The New Nation - Internet Edition

ICX technology to change future of Bangladesh

Mahbubur Rahman Khan

The using of International Gateway (IGW) and Interconnection Exchange (ICX) technology will lead the country a step further to the high of advanced country. It will also influence the socio-economic condition of the country.

Experts said this at the inauguration ceremony of IGW and ICX a few days ago.

Let see how these advanced technology will function and aid to our telecommunication system.

Bangladesh Telegram and Telephone Board (BTTB) has been operating as a medium of connector of both international and national call since after liberation.

As a result, people faced many problems including call jam and network failure. Taking the opportunity of the problems, some greedy businessmen started VoIP business illegally.

Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) directed drive against these illegal business organizations and confiscated huge illegal VoIP equipments and collected millions of taka as fine.

BTRC mainly introduced IGW and ICX act intending to stop the illegal VoIP business. It called bidding and awarded five companies of which Mir Telecom, Novotel and Bangla Trac get license for conducting IGW and M&H Telecom and Getco get license of ICX.

IGW and ICX are mainly work as telecommunication medium. The communication process will be occurred in three steps. That is, an international call will be caught by IGW through submarine cable or VSAT.

The IGW then send the call to the ICX from where the local subscribers get connection. The process goes to vice versa if anyone wish to contact internationally. All local calls including mobile and land phone will be connected through ICX.

The process may seem to anyone lengthy but confusion become clear when we take an account of the technology that the companies are using. Mir Telecom, the IGW service provider, uses Next Generation Networking technology. They have equipment with a rated process capacity of 2 million Busy Hour Call Attempts (BHCA) (expandable to 16 million), with 25,000 trunks (expandable to 360,000 trunks). It has billing capacity of 8 million Call Data Records (CDRs) per day.

They are using incorporating configurable Jitter Buffer, Voice Activity Detector (VAD), Control Noise Generator (CNG), Echo Cancellation (EC) and other quality optimizing capabilities.

It has extensive Points-of-Purpose (POPs) in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. It uses both TDM (standard E-1 and STM-1) and IP (FE and GE) interfaces. It has both high speed Sub-sea (SWM-4) and Intelsat Satellite connectivity.

GETCO, the ICX service provider, has equipment with a capacity of 9.2 million BHCA. It is linked with media gateway. It system can support 205,830 concurrent call.

It uses world class billing system on Sun Platform running Oracle Billing and revenue management suite. It has capablility of processing 35 million CDRs per day.

Besides, providing better inter operator and international connectivity ICX technology will aid to monitor call effectively as all the traffic is routed through it.

It will help to reduce stealing or hijacking of mobile. The International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number of mobile will be registered as a result the owner of the mobile can block it at any time.

Internet users will be able to make domestic or a international phone calls from computers at a very low cost.

Mobile users will be the owner of their mobile numbers. If a Grameenphone user want to take a Banglalink connection for better service or rate, he or she can keep his or her 017 number and use the Banglalink connection.

Experts hope the whole scenario of Bangladesh in telecommunication sector will be changed by 2015 if the companies can work properly.

New software developed for urban planning

In Bangladesh Urban Planning has become an increasingly popular topic of discussion with respect to the provision of efficient environments for urban development activity. The country, city planning and development agencies are preparing plans for urban development. In this technology based period it is essential to use an innovative technology which can assist any planning activity & helps any decision maker involved in urban development activity. "UPT (Urban Planning Tools)" is a Software which is helpful for any decision making in planning activity.

UPT software is developed by Md. Shahriar Alam Bappy, a fourth year student of Urban & Rural Planning Discipline of Kulna University. The main Purpose of this software is to assist urban development activity. The main attraction of this software is that, user can use any ArcGIS shape file without installing Arc GIS Software. ArcGIS is world famous software for map digitizing of any area & its price is too high. The map created in ArcGIS software can also be used in this UPT software without using ArcGIS. UPT software also can calculate and analyze that, what should be the amount of a planned residential, industrial, road, commercial area included in a particular urban area.

This is the first software made in Bangladesh, which can open both ArcGIS shape file, Cad drawings, GRID, ESRI Coverage and Standard Image format files and not only open, it can also do various types of operation by using these types of files. ArcGIS is world famous software which used for map creation and also plays a vital role for planning activity. The file of this ArcGIS software is saved as .shp. "Urban Planning Tools (UPT)" software can read this Shape file; even it can replace shape file to .jpeg image easily. UPT also can create new shape file like ArcGIS even it can read the database of shape file, copy map from UPT to other program, can add new graphics and so on.

Here a new type of converter included in this software which is "One to many converter". Normally we can see many types of converter, but those can convert from one unit to another only one unit in a moment such as inch to meter or inch to feet or meter to feet in one time. But UPT software can convert one unit to another many unit in a moment like inch to feet, meter, mile etc and acre to square meter, katha, bigha, etc many unit by one click. In our country it is too essential to forecasting future population for preparing a particular plan for a particular area development.

Population forecasting is also an important issue for any master plan preparation of an urban area. The first objective of a town planner is to determine the future population of a particular urban area and then he or she has to done other objective based on this calculated population. Here in UPT software a calculator included which can be used only for population forecasting, which will be helpful for any Decision maker, Town Planner in urban development activity. Anyone can easily determine future population of a particular area in a particular year by using this software. In Bangladesh many types of NGOs, GOs, Development organization, company have to Digitize map based on their different types of project and they also need area wise information from map.

But some organization have to faced such a problem like, they have no ArcGIS software because of its unavailability or its higher price, UPT software can be used as alternate of this. In this technology depended world many developed country used developed technology in urban development activity.

The technology used in a particular country indicates that how much this country is developing. UPT software can be used as Planning Support System (PSS), which can support the planning activity. This software can be helpful for Utility service planning of a particular area. User can calculate the future need of a particular utility service like parking facility, market, dustbin etc based on future population and capacity of a particular service by using this software. Here in UPT software there is a link with Microsoft word, Access, Excel program.

So in this way user can easily open any database or document file from this software and also open any web page if internet is connected. User can also convert any shape file as an image like .jpeg, .emf etc and directly copy these to any word document file or any image viewer program. This software can calculate the camber of road to support Transportation planning activity. In a word this software can play a vital role for urban planning activity.

The future Plans of UPT software are- Web base Geographic Information System (GIS), Conversion of MapInfo's .tab file to Arcgis's .shp file, Use of GPS in this software, More option will be included which will be more helpful for urban planning activity. For more information about "UPT (Urban Planning Tools)" software.

Fresher reception held at DIIT

On Thursday, August 21, the orientation program of the fresh students of March and September Session'08 of DIIT held at DIIT Dhanmondi Main Campus Auditorium. In a pleasurable environment and in the presence of guardians the students were given the reception. The Chief Guest of the program was Mohammad Nuruzzaman, the Executive Director of Daffodil Institute of IT. The Program was chaired by Dr. Md. Fokhray Hossain, the Academic Director of DIIT. Among others, Md. Khaled Sohel, Deputy Director of DIIT, Rathindra Nath Das, Assistant Director of DIIT, Md. Samsuddin Ahmed, Course Coordinator of DIIT & Anower Hossain, one of the successful students of DIIT were also present at the program.

Mohammad Nuruzzaman, the Executive Director of DIIT in his speech, advised the students to concentrate on their study and also to become careful in career related facts. The Chairperson of the program Dr. Md. Fokhray Hossain suggested everyone to give importance to moral education. Md. Khaled Sohel, the Deputy Director of DIIT described the importance of International Standard Education.

Nokia releases 3 new smartphones

Sascha Segan

Nokia on Tuesday announced three new smartphones, all destined for direct sales in the U.S.: the video-centric N96, the N85 with an OLED screen, and the N79, a candy bar-styled phone with changeable covers. I had the chance to try these phones at a meeting with Nokia yesterday.

All three phones use the same basic platform-the Symbian Series 60 Version 3 Feature Pack 2 OS-on a device with HSDPA and Wi-Fi Internet connections, a microSD memory card slot, FM radio, good music and video support, GPS with mapping, navigation and photo geotagging, and a 5-megapixel camera with a dual-LED flash. But they're each a little different, too.

Of the three, the N85 is the most striking. It's a slider phone topped by a 2.6-inch, 320-by-240-pixel OLED screen. Holding the N85, I was struck by how bright the screen was, how deep the colors were, and its excellent viewing angle. Nokia reps pulled a movie up on the phone, and it was still watchable nearly edge-on. The wide-viewing angle, as well as a high refresh rate and low power consumption are reasons companies have been experimenting with OLED instead of the usual LCD screen technology.

The N85 is also slim for what you're getting here, especially considering the 5-megapixel camera. Nokia chose to use a two-LED flash instead of a more powerful Xenon flash because the LEDs can stay on for video recording, whereas a Xenon light works mostly for still pictures. Trying the camera, I found it autofocused a lot more quickly than the N95, which can take up to two seconds to focus. The flash seemed pretty bright, though it made my pictures rather blue. I was also relieved to find that Nokia has resolved the performance problems that plagued Series 60 devices for so long. The N85 felt snappy and quick, even when I used its built-in accelerometer to rotate the screen. Nokia also pointed out the N85's FM transmitter, which I didn't get to try.

The N85 has tri-band HSDPA and quad-band EDGE, so it works on AT&T's high-speed network, T-Mobile's slower EDGE network, and foreign high-speed networks. Unfortunately, it won't work on T-Mobile's new 3G network.

The N85 will be available for $600 to $650 before the end of the year.

Nokia also showed me the U.S. version of the N96, a slightly larger smartphone that looks and works like a sleeker version of the existing N95 8GB. Rather than a mere 8GB of internal memory, though, the N96 has 16GB, along with a memory card slot and a little kickstand that lets you prop it up on a table to watch videos.

The N96's other secret superpower is that it supports DVB-H, a European mobile TV standard that's totally useless here in the U.S.

Since the major differences between the N96 and N85 are the size, the memory, and the kickstand, the N96 seems to be focused on video playback. My hands and eyes kept darting over to the N85, though; the N96 just seemed a little duller.

Whirlpool now at Singer plus

Whirlpool Refrigerator, Airconditioner, Washing Machine and Microwave Oven are now available in over 250 Singer Plus Shops across the country.

The customers at Singer Plus will also enjoy attractive discount on these products from September 1, 2008 to Eid day. The discount will be applicable for both cash and hire purchase. The buyers of Whirlpool products will enjoy easy and flexible installment facilities only from Singer Plus.

The launching of world's No. 1 home appliance brand Whirlpool increases brand range of Singer Plus and gives more options to the customers. Currently, apart from Singer Samsung, Haier, Moulinex, Sebec and Tefal brands are available in Singer Plus Shops.

For further details please call Hello Singer Call Centre at 01552205160-6.