International Data Communications Essay

Just like in end terminal / customer premise equipment (CPE) distribution, countries in European countries experience new applications and data services relatively in the same time with other regions like Asia and North America (USA and Canada). Figure 1 shows the current figure of telephone users in the world based on regions. Figure 1 Main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants (1994 -2004) Source: ITU. â€Å"The Digital Divide at a glance. † 2005. Retrieved December 10, 2007 from http://www.itu. int/wsis/tunis/newsroom/stats/ In terms of mobile service penetration rates, Europe is the leader since it currently composes of more than 570 million mobile subscribers and a mobile penetration of over 70%. It leaves other regions behind in mobile penetration rate in which Africa only accounts for 9%, America records 42%, and 19% in Asia Pacific. The high penetration rate has put mobile subscribers in Europe to surpass those in fixed phone lines. This situation also holds true for data communication in the region in which according to ITU (2005), the region has penetration rate above 50%, especially in Western Europe while the rest past of the region only records 20% of Internet penetration rate. However, like its Asian counterparts, some countries in Europe also experiences uneven users since in Russia, for instances, vast majority of subscribers located in large urban centers. 1. M-Commerce: Opportunities and Challenges Moreover, the advancement of telecommunications and internet technologies has created new model of commerce, the borderless commerce or e-commerce. The terminology refers to cross-nations or even cross-continents trade and commerce. This development goes further as Internet is accessible not only via desktop computers but also via mobile devices like PDAs and mobile phones. The benefit of using mobile commerce (m-commerce) is attractive. Say, a woman is shopping at a mall and decides to buy some clothes. Unfortunately, when she is at a cahier, she finds that her debit card has no enough balance to pay the clothes or her credit cards are out of limit. In this situation, she called her husband to transfer some money to her account. Although her husband is in a meeting that is far from a bank, he is still able to do the fund transfer by using his mobile phone and log into a bank’s mobile portal. Finally, in few minutes, the woman’s bank account has enough balance to pay the clothes. Similarly, mobile phones can also act as a virtual debit card when it is used as a payment method for vending machines. The method of this transaction is by sending sms (short message services) from users’ mobile phones and typing the short number that is displayed in the vending machines. When the server of the vending machines received this sms, they ask the telecommunication carrier to deduct some amount of money from the person’s prepaid balance or to add a transaction into his next billing statement.