Economic crisis could offer ICT opportunities

The global economic meltdown could provide growth opportunity to small and medium enterprises in the ICT sector, according to a report by the International Telecommunication Union, says Business Daily Africa.

Released at the ongoing Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona yesterday, the report highlights some harsh realities facing the global ICT industry.

The report, Confronting the Crisis: Its Impact on the ICT Industry, considers how the industry can position itself for recovery in future.

ICT industry leaders, including Nokia, China Mobile and Microsoft, raced to announce online software stores yesterday in a drive to find new sources of revenue and please consumers, reports Reuters.

The success of Apple's AppStore, which lets iPhone users download thousands of small software programs to personalise the way they play games, listen to music or find directions, has inspired admiration and envy in many rivals.

As phone makers and carriers rack their brains for ways to stimulate demand and differentiate themselves in a depressed market, the value of software that is easy and inexpensive to access and quick to respond to trends has come to the fore.

Reacting to an online swell of suspicion about changes to Facebook's terms of service, the company's chief executive moved to reassure yesterday that the users, not the Web site, “own and control their information”, states The New York Times.

The online exchanges reflected the uneasy and evolving balance between sharing information and retaining control over that information on the Internet.

The subject arose when a consumer advocate's blog shined an unflattering light onto the pages of legal language that many users accept without reading when they use a Web site.

Telstra's announcement of what it claims to be the world's fastest wireless broadband network has been met with a mixed reaction from pundits and users, according to Ninemsn.

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo announced the telco will bump up the speed of its Next G network from 14.4Mbps to 21Mbps, on 23 February.

"Everything changes when you can do things faster," Trujillo said.