BROADBAND
AOL, AT&T Deal Expected To Help Both
INTERNET
A Sheep-ish Stab at E-Commerce
Media Giant Decries Net's "Moral-Free Zone"
Wireless Web Comes To Starbucks Shops
BROADBAND
AOL, AT&T DEAL EXPECTED TO HELP BOTH
AOL Time Warner will buy out AT&T's stake in AOL Time Warner's cable assets.
Dissolving the AOL Time Warner-AT&T partnership was necessary to remove a
regulatory restriction blocking the AT&T-Comcast merger. The deal would
enable AOL to offer high-speed service in 22 million more homes, or 36
percent of the cable market. AOL has struggled to grow in the cable
broadband market where it now can offer service only on Time Warner systems.
[SOURCE: USA Today, AUTHOR: Paul Davidson]
(http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techmergers/2002-08-20-aoltw-att_
x.htm)
INTERNET
MEDIA GIANT DECRIES NET'S "MORAL-FREE ZONE"
Peter Chernin, president of News Corp. spoke out against digital piracy,
online pornography and spam at an annual conference organized by the
Progress and Freedom Foundation. "The vast potential of broadband has so far
benefited nobody as clearly as it's benefited downloaders of pornography and
pirates of digital content." Chernin called for government action in
curtailing digital piracy and called the "prevalence of pornographic Web
sites and emails... an increasing reason to keep kids and families off the
Internet." Bruce Mehlman, an assistant secretary at the Commerce Department,
did not agree with Chernin. He said it may not be fair to blame technology
for social and political problems. Chernin said that many of the Internet's
challenges could be worked out over time.
[SOURCE: CNET News.com, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]
(http://news.com.com/2100-1023-954651.html?tag=cd_mh)
A SHEEP-ISH STAB AT E-COMMERCE
Customers on EthioGift, Ethiopia's leading e-commerce Web site, can send
gift packages -- such as medium sheep and a chocolate cake -- to friends and
family in Ethiopia. "Most Ethiopians are not used to giving flowers as a
gift, while sheep is a very common gift," said Dawit Bekele, the
Ethiopian-born computer science PhD who founded the site. Because of
Ethiopia's low Internet and credit-card penetration rates, virtually all the
orders come from Ethiopians living overseas, particularly in Europe and the
United States. Bekele says he would like to experiment with alternative
payment systems in an attempt to launch a collection of Web sites for local
merchants. A United Nations report on e-commerce in the developing world
published last December cited EthioGift as an example of how entrepreneurs
in developing nations are using the Internet in ways that contribute to
local economies.
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Joanna Glasner]
(http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,54360,00.html)
WIRELESS WEB COMES TO STARBUCKS SHOPS
Starbucks Corp. has teamed up with T-Mobile, the wireless division of
Deutsche Telekom AG and Hewlett-Packard, to build a wireless Internet
network. The goal is to open up 2,000 cafes through the United States and
Europe by the end of this year. While wireless networks have been very
popular with corporations and homeowners, they have been slow to develop in
public places. To encourage use of the networks, Hewlett-Packard is
providing free software to help owners of notebooks and handhelds with
wireless antennas find the coffee shop networks. There will be a fee to
access the networks, but free 24-hour trials will be given to new users.
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Reuters]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43512-2002Aug21.html)
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