Monthly Archive

Thursday, January 31, 2008 – Yesterday Digicel and Telikom completed the physical link between the networks in Port Moresby. Today, Digicel and Telikom opened up their networks to the test teams to start interconnection testing. The testing of both networks is expected to take several days. Once testing is successfully completed, Digicel customers will be able to call Telikom and B Mobile customers and vice versa. Interconnection testing is essential to ensure that customers experience a high quality of service and to ensure the stability of both networks. Long term network stability will be ensured when interconnect is provided through 4 points of interconnect in Port Moresby, Lae, Hagen and Kokopo as agreed on by Telikom and Digicel.

Digicel CEO Kevin O’Sullivan said: “This is an important step towards nationwide interconnection and something we have been looking forward to since the launch of our network seven months ago. Testing is crucial to ensure that we continue to provide our customers with the high quality service that they have received since launch. Soon everyone will benefit from interconnection across networks, no matter whether you are a Digicel, Telikom or B Mobile customer, and that is what counts”.

Since its launch in July 2007, Digicel has invested in excess of K450 million in Papua New Guinea including substanial investment in its international gateway.The company is expected to invest a total of K1billion in the next three years.

Loko: We’re on

TELIKOM PNG Ltd chief executive officer Peter Loko yesterday assured mobile phone users B-Mobile was ready to interconnect today.
“Telikom is entirely ready to switch on interconnection tomorrow in compliance (with Government policy) and will do so tomorrow (today),” he told the Post-Courier last night.
While all looks set for the Government-owned company, it is understood Irish-owned Digicel is yet to do a compulsory four-day interconnect test before switching on their equipment.
Besides that Digicel (PNG) CEO Kevin O’Sullivan is concerned interconnection is not happening fast enough and appears to be only for Telikom’s Port Moresby-based customers.
“Put simply, Telikom and Digicel have agreed to join their networks at four places around the country. Telikom, however, appears to be concentrating only on Port Moresby and is not ready in the other three places: namely Lae, Hagen and Kokopo. Digicel wishes to ensure that all its customers are able to make and receive calls from Telikom and B-Mobile,” he said in a statement yesterday.
But Mr Loko yesterday said “extra points of interconnection” were not necessary to achieve full interconnection, giving the strongest hint yet that Telikom will not immediately set up interconnection equipment in Lae, Hagen, and Kokopo to reduce network congestion as per an agreement with Digicel.
“Extra points of interconnection are only required in the future to reduce potential congestion. They are not required for Telikom to achieve full interconnection of both mobile and fixed line on January 31,” he said.
It will cost Telikom about $US200,000 (K589,101.62) to set up the equipment in the three regional centres.
Mr Loko is confident network congestion, which became a growing problem for B-Mobile before the entry of Digicel, will not be an issue from today.
“The public has no reason to be anxious about congestion or prices (because) as far as Telikom is concerned we have plenty of capacity,” he said.
IN a bid to fast-track interconnection, Digicel initially offered to use its network to reroute all B-Mobile and Telikom traffic from throughout the country to Port Moresby, where it will then be interconnected by the government-owned company.
It also offered interconnection equipment free-of-charge to Telikom to temporarily set up and use in Lae, Hagen and Kokopo while its engineers worked on their own radio link machines.
But Telikom turned down both offers and, according to Mr Loko yesterday, should be able to handle extra traffic from Digicel’s network, which Mr O’Sullivan recently said had 200 on-air sites nationwide covering two million people. Mr Loko also allayed fears there would be an increase in Digicel’s international rates when it uses Telikom’s international gateway following the lapse of its own international gateway licence.
But Mr O’Sullivan has warned his customers will have to cope with increased rates.
“If Digicel is forced to stop using its own international gateway, this would result in Digicel customers having to accept Telikom’s congestion problems, quality of service and increased retail rates. Customers would also be prevented from internationally roaming or making or receiving international text messages,” he said.

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Wednesday 30th
Pricing talks stall hook-up

TELIKOM is still struggling against government directions to review its inter-connection rates, a situation now casting doubts on its promise to interconnect with Digicel tomorrow.
The state-owned company yesterday shifted the blame to foreign-owned Digicel, saying it was the one playing delaying tactics because it was going to lose its “temporary” international gateway service if it interconnected.
But Communications Minister Patrick Tammur on Monday night told Papua New Guineans “Digicel is here to stay”. Because the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission allowed Digicel to use its own international gateway pending agreements on inter-connection, he would leave the matter to the consumer watchdog to sort out.
Telikom officials, speaking on behalf of their boss Peter Loko, yesterday refused to confirm if inter-connection was going to be deferred again. The National Executive Council has not yet approved the rates as both companies are still negotiating.
But Telikom officers said “pricing is still an issue” and Digicel was the one raising all the doubts about the rates, especially regarding the mobile to fixed line calls.
Telikom last week announced the Government had directed it be given a one-week grace period to review its phone call rates before it inter-connected with Digicel.
The claim Digicel was delaying inter-connection was raised last month but the Irish-owned company denied those claims, saying it had always been ready to inter-connect.
Despite Port Moresby already being ready to be connected to Digicel network, as of yesterday, the other three points of connection – Lae, Rabaul and Mt Hagen – were still undergoing technical works to allow inter-connection as scheduled tomorrow.
Asked if customers could make calls from a mobile to a landline telephone if Digicel inter-connected with Telikom, the officers said making calls from a Digicel mobile to a landline “is likely not to be possible”.
Telikom officers said yesterday “all Telikom mobiles are routed through Boroko, and the bearer circuit from Boroko Exchange to Digicel tower was completed last Saturday’’.
“All other equipment needed by Telikom to interconnect B mobiles is also in place and under test. Seventy per cent of landlines are also routed through Boroko, and they are also covered by the Boroko Exchange equipment.
“Telikom engineers are currently installing the equipment at the other three points of interconnection (Kokopo, Hagen and Lae), to connect the remaining 30 per cent of landlines.”
Mr Loko in Monday night’s National Broadcasting Corpo-ration’s Talk Back Show raised hopes other negotiating parties would be ready for inter-connection tomorrow, adding the state-owned teleco company was “aiming” for interconnection as planned on that day.
“Our timeframe was to start the test on the 25th of January, testing ends on the 31st. I think all parties hopefully will be ready but we are working towards the 31st as we promised,” Mr Loko said. Mr Loko, backed by acting Communications Secretary Henao Iduhu, could not reveal when the review process would end and whether rates would be lowered.
Mr Loko added: “I really can’t comment but market force will determine the rates.”

By Emmanuel Narokobi

Workshop Programme: ict-workshop-programme.doc

One of the disappointing aspects of the workshop was that there was no representation or apologies sent by the government. No one from the Ministry of Communications turned up and even worse no one from Telikom turned up as well. To be fair though PANGTEL was well represented and ICCC attended. Both very important players in the ICT policy development. Although not directly government but an adviser to the government, was Noel Mobiha. Mr. Mobiha is in charge of setting up the government TV station which is now aimed at starting by September this year.

During question time after Session 4, Peter Aitsi of PNG FM asked Mr. Mobiha if the government would be making the updated policy public for everyone to read. Mr. Mobiha advised that ‘it was not his call’ and so all he could do was promise to take across our concerns and issues. This is unfortunate in addition to the fact that no one from the Ministry or Telikom turned up. For starters it gives us the impression that:

• They don’t care what we think and ‘they will shove it down our throats whether we like it or not’ (as passionately stated by Graham Ainui, CEO of the Rural Industries Council). In other words there is no participation and transparency in the development of the ICT policy.
• Telikom again continues to show that they are NOT ‘always there’. It looks unprofessional and it allows everyone to continuously critise them when it could have been a great opportunity for them to tell us what they are up to. To be honest I truly believe that Mr. Loko has done a tremendous job up to date considering what he has to face. Telikom is a huge ship to turn and dealing with the old guard and trying to re-train 52 years of operating one way to a new dynamic company is not an easy task. So it would have been a great opportunity for Telikom to come and tell us the issues they face and what they are doing to overcome them and what targets and goals they have set to achieve in the short term, medium term and long term.
• Digicel is the only one out there making things happen. Digicel was profusely thanked by the speakers and public (and by myself too, for giving us work). But people have to understand that it takes more then one player to grow the whole industry. The CEO of Digicel made the effort to be there and he himself stated that they needed Telikom as much as Telikom needed them to make competition work for the benefit of PNG.

So in the absence of Telikom and the Ministry’s presence, CEO of Digicel, Kevin O’Sullivan explained their views. O’Sullivan repeatedly stated about how ‘passionate’ they were about their jobs and as a marketing tool and as plain business sense just by being there he already had won over the crowd. His take was that:

• Competition had already proven to be beneficial, not just for them but definitely also for Telikom. So for the whole industry it was clear that competition was working,
• A competitive climate had to be maintained,
• Competition had to be enabled across the board,
• They had to have and be able to maintain an effective network. In this sense it was important to them that they own their own international gateway separate from Telikom, so that they could ensure 1) coverage, 2) affordability, 3) Reliability, 4) a state of the art network and 5) interconnection. He said that Digicel operated in 27 other countries around the world and the only way they can control pricing and quality is by owning their own international gateway as they do in their other operations around the world.
• competition and their operations would have a direct effect on improving social and and economic standards of living in PNG.

So in short the ‘Right Framework’ had to be in place so there was a level playing field for all players. And on the issue of interconnection, Mr O’Sullivan stated again that they were ready and just waiting for Telikom. However it looks like it will be more towards the end of this month and NOT the 25th as stated in the media. Also it will initially start in major centres only like POM, Lae and Hagen.

The big thing I took away from O’Sullivan’s presentation was the issue of each company having a separate international gateway. At present it appears to me that Telikom has it’s Tiare gateway and Digicel is running it’s own gateway. Some months back my thinking was that to protect Telikom (being our PNG company) all companies operating telephony and data services in PNG should just go through Tiare so that revenue can be returned to our government. However after listening to the arguments on quality and effective competition it’s starting to make sense that each service provider is allowed to have their own international gateway. I will explain this a bit more in my next post on the views from the ISP’s.

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Read Also: ICT in PNG: Who the Hell is Doing What in PNG?

By Emmanuel Narokobi

A very big thank you to the University of PNG, INA, NRI, ADB, Business Council of PNG, Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Consultative and Monitoring Council for hosting the ICT workshop at UPNG.

We had a good size crowd there with a nice mix of industry players, consultants, aid workers, students and government officers. I got in a bit late and was able to catch the last part of Prof. Sumbuk’s analysis on the ICT Policy and as I walked in to find a seat in the front, I was quite impressed with how many people had turned up. The main focus of the workshop was for the speakers to comment on the ICT policy and to give their experiences and opinions and what they felt would best way for the policy serve the ICT industry. Chairman of the speakers noted that the great number of people that turned up was a good indication of the high level of interest in the subject matter and what it entailed for PNG.

Before I go on, you can see the programme and list of speakers at this link (ict-workshop-programme.doc), and copies of the ICT policy documents are listed below:

1. IPBC Covering letter
   
2. PNG Telecommunications Deregulation Blueprint (May 2007)
3. National Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Policy

Quite allot was said as the workshop ran for the whole day with a range of interesting speakers. Unfortunately I was only able to get the papers of 2 speakers. I will go through the papers of 2 speakers first and as I get papers of the others I’ll write them up as as well. Most of it I have as notes so I’ll also write those up as well in the next couple of posts.

1. Prof Ken Sumbuk, Pro Vice-Chancellor: A general over view of IT and a timeline of the technologies developed that have lead us to the IT of today was shown.

• In regards to the ICT policy, Prof. stated that Part 1 of the policy should capture the distinctive purpose of the policy, which is the continuous improvement of existing facilities and at the same time employing a careful introduction of new communications technologies. The objectives and goals should be realistic and be reflective of the current status of the ICT in PNG. In his opinion the policy was not focusing on the things that will make the most progress toward accomplishing the vision of the policy paper.
• In Part 2 of the policy paper, in regards to ICT infrastructure and access. He stated that it would be a major challenge to ensure that appropriate and affordable ICT infrastructure was in place and that it was accessible to as many citizens as possible.
• On the Competitive and Efficient Service Devlivery part of the policy paper, he stated that this was where the policy should ensure healthy competition in the industry. Despite the declarations in the policy of creating competition the ICT policy clearly identifies and protects Telikom as the sole agent of the state in being the wholesaler of the telecommunications services in the country. This is provided for under the Operational Separation Model (NetCo/ServCo). Prof asked if we could honestly talk of a genuine competitive environment for ICT investors with the protection of Telikom being in the policy. Especially considering our current experience with the lack of interconnectivity between B-mobile and Digicel. He stated that the next abvious question then to ask was who will protect Service Delivery Companies (ServCo’s) in this monopolised Telco environment. Would it be ICCC?
• On the Use of Internet, he could not agree more with the policies recognition of the importance and use of the Internet in today’s society. He cited statistics that in 2000, more than 106 million US citizens went online with 80% looking for information, 73% researching a product or service before buying, 68% looking for travel information and 65% looking for information on movies, books and leisure activities. He hoped that this aspect of the policy would be fully realised and implemented.
• On Educating the Nation, his point was that obviously the internet needs to play a crucial role here. However despite the recognition in the policy educational institutions, especially universities have been constantly blocked from acquiring licenses for the educational purposes. UPNG had in fact applied twice and on both attempts had been knocked back. Prof believed that this was not in line with the spirit of the ICT policy. He stated that this aspect needed to be vigorously implemented if we were to be serious about ICT assisting in the education of the nation.
• On Policy, Legal and Ruglatory Structures, crime related to interconnectivity and easy access to the internet is widespread in the western world. So it was important that intellectual property rights and consumer rights were also protected by legislation in this regard.
• On the Role of Government and Development, essentially the government is simply to be an enabler, regulator and provider of ICT based services.
• Prof. explained that in look at the policy and any policy really for that matter. 3 important questions need to be asked for a fuller understanding. 1) Feasibility, how difficult is it? in other words what investment both in terms of finance and human resources will be required to make it work? 2) Acceptability, How worthwhile is it? As in what returns in terms financial and performance improvement will it give? 3) Vulnerability, what could go wrong? What are the risks involved if things go wrong?
• Other suggestions made were that the policy should have included attempts to cooperate also on a regional scale with PNG’s ICT development. The policy also concentrated only on mobile and internet and didn’t go into any detail regarding the media such as radio and TV. Lastly no clear provision was made as to how the rural population could be catered for specifically.
• In conclusion Prof Sumbuk’s opinion was that the policy was overly ambitious and impractical in achieving a truly competitive environment.

2. Lois Stanley, Lawyer/ICT specialist/lecturer, UPNG: Lois gave a run down of the legal history in terms of how the ICT industry started and arriving at where it is today. She discussed the current legislative arrangements and the law under which the sector is regulated and operated; and she gave her thoughts on the new ICT policy.

• Historical Background. Department of Posts and Telegraph was established in 1955 by the Australian colonial administration. There were 42 post offices across the then colony of Papua and New Guinea and 17 telephone exchanges operated by hand-wound magnetos.
• Use of telephone was reviewed in 1962. Subsequently the Telecommunications Division was established.
• From just a Department of Posts and Telegraph, the department was changed to the Department of Information and Communication in 1973 when the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) was established. It took over the operations of the PNG branch of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and the broadcasting arm of what was known as the Dept. of Information and extension Studies.
• The Department of Posts & Telegraph ceased to exist on 9th December 1975, its functions and responsibilities were subsumed under the newly formed Department of Public Utilities on 10 December 1975. It became the Postal and Telecommunications Services within this new Department.
• Following an NEC decision on 9th September 1981, an executive steering committee was setup. It’s purpose - to make a change on the status of Postal and Telecommunications Services to a “Legal Commercial Entity”
• After the executing steering committee presented it’s final report to the NEC on 16th December 1981, the NEC gave approval for the drafting of an enabling legislation. An implementation group was then formed to carry out the recommendations from the Steering Committee.
• The drafting of the Bill done by the Chief Legislative Draftsman, Officer Fraser was eventually passed into law by the National Parliament on 15 February 1982. The Post & Telecommunication Act 1982 took effect on 1 July 1982.
• Due to a shift in government policy in 1996 the Corporation was split up and corporatised. The split and corporatisation saw the creation of Telikom PNG Ltd, Post PNG Ltd and the Papua New Guinea Telecommunications Authority (PANGTEL).
• Telikom PNG ltd. was tasked with the provision of telecommunication services for profit and was given necessary legislative backing under the Telikom PNG Ltd Act 1996. Under the Telecommunications Act 1996, Telikom was given exclusive rights up to the year 2001 to provide all forms of telecommunication services within PNG and between PNG and other countries.
• Post PNG Ltd. was incorporated as a public company on 24 December 1996 and commenced trading in January 1997 as a 100% state-owned company. it is responsible for the provision of postal services for profit. Although a limited liability company incorporated under the Companies Act, it is legislatively empowered under the Postal Services Act 1996 and is given exclusive rights to carry letters and other postal related activities.
• PANGTEL, the Papua New Guinea Telecommunication Authority was established on 1st Jan 1997 by the Telecommunications Act 1996. Its creation was part of Government’s policy to corporatise Post & Telecommunications Corporation (PTC) and divide it into three different organisations: two service delivery companies incorporated as public companies under the Companies Act and on regulatory and licensing authority. PANGTEL became the sole regulator and licensing authority of the telecommunications and broadcasting in PNG.
• The radio communications sector includes radio frequency spectrum and satellite orbital positions. The radio frequency spectrum is managed pursuant to the Radio Spectrum act 1996. PANGTEL is also responsible for the management of the PNG orbital satellite parking slots.
• B-Mobile is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telikom PNG Ltd established in the late 1990′. It is regulated by the regulatory contracts pertinent to competition law issued under the Independent Consumers & Competition Commission Act 2002.
• IPBC, came into being on 30 June 2002 through its enabling legislation - IPBC Act 2002. It holds all state assets and liabilities of those state-owned enterprises (SOE). In the last Somare government (2002-June-2007), Hon. Arthur Somare was responsible for Information and Communication portfolio, and it was in that capacity that he was pushing the ICY Policy - essentially to continue to protect the business interest of Telikom PNG Ltd - a SOE for which he had political responsibility.
• Current Developments on the ICT Policy. The current policy being discussed was launched by the then Minister for Public Enterprise, Information and Development Co-operation, Hon. Arthur Somare on July 6 2007. The policy discusses a wide range of issues relating to why PNG needs to develop an ICT policy. The ares of focus are; ICT Infrastructure and Access; Competitive and Efficient Service Delivery; Educating the Nation; Policy, Legal and Regulatory Structures; and Role of Government in ICT and Development.
• Key players in ICT sector, are 1) Public, 2) Telikom, 3) National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), 4) PANGTEL, (5) ICCC [my opinion though is that the private sector like the ISP's should have been mentioned]
• Case Study of Digicel, which is a good case study of competition law being tested.
• The results of competition in only 3 weeks from Digicel’s entry into the mobile phone market showed an estimated increase in connected mobile phones from 160,000 to 315,000 and a growth in phone penetration from 3.75% to 6.3% (figures were market intelligence; phone penetration estimated connects divided by 6million pop. A 69% increase in total connects for PNG users in 3 weeks - the fastest growing network in the Asia Pacific region)
• Role of ICCC, is primarily tp act as the independent utilities regulator, free from any political interferences. Under the reform of utilities there were two requirements and these were - 1) Independent, professional regulation; and 2) the introduction of competition where appropriate.
• Any mobile phone company in PNG is a declared entity under s33 of the ICCC Act. So Regulatory Contracts were issued to each of the participants in the mobile phone market by ICCC as provided for under s35 of the ACT.
• Regulatory contracts are created statutorily under Part III, s.35(1) of the ICCC Act. Under s.37(2) of the ICCC Act a Regulatory Contract takes effect on the date of which a National Gazette is published or a later date of commencement specified in the regulatory contract.
• A Regulatory Contract is enforceable under s.38 of the ICCC Act, where in the opinion of the ICCC the contract is being contravened. The penalty of any contravention is a fine not exceeding K10,000,000.00 (Ten Million Kina), which is provided for under s39 of the Act.
• A Regulatory Contract differs from a normal contract in that normal contracts are enforceable under common law, while the former is enforceable through the ICCC Act
• In Conclusion Lois stated that in her opinion the ICT Policy was essentially aimed at strengthening and transforming Telikom and because of this the policy was against competition laws and regulatory contracts that were statutorily issued. All participants are bound by the December 2005 policy that was implemented by the government to introduce mobile phone competition.

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More to come…

By Emmanuel Narokobi

Okay I know that’s a corny title, but anyhow got an email on facebook about a David Williams who’s trying to bring exposure to snake bite victims and treatment in PNG through winning a competition run by the Holiday Inn chain of hotels. His principal research interests are in the fields of snakebite epidemiology, clinical toxinology and envenomation management and he has set up the PNG Snakebite Project. The project aims at reducing snakebite morbidity and mortality, particularly in children throughout PNG. But here is the rest of his message:

David Willims:You can read more about the work we do at http://www.kingsnake.com/aho/research/research.html

Right now I am a finalist in the Holiday Inn Hotel Chain’s “Everyday Heroes” competition. The competition has only about 2 weeks left to run, and if I can win it, the publicity will be enormously helpful to the Snakebite Project, since our work is under-funded. The global publicity that the project would get through the Holiday Inn chain could well attract new sponsors, and will raise the awareness of snakebite as a neglected tropical disease in Papua New Guinea.

I need all the votes I can possibly get, so If you don’t mind spending a few minutes casting some votes online please follow the instructions below:

1 Go to this web site..  http://www.holidayinneverydayheroes.com/readmore.aspx?id=57&page=1

2 At the top right, click on “Register”….using your email address (Each e-mail address can only vote once)

3 Pick a password so you can get back in to vote after your email is validated…use anything!

(An email would be sent to your inbox)

4   Click on the “Complete the registration” button in the email and get taken back to the website

5  Click the view all stories….Go to “David Williams…”LIFE S-S-SAVER”… Click on “read more & vote”

6…Click on 5 medals equals 5 POINTS..(Make a comment if you wish)

7 Click “submit” .. and viola you’re done!!!

If you are happy to do so, please circulate this to your facebook friends and email buddies and ask them to vote as well.

Many thanks everyone!

David Williams

By Emmanuel Narokobi

Was supposed to have lunch with a good friend of mine, Poyap Rooney…sorry Dr. Rooney, last week but got tied up at work and missed it. Will have to try see him this coming week. Quite proud of him actually cos he started off at MedFac here in Port Moresby but then ended up working in Melbourne and now he’s off to work in Tasmania in a hospital there. So really need to catch up with him before he and his family head for Tasmania.

I was to meet him and Rodney Itaki of the Pacific Family Health Journal for lunch. Which reminded me that I had promised myself I’d put up 2 links of these new blogs late last year, so doing that now. The first is Rodney’s, General Practice in PNG and this other one which I saw on his blog was the Papua New Guinea Journal of Science, Technology and Engineering which setup by VortexPNG LTD.

What interests me about these 2 blogs is that if they get used often enough by the technical people involved in the fields that they cater for, then I can see them becoming valuable forums for practically finding solutions to real life problems in PNG. Great work guys and hope to see you promoting these blogs more so that they do fulfill their aims to being useful for sharing information.

By Emmanuel Narokobi

Love is such a dictatorship. Although the song and dance of the world today is democracy, you wont find anything democratic in the corridors of the heart. And so this lady continuously haunts me, she taunts me. I feel like dying, I feel like crying, but I just end up doing a whole lot of sighing. You know those heavy drawn out sighs so laden with emotion. You do it loud enough so everyone can hear you. ‘Oh what’s wrong?’ they ask. You reply ‘Oh nothing…well if you really want to know…it’s about a girl’….’ohh’ they all chime in. But who can help me but only her.

I’ve talked to people from Simbu to Sydney and no one can ease my plight. I feel like if it gets bad enough I’m gonna have to take that flight. It’s been a long time and my heart is aching. And this is not some imaginary thing like seeing a UFO and nobody believing you. I mean it’s not like I’m looking for love of the one night variety cos I do want to know her name. I’m going crazy cos I’ve got lots of pictures in my head and maybe I just don’t want to be lonely.

If only she knew that a wantok is thinking of her…

*more here

By Emmanuel Narokobi

Sunday Chronicle announced today that Dr. Temu has set the 25th of this month for Telikom and Digicel to commence interconnectivity. Digicel said they would be ready to do it like tomorrow and Telikom have said that they are waiting on something from Digicel…okay, like Whateverrrr!!!! Just interconnect.

So I’m just jotting down the 25th in my Dairy now, (well not really a diary but the calendar on my Outlook program).

In January 2005, MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte announced the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, a utopian attempt to improve education in poor communities through the design and global distribution of cheap, low-power laptops. Eventually, Negroponte said, the laptop would sell for a hundred dollars. The program was conceived on a grand scale: Negroponte initially claimed that the laptop would not go into production until governments worldwide had placed a total of five million orders.

But the million-unit orders never materialized. To date, Peru is the program’s largest customer by a large margin, having ordered about 270,000 laptops. So in November 2007, the laptop, dubbed the XO, went into production anyway, at a cost of roughly $188 a unit. At about the same time, OLPC began its holiday-season Give 1 Get 1 drive: any donor who contributed $399 to the project would receive a complimentary XO, and a second XO would be sent to a poor community.

Some observers considered the drive a desperate attempt to inject cash into a floundering endeavor. Then, last week, Intel walked away from a tempestuous six-month partnership with OLPC, scotching the planned unveiling of an Intel version of the XO at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The main point of contention appears to have been Intel’s attempts to sell its own cheap laptop, the Classmate PC, to governments that had already made provisional commitments to OLPC.

OLPC claims that Intel violated a nondisparagement clause in its contract; Intel claims that the clause bound only the company’s officers, not its sales force. The New York Times greeted the news with a headline announcing “The Demise of One Laptop per Child.”

Earlier this week, Technology Review senior editor Larry Hardesty sat down with Walter Bender, OLPC’s president for software and content, to discuss both Intel’s withdrawal and the overall health of the initiative.

Technology Review: What effect does Intel’s departure have on the program?

Walter Bender: Zero. Intel had contributed nothing. They contributed nothing to our current product, the XO. They contributed nothing to our learning models. They contributed nothing to the software. So their going away, so far, is a wash for us.

TR: Isn’t this just the latest blow to the program?

WB: After what?

TR: After large contracts not materializing. Originally, wasn’t there a minimum requirement for a government order?

WB: Originally, there was. We certainly made some mistakes along the way. And one mistake was to be a little bit too rigid in our model. Part of it was just based on some false assumptions on our part in terms of what kind of volume we needed to get things launched. And we thought that going to a few large orders was the best way to jump-start things, to prime the pump.

Some of us, our instinct was quite different. And that was to try to get a broad base and try to make this a grassroots, bottom-up launch instead of a top-down launch. Now, it turns out that we have both. And really, what we’re after is any good idea. So on the one hand, we actually do have some large orders. Maybe not as large as we had originally hoped for, but we’re going to do a quarter of a million laptops just in Peru. And we’re doing something on a similar scale in Uruguay.

Those are examples of top-down. But then there’s a lot of bottom-up. We just did about 100,000 bottom-up machines that we’re going to be distributing through the “give” part of the Give 1 Get 1 program.

WB: Yeah. And that broken display that someone’s going to toss in a landfill somewhere–the one I have from Lenovo has mercury in it. The one that we make doesn’t. So we’ve thought about this stuff. This is not a hack. It’s not an academic exercise. It’s serious stuff, and it’s stuff that we’re doing better than anybody else right now. And we hope that the rest of the world learns from what we’re doing and does better than us. But right now they aren’t. But they will. And that’s part of the plan.

TR: Does that mean you plan to license your technology to other manufacturers?

WB: That’s something we’ve been struggling with. We need an economist to help us figure this one out. It’s not clear to me that we wouldn’t be better serving kids to make everything we’ve done be available to anybody for any purpose. And that might get more laptops to more kids faster.

TR: So from your perspective, this could still be a success even if you stopped manufacturing laptops and the technology found its way into a dozen different laptops …

WB: Yep. But I think it’s premature to do that. And the reason is quite simple: unless we keep the pressure on, the prices are going to go up, the efficiencies are going to go down, and we’re going to be right back to the same “bigger, faster” model. We’ve got to keep the pressure on and keep the industry honest until we’ve really proven that this other way is viable. Because otherwise, next year’s Intel machine will be more expensive and more power hungry, and that’s not going to serve the needs of these kids.

TR: Okay, I have to say, I’ve played with the laptop, and it seems slow.

WB: Well, it’s certainly slow compared to the laptop you carry around. But the metric you have to measure things by is not Grand Theft Auto III. The metric you want to measure things by is learning. The word processor keeps up with my typing. The video camera works just fine. The music programs work just fine. It’s a perfectly adequate platform for kids for learning. Every decision we make is, How does this enhance the learning? And the bottom line is, if you can’t turn it on since you can’t power it, a fast processor doesn’t do you very much good.

TR: There’s also the question of whether laptops are really what governments should be sinking resources into.

WB: The way Nicholas [Negroponte] likes to put it is, substitute the word “education” for “laptop.” And then ask, “Should we be giving these kids education?” “Nah, they don’t need education! Education is a luxury. Why should we give them education?” What we’re advocating is that the laptop is the most efficient way we know of of giving them an opportunity for real learning. It’s not that we’re interested in laptops; we’re interested in learning. And it turns out that almost 50 years of research by people like [computer scientist and educational theorist] Seymour Papert has demonstrated that computation is a wonderful thing to think with. It’s powerful stuff. And it’s going to change these kids’ lives dramatically for the better.

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For more info on the OLPC, check out these links:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$100_laptop

2. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home

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And for you techies out there here is a rip up of the XO-1 from bunnie’s blog

I got an OLPC XO-1 a few days ago in the mail as part of the give one, get one program. Hopefully some child out there is enjoying their new laptop–there’s a certain amount of opacity in the process so I have no idea even if this laptop went to some needy far-flung village in a developing nation, as most of the propaganda would have you believe. I don’t mean to be too critical; I recognize that proper allocation of charitable resources is one of the most difficult tasks anyone can attempt, but a donation the magnitude of the laptop, even if it is only $200, is big money in the most needy countries. I somehow hesitate to think if I shouldn’t have just given a check to UNICEF instead to provide medicine to newborns. Then again, as long as one laptop is being delivered to somewhere that’s needy, I’m not doing bad compared to some other charities, where often more than half the donation is retained to cover management fees and fundraising costs. I also got a laptop out of this…so for whatever reason, Negroponte’s logic was successful in convincing me.

Well, the point of this blog isn’t to discuss the merits of charities. We like hardware, and the OLPC XO-1 is an interesting piece of hardware. There are plenty of teardowns for the OLPC XO-1 (including one on the OLPC wiki itself), so I won’t repeat the tedium of what screw comes out of where and just cut to what I thought were interesting highlights.

If I were to make one general comment about the OLPC XO-1, it’s that its mechanical design is brilliant. It’s a fairly clean-sheet redesign of traditional notebook PC mechanics around the goal of survivability, serviceability, and robustness (then again, I’ve never taken apart any of the ruggedized notebooks out there). When closed up for “travel”, all the ports are covered, and the cooling system is extremely simple so it should survive in dusty and dirty environments. Significantly, the port coverings aren’t done with rubberized end caps that you can lose or forget to put on–they are done using the wifi antennae, and the basic design causes the user to swivel them back to cover the ports when they are packing up the laptop to go. That’s thoughtful design.

The OLPC is one of the first devices to use the Li-Fe-P battery chemistry. My understanding is that it’s safer than normal Lithium Ions (and those who have been reading the chumby fora are aware of my liability and safety concerns around putting a Lithium Ion battery into any device), but it has a lower capacity.

Unlike most other laptops, the OLPC is easy to take apart and service–something important for a device you are sending to a remote region of the world. The LCD, which is shock mounted, was clearly designed to be easy to replace if it was broken–a few screws to remove, some panels to slide off, and you’re done. This is unlike my T60p, where even the trained tech who did the warranty repair on it couldn’t quite put humpty dumpty back together again.

The display is made by Chilin (which is related to Chi Mei, one of the major LCD glass manufacturers–the current chumby’s glass is made by them as well). I had the fortune of meeting Scott Song from Chilin at China FOO, and he was telling me some of the interesting yet lesser-known features about the LCD. In addition to the celebrated dual-mode monochrome/color transreflective layer stack used by the panel, it also features a removeable backlight LED bar. Aside from mechanical abuse, the most common failure mode for an LCD is the backlight burning out. Most LED backlights are rated for only about 10,000 hours–if that–and it’s expensive to trash a whole LCD for the failure of a fifty cent component. Therefore, the backlight bar was designed to be easily replaced.

I gave it a whirl on the OLPC, and it certainly lived up to its expectations. Usually, to get to the backlight bar, you have to risk destroying the LCD panel, but in this case, two screws was all it took.

I decided to fire up the backlight outside the display, and let me tell you, that sucka is bright.

Note that the photo above wasn’t taken in the dark–it’s just that the camera shutter had to tighten up so much so that the background looked dark. If I were in the third world, I probably would say screw the laptop, I’m taking the backlight bar out and lighting my home with it!

Here again is a close-up of the pixel array used by the transreflective display (click on the image for a much larger version).

One very slick thing about the OLPC software is that I can hit a button on the lower left hand corner and it will rotate the display rendering by 90 degrees each press of the button. This allows me to easily fold the display back and use it as a sunlight-readable eBook device.

Thanks in part to the low power of the Geode CPU, the design mounts the motherboard against the LCD, unlike most laptops where the motherboard is under the keyboard. This configuration has some simplicity advantages, especially considering the flexibility required by the display unit that can be flipped 180 degrees in either direction. The heatsink for the CPU consists simply of a thin metal heat spreader, which is in close proximity to the plastic casing: no cooling holes, fins, or fans to collect dust and break (notice how the Intel Classmate PC features prominent cooling holes for its under-keyboard CPU module). It also doesn’t burn your lap up while you are using it (although the display still does get quite warm when you use it–I tucked it into my jacket once to keep me warm while running around outside in the cold).

Here’s a photo of the motherboard with the heat spreader on:

And here’s a hi-res photo of it with the heat spreader off (click on the image to access the hi-res version):

Notice how both of the large BGA chips are underfilled to provide better shock and vibration robustness. I actually have never seen an underfill like this before–it seems to be oozing out of the edges–and it also doesn’t seem to be very uniform (some spots seem to have a little underfill missing). Most underfills I’m familiar with to attempt to cover every gap and void underneath a chip (which is actually a very hard process problem); maybe this is some new kind of underfilling technique that expands a little bit upon cure to help cover voids and its robust to a few missing spots. If a reader is familiar with this type of underfill technique, I’d appreciate a link to it.

Here’s the backside of the motherboard, nice and simple (again, click for the hi-res version):

And here are some detail shots, first of the camera:

And of the wifi:

A little trivia here–this is the same chipset used inside the Microsoft Xbox360 Wireless Networking Adapter.

Presumably Microsoft doesn’t use the programmable ARM core in the Marvell 88W8388 to do something as magnanimous as bringing mesh wifi networking to the third world–probably it’s used to help implement security authentication to support their high ASPs for their closed accessories and to implement Microsoft-enhanced protocol tweaks that helps lock out competitors. Engineers make guns, they don’t tell you where to point them–that’s up to the marketing guys. Hackers take these guns apart and use the barrels and stocks as tubing and lumber to build functional art. Sometimes the art includes a bigger gun or a barrel that points backwards, and often it’s up to the media to interpret what this cryptic art means. Really, most of the time, it was done just because it’s fun to make art, but that doesn’t sell copy.

The OLPC’s wifi sensitivity is really quite excellent–the dual antennae clear of the laptop’s body do wonders for sensitivity. On the other hand, I had some trouble getting the native UI to associate the OLPC to my access point, and to get it to stay there. Overall, the software on the OLPC is clever but very “appliance-like”: there are some pre-loaded applications and it’s not immediately obvious how to add new applications using the native UI (it’s hackable from the command line but that’s not very beginner-friendly). Then again, it does include some education-oriented scripting languages that kids can use to write programs, even if it does lack a local gcc installation, and it includes the basic infrastructure for chat, video, audio, and photo sharing functionalities. If anything, I think the OLPC could play an important part in helping people keep in touch better in remote parts of the world, with some software improvements in that area (I don’t have two of these so I wasn’t able to test how easy it is to share files or connect to each other over other protocols). It also didn’t have an easy way to reconfigure the keyboard to the dvorak format that I type (I probably have to go in and hack the X configuration files via the commandline) and the keyboard is not at all comfortable for adult hands to type on–maybe I will have to plug a full-sized keyboard into the USB port to do anything extensive with the device, which sort of voids the portability aspect of the laptop. Then again, the laptop was designed for children with smaller hands, and not adults like me. Wait, I’m an adult? Crap!

Finally, some screenshots of the OLPC XO-1’s OS configuration:

Interestingly, the OLPC ships with a hardware AES unit. Great for privacy, but presumably this is going to cause some troubles for the US government export controls when it comes to shipping the OLPC to certain third world countries on certain blacklists…I know I had to fill out parts of a somewhat thorny encryption questionnaire for the chumby lawyers as part of preparation for chumby’s sale.

By Emmanuel Narokobi

I actually wrote this post last year and didn’t put it up for various reasons but thought I’d better do it now before it becomes irrelevant and also after seeing the great work being done with WIMAX as reported by our Vanuatu friend, The Red Tank. Most of the heated Hoo-Hagh between Telikom and Digicel has died down now but some questions still remain to be answered about our Information Communications Technology industry.

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‘Wanna Be‘, made a comment on one of my posts which he said:

“I don’t know if you read Sundays Independent [Sunday Chronicle] but one of the writers was going on about satellites and air space and all that. He wouldn’t have won any prizes for outstanding journalism or anything but don’t you think he’s on to something there?”

This got me thinking more about the current governments Information and Communications Technology or ICT policy and where it’s heading for us. You can read them yourself here (in PDF):

1. IPBC Covering letter
   
2. PNG Telecommunications Deregulation Blueprint (May 2007)
3. National Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Policy
   

I have read the policy papers, which although sets out some noble goals and aspirations to developing ICT in PNG and the strategies it will take, the policy documents however remain very muddy on the roles of the players in the industry. It would perhaps be fair to say that the current policies do not reflect in anyway the existing Telecommunications laws of PNG. The laws currently support a controlled deregulation of the industry. So that would mean that although de-regulation is to happen it will do so under certain guidelines.

For most of us, how our ICT sector is developing can be easily understood by following the players and their services in PNG. In terms of the players then, what are their guidelines and what are the rules for them to follow under the new ICT policy? This is important as it goes back to the heart of everyones concerns about ‘competition’ being the catalyst for better prices and efficient services.

Now before I continue I want to state clearly here that I am not placing any blame on any player here. Everyone involved has a story to tell and everyone feels that they have a right to the positions they have taken. The main issue here is that there are allot of positions here and someone has to make it clear as to where everyone should stand.

ICT services in PNG fall under 3 major categories:

1. Landlines (PSTN); voice and fax services
2. Data; internet both wired and wireless
3. Mobile; mobile telephony (however this is not clear cut as it can involve data services as well)

Roughly 5 years ago all we had was Telikom which was regulated by PANGTEL alone. The Independent Consumer & Comptition Commission(ICCC) did not exist back then. Telikom was the sole provider for all our ICT needs. When deregulation was ear marked through legislation in the Telecommunications Act of 1997, two types of roles for players were discussed to be allowed to exist in PNG at that time.

1. Carriers: which in our case would be Telikom. The carrier would own the landline infrastructure. It would be the only one that can provide telephony services and it would be the only one that can run the international gateway for both telephony and internet services, and

2. Value Added Service (VAS) Providers: This would be mobile phone companies and internet service providers. For example Digicel has a VAS license which is restricted to mobile services and ISP’s have VAS licenses that are restricted to internet services.

On top of the above allowable roles for players in the ICT sector when deregulation was trying to be introduced, the ICCC came into existence. The ICCC therefore took over the role of regulating pricing of ICT services and PANGTEL was to regulate the technical side of ICT services.

Carrier Services

Coming back to the players in the industry, 5 years ago before deregulation was a hot topic, the playing field looked like this; Landlines and Mobile Phones were only restricted to Telikom and Data services were being re-sold from Telikom to customers through ISP’s like Daltron, Datec, Global and Online South Pacific. (There used to be a 5th ISP called Data General but it went out of play around the time it was bought by HiTech Industries from Remington). So the only competition happening at that time in PNG’s ICT sector was at the internet service level. The ISP’s did this through their Value Added Service License for Internet.

However there is one internet player that seemed and is still out of place and this is the high speed broadband internet supply company called NewSat. NewSat entered the internet market to provide internet services to mining companies via satellite and VSAT in areas which were described as ‘remote’ locations. Because Telikom at the time was not at the service levels that mining companies were happy with, they naturally switched to NewSat. The arrangement that NewSat had with Telikom was that because Telikom had no services in these ‘remote’ locations it was a legal right for communications to be available to everyone and so Telikom allowed NewSat to provide their services to their ‘remote’ customers.

Keep in mind that the policy in the last 5 years was to only provide for 2 types of players; carriers and value added services. So if NewSat, (which is still here in PNG today) is allowed to bring in internet from overseas bypassing Telikom’s infrastructure and direct to customers, doesn’t that make them a carrier? How can a company that is not registered in PNG, who pays no taxes to PNG and does not even employ anyone in PNG get approval to provide carrier services?

What this means then is that maybe Digicel should bring in internet on their own accord? Actually speaking of Digicel, you can make and receive international calls with them too so have they taken on the carrier role as well in providing international telephony access? My point is that if anyone with money can bring in carrier grade services into PNG like NewSat and Digicel then how is this regulated? How does PANGTEL and ICCC decide who can take on the big wholesale jobs of supplying telephony and data services into the country?

This is what I mean when I say that the new ICT policy does not clarify the roles of the players in the industry. Although it is in fact claiming that Telikom will take on the lions share of carrier services it does not layout a clear picture of how other carrier grade providers (like NewSat and Digicel) were let in and how they were qualified to be doing what they are doing right now.

As we all know there is nothing wrong with competition but it has to be done correctly so that we know that registered PNG companies are running these carrier services and we need to have a qualifying process for them so that we know that the companies coming in as opposed to others that may have tendered will provide competitive rates with savings to be passed onto us telephony and internet customers.

Value Added Service (VAS) Providers

In the VAS role we have our ISP’s, Digicel and Green Com. The ISP’s in the past enjoyed the clear distinctions between Telikom being a carrier and them being re-sellers for internet via the Tiare Gateway. With the above mentioned introduction of NewSat and possibly Digicel (for internet on their mobile phones) this poses a a number of questions again about regulating competition in the market.

Firstly with NewSat, they are not a registered PNG company and so another question besides why PANGTEL let them in is what ICCC is doing about it? Why are they not paying taxes? If they are not a registered PNG company then how can ICCC regulate the rates that they are offering in the country? NewSat still operates today through their agents Hitron and you only have to look at the Hitron website to find out what services they provide. So from a regulatory point of view is NewSat a carrier and is Hitron a re-seller to NewSat? Do we have the regulatory framework to classify what they are doing?

On top of that comes Telikom with their wireless internet service being sold directly to the customers called Telinet. Now if Telikom is a carrier then why is it bypassing registered ISP’s with licences who are already re-selling internet for Telikom? Isn’t that anti-competitive? Haven’t we been crying about competition all this time? Of course if it is an efficient and cheaper service then I’m all for it and I’d break down my door to get to it, but again, what is the process for Telikom qualifying to do that? Because if they do that then why can’t Digicel do the same since it already acts as a Carrier why can’t it just get an internet gateway too and start selling internet to it’s mobile phone customers?

The potential problem is this, if Telikom controls all roles of providing the internet both wireless and via ADSL (which it has started but is waiting ICCC approval), then do we want to be stuck with a huge demand for the services when their linesmen (especially for ADSL since it runs on copper wires) cannot get to you because they are busy? They have failed miserably with landlines for years so how do we know if they can improve with their implementation with the potentially huge demand for these new Telinet and ADSL services?

Value for Services in the long term

One cannot ignore Telikom’s huge drop in prices for their Telinet service. I currently use Daltron’s wireless broadband and I’m hit with a bill of roughly K2,600.00 per month (Daltron’s rates have since dropped). Telikom can give me a 1.5MB service with a 1000MB cap at K119.00 per month. I have to applaud Telikom there, I am as excited as the next man about prices like this. From asking a couple of friends about whether they would jump at this, it was all a resounding ‘Definitely!!!…the ISP’s have ripped us off for so long’. The majority if not all the businesses and anyone else who spends allot on internet will no doubt switch over because it makes plain business sense.

I know some people may not care as to why ISP’s have been so called ‘ripping us off’, but if we are to develop ICT in PNG then all the players must have protection for their investments. PANGTEL threatening Digicel is a perfect example of this. From what I can gather our ISP’s have also been faced with fighting on an uneven playing field.

ISP’s have invested allot of money in the past several years especially on wireless internet and so how will their investments be protected?

Where to from now?

The splitting of Telikom into 2 companies will be an interesting exercise. It makes sense in some ways in that the infrastructure part is handled by one company and the actual services by another. But you have to wonder if our economy is large enough to adopt such a strategy? It seems like a first world strategy for a developed and robust economy, because I would’ve thought that all we needed to improve in Telikom was it’s management. I would hate to think that perhaps splitting the company is a way for dressing up one of them for an eventual fire sale.

If the Telikom split is to go ahead anyway and if that is what we will be living with for the rest of our lives then lets do this properly and lets clarify the roles. The roles of the 2 purported Telikom companies and all the players in the industry need to be classified and regulated appropriately because what we all need is a vibrant ICT industry where all service providers know what they can and cannot do in PNG.

The ICT Policy reads:

“At the heart of this Strategy is the recognition of the importance of three interrelated enabling conditions:

• Connection: Affordable access to viable ICT infrastructure such as telecommunications networks, computers, internet signal, mobile phones and other devices.
• Confidence: Developing the necessary skills at all ages, in all parts of society, to use and participate in ICT effectively. Such skills include functional and digital literacy and the ability to take part in an interactive electronic environment. Confidence also encompasses the dimension of trust in using ICT and addressing the challenges that may erode trust in electronic commerce such as spam and electronic crime.
• Content: The information which can be made available through digital networks includes national heritage collections, goverment information, local language resources and research databases. Trough effective uses of the internet, the people of Papua New Guinea can gain access to online facilities for entertainment, learning and business as well as information generated by government, businesses and community organisations.

These three dimensions reinforce one another. Being connected provides the means, confidence provides the skills and trust and content provides the reason for engaging in the ICT age.”

Being dynamic in the services you can provide is one thing but being dynamic in how you deliver and have your services paid for is a totally separate issue. So I believe that the three C’s as provided above are admirable, but for my argument here in this post, who will build the connections? The players of course. They are the ones who will provide the efficient and competitive delivery of content that will determine confidence.

It is a mammoth task for all players to develop our ICT industry and Telikom and the government need to learn how to work with the private sector and know how to make concessions when implementing their ICT strategies. Everyone in the ICT industry has the potential to catapult all our dreams into the future if they are all simply given clear roles and a level playing field to play in. In the end that is where proper competition will bring the results we all want.

What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC.

By John Hockenberry

 
The most memorable reporting I’ve encountered on the conflict in Iraq was delivered in the form of confetti exploding out of a cardboard tube. I had just begun working at the MIT Media Lab in March 2006 when Alyssa Wright, a lab student, got me to participate in a project called “Cherry Blossoms.” I strapped on a backpack with a pair of vertical tubes sticking out of the top; they were connected to a detonation device linked to a Global Positioning System receiver. A microprocessor in the backpack contained a program that mapped the coördinates of the city of Baghdad onto those for the city of Cambridge; it also held a database of the locations of all the civilian deaths of 2005. If I went into a part of Cambridge that corresponded to a place in Iraq where civilians had died in a bombing, the detonator was triggered.

When the backpack exploded on a clear, crisp afternoon at the Media Lab, handfuls of confetti shot out of the cardboard tubes into the air, then fell slowly to earth. On each streamer of paper was written the name of an Iraqi civilian casualty. I had reported on the war (although not from Baghdad) since 2003 and was aware of persistent controversy over the numbers of Iraqi civilian dead as reported by the U.S. government and by other sources. But it wasn’t until the moment of this fake explosion that the scale and horrible suddenness of the slaughter in Baghdad became vivid and tangible to me. Alyssa described her project as an upgrade to traditional journalism. “The upgrade is empathy,” she said, with the severe humility that comes when you suspect you are on to something but are still uncertain you aren’t being ridiculous in some way.

the bombs intended to evoke “shock and awe” were descending on Baghdad. Most of the Western press had evacuated, but a small contingent remained to report on the crumbling Iraqi regime. In the New York offices of NBC News, one of my video stories was being screened. If it made it through the screening, it would be available for broadcast later that evening. Producer Geoff Stephens and I had done a phone interview with a reporter in Baghdad who was experiencing the bombing firsthand. We also had a series of still photos of life in the city. The only communication with Baghdad in those early days was by satellite phone. Still pictures were sent back over the few operating data links.

Our story arranged pictures of people coping with the bombing into a slide show, accompanied by the voice of Melinda Liu, a Newsweek reporter describing, over the phone, the harrowing experience of remaining in Baghdad. The outcome of the invasion was still in doubt. There was fear in the reporter’s voice and on the faces of the people in the pictures. The four-minute piece was meant to be the kind of package that would run at the end of an hour of war coverage. Such montages were often used as “enders,” to break up the segments of anchors talking live to field reporters at the White House or the Pentagon, or retired generals who were paid to stand on in-studio maps and provide analysis of what was happening. It was also understood that without commercials there would need to be taped pieces on standby in case an anchor needed to use the bathroom. Four minutes was just about right.

At the conclusion of the screening, there were a few suggestions for tightening here and clarification there. Finally, an NBC/GE executive responsible for “standards” shook his head and wondered about the tone in the reporter’s voice. “Doesn’t it seem like she has a point of view here?” he asked.

There was silence in the screening room. It made me want to twitch, until I spoke up. I was on to something but uncertain I wasn’t about to be handed my own head. “Point of view? What exactly do you mean by point of view?” I asked. “That war is bad? Is that the point of view that you are detecting here?”

The story never aired. Maybe it was overtaken by breaking news, or maybe some pundit-general went long, or maybe an anchor was able to control his or her bladder. On the other hand, perhaps it was never aired because it contradicted the story NBC was telling. At NBC that night, war was, in fact, not bad. My remark actually seemed to have made the point for the “standards” person. Empathy for the civilians did not fit into the narrative of shock and awe. The lesson stayed with me, exploding in memory along with the confetti of Alyssa Wright’s “Cherry Blossoms.” Alyssa was right. Empathy was the upgrade. But in the early days of the war, NBC wasn’t looking for any upgrades.