesting activity on the internet will quietly migrate to a "same but different" network free of their stifling control.
Frustrated by the growth of the internet at the expense of the centralized data network they had been advocating, and livid at the way that techologies like VOIP have decreased the relevance of their constituent monopolies, for the last few years all the ITU has really done is schemed for a hostile takeover of the internet. It's as dangerous as dealing with a herd of angry dinosaurs: While they are rapidly growing technologically irrelevant, their bureaucratic and political skills are well-honed and they are both rich and ruthless.
In sum: ITU = enemy of the people, enemy of the internet, enemy of affordable communications, enemy of democracy. And I say this as a touchy-feely left wing one-worlder. If you're anywhere to the right of me you should be outside their gates with a torch and pitchfork.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
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[tom@cougaarforge tom]$ telnet www.itu.int 80
Trying 156.106.192.163...
Connected to www.itu.int.
Escape character is '^]'.
get / http / 1.0
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 20:25:29 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_jk/1.2.1 PHP/4.0.6
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
400 Bad Request
Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
The request line contained invalid characters following the protocol string.
Apache/1.3.26 Server at www.itu.int Port 80
Connection closed by foreign host.
[tom@cougaarforge tom]$
=========
They're running Apache and mod_php... can't be too bad
Yours,
tom
The Army reading list
the word "linux" should be changed to "apple" :)
This is my