>From: Barry Lee Brisco <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Yes, I am familar with that plan. Of course, $US3/min is more than the
monthly income of many Vietnamese villagers. So they're not going to be
making a whole lot of calls.
Agreed. I don't understand the economics of this, when they earn $1/day. But
whatever.
>What will first occur in countries like Vietnam is that the major cities
will get set up with the latest telecom technology and in a decade or so
you will be able to make cheap calls from there. But not from the villages.
The economics just don't work.
The plan apparenly is to connect the villages. The cities already have
telephones. The real payers will be international businesspeople who can
afford global telephone service. Lately on NPR, one often hears journalists
reporting by satellite cell phone from Afghanistan, etc.
Shopping at Eddie Bauer is also a bit of a silly example. Most likely, it'll
be used for buying agricultural tools, seeds, medical supplies, etc., things
they really need to really improve their lives. If they do their shopping
offline with a laptop and a CD, and then use some sort of automated logon to
send the order, then it'd be a few seconds of connect time.
This was all the basis of Sears, Roebuck, the first mail order catalog.
Small towns and farmers across the Midwest could pick from a catalog of
thousands of products, use the US mail to order, and receive by trrain. So
the idea isn't new, just updated technology.
Which means there's future in e-commerce sites for substainable agricultural
tools, etc., all the things that a village needs. A sort of online Whole
Earth Catalog.
>Actually, Vietnam was probably a poor example. The govt. has proven so
inept and paranoid about foreign investment that the country is almost
going backwards right now. The beauracracy is staggering.
Vietnam is indeed a bad example. Burma maybe yet worse. I think the main
target is China and India with millions of unconnected villages.
yrs,
andreas
___________________________________________________
Andreas Ramos [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.andreas.com
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