The Hindu Business Line : Bandwidth at great length

Okay, we know broadband as high-speed network access, but who or what is a broadbandit? "One who padded his coffers by $50 million or more riding the bandwidth bubble," says Om Malik in his book.

EVEN before delving into the book, you might be struck by a confession among a list of praises on the back cover of Broadbandits by Om Malik, published by Wiley (www.wiley.com) .

Ethernet Inventor, 3Com Founder, Polaris partner, Bob Metcalfe writes: "Spread of blame for the Internet bubble shows there's plenty to go around. For my part, I am sorry and promise almost never to do it again." Managing Editor of Wired magazine, Blaise Zerega says that Malik's pen is as wicked as Mark Twain's.

Okay, we know broadband as high-speed network access, but who or what is a broadbandit? "One who padded his coffers by $50 million or more riding the bandwidth bubble," explains the blurb, before launching into the $750-billion telecom heist, which "all but destroyed an industry and decimated thousands of portfolios".

The book begins with `the most wanted list' that includes Gary Winnick, Bernie Ebbers, Jack Grubman and Joe Nacchio as bosses, and Scott Sullivan, Matt Bross and Richard McGinn as the underbosses. Telgi, though he shares at least the first three letters with the industry, is not the culprit under Malik's scrutiny, so take courage and read on.

The prologue corrects a common misconception — that the biggest bubble in the history of the modern world was the dot-com bubble. No, the author would say, it was the telecom bubble, less visible but more damaging.

"In stark contrast to the dot-com bust and the implosion of Enron, which unravelled with alarming speed, the disaster in the telecommunications industry arrived stealthily. Thus an industry that at one point had "a value of $ 2 trillion" bit the dust.

"It was a case of the right thing at the right time with all the wrong people." The author goes on to discuss three bubbles — infrastructure, services and equipment — in what went poof.

"The world is crisscrossed with fibre optic that is unlikely to be used for decades... and cables as thick as a full-grown python lie dormant across the oceans." The future, however, may not be bleak, hopes Malik. We may, after all, find use for all the spare bandwidth, putting life in those snakes.

Running around a disk

A scan of a disk label appears as a `holoproj' in midair. It is in fact a `two-dimensional code'. "The dots making up the border and the lion made an ugly picture, but they served a hidden purpose as well — they filled a two-dimensional data matrix with information." That's a teaser from Steve Perry and Larry Segniff's new Tom Clancy book, Changing of the Guard.

It tells the story of the head of a multinational corporation who is ready to see the world in ruins to protect his name. Where's the threat for him? In a computer disk that has fallen into the hands of the Net Force. "Reality bites. Nothing is perfect," is old wisdom.

Talk about Virtual Reality (VR) programming. To create the other reality, don't make perfect beaches. "Nibble a bit at a VR viewer and thus make it seem more real." Thus, when stumbling on waves with no teeth, Jay wonders whether he had "accidentally jacked into someone else's data stream," or "grabbed an old data file he'd used for research."

Magnet can play tricks, as you would see Natadze doing to disable the magnetic alarm sensor: "He used a powerful rare-earth magnet he'd taken from the head of an electric toothbrush, sliding it between the top of the door and the inset switch mounted in the top of the jamb. The magnet would prevent the switch in the sensor from triggering when he opened the door... The PDA he carried was more than it seemed; it had a magnetometer and both an ultrasonic and an infrared sensor. Between the three, he could ID most alarm triggers."

Does that trigger some curiosity?

India business

Offshoring, outsourcing and the global services revolution. The common thread for all this is not far to seek. So, "What's this India Business?" asks Paul Davies, a book from Nicholas Brealey Publishing (www.nbrealey-books.com) . "This is a practical guide to a dynamic country of a billion people with a complex culture and vibrant business environment, offering proven strategies for working positively with Indian businesses," states the blurb. Preface does not project India as a land of maharajahs and palaces, but as an economic powerhouse. "The World Bank is predicting it will be the fourth largest economy in the world before the year 2050... Already 10 per cent of the very richest Californians are of Indian extraction, and probably living in Silicon Valley." Here is the invitation: "Someone who goes through life without experiencing India misses a whole range of opportunities, paradoxes, and contradictions. Where else in the world would you see electronic voting machines being transported to far-flung locations on the back of an elephant or the most advanced communications fibre being laid into the ground with only the help of pick and shovel?"

On IT education, again, there are kudos: "More than two million people graduate from higher education in any one year, and more than 250,000 of these will be IT graduates. That sort of figure leaves most people astounded, but the more impressive attribute is the extremely high standard of these individuals. As a group, they have world renown."

A quote from Arun Shourie sums up the future course: "A series of new disciplines is about to break out in India for which IT will be what arithmetic is to calculation. Biotechnology, nanotechnology, telemedicine, telesurgery, distance learning, products with embedded software, automated production processes, product design - and many more. Each of these will see a leap in the coming years in India, and in each of them IT will be a basic ingredient." Good read for Indians too.

Books2Byte@TheHindu.co.in

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