Air fares could go down this week, but what about ISP charges?

Both Domestic and International airfares could go down this week which is great news for the traveling public in Papua New Guinea. According to the NBC "Air Niugini, expects to reduce its international and domestic sector fuel surcharges" between the 5th and 10th of January 2009 but is currently awaiting International Parity Pricing. This is great news for all Wantoks out there that are planning to do some air travel in 2009, and with the current competition that Air Niugini is facing from Airlines PNG and Virgin Pacific Blue we could see a decent drop in air fares in 2009. This is also in line with the current global oil prices that may help make air travel affordable in 2009.

I for one am a great supporter of competition and as a consumer 2008 was good year for competition both in the airline industry (Air Niugini/Qantas Vs Airlines PNG/Virgin Pacific Blue) and telecommunications industry (Digicel Vs B Mobile). But what I am hoping for in 2009 is for ICCC to give the go a head for Telikom or one of its subsidiaries to become a Internet Service Provider(ISP). Then hopefully we will see some real progress in the reduction of the astronomical prices that Papua New Guineans are charged by local ISP's.

If you compare what people in Papua New Guinea are charge by ISPs to other countries in the region you feel totally ripped off. For example iPrimus Speedster 6GB plan (broadband wireless) for 6 Gigabytes of downloads per month was advertised in the December 2008 NetGuide issue for $39.95 per month. So for arguments sake lets say that the current PNG Kina to Aus Dollar is 0.5. That would mean that this plan would be K79.90 per month, with speed reduction after you go over your limit so there would be no extra charges. Now if you were to look at Daltron's entry level standard wireless plan 64k - 100. Meaning that you get a 64kb link and you are allowed to use 100 Megabytes before you are charged K0.50 for every excess Megabyte. For a monthly fee of K225, you don't have to be a maths professor to feel that you are being ripped off in a big way. To Daltron's defence I must admit that here in Papua New Guinea, currently we do not have a half decent communications infrastructure and Daltron buys their data wholesale from Telikom so they can not go any lower then what Telikom charge them.

With these arguments in mind I am thinking that it is time for competition to enter the ISP market place in PNG. To give all the grassroot Wantoks out there a fighting chance to be able to get affordable internet access. The PNG government should treat internet access as commoditiy that all Papua New Guinean's should have and not something for the privilege Wantoks out there. More funding is need to help reduce the cost of Internet access to help make it more accessible to the general public in Papua New Guinea.

Computer health check

Since it is the beginning of a new year why not start 2009 with a do it yourself service of your computer. Here is a list things that Wantok's with a Windows computer can do to service their computers:

Defragging your hard drive
I believe that it is important to defrag your hard drive every couple of months. So since it is the start of the year go through your hard drive and deleted files that you don't need or remove them to external storage like burning the files to a CD/DVD or putting them on an external hard drive. After doing this make sure that close all other programs. Then using the Windows defrag tool run a defragmentation of your hard drive. You can find the defrag tool in Accessories\System Tools\Disk Defragmenter. The reason why you defrag your hard drive is because over time your hard becomes disorganised with some files split into chucks and kept at different locations on the hard disk. Which means that when you try to access the file it takes you longer to access then if the file was stored in the same location on the disk. The whole defragmentation process takes a while so don't expect to be able to use your computer for a while when you start it.

Clean up your Cache
When ever a web page is loaded in your browser it will save ti to your hard drive. Which makes it faster to load the next time you visit that web page. But the Cache can become very large so you need to clean out your cache/temporary Internet files.

Run a Check Disk
I also suggest running a check disk to fix any corruptions that may have occur ed on your hard disk. To do this on a windows computer is quite simple. Click on your start menu and then click on run (to bring up the command prompt). Type in "cmd" and then click ok. Then a black command line screen will appear. Now type in the "chkdsk /f" and press enter. If a message comes up saying something like this volume is in use and chkdsk can not run.... would you like it to run on your next start up Y/N? type "y". What will happen is that the next time you start up your computer the check disk will run. So restart your computer and then a Windows message will appear saying that you schedule check disk to run if you don't want it to run press any key now. Leave it alone to run. I added in the "/f" option on these instructions so that it would fix any errors that are found during the check disk.

Run a Anti Virus Scan
It is also important to run a full system scan in safe mode to scan for any nasties that might have got into your computer over the last year, months, days, etc. There are a lot of great free anti virus software programs out there like AVG 8 - Free version which you can download and run for free. I recommend this free program I have being using it for the last 3 years and it has got rid of most of the nasties that I have encountered. There are a few that I have needed special removable tools for but that is a different story.

Run a Spyware Scan
Scan your computer for Spyware as well. Not only do these nasties collect information about you but they also take up valuable disk space and uses processing power. So you can run Windows Defender or another program like it that will remove Spyware from your computer.

Wantok's please note that I do not take any responsibility for any thing that you do to your computer.

Home Body Fat Test

In a desperate effort to help me keep my new years resolution of losing the spare tyre around my gut. I have sort technology to help me do this by figuring out how much I need to lose. I decided to do the online Home Body Fat Test . Which involves measure a few body parts and entering it into a questionnaire. It will then produce a result showing you what percentage of your body is fat, how many kilograms of your weight is fat, and it will provide you with links to go to web pages to help you eat healthier. After getting my results I found it to be motivation enough to help me keep my new years resolution going for another couple of days.

Basically Wantoks if you want to lose a few extra pounds or a spare tyre like me, by doing a home body fat test it may just give you the motivation that you need to kick start you. I know that it worked for me. But only time will tell to see if the motivation has helped me.

NBC website is being updated again

Great to see that The National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) is updating its website again. After not updating it for over 3 months. It is great site to provide short up to date news stories of what is taking place in Papua New Guinea. Technology wise 2008 marks an important year for NBC with it officially launching both its website and the National Television Service. Keep up the good work NBC and please continue to update the website on a regular basis instead of leaving it for months.

Australian ISP's rebuff filtering plan

The Australian governments plans to filter internet use have being rebuffed by Australian ISP's (Internet Server Providers). According to the BBC Telstra, which is the largest ISP in Australia has stated that it will not be joining trials for filtering. Which this blog spoke about in an earlier post regarding the planned filtering of Australian internet traffic. The initial trails of the filtering technology was due to take place before christmas. But with major ISP like Telstra going against it, this may be just the spanner in the works that the general public has being hoping for.

On the opposite side of the fence Optus has stated that it is going to take part in the trial in early 2009, but they said that they would only apply the filters to block access to 1300 sites hosting illegal content. This brings up the question of who is going to deem the sites that Optus is blocking as illegal, and what type of guideliness are going to be used to determine what is illegal and offensive. By doing such a thing is just going to open up a whole grey area of what should be blocked and what should not be blocked. Again it raises the question of who is to determine what items are on the blacklist that the Rudd government is keeping secret from the general public.

Optus has also stated that it would not block access to the 10,000 sites that the Rudd government is demading. Nor will will Optus impose the second tier of filtering that blocks sites deemed to be unsuitable for childern. It seems what Optus is really saying here is that they are going to use this filter on their terms  to block what they fill needs to be blocked. On the other hand they are not going to block other items that they deem to be ok. So basically Optus is sitting on the fence and only taking the bits that Optus likes.

At the end of the day it is great to see that Telstra is taking a stance against the filtering of the Internet. Once the Internet starts to be filtered you lose your right to the freedom of information. This leads me to the question does Rudd what to filter the internet like how Internet filtering is done in China?

Prosthetic arm fitted to bone

In a medical breakthrough according to the BBC Kira Mason a victim of the London bombings (7 July 2005) has had a prosthetic arm fitted to her bone and skin. According to the BBC surgeons were able to fuse a metal pin with her skin tissue and a battery pack that will help ensure that Kira is able to clench her fist and flex her muscles. It is said that getting muscle and skin to grow onto the metal is a revolutionary technique. Surgeons were inspired by the way deer antlers fused to skin which lead to the breakthrough. According to surgeon Steve Cannon

"The wonderful technology in Kira is the ability to put a piece of metal inside the body, then put it outside and stop it from becoming infected, and also allow the piece of metal to incorporate into the bone."

Text messages can help the fight against AIDS in Papua New Guinea

Over the last couple of weeks I have taken a keen interest in reading up on articles of how HIV AIDS is being fought in African countries using Technology. An article that was of particular interest to me was the use of text messages to remind AIDS infected people to attend appointments at clinics. The reason why this article was interesting is that it is using a "Please call me" service similar to the one that Digicel PNG is offering.

How it works is quite simple a medical clinic sends a text message to a patient using the "Please call me" service to remind a person to contact the clinic.

To implement such a system here in Papua New Guinea would be quite simple considering that Digicel all ready offers the free "Please call me" service. It would just be a matter of clinics obtaining a Digicel mobile phone. There would also be a number of other steps that would need to be taken like obtaining a list of patients mobile numbers. A major limitation would be that since the "Please call me" service is only offered on the Digicel network it would only work on Digicel phones.