Reaffirms Its Commitment to the premier city and hub of Mindanao

IBM kicked off its centenary celebrations in the Mindanao Region last 21 July 2011 with an IBM Comes To You (ICTY) event for clients and business partners in Davao City, as part of the company’s commitment to help bring smarter business and technology solutions to local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in key areas outside of Metro Manila. The event featured the IBM Mobile Solutions Kiosk and was held at the Marco Polo Hotel, Davao City.

The ICTY roadshow series is part of the company’s geographic expansion strategy to bring expertise and technology solutions to clients outside metropolitan areas at greater speed and efficiency. It showcases IBM’s comprehensive set of offerings, including hardware, software and services tailored for the SMEs.

“Businesses based outside the National Capital Region (NCR) see great value in information technology as a way to increase competitiveness and as an enabler for a smarter planet. It is our strategy to work more closely with the city and our clients outside Metro Manila and to empower them to drive innovation and business efficiencies, that is why we continue to bring various initiatives to this region,” said Joy Bellosillo, Geo Expansion Leader, IBM Philippines.

Mindanao is an important market for IBM. The company is committed to help businesses and governments in the region grow and innovate through its extensive network of technical consultants and engineers, resellers, integrated software vendors and distributors in Davao, the region’s main business hub.

The ICTY Davao leg is in line with IBM’s mission to increase smarter technology adoption in the region across all industries with strong focus on the retail industry.

According to the Philippine Retail Association (PRA), the retail industry is experiencing significant growth in the Philippines, mainly due to rapid urbanization happening especially in growth areas like Davao. It is also an important contributor to the Philippine economy as it accounts for roughly 15% of the country’s total Gross National Product (GNP) and 33% of the entire services sector. It employs some 5.25 million people, representing a significant 18% of the country’s work force, which means roughly 2 out of every ten (10) workers is employed in the retail industry.

“We are in the age of the ‘empowered customer’ where the consumer expectations have accelerated rapidly over the past 10 years. Consumers are demanding greater flexibility and choice, creating opportunities for companies of all sizes to innovate and change the way consumers connect, interact and transact. Successful companies are staying competitive by transforming their approach to commerce. At IBM we call the path forward: Smarter Commerce — a strategic approach that places the customer at the center of a retailer’s business operations. IBM’s new smarter commerce approach and innovative standards-based technologies specifically designed for retail will enable retailers in Davao and other emerging markets in the Mindanao region to deliver better and more meaningful customer experiences,” Bellosillo added.

IBM’s commitment and focus in the Mindanao region reaches beyond the business frontiers — it extends to the community. In 2008, IBM deployed a team of 10 top-performing employees from various parts of the world to Davao for the IBM Corporate Service Corps (CSC) program. The volunteers were deployed to Davao Tourism Council to collaborate and work on strategic plans to establish a roadmap/framework for a master plan to achieve the council’s objectives. Another CSC team is set to be deployed in Davao in September.

IBM is also one of the founding members within ICT councils in the southern region. In November 26, 2009, IBM Philippines, Davao City Chamber of Commerce, Inc. (DCCCII) and ICT Davao, Inc. launched an SME Technology Center in Davao City. The center aims to help local enterprises to leverage IT as a strategic business enabler by providing partners and developers a facility to increase homegrown software development using IBM technology as a platform. The IBM-powered facility is located at DCCCII Building, Bajada, Davao City,

The company regularly partners with local ICT groups, government, business chambers and academic institutions to actively promote and harness technology for the region’s business and economic growth.

For more information, please visit www.ibm.com.

And here are my de rigeur unboxing photos:

I’ve received quite a few gadgets since I started blogging in earnest, which was around 2007, either directly (gifts, prizes) or indirectly (acquired through blog-related earnings). There was a series of Nokia phones and a Bluetooth headphone, each of which I got to use for about a month — and my all-time favorite was the N82, which I got to keep. I won an HP mini at a press launch of HP’s new line of computers. Except for that and my very first laptop, my notebooks (as well as two iPods) were all bought with earnings from ad placements on my blogs. Same goes for my Lumix LX3, the quintessential blogger’s camera.

What I really would like to be given is a Sony Bloggie. A handy pocket videocam perfect for interviews and such, don’t you think? Of course there’s the Flip Mino and similar cameras of other brands, but I believe the Bloggie is for me. It’s nearly identical in spelling and pronunciation to my own nickname, for crying out loud!

It’s fun and it’s fulfilling in a way to receive gadgets. After all, these devices are tools of the blogger’s trade. But it shouldn’t be an end, it shouldn’t be the objective for blogging. It’s disturbing to see some people taking up blogging because of a desire to get hold of material things. More often than not, so-called bloggers of this ilk fail to appreciate the raison d’être of blogs: quality and meaningful content. But that’s an entirely different topic which I’ll leave for another day.

In the meantime, I’m finally going to be able to play Angry Birds on a bigger screen. Oh yeah, keep my Google Apps calendar and contacts beautifully synchronized as well, of course, that too. Now I’m in a quandary as to whether I should dispose of my old iPod touch 3G or not…

HP Laserjet Pro CM1415

Today’s growth in mobile device usage in the country has spawned new ways of accomplishing tasks. For example, mobile users now read news on their tablets or send messages via their smart phones. With the ease in communications afforded by mobile devices, users have also come to demand more conveniences in other ways. HP is addressing one of those through their ePrint technology, which is now enabled in all of their new printers.

On my Apple iPod touch, I can have PDF files, MSWord files, but due to the closed nature of the iOS environment, there’s not much I can do with those files on the device when the need arises for me to print them. But with HP’s ePrint-enabled printers, all I need do is to email the file directly to an HP printer for printing.

No more tinkering with drivers or worrying about supported file formats! When you email a file (attached to the email message) to your printer, it’s HP’s cloud-hosted printing service that’ll take care of determining the proper drivers to use for completing the print job. And you even get a confirmation email response to inform you whether or not the print job was successful.

At the ePrint launch in Makati last 15 April 2011, HP’s market development manager, Erwin E. Creencia, and his colleagues talked about this newfangled innovation. In answer to my question regarding file formats that are not yet supported, Creencia said that AutoCAD files are the only printable files that can’t be printed via ePrint. (Although, ePrint is now also enabled in HP’s large-format Indigo printers.)

What came to mind right away after learning of ePrint and how it works was spam. HP Philippines country general manager, Mandy Pascual, addressed this by apprising us of the safeguards built into HP’s cloud printing service. He said that the service allows for whitelisting of source email addresses, aside from having built-in anti-spam monitoring. (I just wonder how good their anti-spam software is…) The good news is, you can change your printer’s email address anytime, and for an unlimited number of times.

HP Officejet Pro 8500a

Printers that are equipped with the ePrint technology — i.e., HP’s printers that can be connected to the Internet either via LAN or Wi-Fi — need only be registered online. Once registered, it will be assigned its unique email address. An online account will be created where you can manage or monitor print jobs.

For those who are concerned about privacy, Pascual said that the online printer registration is secure and can be done anonymously. (I certainly hope HP won’t do profiling of their customers, or worse, sell the aggregated user data to advertisers.)

Currently, ePrint is enabled on the following printers: HP LaserJet Pro M1536dnf Multifunction Printer, HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fn/fnw Color Multifunction Printer, HP LaserJet Pro CP1525 Color Printer, HP Photosmart Ink Advantage K510a, and the HP Officejet Pro 8500A e-All-in-One Printer.

According to HP Philippines, there is also an enterprise solution for corporations that require the ePrint service on their private networks. Normally, printers with their own email addresses are open to the world for receiving documents — this is what lets you print from wherever. But for companies that require a more secure system, HP can enable the use of their ePrint technology within a corporate Intranet.

With a growing number of individuals and businesses going online, it’s becoming more and more practical to use the ubiquitous email for communicating… and for printing. One day soon, HP’s ePrinting will most probably replace the fax machine. In fact, I’m trying to convince my friends in the travel industry to consider the shift. Since all of them have email already, and since they still need to print stuff regularly, upgrading to HP’s ePrint technology is but natural!

Consider this: when buying an airline ticket online, you could supply your printer’s email address to the online booking system. So that when your e-ticket is sent to you, it gets printed right away!

What about you? Can you think of other practical uses for printers that have their own email addresses?

Last week it was their new line of Ink Advantage printers. This week, HP launched in Davao City their new family of notebooks and desktops, as well as high-performance thin clients. The world’s #1 technology company in terms of PC sales in 2010 also opened yesterday its new HP Concept Store at the Gaisano Mall of Davao. The HP Concept Store will feature the latest products, enabling customers to experience first-hand HP’s most cutting-edge technologies. HP yesterday also revealed a redesigned consumer portfolio at A New HP World, with sleek looks and the latest technologies to enhance the way people connect, produce and experience entertainment, and manage information that matter to them. All in order to allow HP’s consumers to achieve their personal passions.

The redesigned HP Pavilion notebook PCs and the new HP TouchSmart Consumer PC are built on inspirations from culture, art, fashion trends and HP’s MUSE — Materials, Usability, Sensory appeal, and Experience — design philosophy.

What the MUSE design philosophy involves are a mix of materials such as metals, alloys and high-grade plastics; easy-to-use features for enhanced usability; a blend of artisanal elements for sensory appeal; and, intuitive features for streamlined computing experiences.

HP Pavilion DV6

The improved HP Pavilion lineup, featuring the dv series of notebook PCs, includes impressive features, such as HP CoolSense technology (for automatic sensing of the processor’s need for ventilation), HP TrueVision HD webcam (gone are the days of the low-megapixel webcams), and HP SimplePass (for biometric logins). Select models of the HP Pavilion dv series also feature Beats™ Audio for a mind-blowing audio experience!

HP Elitebook 8540W

Other new notebooks include the HP Pavilion dv4, HP Pavilion g4 (which is available in the Philippines in charcoal grey and sonoma red), and the Elitebook 8540w series. I was especially salivating over the Elitebook 8540w Mobile Workstation, a.k.a. Portable Powerhouse, which looks like a no-nonsense business machine that packs a punch. It boasts of an Intel® Core™i7 processor with Turbo Boost technology, and with 4 RAM slots that can accommodate up to 16GB of memory. (Of course, you’ll have to run Windows 7 64-bit on it to enjoy all that RAM.)

All in all, I was very impressed with the new offerings of HP in the Philippines — in terms of the awesome technologies and the wide range of products that address not only consumer requirements, but also budgetary considerations. Also, judging by the constant presence of HP in Davao, it would seem that this company is fulfilling its commitment to the city when it declared it its first HP City back in 2008.

I can’t possibly cover here all that was presented during the launch yesterday, so I urge you to go to the HP Concept Store at the Gaisano Mall of Davao in Bajada. Experience HP innovation yourself and be amazed as I was!

Globe subscribers, your Internet access is going to be throttled if your downloads and uploads exceed 1 gigabyte in a day. For most of you, whose Internet access involves mostly just emailing and interacting on Facebook or Twitter, this isn’t going to be an issue at all. But for those who use the Internet (via Globe Telecom) for business, a broadband cap is going to be a major problem.

Filipino netizens today are very sophisticated, constantly finding amazing and creative ways to make use of the Internet. Buying and selling online are activities that aren’t so newfangled anymore, and an increasing number of Filipinos are finding jobs through websites and making a living via the Internet. These people are in need of better Internet access, which Globe Telecom would do well to provide.

Everyday, I hear complaints from people around me about their Internet access woes. At home, in the office, in public Wi-Fi hotspots, Filipino Internet users are dissatisfied. But more urgently, the satisfaction of Filipino Internet users whose living depends on the Internet are not being met.

In a news article, Globe Telecom purports that a minority of users are abusing access:

In a recent internal analysis, Globe said about 5 percent of abusive subscribers use 80 percent of the available broadband Internet bandwidth in the company’s network.

This leaves only 20 percent of the capacity to be shared by 95 percent of the remaining users.

Source: INQUIRER.net

They seem to be blaming “abusive” Internet access on illegal downloading of content (music, TV shows, etc.), but are they for certain that these are the only activities going on online? It’s like saying excessive use of knives is bad because it kills people. Do chefs kill people for a living?

I don’t think telecommunications firms in particular, or businesses in general, are in a position to dictate which activities are illegal and which aren’t. That’s the government’s job. In my opinion, Globe Telecom is imposing their broadband cap because they do not want to invest further in their facilities and infrastructure.

Do they really give a damn about Filipinos, about protecting us from illegal online activities? I doubt that very much. And my reason for saying that is this: if they did care, they would be proactively anticipating the fast-paced growth of Internet usage in the country, and addressing this by meeting our requirements. But no, what Globe seems to be doing now is attempting to hide the fact that their Internet service provision is sub-par and does not even meet the minimum requirements of today’s netizen.

I’m quite certain that everyone who’s using the Internet for work or business will agree with me here, that if Globe, Smart and the other telecoms firms provided better Internet access, productivity would soar and we would have more time and resources available.

TXTPower, a mobile users watchdog, has a very cogent suggestion: for the government to conduct an independent review of telcoms companies’ existing facilities and services vis-à-vis consumer demand. Let’s hope that the National Telecommunications Commission finds it persuasive enough. But if you doubt that, then let’s all be vigilant and defend our universal right to a better Internet.

HP Officejet Advantage 4500

Hewlett-Packard (Phils.) launched in Davao City last 7 April 2011 a new line of value-for-money printers that are designed primarily for the home-use market. In total, six new models have been introduced: from the basic HP Deskjet Ink Advantage K109a, to the advanced HP Officejet Advantage 4500 All-in-One Printer, of which SME companies could very well take advantage as well.

These printers are priced very competitively at ₱8,999 (SRP) for the Officejet 4500. This particular printer has all the bells and whistles, such as borderless printing, network printing, and PC-less printing (via SD card). You can event assign

But what caught my attention was the new line of inks that HP has come up with. These new printers accommodate the new Ink Advantage 703/704 ink cartridges.

In addition to providing greater choices and outstanding value, the new HP Ink Advantage printers deliver the same quality, reliability and convenience customers rely on from HP.

The high-capacity HP 703 Black and Tri-Color Ink Cartridges used in the new HP Photosmart Ink Advantage e-All-in-One and the HP Officejet Advantage 4500 All-in-One offer up to 600 pages in black and 250 pages in color, delivering finely detailed graphics, laser-quality text, and archival-quality output.

The New HP 704 Black and Tri-Color Ink Cartridges used in the New Deskjet HP Ink Advantage Printers offer up to 480 pages in black and 200 pages in color and is composed of up to 70%(3) recycled plastic.

Personally, I use the HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 2060 AIO Printer (SRP: ₱4,999) at home. It can print, scan and copy and the ink cartridge costs less than ₱400 apiece!

With this new line of HP printing solutions, equipped with the new Ink Advantage color and black ink cartridges, the cost of ownership of an HP printer should be its greatest selling point. Over time, an HP printer owner will spend less compared to other brands whose printers are cheap but the corresponding ink cartridges are exorbitantly priced.

When I asked an HP representative about the new Ink Advantage cartridges being HP’s response to the spread of continuous-ink systems, he said that it was. He said that HP does care about their customers, and that’s why they came up with this solution: a very cost-effective ink cartridge that delivers the same quality of printing as HP’s more high-end ink cartridges. Plus, you get to keep your printer’s warranty, too!

HP Ink Advantage printers

HP printers are available in many of Davao’s computer shops. And, there is an HP service center in the city, at Digital Interface, Pryce Business Park, J.P. Laurel Ave., Davao City.

IRVINE, Calif. and SAN JOSE, Calif. – Mar. 7, 2011 – Western Digital (NYSE: WDC) and Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT / TSE:6501) announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement whereby WD will acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately $4.3 billion. The proposed combination will result in a customer-focused storage company, with significant operating scale, strong global talent and the industry’s broadest product lineup backed by a rich technology portfolio.

Under the terms of the agreement, WD will acquire Hitachi GST for $3.5 billion in cash and $25 million WD common shares valued at $750 million, based on a WD closing stock price of $30.01 as of March 4, 2011. Hitachi, Ltd. will own approximately ten percent of Western Digital shares outstanding after issuance of the shares and two representatives of Hitachi will be added to the WD board of directors at closing. The transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close during the third calendar quarter of 2011, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. WD plans to fund the transaction with a combination of existing cash and total debt of approximately $2.5 billion.

WD expects the transaction to be immediately accretive to its earnings per share on a non-GAAP basis, excluding acquisition-related expenses, restructuring charges and amortization of intangibles.

The resulting company will retain the Western Digital name and remain headquartered in Irvine, California. John Coyne will remain CEO of WD, Tim Leyden COO and Wolfgang Nickl CFO. Steve Milligan, president and CEO of Hitachi GST, will join WD at closing as president, reporting to John Coyne.

“The acquisition of Hitachi GST is a unique opportunity for WD to create further value for our customers, stockholders, employees, suppliers and the communities in which we operate,” said John Coyne. “We believe this step will result in several key benefits: enhanced R&D capabilities, innovation and expansion of a rich product portfolio, comprehensive market coverage and scale that will enhance our cost structure and ability to compete in a dynamic marketplace. The skills and contributions of both workforces were key considerations in assessing this compelling opportunity. We will be relying on the proven integration capabilities of both companies to assure the ongoing satisfaction of our customers and to bring this combination to successful fruition.”

“This brings together two industry leaders with consistent track records of strong execution and industry outperformance,” said Steve Milligan. “Together we can provide customers worldwide with the industry’s most compelling and diverse set of products and services, from innovative personal storage to solid state drives for the enterprise.”

Hiroaki Nakanishi, president, Hitachi, Ltd. said, “As the former CEO of Hitachi GST, I always believed in the potential of Hitachi GST to become a larger and more agile company. This is a strategic combination of two industry leaders, both growing and profitable. It provides an opportunity for the new company to increase customer and shareholder value and expand into new markets. Additionally, it is important to us that WD shares common values with Hitachi GST to create a more global company that is well positioned to define a broader role in the evolving storage industry.”

WD’s exclusive financial adviser on the transaction is Bank of America Merrill Lynch; its lead legal adviser is O’Melveny & Myers LLP. Goldman, Sachs & Co serves as financial adviser to Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi GST. Legal advisers to Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi GST are Morrison Foerster LLP and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP & Affiliates, respectively.

[Media Release]

Western Digital, WD, and the WD logo are registered trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

I have now almost completely abandoned Yahoo! and all of its services. I’d stopped using their “search engine” a long, long, long time ago, and their Web-based email service is but a distant memory to me. I don’t use Yahoo Messenger either, except when I’m online on Nimbuzz, where I’d enrolled my Yahoo! account and kept it there for the sake of the few friends who still have my Yahoo! ID.

The last item was Flickr. I’d actually gotten myself a pro account a couple of years back, and was happy enough using the service, especially because many of my WordPress themes incorporate Flickr widgets. Around December 2010 I renewed my subscription via PayPal, but the payment somehow got flagged “Pending”. My PayPal balance was debited, though, and PayPal said that it was up to the recipient to accept the remittance. Days passed and nothing happened.

The daughter of one of my cousins had been given a DSLR, so I thought a Flickr pro account would be a nice birthday gift from me, but I had to settle my renewal first. It was not meant to be.

I emailed Flickr (after much digging around for the proper contact form) and got a reply no less than a week after, but only to be told that the problem was with PayPal. PayPal said, again, that the ball was in Yahoo!’s court, so to speak. Since I badly needed to reactivate my account and send my niece her own pro account, I actually made another payment transaction… but the same thing happened — payment pending. This time, I got no reply from Flickr / Yahoo! at all.

To make a long story short, my Flickr pro account did not get renewed. To hell with it, I thought. If they don’t want my business, then I’ll gladly take it somewhere else. Good riddance.

The Y! logo above is a trademark of Yahoo! and is being used here solely for identification purposes.

This may be a small matter, but for me, it’s a big deal. For a whole week, we didn’t have Internet at home. (We were on SmartBro Broadband before, but when the service deteriorated beyond belief, we transferred to PLDT myDSL. Not much of an improvement, I’m afraid.) The first time we called their helpdesk, the call center agent said that they were experiencing a “system-wide failure” at PLDT. One would think, when such a thing occurred, that a company would pour its resources into solving such a serious matter, yes?

It took a whole week, despite our calling PLDT everyday. We got ridiculous questions like “Are you using a Wi-Fi router?” — as if that ever mattered to problems at their end! I was telling them that their modem was registering a “DSL” connection but that the “Internet” lamp was dim, so that it was probably a server issue and not a local one. To that, I got canned answers that helped not one iota.

Turns out that they migrated their DNS servers. Changed the whole batch of IP addresses. After seven days, a PLDT technician (a contractor, I’m certain) comes over to the house and reconfigures the DNS server. That straightforward. From 58.69.254.69 to 124.106.4.2. And I got my crappy Internet connection back.

They couldn’t have conveyed this bit of information over the phone??

Last night I was chatting with a friend who’s in London. He has a BPO company in Davao and his office is connected to PLDT myDSL as well. And he was having the same problem. He told me that, for ₱1,000/month equivalent, his connectivity at home is very reliable and stable and maintains a bandwidth of 15 gigs. One thousand pesos for a fifteen gigabyte line?? Now that’s broadband!

Back here, we have to contend with abysmally dismal connectivity. And as if that weren’t enough, we have to put up with customer service that’s moving in retrograde!

So now I’m thinking, should we move to Sun Broadband? I’ve heard that their connection’s pretty good here in Davao. But the question is, up to when…?

Ok, to be fair to the NTC, the draft Memorandum Order is actually about whipping telcos into shape: that ISPs should deliver a minimum of 80% of promised bandwidth. Still, allowing ISPs to put a cap on bandwidth use is anti-development, it’s against our freedom, and it’s just plain embarrassing.

The rationale, NTC said, is to prevent illegal downloading of huge amounts of cyber-contraband, so to speak. But that line of reasoning is flawed and flimsy. I know of many people who use the Internet to download (and upload) gigabytes of data for work or for pursuing knowledge and not for anything illegal. (It’s like saying highways shouldn’t be used at night because criminals operate in the dark…)

If you ask me, this smacks of the government colluding with greedy telcos. Wouldn’t those companies just love it if their bandwidth-throttling activities become legalized? Then they wouldn’t have to upgrade their facilities or technologies to keep up with demand.

Cocoy Dayao of The ProPinoy Project wrote an open letter to the president and to Congress. Click here to read it. Let’s hope the government listens.

When I was in Vilnius, Lithuania for a conference on Internet Governance, I enjoyed 4G access via a USB modem. I was uploading at an average of 5Mbps, can you imagine? In almost every foreign city I’ve visited, Internet access speeds are way out there compared to ours here in the Philippines. This in spite of our having a relatively high Internet penetration rate. You’d think our telcos would be competing against each other to deliver the best in terms of technologies in order to woo the market. Instead, they attempt to dazzle the masses with unfulfilled promises of “unlimited” access.

It’s not even only about reasonable connection speeds with Philippine carriers. There’s still that gaping problem of under-serviced areas in the country. But let’s leave that for another discussion.

More and more Filipinos are finding themselves online today, the hours spent by each Filipino using the Internet have grown exponentially since the last decade, and there’s no slowing down this growth. And yet, the providers of Internet connectivity aren’t keeping up. They say “broadband” to label their Internet products, but is it really? The way Internet access is now, I’m happy when I get a steady speed of 80Kbps, which isn’t always.

The final NTC Memorandum Order should indeed compel telcos to deliver what they’re advertising — and yes, they should declare a CIR. Heck, they should already be doing so, Memorandum Order or no. But, the NTC should drop that part about allowing providers to limit bandwidth usage.

Like what Abe Olandres of YugaTech said, “I’d (rather) look at the other provision that requires a minimum guaranteed speed based on the subscribed speed.” However, Olandres goes on to defend the draft M.O. and puts forth the analogy of the MMDA limiting the use of the highways in the nation’s capital via color coding. But, with all due respect, I think this analogy is not apt.

The days of saying physical roads are analogous to the so-called information highway are long over, in my opinion. The highways in congested Metro Manila are incomparable to the Internet because the former is a limited resource: what you see is what you get, despite the burgeoning amount of vehicular traffic, hence the implementation of color-coding schemes. But the Internet is not limited at all; it’s limited only by what the telcos are providing at the moment. So, in this vein, the question really is not about limited resources, but about competence.

There’s been talk about the “fair-use policy” being adopted by telcos. A good friend of mine pointed out that this is baloney. If you’re a waterworks body, he goes on to say, you are constrained to implement fair-use policies because potable water is in limited supply. But, again, the Internet as a resource is not comparable to water supply.

My view is that the Internet is not merely a resource, but a tool as well. That’s why throttling access to it is a detriment to progress.

Here’s what Jayvee Fernandez of a Bugged Life says about this: that it’s a human rights issue because this bandwidth cap will stunt progress. I agree with him.