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Tech May Be Key To European Productivity
by Winter Casey
Europe has not benefited from information and communications technologies as much as the United States and desperately needs to raise productivity growth rates, according to a new report.
In order to increase productivity rates, Europe should use tax incentives and tariff reductions to encourage investment in ICT, according to a paper released Tuesday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank focused on policies aimed at promoting technological innovation. Europe also needs to encourage digital literacy and support innovation, the report argues.
According to the paper, two factors have contributed to Europe's failure to reap as many benefits from the ICT revolution as the United States. European firms have invested less in ICT than their U.S. counterparts and many European countries "have been slower to make the process and organizational changes that would allow them to achieve the full benefits of ICT," the report said.
The European government and policymakers also have a large role to play in improving productivity rates through support of tech sectors, ITIF argues. The report suggests that governments should invest in early-stage research in emerging ICT areas.
Also in European news, Viviane Reding, the European Union commissioner for the information society and media, spoke Monday at a conference in Budapest, Hungary, about the importance of having consistent regulation of the telecommunications markets. In particular, she mentioned termination rates, the per-minute cost of ending calls on mobile telephone networks, which some observers say has helped inflate the price of mobile calls in Europe.
Reding said the "problem of regulatory consistency appears evident in the case of termination markets. ... I am concerned about the important differences as to the level of the termination rates and the methodologies used to determine those rates across the EU." She said some national regulators are interested in finding a common approach for regulating the rates regionally.
Reding also said the treatment of advanced mobile networks should be consistent and that the European Commission will need to address whether roaming data services such as SMS or MMS, which are mobile text-messaging services, should be regulated. "I call on national regulators to solve this problem swiftly in the same way as I have done on voice roaming," she said.
Supercomputing Aids Cyclone Response
Supercomputing models were utilized by a professor at Louisiana State University to give Bangladesh emergency officials information on an impending cyclone storm that hit the country Nov. 16, according to the university.
"These models are incredibly accurate and highly detailed," Hassan Mashriqui, assistant extension professor of coastal engineering at LSU, said in a statement. "You can pinpoint events down to small counties and towns. We were looking at a 10- to 12-foot storm surge that would devastate anything in its path."
After he learned of the storm using the university's supercomputing network, Mashriqui, who earned his undergraduate degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, was able to use his connections in the country to communicate the findings to dozens of agencies in Bangladesh. The agencies raised the danger signal to its highest level and moved people out of the danger zone.
"When you can pinpoint the areas of impact and determine the level of storm surge that far ahead of landfall, it provides critical time for agencies and officials to focus energy and resources to the areas that will need them most," Mashriqui said.
In other news, the European Union has funded a computer game that Dutch, Spanish and Swedish researchers say they hope will further understanding of sustainable water use. The game's landscape is based on geographic information from a region in Spain, a country that has been hurting from a severe water shortage.
U.S. Trade Official Visits Cambodia
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab met with Cambodian Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh last week for the first time in Cambodia to discuss ways to broaden trade and investment ties between the countries.
Schwab and Prasidh discussed Cambodia's economic growth and the implementation of legal and trade reforms that Cambodia committed to when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2004. The officials also discussed Cambodia's efforts to protect intellectual property rights.
"Cambodia is working hard to put the right policies in place to support an open and welcoming environment for trade and investment," Schwab said in a statement. "There has been real progress on the ground. We will continue to work together to build momentum to sustain these reform efforts."
Trade between the United States and Cambodia totaled $1.95 billion through September and $2.2 billion in 2006, according to USTR. U.S. foreign-direct investment in Cambodia is roughly $1 million, and the United States is Cambodia's largest export market, accounting for $1.85 billion worth of goods this year through September, USTR said.
Groups Launch Satellite Radio Project In Africa
Faith Satellite Radio and the World Catholic Association for Communication have been engaged in a joint initiative to supply African parishes with radio programs and multimedia content from across the world.
Satellite radios currently are being distributed to each of the Catholic dioceses in Africa. The two organizations said they hope the Catholic programming will reach 17,000 African parishes in 31 countries by the end of 2007. Faith Satellite Radio also has started an "adopt a parish" campaign to support its initiative.
Faith Satellite Radio claims to be the only such faith-based service covering Africa and Europe. Each radio can broadcast multimedia content and contains a data port that transforms into a wireless modem able to download data to personal computers at rates of up to 128 kilobits per second.
"Radio is still the most widespread electronic communication device in the world and a unique means of reaching the world's poorest communities," the catholic association said.
"Community radio broadcasting, in particular, is increasingly recognized as an important bridge across the digital divide between those who have access to the world's information resources and those who do not," according to Faith Satellite Radio.
In other African news, Nairobi's Business Daily reported that cyber-cafe operators in the Kenyan capital are being pushed to choose between legalizing their Microsoft software operating system, changing to "open source" code that can be viewed and altered by users, or shutting down.
Most cyber cafes in Kenya use Microsoft software, but many of them have been suspected of copyright infringement as part of a crackdown on illegal software, Business Daily said.
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