Broadband to Resurge Rural India

Broadband to Resurge Rural India
The agro-product trading and direct interaction of village Chaupal/Kisan Haat with city-based Mandi will be a reality, if we develop a policy keeping rural India in priority as far as broadband technology deployment is concerned.
Broadband has the potential to improve the literacy rate and better the medical facilities -- particularly in rural India. Undoubtedly, differences between alternative and more traditional distance education are being realized through extensive use of the broadband related tools, and applications.
Several advantages are associated with reduced duplication and greater access in distance learning -- particularly for highly specialized courses. Broadband will provide specific Internet-related interactive opportunities that India can exploit to distinguish ourselves from more traditional distance education delivery systems.
Education
The value-added component of a distance education course with a remote or virtual laboratory is fundamental for a successful distance education program -- particularly in highly specialized areas such as engineering, medical, media, etc. Universities have different sub-disciplinary expertise, and within a sub-discipline, there are specialties that can be exploited.
The major difficulties faced while developing distance education course are: technical and psychological problems. For any given course, the appropriate combination of the 3 modes of communication, i.e., formal lecture, the virtual laboratory, and interactivity, will minimize the cost and maximize the effectiveness of the learning process.
Broadband for Distance Training
One obvious method is the formal, televised lecture in which the instructor delivers a conventional lecture to a group of students in a multimedia classroom and simultaneously to groups of students in remote, television-equipped classrooms.
Formal lectures incorporate some aspects of a television production. That is, they include "talking head" didactic segments, interspersed with video clips, still photos, diagrams, computer "white boards," and so on.
However, there is also a 2-way audio, video, and data communication between the originating site and the remote sites, so that all students have real-time access to the instructor and vice versa.
Although the formal lecture is an important element in distance education, yet it has its limitations. It's expensive, both in terms of the TV studios-classrooms required and the large bandwidth required for audio, video, and data communication among sites.
Furthermore, the TV lecture doesn't lend itself to the type of interaction that occurs between an instructor and subgroups of the class, in a laboratory, or tutorial setting. It doesn't provide the laboratory component, nor does it allow for detailed interaction between individual students and the instructor. Thus, alternative distance communication media must be used to supplement the expensive televised lecture. And that could be web-based application -- using wireless or wireline broadband connectivity at the last mile.
The facilities required are a workstation or laboratory environment supported by a reasonable communications network and software. There is a major opportunity here to design team-based projects that require the students to participate in a design project over geographically remote distances.
A main advantage and attraction of this type of laboratory is that the receiving institution doesn't need to invest heavily in the staff and equipment required to maintain the virtual environment.
"Learning Technologies Center" at Villages
These centers could be utilized for training as well as trading. It should incorporate electronic multimedia distance education classrooms, clusters of networked multimedia work stations, and classrooms equipped with networked computers and video projection equipment to support computer interaction among the instructor and the students.
The objectives of the Learning Technologies Center could be:
1. To provide interactive virtual platform to farmers for trading with city Mandi
2 . To support sharing of courses with other universities and community colleges
3. To provide access to seminars, workshops, and educational materials from many sources
4. To train local village-based academic staff in the use of the modern learning technologies
5. To be a demonstration facility for staff, students, and the public in the use of modern technologies
- The writer is the managing director of Digital Broadcasting
courtesy :www.enterpriser.in/

Online Trade: The New Mantra

Online Trade: The New Mantra
Electronic Commerce or e-commerce is trading of products and services over the Internet. It's basically online shopping. A lot of commercial activity is doing the rounds thanks to e-commerce. This has given led the way to a whole lot of electronic exercises like electronic fund transfer, electronic data interchange, Internet marketing, and online transaction processing.
With Broadband initiatives floating around in the country, SMBs can easily use Interent for their business.
So how can SMBs make use of e-commerce in their business? How can this be profitable? Technology does have an upper hand in any business and an e-commerce store can do the trick for an emerging business outfit.
Kartik Shahani, regional director of McAfee India lists out the steps to be followed for starting with an e-commerce initiative.
* In addition to the basic IT infrastructure, to do online trading, first put up a website. If your business is at a nascent stage, you should necessarily create a light website, since a heavy one takes a lot of time.
* Post the set up of website, you'll have to register with payment gateways like ICICI, SBI, etc. Registration of the payment gateways will involve showing the bank the required documents, your business plans and future plans. This is to make the bank realize that yours is a legitimate business.
* Finally, for secure transactions get hacker-free certification like a certification from a validated authority to ensure secure end user payment.
Today all businesses, irrespective of their sizes, are exploring online trade.
Jet Airways revamped its website last year. "With the critical mass of consumers planning travel and purchasing tickets online, it became important for us to be involved in the online distribution and retail. We'd partnered with Akamai Technologies, which accelerated the online business process," said Belson Coutinho, head (e-commerce) of Jet Airways.
"The business drivers for this partnership were to provide a superior online end user experience, improve look-to-book and conversion ratios online, handle peak travel demand with no incremental website costs and ensure 100% uptime of online reservation systems," added Coutinho.
Often while leveraging the Internet, instability and unpredictability of the Internet's performance can have a negative impact on customer relations. Coutinho feels that if performance not up to the mark, customers will refuse to use the site and will instead choose the competitor's business. By the same token, a high-performing web site translates into customer satisfaction, which can be correlated to increased purchase conversion, customer loyalty, and increased market share. To ensure a strong ROI, a company's Web site must perform well.
Chandamama recently came up with an interactive site for children and has a collection of illustrated stories and comics. L. Subramanyan, CEO of Chandamama said they're currently working on creating a 'Chandamama.com shop', where parents can buy magazine subscriptions, books, Chandamama merchandise, toys, and games.
Some time back, Globus started an e-commerce initiative. "Being 23 in number and not available everywhere and anywhere all the time was a question mark for us. So, we thought of developing a user-friendly, Web 2.0 open front-end e-commerce website where our niche products will be displayed and made available for purchase," said Meheriar Patel, general manager and head (IT), Globus.
Online trade will be useful and progressive for the emerging business outfits as it helps companies be in touch with the outside work 24x 7x 365. Also, since the trade is online, the SMB outfits can make use of less manpower.
courtesy :www.enterpriser.in/

Among top 100 BPOs 21 Indian cos

Twenty-one Indian firms, including Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, are among the top 100 outsourcing companies in the world.
According to the study - '2008 Global Outsourcing 100' - compiled by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals five Indian firms feature among the top ten -- Infosys (3rd), TCS (6th), Wipro (7th), Genpact (9th) and Tech Mahindra (10th) in the top 10.
Other Indian companies in the list are HCL Technology (11th) Mastek (16th), WNS Global Services (19th), Hexaware (22nd), ExlService (26th), 24/7 Customer (28th), Cambridge (36th), ITC Infotech (40th), KPIT Cummins (42nd), Patni (46nd), Zensar (53rd), MindTree (54th), Mphasis (56th), Aditya Birla Minacs (62nd), FirstSource Solutions (73rd) and Cross-Tab (78th).
According to IAOP, the key strength of Wipro and TCS is their 'employee management' while 'executive leadership' is cited as the strong point of Infosys and Genpact.To know more of these Indian IT companies, read on...
Infosys (Rank 3)