Cheap DSL slated

A broadband strategy based on cut-rate prices could hurt the commercial viability of broadband providers, a new report says.

The Register reports that cheap broadband availability, specifically DSL, would trip up broadband providers in the same way that it impeded the viability of dot-coms, since cheap or free services aren`t viable in the long-term, says the report released by consultancy company Ovum.

Stiff competition among operators in Japan and Korea has led to prices being cut to unsustainable levels. Operators in these countries now have to sell extremely generous service offerings at slashed prices of less than 10 euros per Mbps. This is in contrast to countries such as the US, Germany or France, where the same level of service would cost 35, 61 and 85 euros per Mbps respectively.

As is the case in SA, the use of open source software is alive and well and growing among government agencies in the US, eWeek reports.

In an address at the O`Reilly Open Source Convention, a senior Internet technology architect at the US Census Bureau said recently: "The penguin has landed."

This year, the office of the CIO at the US Department of Defence came out with an official open source software policy, which placed open source software under the same requirements of commercial off-the-shelf products and the same security certification.

One of the first vendors to release a Tablet PC, Acer America last month launched its second-generation TravelMate C110 - the first Tablet PC to include Intel`s Centrino mobile technology.

The C110 starts at $1 899. The unit tested by eWeek was equipped with an Intel 900MHz Pentium M ultra-low-voltage processor, 512MB of DDR RAM and a 40GB hard drive. It comes preloaded with Microsoft`s Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and features a 10.4-inch XGA display. In addition, the C110 has built-in wireless 802.11b and Bluetooth support, two USB 2.0 ports, an IEEE 1394 interface, a 10/100Mbps LAN connection, and a 56Kbps modem. An external CD-ROM or combo drive can be attached via the IEEE 1394 interface.