The World Summit on the Information Society recognized that “access to information and sharing and creation of knowledge contributes significantly to strengthening economic, social and cultural development”.  Information is a fundamental driver of increased efficiency and worldwide competitiveness in this age of IT revolution. It is shaping the future by providing opportunities to information, invention and wealth creation. Global economic processes including international and national trade is increasingly influenced by the creation, dissemination, accumulation and application of knowledge and information. Broadband technologies can provide foundation for building up knowledge and applying in both private and public sector. Countries that have recognized the benefits of broadband technologies and have deployed extensive broadband networks have better advantage for sustained economic growth and social development. The recent advances in technology have further strengthened the link between digital information and national development. The term IT revolution or can also be called as knowledge revolution as it provides an opportunity to foster greater competitiveness, new economic growth and job creation, better access to basic services, improved health and education outcomes, and greater empowerment of local communities. Some remote villages in developing countries are already beginning to use the Internet to sell commodities directly to the global market, to improve educational opportunities, and to increase their participation in decision making. Spread of Broadband can directly influence the productivity, cost effectiveness and competitiveness in industries, which is the advantage to developing countries that can build their economies upon and catch up on developed economies in terms of application of technology and resulting economic benefits. The development of broadband services on regional and global basis can play a very important role for the overall improvement of economic, social, political, and cultural values. It promotes the sharing and exchange of such values across different cultures, and in doing so, fosters healthier inter-cultural relationships and stronger links between people across the globe. Around the world, broadband is being adopted faster than any preceding technology before and expectations of it are increasing almost daily and has become as accelerator for economic growth.

 Broadband can play a very pivotal role in not only in economic development of a country but also in its social development if it is properly implemented and utilized. Economic developments which are measurable and hence are shown up in GDP, national accounts statistics, FDI, are not the only component of development. Development can also include improvements in the capabilities of the population, such as education, health and nutrition, independently of any direct or indirect economic impact. Broadband is not a one time process but a constant phase of transformation. It cannot act as a magic bullet for any economy but it can provide the basic infrastructure upon which other technologies and application can act to provide benefits to economy and social development. It is also necessary to have the minimum skill set to utilize the benefits broadband has to offer.  It is also important for policy makers in the government to realize the basic fact that by providing high speed internet to communities cannot guarantee economic benefits it’s the knowledge and skills to use the technology to their own benefits whether personal or business that has to be provided to people to utilize the socio-economic benefits.

 “Facebook is spending well over a $1 million per month on electricity alone. Bandwidth is likely another $500,000 or more per month on top of that. The company has earmarked $100 million to buy 50,000 servers this year and next. And sources say they’ve been buying one NetApp 3070 storage system per week just to keep up with all this user generated content. At up to $2 million each, that adds up quickly – we’ve heard estimates that they may have spent as much as $30 million this year alone with the company. And the icing on the cake – earmark another $15 million per year in office and datacenter rent payments”.   Source: Facebook EBITDA

To reduce some of these costs, Facebook decided to engineer its own storage architecture called Haystack. On the whole, Haystack will allow Facebook to switch from expensive, commercial storage appliances to commodity off-the shelf hardware. It is going from a traditional network file system to something more parallel to stripped-down network application that does only what it needs to do. Not only will Facebook get the cost savings of going commodity, but they also get a 3X improvement in storage capacity. In other words, what used to take 30 disks to store, now will take only 10. It’s heard in the future, Facebook may even open-source the architecture so other companies can benefit from it. Not bad, for something that was built by three engineers (Doug Beaver, Peter Vajgel, and Jason Sobel).

I just came across this hilarious news and thought it was necessary to post it before I headed to gym. The Motion Picture Association of America is stepping up its war against piracy in emerging markets including the Gulf and South East Asian markets with the release of a report which claims film piracy is funding global terrorism. The report, entitled Film Piracy, Organised Crime and Terrorism, was compiled on behalf of the MPA by US non-profit security analyst RAND Corporation. It cites evidence of involvement in piracy by various groups branded terrorist organisations by the US government, including Hezbollah and D-Company, the latter of which reportedly had operatives based in the UAE in the 1990s and was responsible for the Black Friday Mumbai bombings in 1993, which claimed close to 1,000 casualties. By the early-2000s, the report claimed D-Company “dominated every step of the Indian filmmaking process and so was able to control most of the region’s piracy”. Furthermore, it claims D-Company continues to generate massive revenues from the production and distribution of counterfeit Bollywood and Hollywood DVDs in the Gulf and South Asian regions. This report makes me wonder whether the Taliban fighting in Swat and the frontier province are being funded by film piracy and if they are than I am very much hopeful they won’t be planning a take over lollywood film industry for funding.

The report further argues that regional governments should enforce Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) under World Trade Organisation obligations to represents the best strategy for combating terrorism funding derived from piracy activities. “Five factors bear on the effectiveness of IPR policies: strong government and political will, good legislation, fair and consistent enforcement, deterrent sentencing, and willingness to experiment with innovative solutions,” all of these can not be applied to the dynamics of Pakistan Government for a long time to come.