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ADSL services less attractive amid new technologies

VietNamNet Bridge – Big ADSL service providers, namely VNPT, Viettel and FPT have offered big preferences to new subscribers registering services in May 2013. They have to try every possible measure to prevent the sharp fall in the number of ADSL subscribers, blamed on the application of new technologies.

 

Ho Thi Dieu Hong, a senior executive of VDC 2, has admitted that the ADSL subscriber growth has been slowing down over the last few years in the context of the rise of the 3G technology.

Revealing the modest growth rate of 15 percent per annum, Hong said that it’s necessary to upgrade the service quality and better take care for customers to retain them.

Bui Phuong Chau from FPT also said its number of new ADSL subscribers still has been increasing, but more slowly than previously.

Le Huu Hien, Deputy Director of Viettel Telecom, said he can see signs of the ADSL market growth stopping short.

Meanwhile, an economist said that the disappearance of hundreds of thousands businesses in the economic crisis had brought lower revenue to telcos, because businesses were the big clients which spent more money on the service than household clients.

A report of the Ministry of Information and Communication showed that by the end of 2012, Vietnam had had 5.2 million subscribers, including 3 million household subscribers. VNPT had led the market with 62 percent of the market share with 3.2 million subscribers. Viettel had had 1.2 million subscribers (23 percent), FPT 700,000 (13 percent), and the remaining 2 percent belonged to NetNam. Meanwhile, Saigon Postel is targeting business clients in big urban areas.

IPTV service packages, including MyTV of VNPT, OneTV of FPT, and NextTV of Viettel, were once hoped to help increase the number of ADSL subscribers. However, this did not come true, because the services now have to compete with higher grade services such as cable TV or satellite TV.

Analysts believe that telcos would not spend more money on ADSL to expand the market. In order to have more subscribers, telcos need to target new urban areas or remote areas. However, this would require big money to set up infrastructure items.

According to Hien, Viettel is still moving ahead with the program on popularizing Internet services, but it would not spend more money on the infrastructure, while it would only provide services on the existing infrastructure.

As soon as 3G technology appeared, ADSL service providers have been falling into dilemma. Currently, the clients who need to use high speed Internet cannot work on 3G with the current speed. Therefore, ADSL still can “live well,” but its attractiveness has decreased.

In fact, ADSL service providers anticipated the situation some years ago. Therefore, they have stopped new investment programs, while focusing on upgrading services to retain existing clients in big markets, including Hanoi, HCM City and Da Nang.

Nguyen Tri Nang, an expert, has noted that service providers now have to think of the measures to lure more customers, once the service quality is no more the key of the competition.

“The service providers understand that they cannot expand the markets. Therefore, they have been trying to scramble clients with each other,” Nang commented.

Viettel and FPT have offered the 30-45 percent fee discounts. The clients, who pay fees for 12 months in advance, would get the free 13th month use.

Especially, FPT has announced that the customers of VNPT and Viettel, who leave the networks and shift to use FPT service, would receive the gifts – wifi modems and enjoy the discount of VND20,000 a month. The preferences would be applied to Mega Save, Mega You and Mega Me packages.

SGTT

Vietnamese students win fourth prizes at Intel ISEF 2013

VietNamNet Bridge – Two groups of Vietnamese students from the Ha Noi-Amsterdam and Le Hong Phong high schools have been awarded fourth-place prizes at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF).

The group from Ha Noi-Amsterdam High School for the Gifted included Vu Mai Huong, Hoang Trong Nam Anh and Do Thuy Linh, won the prize in the field of materials and bioengineering. The group studied the micro-filtration properties of chicken eggshell membrane and its potential use in portable water filtering devices.

The project “Application to Aquaponics for Home Grown Food – an Automatic Environmental Monitoring System” by Tran Ngoc Chau, Nguyen Phuong Dy and Truong Nhut Cuong from Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted in HCM City is a work in the field of electrical and mechanical engineering.

The Intel ISEF competition for students in grades 9 – 12 is the world’s largest international pre-college science competition. This year, 1,600 high school students, young scientists and engineers from 70 countries, regions and territories took part in the week-long competition in Phoenix, USA.

Source: VNS

Yahoo! board chairman steps down

Yahoo! on Thursday announced that the chairman of the board was stepping down as freshly-minted chief Marissa Mayer forges ahead with an effort to revive the struggling Internet pioneer.


A view of Yahoo! headquarters on July 17, 2012 in Sunnyvale, California.
(AFP/Justin Sullivan)

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo! on Thursday announced that the chairman of the board was stepping down as freshly-minted chief Marissa Mayer forges ahead with an effort to revive the struggling Internet pioneer.

Fred Amoroso will not seek reelection to the board of directors at the upcoming 2013 annual meeting of shareholders, Yahoo! said in a release.

Maynard Webb Jr. was appointed to take over as chairman of the board, with Amoroso serving as a member until the shareholder meeting on June 25.

“Fred has been a wonderful chairman for Yahoo! over the past year, and I’m personally grateful for his trust and guidance as I took on the role as Yahoo! CEO,” said Yahoo! chief executive Mayer.

“Fred’s mentorship and perspective has proved truly valuable to me in my first few months here at Yahoo!.”

Mayer took over the helm of Yahoo! in July of last year. Mayer had been a high-ranking executive at Google, which she joined in 1999 as its 20th employee and the first female engineer hired.

Yahoo! has been trying to reinvent itself as a “premier digital media” company since the Internet search service found itself withering in Google’s shadow.

At the time of Mayer’s hiring, Amoroso touted her as the ideal person for the job of Yahoo! chief.

Amoroso said that he told the board from the outset that he only intended to serve as chairman for a year.

“I’m very grateful and proud of the progress Yahoo! has made over the past year,” Amoroso said in a release on Thursday.

“With Marissa at the helm and the leadership team in place, this is a natural time for me to transition off the board, consistent with what I said a year ago.”

After Amoroso leaves, the Yahoo! board will have 10 members.

Zuckerberg earned over $2b at Facebook in 2012

Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg earned more than $2 billion worth of stock and $503,000 in base pay last year.


Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a media event at Facebook’s
Headquarters office in Menlo Park, California on April 04, 2013. (AFP/Josh Edelson)

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg earned more than $2 billion worth of stock and $503,000 in base pay last year for running the world’s leading social network.

Zuckerberg was also given bonuses that added up to slightly more than $266,000, according to a Facebook filing on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

He received $1.22 million in “other compensation,” more than half of which was said in the filing to involve the use of chartered aircraft for travel by Zuckerberg and guests as part of a “comprehensive security program.”

Facebook provided US regulators a breakdown of executive compensation and other matters that will be topics at an annual meeting of shareholders set to take place on June 11.

“In the first quarter of 2012, the compensation committee decided to increase the base salaries of our executive officers, other than our CEO,” Facebook said in the document.

“Accordingly, our compensation committee increased the base salary of each executive officer, other than our CEO, by $35,000 or $40,000.”

Zuckerberg has served as chairman of the board at Facebook since the beginning of last year.

His base pay will remain the same this year, while chief operations officer Sheryl Sandberg’s was raised to $340,000, according to the filing. Her bonus last year added up to $276,730, the paperwork indicated.

Sandberg was paid $321,000 last year, along with a bonus of $276,730 and about $25.6 million worth of stock awards, Facebook told the FTC.

Sandberg’s bonus “reflected her leadership in growing our revenue year over year and her strategic guidance in various business matters,” the filing said.

Zuckerberg exercised options to acquire 60 million shares of Facebook stock, which were valued at just shy of $2.28 billion, according to the SEC filing.

He holds 607,599,549 shares of Class B stock in Facebook and another 1,939,987 in Class A shares, the company said in the paperwork.

The SEC in March endorsed a Nasdaq exchange plan to create a $62 million pool of cash to cover trading losses due to computer glitches that disrupted the launch of Facebook shares onto the market.

The huge electronic market’s foul-up marred the $16 billion Facebook share issue in May, the most hotly awaited initial public offering on the US markets in years.

The stock hit a high of $45 on the first day, but slid below $18 in the following weeks. Facebook shares were trading at $26.85 at the Nasdaq close on Friday.

Samsung blames demand for delay in US sales of new S4

Samsung said Thursday that unexpectedly high demand for its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, was behind shipping issues that delayed scheduled sales in the US market.


File photo: Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone. (AFP PHOTO / FILES / Don EMMERT)

SEOUL: Samsung said Thursday that unexpectedly high demand for its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, was behind shipping issues that delayed scheduled sales in the US market.

“We are experiencing difficulty in boosting supply in the short term because pre-order demand has been far stronger than we anticipated,” said Lee Don-Joo, head of sales and marketing at Samsung’s mobile unit.

US telecom carriers T-Mobile and Sprint both had to postpone scheduled sales of the S4, citing delays in shipments from the South Korean consumer electronics giant.

The world’s top handset maker starts selling the much-anticipated device in South Korea on Friday, followed by a global roll-out at the weekend.

The S4, armed with eye motion control technology that will pause a video when the user looks away, comes with a faster chip and is thinner and lighter than the previous S3 model.

It features a high-definition, five-inch (12.7-centimetre) screen, enhanced picture-taking capabilities and the capacity to translate to and from nine languages. It also recognises touch by users wearing gloves.

The device was unveiled last month at a glitzy event at New York’s Radio City Music Hall — reflecting Samsung’s desire to expand its presence in the high-end US market against arch rival Apple and its iconic iPhone.

After years of following and refining the iPhone’s pioneering innovations — a strategy that resulted in bitter patent battles with Apple — Samsung has dethroned Apple to become the world’s top smartphone maker.

Samsung did not give a sales target at a press event Thursday, but Kim said he anticipated global sales would “outpace” those of the popular S3.

Back in January, Samsung said it had shifted more than 41 million Galaxy S3 units since its market debut last May. Analysts and market observers estimate that figure is now close to 60 million units.

The S4 release has been preceded by a massive promotional campaign — from the launch in New York to lighting up the sails of Sydney’s iconic opera house on Tuesday.

3D printing could herald new industrial revolution

As potentially game-changing as the steam engine or telegraph were in their day, 3D printing could herald a new industrial revolution, experts say.


(AFP/Emmanuel Dunand)

GENEVA: As potentially game-changing as the steam engine or telegraph were in their day, 3D printing could herald a new industrial revolution, experts say.

For the uninitiated, the prospect of printers turning out any object you want at the click of a button may seem like the stuff of science fiction.

But 3D printing is already here, is developing fast, and looks set to leap from the labs and niche industries onto the wider market.

“There are still limits imposed by the technology available today,” said Olivier Olmo, operational director of Switzerland’s EPFL research institution.

“But I’m certain that within 10 or 20 years, we’ll have a kind of revolution in terms of the technology being available to everyone,” he said.

The concept’s roots lie in fields ranging from standard two-dimensional printing to machine-tooling.

First, a 3D digital design is created either from scratch on a computer or by scanning a real object, before being cut into two-dimensional “slices” which are computer-fed into a printer.

The printer gradually deposits fine layers of material — such as plastic, carbon or metal — and builds a physical object.

The product can be as hard or as flexible as you programme the printer to make it, and even include moving parts rather than being a solid block.

“In theory, anything that we have today can be produced through 3D printing. It may just alter manufacturing as we know it,” said Simon Jones, a technology expert at global law firm DLA Piper.

In addition to the potential ecological impact of producing products right where they are needed, Jones said, 3D printing could make small-scale production of objects cheaper, rather than turning out huge numbers which may go to waste.

The uses go beyond easy replication of things that exist already.

“The technology offers possibilities that available manufacturing does not,” said Carla van Steenbergen of i.materialise, a Belgium-based service that prints designs for users.

Van Steenbergen pointed to objects such as customised screws for broken bones which match a patient’s specific anatomical characteristics and thereby cause less deterioration than the traditional variety.

“It’s the kind of thing that traditional technology won’t allow. It’s the kind of area where the big added value lies, making the impossible become possible,” she underlined.

The technology has been around for longer than many would think: the first commercial 3D print technology, known as stereo-lithography, was invented in 1994.

It has taken time to inch into the limelight, however.

“It’s honest to say that 3D printing is far from the mainstream, but it’s a sign that something is happening,” said Tristan Renaud of Prevue-Medical, a company that turns out models from 3D medical imaging data.

His technology chief Erik Ziegler said using online 3D printing services was likely to remain the norm for a while, given printer costs.

An alternative is provided by “Fablabs” — short for “fabrication laboratories” — a concept created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that offers grassroots access to small-scale manufacturing facilities.

But for those tempted by home-output, a handful of 3D printers have hit the consumer market, retailing for around $2,000.

As with computers, the price is expected to fall over time as demand rises and technology advances.

Van Steenbergen said that at the industrial level, 3D printing is not set to take over from classical methods, but rather go hand in hand.

“I think it will affect the manufacturing of some products, but it’s never going to replace it,” she said.

It also raises a raft of questions.

For example, would a car manufacturer be ready to let a neighbourhood mechanic print spare parts? And if such goods were produced under licence, what quality guarantees would be offered to consumers?

On the intellectual property front, what constitutes fair production of a replacement part for something you already own? And would designers of 3D objects be protected from an equivalent of file-sharing, bemoaned by the music industry?

“We’d tend to see an increase in commercial impact,” said Jones. “It would be very difficult to prevent that once 3D technology got to a cost point that’s sensible.”

Francis Gurry, head of the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organisation, underlined that the global 3D printing business is forecast to be worth $3.7 billion by 2015.

In contrast, world merchandise exports were worth $18.3 trillion last year, and commercial services, $4.3 trillion.

Despite remaining small in global terms, Gurry noted, the value of 3D printing is expected to expand relatively fast, to $6.5 billion by 2019.

Google Plus racks up followers, but not all are devoted

When Google launched its social networking service, Google Plus, during the summer of 2011, tens of millions of people clamoured to sign up for an account.


(AFP/Nicholas Kamm)

PARIS – When Google launched its social networking service, Google Plus, during the summer of 2011, tens of millions of people clamoured to sign up for an account.

But within months, critics had panned the new service, pointing to user pages bereft of meaningful content and exchanges. They said the new social site just wasn’t, well, social. It seemed as though Facebook had cornered the market — Google was too late to the party.

Perhaps not. According to data released this week by Internet analytics firm GlobalWebIndex, Google Plus is racking up large numbers of new users and continues to outpace Twitter as the world’s number two social network, behind perennial titan Facebook.

The reasons behind Google Plus’ growth — it now can boast 359 million active users, up 33 percent from 269 million users at the end of June 2012, according to GlobalWebIndex — are complex and tied to Google’s effort to build a connecting layer across all its services, including search, YouTube, maps and other products. Log into one, and you’ve logged into the lot.

Google itself is tight-lipped about its numbers. Its last released figures were in December, when the search giant said 500 million people had created Google Plus accounts.

But of this number, only 135 million were actively posting to Google Plus pages. Millions more were using some of the service’s features, such as clicking the “+1″ button to show they liked certain web pages.

It remains far behind Facebook, which boasts 701 million active users, according to the report, though Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg last year claimed more than a billion active accounts.

Still, the volume of Google Plus accounts suggests naysayers were too hasty in calling its demise. Like many social networking services, Google Plus has won over a devoted core of users.

One such convert is New Zealand photographer Trey Ratcliff, whose picture-centric Google Plus page has nearly five million followers.

“It’s nice to pop into Google Plus to discover new things. Facebook is pretty good, but it’s harder to discover new people or have more in-depth discussions around passions,” he said in an email exchange.

Indeed, this may be how Google Plus will find its niche in the crowded social media world: Whereas Facebook is the go-to service for connecting friends, Google Plus is more often used to meet strangers who share common interests.

Google Plus acknowledged as much last year by adding its “Communities” section, which hosts a diverse mass of groups and lets users join a “hangout” — the popular group video service.

“We’re extremely happy with our progress so far, and one of our main goals is to transform the overall Google experience and make all of the services people already love faster, more relevant, and more reliable,” Google said.

But some observers remain sceptical that account holders are doing much on Google Plus, and see it as little more than a tricked-out sign-in service for Google’s products.

Claire Stokoe, who works as social media manager at Mediaworks, a marketing agency in the English city of Newcastle, said she is doubtful Google Plus will ever catch up to Facebook, but she warns clients not to ignore it.

“An authoritative Google Plus account is one of the factors that will help you rank high on Google (search results),” she said, noting that a popular Google Plus account was an important criterion in the search algorithm that ranks pages.

But she doesn’t see the service expanding far beyond the business and marketing world — at least for now.

“Whoever I ask, everyone has a Facebook account. I don’t know anyone who has a Google Plus account unless they are in the industry, and that’s because they have to,” Stokoe said.

GlobalWebIndex’s latest figures show that while Google Plus is the second-most popular social networking service after Facebook, Twitter is actually growing at a slightly faster clip, increasing from 206 million users at the end of June last year to about 297 million today, a rate of about 44 percent.

The study also found that usage was growing fastest among older people, especially with Twitter, confounding stereotypes that social networking is for the young.

GlobalWebIndex is a London-based firm that tracks Internet users through a series of surveys in 31 countries, with an annual sample size of about 120,000 people. It asks respondents which social platform they have directly contributed to in the last month and said Google itself uses its numbers internally.

The study found that Facebook also continued to grow rapidly, at about the same rate as Google Plus.

But the leading social network is also said to be battling “Facebook fatigue” in some countries, with some users growing bored of the service or else bemoaning its myriad changes to privacy settings and other tweaks, including the growing prevalence of sponsored content.

A study by the Pew Research Center in February found that more than half of US Facebook members had taken breaks from the leading social network. While the top reason was they were just too busy, people also cited fatigue with the service.

Judith Catterall, a retired choreographer from Portland, Oregon, said she tried to close her account after getting fed up with changes and a news feed becoming increasingly cluttered with sponsored content.

“It’s one of those things where you think ‘OK, I have no control,’ and that may have been the final straw,” she said.

But within 10 days of deactivating her account, Catterall was back on Facebook. She missed her friends.

Viber vulnerabilities allow full access to Android phones

More than 50 million smartphone users worldwide are at risk of being compromised by a serious bug in the Viber app.

Bkav network security company experts brought Viber vulnerabilities to light which allows intruders to gain access and control over all the Android smartphones having Viber installed, even if they are locked.

All smartphones including Samsung, Sony and HTC are affected by this bug.

Viber is an application OTT (over-the-top) for mobile, enabling messaging, free calling. Particularly in the Google Play app store.

In Vietnam, more than 3.5 million smartphones users had Viber installed in Vietnam by March 3, 2013.

Utilising the Viber vulnerabilities to control the locked screen of the Android smartphones does not stop the villians. Just few taps with the new Viber popup messages, combining with using the notification bar of the phone or sending a Viber message to the victims can give access to the phone.

Nguyen Minh Duc, Bkav director of the network security division, said: “The Viber solutions for handling the popup messages displayed on the locked screen are not the usual way, leading to uncontroll over the logic programme and cause the hole. The danger is that the bad guys can install the eavesdropping software on the phone, cellphone spy or steal data but the user did not know.”

Speaking on PC Magazine (U.S.), Viber representative has confirmed this bug and said the company was conducting the bug correction. While the manufacturer has not released official patch, Bkav recommends the cell phone users should not let anyone use their own cellphones for the security. Simultaneously, users should regularly monitor the latest information to update the patch as soon as possible.

Rights group presses Twitter on ‘hate speech’

A Nazi-hunting group urged Twitter and other social media Wednesday to step up efforts to remove online “hate speech”.


(AFP/Yasuyoshi Chiba)

WASHINGTON: A Nazi-hunting group urged Twitter and other social media Wednesday to step up efforts to remove online “hate speech”, citing a surge in incitement to attacks like the recent Boston bombings.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center said Twitter has spawned nearly 20,000 hashtags and handles this year that are linked to terrorism and extremism, up 30 percent in the past year.

“If we want to make it tougher for the terrorists to recruit, we need (actions by) Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube,” the centre’s associate dean Abraham Cooper said at a Capitol Hill briefing.

“The proliferation of terrorism tutorials, and the abuse of social media and online forums by extremists, portend that future ‘lone wolf’ attacks here and abroad are inevitable.”

Cooper said that Facebook has been far more active in “scrubbing” pages which appear to incite hate and violence, and has been open to feedback from his group, but he said Twitter has refused to even discuss the matter.

“We have been unsuccessful in even getting an answer from Twitter” about its efforts, Cooper said.

“The bad guys know how to use Facebook and Twitter,” he added, to recruit and promote violence.

The organisation gave Facebook a rating of A-minus for taking “tremendous steps to identify and eliminate digital prejudice and hate on their site”.

It gave YouTube a grade of C-minus, saying the Google-owned video site allows many tutorials used by attackers to remain online.

Twitter was given a grade of F by the centre, which said, “You can post anything you want without being screened or removed.”

A Twitter spokesman said in a statement sent to AFP that the company does not “mediate content or intervene in disputes between users”.

“However, targeted abuse or harassment may constitute a violation of the Twitter rules and terms of service,” the spokesman added.

The messaging platform’s terms of service state that Twitter is not responsible for content posted, but that users “may not publish or post direct, specific threats of violence against others”.

The centre, which was founded in 1977 by Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Wiesenthal, published the data in its 15th annual report on digital hate and terrorism.

Vietnam’s first remote sensing satellite launched after delay

After three days of delay due to bad weather conditions, Vietnam’s first remote sensing satellite, VNRED Sat-1, was launched by Arianespace from the Guiana Space Center, French Guiana this morning, May 7.

>> The launch of Vietnam satellite delayed by weather

>> VNREDSat-1 to be launched into orbit on May 4

>> VNREDSat-1 satellite launch delayed

>> Vietnam plans to launch third satellite in Q2

The earth observation satellite was launched by a Vega lightweight rocket at 9:06 am.

It is expected that 1 hour, 57 minutes and 24 seconds after taking off, the satellite will activate its propulsion engine to make its way to sun synchronous orbit (SSO) at an altitude of nearly 670 km.

The VNRED Sat-1 was launched with two other space vehicles, including a 140kg Proba-V satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) to map vegetation cover, and a 1.3kg Estonian microsatellite, ESTCube-1, to test an electric solar sail.

During its operation, VNRED Sat-1 will provide high-resolution satellite images that will serve social and economic development purposes, natural resources management, environmental protection, and natural disaster detection and control.

The satellite, which measures 600 mm x 570 mm x 500 mm and weighs 115 kg, was built at a total cost of €55.8 million from the French Government’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) fund and VND65 billion (around $3.2 million) from the Vietnamese Government.

It is expected that the satellite will provide 100 images a day on average.

This is very important for Vietnam, since the country currrently has to buy satellite images from foreign countries at high prices and has to wait for 1-2 months to receive such images.

In 2008 and 2012, Vietnam launched two telecommunication satellites, Vinasat 1 and Vinasat 2, both of which are operating on a geostationary orbit at an altitude of about 35,800 km.