IT lovers to 'feel the net' at Internet Fair 2005
City Correspondent
A six-day Internet fair under the banner "Feel the Net" begins today at Bhasani Novo Theatre and will continue till May 1. The fair jointly organised by the Science, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Ministry and the Internet Service Providers Association of Bangladesh (ISPAB) will be open daily from 10am to 8pm. Taking a cue from last year's success, the Internet Fair 2005 is expecting over 30,000 visitors with the objective of creating awareness among general people on the various uses and benefits of using Internet Technology, Secretary General of ISPAB Ershad Shafi Chowdhury said. This exhibition will house 53 stalls in four pavilions, and representatives of many local and foreign ICT companies, along with Internet Service Providers (ISP) will participate in the fair. The fair will have an Internet browsing zone with one mega bit per second (Mbps) speed compared to the speed of 64 Kbps provided in last year's fair and a gaming corner as additional attractions. The participating companies will present networking products and solutions, offer various ISPs, introduce latest technology like Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone, video streaming, call centre solutions, broadband services (fibre optic, Digital subscriber lines (DSL), radio link), wireless access protocol (WAP) and general packet radio service (GPRS). Seminars will be held on broadband, submarine cables and advantages of using open source, Red Hat Linux and the various uses of internet and electronic journalism and more. Shafi emphasised on the seminars in the fair. "The seminar on open source and Linux technology should be very important and interesting. Internet Technology should reach villages and the concepts of this extension process will be discussed with importance". Organisers said the linking of the submarine cable would be given prominence. There will also be discussions on Bangladesh Internet Exchange -- a process by which internet speed will be increased so that e-mails and file transfers within local ISPs will be quicker. Earlier a user of Bangladesh-on-line (BOL) sending an e-mail message to a user of the ISP Bangla net, the message was linked via Hong Kong. Even users from the ISPs in Bangladesh needed more time to send any file using theMSN messenger. But now with the Exchange since August, the transfer rate is faster. More interesting information will be discussed about this Internet Exchange at the seminars. There will be a media booth where ATN Bangla, The Daily Naya Diganto, The Daily Financial Express and Computer Bichitra, the media partners of this event will gather.
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