Thanks to Per Helmersen, here is an interesting article on mobile telephones in the third world
Rich L. ************************************* Cheap laptops not quite online By John Markoff The New York Times MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 2006 DAVOS, Switzerland It sounds like a project that just about any technology-minded executive could get behind: distributing durable, cheap laptop computers in the developing world to help education. But in the year since Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the MIT Media Laboratory, introduced his prototype for a $100 laptop, he has found himself wrestling with Microsoft and the politics of software. Negroponte has made significant progress, but he has also helped generate the debate over the role of computing in poor nations - and ruffled a few feathers. He failed to reach an agreement with Microsoft on including its Windows software in the laptop, leading Microsoft executives to start discussing what they say is a less expensive alternative: turning a specially configured "smart" cellular phone into a computer by connecting it to a television and a keyboard. Gates demonstrated a mockup of his cellular PC at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, and he mentioned it as a cheaper alternative to traditional PCs and laptops during a public discussion here at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. Craig Mundie, Microsoft's vice president and chief technology officer, said in an interview here that the company was still developing the idea but that both he and Gates believed that cellphones were a better way to bring computing to the masses in developing nations than laptops. "Everyone is going to have a cellphone," Mundie said. He said that in places where televisions were already common, turning a phone into a computer could just require adding a cheap adapter cradle and keyboard. Microsoft has not said how much the product would cost. Mundie said there was no firm timing for the phone strategy, but the company has encouraged such innovations in the past by building prototypes for consumer electronics manufacturers. It is not clear to what extent Negroponte's decision to use free open-source software in the laptop, instead of Windows, has spurred the alternative plan from Microsoft. But Gates has been privately bitter about it, and in public Mundie has been skeptical about the project's chances of success. "I love what Nick is trying to do," Mundie said, but he added, "We have a lot of concerns about the sustainability of his approach." This has not deterred Negroponte. At a private breakfast meeting on the digital divide sponsored by the World Economic Forum on Saturday, he said he had a commitment from Quanta Computer to manufacture his portables, which will initially use a processing chip from Advanced Micro Devices; that he had raised $20 million to pay for engineering; and that he was close to a final commitment of $700 million from seven countries - Thailand, Egypt, Nigeria, India, China, Brazil and Argentina - to purchase seven million of the computers. On Saturday at a news conference in Davos, Negroponte's nonprofit group, One Laptop Per Child, signed a memorandum of understanding with the UN Development Program under which the two parties will work together to develop technology and learning resources. Negroponte is still showing only a mockup of his laptop, which will have a carrying handle, built-in stereo speakers, a wireless data connection, a hand crank to generate power and a screen that can be read even in bright sunlight. He said that at the Davos meeting next year he hoped to be able to hand out working laptops to some participants. He also acknowledged that months of discussion with Microsoft and Apple Computer about using their operating system software for his computer had not borne fruit and that as a result it would use a version of the open-source Linux operating system. According to several people familiar with the discussions, Microsoft had encouraged Negroponte to consider using the Windows CE version of its software and that Microsoft had been prepared to make an open-source version of the program available. Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive, had also offered a free version of his company's OS X operating system, but Negroponte rejected this idea because most of the software not open-source. Negroponte said he had resolved to use Linux not because it was free but because of its quality and maintainability. "I chose open-source because it's better," he said. "I have 100 million programmers I can rely on." At the same time, Negroponte, who is on the board of the mobile phone maker Motorola, said he was not opposed to the idea of building a low-cost computer around a cellphone. He said his research group at the Media Laboratory at MIT had experimented with the idea of a cellphone that could project a computer display onto a wall and project the image of a keyboard, sensing the motion of fingers over it. But they decided the idea was less practical than the laptop. Some business and development policy specialists have raised questions about Negroponte's laptop, pointing to the price of Internet connectivity, which can be $24 to $50 a month in the developing world. But he said networking costs would not be an obstacle because the laptops would be designed to connect automatically in a so-called mesh network, making it possible for as many as 1,000 computers to wirelessly share just one or two land-based Internet connections. The Media Lab researchers are also planning to approach a meeting of the GSM Association, an international industry group representing mobile operators, about setting up a data standard that would allow low-cost and educational use of wireless network capacity. "We call the concept 'standby bits,"' Negroponte said, likening the concept to that of standby passengers' traveling on airlines when there are empty seats. The laptops would send and receive Internet data only when higher-paying commercial data were not being transmitted. At the Davos meeting, a number of participants raised questions about the wisdom of Negroponte's plan to persuade governments to underwrite the cost of the laptops. Stuart Gannes, director of the digital vision program at Stanford University, said a better way to bring computers into poor countries would be to put them into the hands of entrepreneurs and make them revenue-generators. "We need to look at technology as a way to bring cash into the poorest communities," Gannes said. Negroponte said that "a lot of people were apprehensive" about the project before he won the backing from Quanta but that he believed he had put the doubts to rest. Quanta manufactures about one-third of the world's laptop computers, he said.
