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TechnologyDaily Mobile
Asia Ready To Outpace U.S. In Wireless Market
Asia is likely to outpace the United States in the development of next-generation wireless services, a top U.S. Commerce Department official said earlier this week.
"Asia is a very, very important market. Eighty percent of wireless users are in Asia," Gregory Rohde, assistant secretary of Commerce for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said in a press briefing Tuesday. "We're going to see Asia surpass [the United States] in wireless use. We're going to see Asia play a significant role" in the development of the Internet, he added.
Consequently, Rohde stressed the need for the United States to begin to cooperate internationally on the rollout of the third-generation (3G) wireless services, which includes services like mobile, high-speed access to the Internet. "Asia is really on fire when it comes to wireless services, " he said, noting that there are more wireless phones than land lines in regions like China, making the country an essential market for wireless development.
Rohde's comments came on the heels of his return from the International Telecommunications Union's Asian conference last week in Hong Kong. In several bilateral meetings with telecom counterparts in Japan, China and Hong Kong, Rohde said the U.S. delegation also addressed the sticky issue of Internet backbone interconnection rates.
The issue marked the United States as the "lone dissenter" at ITU's Montreal conference in September, when several countries asserted the need for cost-sharing in access charges to the Internet backbone, largely owned and maintained in the United States. The proposal would have made dial-up access to the Internet akin to interconnection rates countries pay one another to connect international phone calls.
Rohde defended the U.S. resistance to the global policy proposal to his Asian counterparts, arguing that the "demand for Internet hubs in Asia will solve" the imbalance in cost of connections to the Internet.
Underscoring Rohde's comments, a recent Andersen Consulting report targets the Asia-Pacific region as the likely center in the second generation of electronic commerce. The report, released Nov 28., said the region — which includes China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Korea, Singapore and India — may be key to determining how digital television develops and how it influences e-commerce.
Japanese Consumers Wary Of E-Commerce
The vast majority of Japanese consumers are still wary of e-commerce, according to a survey released earlier this week by Research International. A concern over online payment security is a major reason that many consumers avoid e-commerce, according to the report, which polled consumers' attitudes toward e-commerce in 38 countries.
But in Japan, unlike other regions of the world, consumers can order products over the Internet and pay and retrieve them from bricks-and-mortar stores, a development that Research International experts believe will aid the spread of e-commerce in Japan.
Australia Extends Privacy Requirements To Private Sector
The Australian Parliament amended the country's privacy code last week by approving the Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Bill. The new measures regulate "the way private-sector organizations can collect, use, keep secure and disclose personal information."
Under the new provisions, consumers can demand to see how their personal data is held by private-sector organizations. If consumers, for example, find incorrect information in records kept by the private sector, they can demand changes and even file complaints if they think their information is not being handled properly.
The new provisions will extend current privacy practices to businesses with a turnover of $3 million or more and to nonprofit organizations, government contractors, health-service providers that hold health information (even if their turnover is less than $3 million), state government business enterprises, among others. Small businesses with a turnover of less than $3 million also could opt in to the system if they choose.
Officials from the European Union already have expressed concerns to Australia's attorney general over the apparent discrepancy in privacy standards between the two regions. An EU submission to the House of Representatives committee which examined the bill said it "may not provide adequate protection for European citizens" because it offers too many exemptions to companies and too few opportunities for European citizens to correct inaccurate information, The Australian reported Tuesday. Officials from the attorney general's office are expected to travel to Brussels next week to meet with officials and discuss EU concerns.
The Australian Parliament also passed groundbreaking legislation last week that will allow citizens in Canberra to cast votes via the Web next year. With a $405,000 trial run set to create four pre-poll voting centers and about 10 polling places on Election Day in October 2001, the government will use a secure computer network to allow citizens to cast votes.
India Holds Portals Responsible For Porn
India is the latest country plagued by the growing problem of defining legal jurisdiction over the Web. Two of the country's leading Internet companies, Rediff.com and Sify.com, have become the latest Web portals held responsible for risque materials posted by their users.
Pune Municipal Court Magistrate S. Bhosle ruled last week that Rediff.com was responsible for spreading pornographic material on the Internet. His ruling was in response to a suit filed last June by Rohas Nagpal on behalf of a Prune law student who charged that indecent materials were readily available on the company's search engine.
The Indian action follows a rash of legal cases worldwide that pit global search engines against local and regional laws that prohibit certain brands of content.
Cyber-Crime Treaty Draws Criticisms
As officials at the Council of Europe (COE) this week put the final touches on a controversial treaty that would govern cyber crime in the 41 nations with council membership, privacy groups and industry members criticized the treaty.
Sources at the COE have said the treaty should be wrapped up this week in order to meet deadlines, but there are major concerns over consumer privacy protections. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week urged members of Congress and the administration to withhold support for a 41-nation treaty, arguing that the document "places unnecessary and costly burdens on e-commerce companies."
The Global Internet Liberty Campaign, a global free-speech organization, has sent several letters to the COE asking for treaty revisions to protect consumers' privacy. Other groups, such as The American Civial Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have also voiced opposition to the treaty. A council official told Wired News that privacy protection may not be in the final document.
"We cannot find acceptable international standards in terms of privacy as it applies to this treaty," said Henrik Kaspersen, chairman of the council's committee of cyber-crime experts. "We don't want to exclude privacy. We very much want to include it. But there are a number of existing case laws dealing with privacy throughout Europe, and we're also dealing with countries like the United States and Japan that have differing legal systems."
The treaty aims to aid law enforcement by requiring Web sites and Internet service providers to collect and record information about their users, a move privacy groups insists goes too far.
- by Maureen Sirhal
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