Bridging a widening digital divide is a tough challenge for India, where gains from the booming economy that is growing 8 percent annually have mostly accrued to the urban middle class.
Intel Corp chairman Craig Barrett sees a part of the remedy lying in WiMAX technology, a wireless capability that provides Internet connectivity without requiring a computer to be tethered to a cable.
"India has the opportunity to be a leading commercial implementer in WiMAX capabilities," Barrett said as he toured the remote town of Baramati in western India on Thursday to explore how the US chipmaker could help in advancing efforts to empower unemployed youth and farmers with the help of information technology.
Intel has been trying to drive the adoption of WiMAX. Like its wireless cousin Wi-Fi, WiMAX delivers high-speed connections but the coverage range can stretch for kilometers.
"The conditions are absolutely ripe here in terms of the lack of rural infrastructure and what WiMAX could do," Barrett told a news conference in Baramati, a town known for innovative adoption of new technologies.
His comments, broadcast over the Internet, came after a tour of the town that took him to a local hospital using WiMAX to access the Internet for diagnostic work and a school that is implementing new technology-driven learning tools.
Baramati has been adopted by Intel under its World Ahead Program that seeks to expedite access to technology and education for people in the world's poorer nations.
He also visited farmers in outlying villages to see how information technology could be used to improve their living standards.
More than two-thirds of India's 1 billion plus people live in villages, depending mostly on agriculture. Much of rural India lacks adequate infrastructure such as good roads, electricity supplies and telephone facilities to help people improve productivity and living standards.
Farmers often lack vital information such as weather, new seeds and crop prices. Access to the Internet could help.
"The beauty of [WiMAX] is it is relatively inexpensive and relatively simple," Barrett said. "It is ideal for rural environment where there is limited infrastructure in place."
Intel is spending about US$1 billion in promoting WiMAX, he said. Trials are underway in about 200 places across the world and some 40 to 50 companies are engaged in commercial implementation, he said.
Yesterday, Barrett traveled to New Delhi, India's capital, to meet with government and business leaders.
Intel plans to invest US$1.1 billion over a five-year period ending in 2010 to expand its operations in India.
Intel said it has been successful in working with local companies to bring cheaper computers to the country's rural poor, and the company will donate 10,000 personal computers to provincial governments and teacher-training centers in the next two years.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS