Category: Technology (Page 1 of 2)

6G Network

2024-11-30 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 0 Comments

The 6G network will be the next big step in mobile technology, expected to launch around 2030. Currently in the research phase, it promises to go far beyond 5G and 4G with faster speeds, lower latency, greater capacity, and better connectivity. Using THz frequencies for higher bandwidth, AI for smarter networks, and quantum communication for advanced security, 6G will power exciting applications like holographic communication, brain-machine interfaces, autonomous systems, and the Internet of Everything (IoE), paving the way for a highly connected and intelligent future.

The foundational advancement of 6G indicates significant performance enhancements over previous generations:

Spectrum Efficiency: With 5–10x improvement over 5G, 6G will maximise the spectrum use, enabling high-capacity transmissions for increasing network demands.
Peak Data Rates: Exceeding 1 Tb/s, 6G will support next-generation applications like holographic communications and high-resolution immersive experiences.
Latency: Reduced to 10–100 µs for over-the-air (OTA) transmissions, 6G enables ultra-reliable real-time applications such as brain-machine interfaces, autonomous systems, and tactile internet.
Mobility: With support for 1000 km/h speed, 6G supports high-speed transportation systems like hypersonic travel and advanced railway systems.
Connectivity Density: Connecting >10⁷ devices/km² will support dense IoT ecosystems, including smart cities, industrial automation, and ambient intelligence.
Energy Efficiency: Efficiency to be improved 100 times, emphasising sustainability and minimising the environmental impact of the growing digital ecosystem.
Traffic Capacity: With an area traffic capacity of up to 1 Gbps/m², 6G will provide consistent performance in densely populated urban centres and during high-traffic events.

6G technology is designed to address diverse and futuristic use cases, grouped into key verticals:

Enhanced eMBB (FeMBB)
- Holographic Verticals: Real-time holographic telepresence for virtual meetings, education, and entertainment.
- Full-Sensory Digital Sensing and Reality: Immersive experiences that incorporate multiple senses in digital interactions.
- UHD/SHD/EHD Videos: Ultra-high-definition video streaming for cinematic-quality remote collaborations.
- Tactile/Haptic Internet: Real-time transmission of touch and feedback for applications like telemedicine and virtual reality.
Enhanced Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (ERLLC)
- Fully Automated Driving: Safe and reliable real-time communication for autonomous vehicles in urban and highway settings.
- Industrial Internet: High-precision and responsive connectivity for smart factories, robotics, and industrial IoT systems.
Massive Machine-Type Communications (umMTC)
- The Internet of Everything (IoE) will become a reality with comprehensive integration of devices, systems, and environments, driving smart cities and personalised services.
Enhanced Low Power Communications (ELPC)
- Internet of Bio-Nano-Things: Advanced nanoscale connectivity for healthcare and biological systems.
Long-Distance High-Mobility Communications (LDHMC)
- Space Travel: Reliable communication for interplanetary exploration and space tourism.
- Deep-Sea Sightseeing: Advanced communication systems for underwater exploration and operations.
- Hyperspeed Railways: Seamless connectivity for passengers traveling at speeds greater than 1000 km/h.
Energy Efficiency and Environmental Goals
- Energy Harvesting: Devices will capture energy from ambient sources such as solar power or electromagnetic waves, reducing dependence on batteries.
- Zero-Power Communications: Some devices will operate solely on harvested energy, making them ideal for IoT in remote or inaccessible locations.
- AI-Driven Energy Management: Artificial intelligence will optimize resource allocation across the network, ensuring minimal power usage without compromising performance.

IEEE Presidential Roundtable on Climate Change

2023-10-27 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 0 Comments

It is not a regular occasion of any serving IEEE President to visit Indonesia. In our official note, the first serving IEEE President to visit Indonesia was Prof Peter Staecker in 2013 — he visited Bali for an IEEE Educational Program awareness while I was only days starting my service as the IEEE Indonesia Section Chair. This year, Prof Saiful Rahman, the current IEEE President, is visiting Indonesia for a couple days. The visit is related to the IEEE campaigns in climate change; so it is also the theme of his visit. He is visiting Indonesia accompanied by the current IEEE Indonesia Section Chair, Prof Gamantyo, and the IEEE Malaysia Chair-Elect, Bernard Lim.

As one of the programs within his visit, the IEEE Indonesia Section co-organise with TVRI, an on-air discussion titled the IEEE ASEAN Roundtable on Climate Change. The event was carried out today in TVRI, with the IEEE President Prof Saifur Rahman as the main speaker, and teens of other speakers from the industry, universities, research centres, and government agencies as participants in round table discussion form — including yours truly, representing the IEEE Indonesia Section Advisory Committee, and the IEEE TEMS Regional Leadership Subcommittee. The organiser is TVRI, led by Dr Agnes Irwanti, a member of its Supervisory Board; and Mr Iman Brotoseno, the CEO.

I explored the opportunity of using currently available or currently developed technology to reduce and overcome the impact of the climate change. Climate change is always one of the motivations behind many collaborative innovations in the development of technology and technology-based business.

Since I work in telecommunications industry, I started by giving an example in mobile industry. The use of cognitive radio and dynamic spectrum access (CR/DSA) may optimise green technology by improving the efficiency and utilisation the spectrum by dynamic adaptation to changing network conditions and environmental factors. In urban areas with high network congestion, CR can switch to less crowded frequency bands, reducing power consumption and improving network performance; and it could also optimised to choose the most green-powered network infrastructure available. CR device can lower its power when communicating over shorter distances, conserving energy. CR also enables dynamic spectrum sharing among different technologies. For example, a cognitive radio network can share spectrum with existing cellular networks during peak traffic hours and switch to alternative bands during off-peak times. This optimises resource usage and reduces energy consumption in both networks. With the use of blockchain, spectrum may be shared among operators with easier accounting and cost-sharing.

In more applicative approach in the industry, the paradigm of of ecosystem-based business growth has motivated enterprises to share capabilities, resources, opportunities, so they can reduce the cost and risk, while also reduce the cost for the environment by many sharing methods used in business ecosystems, facilitated by massive digitalisation that enables process and capabilities to be modularised, reused, integrated, improved, and orchestrated among collaborative or event competitive businesses.

The use of technology like the AI and robotics play important roles in addressing climate change in various ways. Some examples:

The technology might be used for autonomous sensor-equipped robots, drones, and satellites to monitor and collect data on climate-related parameters such as temperature, humidity, carbon emissions, deforestation, and more. These technologies help in obtaining real-time and accurate data for climate analysis.
AI facilitates the analysis of huge amounts of climate data, helping researchers build more accurate climate models. These models are crucial for understanding climate change, its causes, and predicting future climate trends.
AI to optimise energy consumption in various sectors, including transportation, manufacturing, and buildings. Smart grids and energy management systems use AI to balance energy supply and demand, reduce wastage, and integrate renewable energy sources effectively.
AI-based integrated logistics management (4PL / 5PL) may orchestrate logistics services to share the logistics resources they have, with better supply chain model, supported by better demand and production prediction. It will also reduce the use of fuel and environmental cost to expand the transportation facilities.
AI to support agricultural practices, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving crop yields. Additionally, robots can assist in precision agriculture, reducing chemical usage and improving sustainability.

There are many more aspect of technology to be used to improve the environmental conditions, including the power management, traffic management, personalised education, etc. Other speakers also explored what we can do in the aspects of education, government policy, and others.

Even after the formal discussion, we still continue the discussion during the lunch session, after Friday-prayer session. I think it is also my first experience to accompany an IEEE President to a mosque to attend a Friday prayer session.

We closed the day with a more relaxing discussion during dinner at Plaza Senayan.

On Complexity

2022-12-24 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 0 Comments

Computer Science Doctorate Program of Binus University invited me to provide an Industrial Talk for their PhD-level students. I offered them a talk on the evolution of economy and technology towards the era of complexity.

The day for the lecture was December 2nd. But since I was in Bandung that day, the lecture was carried out as a zoominar. The moderator was Dr Agung Trisetyarso; and the sponsor was surely Dr Ford Lumban Gaol, the Vice Chair of Binus University Doctorate Program in Computer Science, who is also the current Chair of the IEEE Indonesia Computer Society Chapter.

I started the talk by introducing the IEEE TEMS — Technology & Engineering Management Society, i.e. an IEEE society where I am currently a member of its Regional Leadership Subcommittee. TEMS aims to drive IEEE members in maintaining essential engineering management skills, supporting the leadership career path of IEEE members, and fostering active knowledge transfer between the academic and practicing communities.

The lecture continued by exploring the digital transformation in the contexts of digital strategy, digital architecture, and its innovative business model, which inevitably drive global business into ecosystem-based collaborative business (Warner & Wäger 2019) with its platform-based value chain (Jacobides, Cennamo, Gawer 2018) and virtually-connected strategic collaborative network (Graça & Camarinha-Matos 2016). After discussing the methods in architecting business ecosystems, the lecture shifted to business ecosystem as paradigm shift (Cha 2020). I figured that it means that business ecosystems are considered as another inevitability in a more complex business environment — even for non-digital business.

Ecosystem players — i.e. business entities related to the ecosystems — may have different needs, goals, positions, and abilities. When interactions occur, members analyse, adapt, and form an evolutionary process. Adaptabilities within a business ecosystem shows that a business ecosystem is a system that has the characteristics of a complex adaptive system (CAS).

Adaptability in CAS occurs both to environmental changes and to changes in relation among players in the system (Arthur et al. 1997). Simultaneous and continuous adaptability among players in CAS will result in co-evolution (Gomes & Gubareva 2020). This co-evolution also allows changing roles in the business ecosystem. The result of this collective activity is adaptability that creates new things (emergence) with dynamic congruence.

But this is not a deep exploration on ecosystem business and CAS. Instead, this talk aims to provide some insights on the aspects of complexity, where CAS and ecosystem business are only some examples of its parts. I then restarted with a storytelling of the exploration of complexities, starting from Murray Gell-Mann, his book The Quark and The Jaguar, and the establishment of Santa Fe Institute.

The scientific method is the portmanteau of instruments, formalisms, and experimental practices that succeed in discovering basic mechanisms despite the limitations of individual intelligence. There are, however, on this planet, phenomena that are hidden in plain sight. These are the phenomena that we study as complex systems: the convoluted exhibitions of the adaptive world — from cells to societies. Examples of these complex systems include cities, economies, civilizations, the nervous system, the Internet, and ecosystems.

The nature of complexity would include the phenomena of non-linearity, dynamic interactions, adaptation, self-organisation, evolution, and emergence.

Its consequences in economy and business, is that economy is analysed not necessarily in equilibrium, its decision makers (or agents) are not superrational, the problems they face are not necessarily well-defined, and the economy is not as a perfectly humming machine but as an ever-changing ecology of beliefs, organising principles, and behaviours (Arthur 2021).

We continued from WB Arthur (2021): Complexity economics assumes that agents differ, that they have imperfect information about other agents and must, therefore, try to make sense of the situation they face. Agents explore, react and constantly change their actions and strategies in response to the outcome they mutually create. The resulting outcome may not be in equilibrium and may display patterns and emergent phenomena not visible to equilibrium analysis. The economy becomes something not given and existing but constantly forming from a developing set of actions, strategies and beliefs — something not mechanistic, static, timeless and perfect but organic, always creating itself, alive and full of messy vitality.

So my main message is that a competitive business should not avoid or overcome complexities. Instead, complexities are used or even created as a way to open new opportunities, design new capabilities, and conquering new markets.

For its implication in strategic management, I offer a view from the IEEE to use — in this era — a framework called strategic planning for exponential era (SPX). I explored this framework quite deeply. It is taken from an IEEE book authored by Espindola and Wright (2021), titled The Exponential Era: Strategies to Stay Ahead of the Curve in an Era of Chaotic Changes and Disruptive Forces.

My presentation was followed with a warm discussion with Binus’ lecturers and students on some technological and business aspects of complexity, complex adaptive system, and ecosystem-based business, including its current implementation in Telkom Indonesia. I also offered to continue the discussion using a collaborative framework of IEEE TEMS.

IIJ Special Issue on Internet IoT

2016-05-19 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 0 Comments

The Internetworking Indonesia Journal has just published a special issue (IIJ Vol 8 No 1 / 2016), presenting papers from the 2015 International Conference on Industrial Internet of Things.

Here are the content of this special issue

Guest Editors’ Introduction, Endra Joelianto, Augie Widyotriatmo and Arjon Turnip (PDF)
Road Road Travel Time Prediction using Vehicular Network, Sejoon Lim, (PDF)
Daytime Road Marker Recognition Using Grayscale Histogram and Pixel Values, Zamani Md Sani, Hadhrami Abd Ghani, Rosli Besar and W.S. Loi, (PDF)
A Food Ordering System with Delivery Routing Optimization Using Global Positioning System (GPS) Technology and Google Maps, Roy Deddy Hasiholan Tobing, (PDF)
Energy Aware Distributed Estimator System over Wireless Sensor Networks with Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) Routing Algorithm, Husnul Abady and Endra Joelianto, (PDF)
A Comparison of SVM and RVM for Human Action Recognition, Vina Ayumi and Mohamad I. Fanany, (PDF)
Online Brain Activity Extraction from EEG-P300 Signals with Nonlinear Autoregressive Model, Arjon Turnip and Artha Ivonita Simbolon, (PDF)
Ambient Environmental Quality Monitoring Using IoT Sensor Network, Arko Djajadi and Michael Wijanarko, (PDF)
The Application of Internet of Things System for Water Quality Monitoring, Tito Yuwono, Luqman Hakim, Irfan Ardi and Umar, (PDF)
Attenuation Measurement of Laboratory-Based PLC Implementation, Intan Sari Areni, Elyas Palantei, Ansar Suyuti, Adnan, Weni Sri Yusnita and Heni Susanti, (PDF)
A Distance-Based Approach for Binary-Categorical Data Bi-Clustering, Sadikin Mujiono, (PDF)
EEG-Based Brain-Controlled Wheelchair with Four Different Stimuli Frequencies, Arjon Turnip, Demi Soetraprawata, Mardi Turnip and Endra Joelianto, (PDF)
A Small Signal State Space Model of Inverter-Based Microgrid Control on Single Phase AC Power Network, Sutanto Hadisupadmo, Arista Nugroho Hadiputro and Augie Widyotriatmo, (PDF)
A Model of Turbo Encoder Based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for Nano Satellite Application, Laila Prakasita, Heroe Wijanto and Budi Syihabuddin, (PDF)
Implementation of LSI Method on Information Retrieval for Text Document in Bahasa Indonesia, Jasman Pardede and Mira Musrini Barmawi, (PDF)
Design an Advanced Botnet to Monitor User Awareness on Harmful Malware Using VertexNet, Albert Sagala and Alexander Lumbantobing, (PDF)
Metadata of Dashboard Data Source Based on Study of Pentaho Dashboard Metadata, Rosni Lumbantoruan, Agnes Juliana Siregar, Erikson Matondang and Marisa Helen Gultom, (PDF)

Bandung: IC3INA 2014

2014-10-31 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 0 Comments

IC3INA (International Conference on Computer, Control, Informatics and its Applications) is an annual conference, organised byResearch Center for Informatics, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). Since 2013, the IEEE Indonesia Section co-organised this conference as technical sponsor. This year, IC3INA was conducted in Bandung, October 21st-23rd.

I attended this conference as one of Scientific Committee member, and as the chair of the IEEE Indonesia Section. Last year (2013), they made me the moderator of all keynote speech session on opening day. But this year (2014), they only wanted me to present a 5 minutes speech as an IEEE representative.

Here’s what I read:

Assalaamu’alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh.

Distinguished Ladies & Gentlemen,

It’s always enchanting to be around the community of scientist, researchers, academicians, and technology professionals. Representing the IEEE, and especially the IEEE Indonesia Section, I would like to express our gratitude to be involved for this distinguished event, the IC3INA 2014 in Bandung, Indonesia, organised by LIPI.

We have known that the IEEE was established more than 125 years ago. This organisation is a home for scientists and engineers from the industrial world and academic domain to synergise their idea, and to collaborate their efforts to understand more about the nature and to engineer it toward a better life. In Indonesia, the Section was established only 26 years ago, and is now actively fostering the academic and professional engineering activities in Indonesia with its 10 chapters representing 15 different fields, and 7 student branches. It is a place for the engineering ecosystem to work in partnership and collaboration to enhance the dynamics and quality of our researches, our academic and professional works, for our mission to advance the technology for humanity.

The second decade of the 21st century has been witnessing new paradigms for the Information Technology. The Internet, which has previously revolutionized the communication and interaction among people, has started its next evolution to be the Internet-of-Things (IOT), with the ability to connect any digital entity or virtually anything to the network of information and knowledge. Information processing does not stop with just doing computation over data input, but would also enrich the information with aggregation of various supporting knowledge, with context-awareness. Big data technology allows the aggregation of large amounts of information from various sources intelligently to obtain results that are sometimes unpredictable.

But the challenge is to develop and to implement those new computing paradigms in real applications to enhance the value of human life. While we carry out researches on Big Data, we keep in mind that this is one of the key technologies to improve the quality of life. We expect better understanding to the universe and human, better education approach, personalised health care, smart city integrated with ubiquitous sensing networks, smart businesses that understand their customers in person, better approach for environment conservation, and others. The interesting thing about Big Data is the necessity on its implementation to maximize the role of the ecosystem, to involve all stakeholders in designing a disruptive lifestyle with this technology.

So let’s have some discussions, and warm networkings. All the best for you; all the best for the profession. Thank you.

Bandung, 21 October 2014

Kuncoro Wastuwibowo
Chair, IEEE Indonesia Section

Bali: APCC 2013

2013-09-03 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 1 Comment

Alhamdulillah, we have finished APCC 2013. Just like TALE 2013 was somehow related to CYBERNETICSCOM 2012; then APCC 2013 was like a continuation of COMNETSAT 2012, when Prof. Byeong Gi Lee suggested the IEEE Comsoc Indonesia Chapter to host the APCC. This suggestion brought us to attend APCC 2012 in Jeju Island, where we won the bid to host the 2013 APCC. It was followed by a series of activities, including event organising and paper management. The IEEE Comsoc Indonesia Chapter appointed Dr. Wiseto Agung, an avid scientist an researcher from Telkom Indonesia, as the General Chair of the conference. Another strategic step taken is to arrange a partnership with ITTelkom (now the University of Telkom) as a co-organiser on both the technical issue and event organising. Originally, the number of submitted papers raised very-very slowly. A bit stressed, indeed. But a few days before the deadline, hundreds of paper came through the EDAS. From all over the world, those most educated human beings still chose to wait until the final second before submitting their papers. We collected a total of 309 papers. The Technical Program Committee was chaired by Dr Arifin Nugroho, with some vice chairs. The most active TPC vice chair was Dr. Rina Puji Astuti. Meanwhile I held the position of Chair at IEEE Indonesia Section, so I must share my resources (time etc) with many other IEEE activities. The Comsoc Chapter Chair (Satriyo Dharmanto) and the Past Chairs (Muhammad Ary Murti, Arief Hamdani) continued the struggle to succeed APCC 2013. With strict selection process, APCC 2013 passed only 163 papers (53 % of total incoming paper).

APCC, Asia – Pacific Conference on Communications, is a very prestigious regional conference in Asia Pacific, which is the region with the highest growth in the world of ICT technology. APCC is supported by the IEEE Communications Society, the KICS in Korea, the IEICE Communications Society in Japan, and the CIC in China. The names of the APCC Steering Committee members are also thrilling: the great figures who pioneered the world of ICT. APCC was first held in 1993 in Taejon, Korea. This year, the 19th APCC was held at the Bali Dynasty Resort in Kuta Beach, 29 to 31 August 2013. I had been in Bali since August 26 to attend TALE 2013. The other APCC organisers, from the IEEE Comsoc Indonesia Chapter, University of Telkom, and University of Udayana, has started preparing the event on 28 August.

Thursday, 29 August, the APCC 2013 was opened. With a lot of technical sponsors, some representatives had to deliver short speeches at that opening ceremony. But each one took only about 5 minutes. Opening speeches were delivered by Dr. Wiseto Agung (GC APCC 2013), Satriyo Dharmanto (Chair , IEEE Indonesia Comsoc Chapter), Dr. Ali Muayyadi (Telkom University representative), Prof. Zhen Yang (Chair of APCC Steering Committee; Chair of the CIC), Dr. Yoshihiro Ishikawa (Chair, IEICE Communications Society), Prof. You- Ze Cho (Vice Chair , KICS), and yours truly (Chair, IEEE Indonesia Section). IEEE Indonesia Section itself represented the IEEE as the technical activity endorser.

My speech just simply mentioned that Asia Pacific has great significance in the development of ICT. Besides the fact that this area is the center of the most competitive ICT industry, the residents are also among the most adaptive in embracing digital lifestyle in the new culture. Our cultural richness has supported the development of communication technologies, with the ability to understand and support the highly contextual interaction and communications. But the social problems in the region is also alarming. We open access to information technology, but we encourage consumerism. We facilitate the preservation of nature, but we also increase pollution. We help creating new jobs, but we also accelerate urbanisation. The engineers need to design and develop technologies that will address the various issues of humanity and the life of human being. And it was in this social context, that we chose this theme for APCC 2013: Smart Communications to Enhance the Quality of Life .

Keynote speeches were delivered successively by Prof. Byeong Gi Lee (Past President, IEEE Communications Society; Past President, KICS), Prof. Adnan Al-Anbuky (Director of Sensor Network and Smart Environment (SENSE) Research Lab, School of Engineering Auckland University of Technology, Auckland New Zealand), Mr. Indra Utoyo (CISP, Telkom Indonesia; Chairman, MIKTI), and Mr. Ichiro Inoue (Network Systems Planning & Innovation Project, NTT).

The next activities were typical for any international technical conference. Special speech sessions, tutorial sessions, parallel presentation sessions, poster sessions, etc. In the tutorial session, I chose to avoid mainstream discussions of mobile network etc, and chose instead the sensor network as one of the elements for the Internet of Things (IoT). The tutors happened to be a pair of professors from Coventry University. This is a modern university (compared to classical universities) that gained a lot of appreciation and awards everywhere this year. Another regular event was the Gala Dinner, with its semi-formal atmosphere, but also with its permission for a laugh-out-loud sessions. Here the Paper Awards were also presented by the APCC Steering Committee .

The last day, I spent my time to visit the poster sessions. Out of curiosity, I seriously talked to all presenters about the posters presented. It was a way to learn new things while expanding networks. Conversations in the poster session could be deeper and more interesting than the presentation session where time is very limited.

I recognised that it was a hard work for the organisers. In the review session on Saturday afternoon, I said that even though the organisers in any events always feel that there are a lot of unforgivable shortcomings, but the APCC Steering Committee and the participants, had personally conveyed their appreciations and positive feedbacks. Good job! The IEEE, Unitel, Udayana University, and all. Great job! This year there will be many other events of the IEEE Indonesia Section. Hopefully all will provide supports as it was for the APCC 🙂 . Thanks, all.

Digital Education

2013-01-31 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 0 Comments

Digital education, in both meaning :).

We might be easily mention the name of the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years. We might mention something like the combustion engine, air travel, Ford’s T-model, and others. But we might not that easily mention the single biggest innovation in education. We can read that puzzling question at MIT Technology Review. The question is a gambit used by Anant Agarwal, the computer scientist named this year to head edX, which is the MIT-Harvard effort to stream a college education over the web, free, to anyone who wants one.

It is indeed rare to see major technological advances in how people learn. Internet, the web, and the power of data-crunching technologies should have changed dramatically the education methods. Remote classes have been arranged with video streaming with sophisticated interactive elements. Data and information on students could be processed individually or in group to make them learn more effectively. Online education is not new. In 2010, 31.3% of the US college students enrolled in at least one online course, while 700.000 students study in full-time distance learning.

Still, education is called inefficient and static with respect to technology. It is often cited as the next industry ripe for a major disruption. This belief has been promoted by Clayton Christensen, an HBS prrofessor who coined the term disruptive technology. Disruptive innovations, he said, find success initially in market where the alternative is nothing.

In Indonesia, where education in technology is still a limited priviledge, digital learning may find its way. Besides many limitation on the technology and the experiences, we may improve the efficiency of lecturing. As Agarwal said, the same 3 person team of a professor plus assistants that teaches analog circuit design to 400 MIT students now handles ten thousand students online, and could take 1 million. That is one of the result of the massive open online course, or MOOC. One of other expected results is how the top quality education, could change the world, or at least the nation. Why not? Currently about two thirds of the people signing up for the free online college course carried our in the US, comes from overseas. Means that for good universities, the methods, the curriculum, the materials are expected to spread easily, crossing the nation borders.

But, as implied, MOOC will also be profoundly threatening to weak institutions. Sebastian Thrun, a Google researcher, predicted that within 50 years, there might be only 10 universities still “delivering” higher education. The keyword he chose, somehow implicates another concern: the commodification of education. Or, as Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser warned in Chronicle of Higher Education, McDonaldisation of college classes: the exact same stuff served everywhere.

By working harder, we may change the direction, though. When Prof Gordon Day, then elected president of the IEEE, visited Yogyakarta in 2011, he mentioned the necessity for the engineering profession to expand the activities, by synergyzing engineers from academic world and industrial worlds, and supporting more roles from professionals in developing countries. That is the point that we will do these years. By synergyzing the academic and industrial world in the region, we will support Indonesian education institutions to grow and strengthen the education methods through digital technologies, to leverage the reputation of Indonesian education institutions globally, and to intensify the research and innovation to develop a breakthrough in education technology.

Singapore: Carrier Ethernet 2011

2011-12-14 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 0 Comments

Tori Bennett and Ingerid Sørgaard, the EO of Carrier Ethernet World Forum I attended last year in Hong Kong, contacted me in the middle of this year, asked me to join the annual event this December, to perform the similar rituals similar like in Hong Kong last year. This year, the conference took place at Resorts World Sentosa, Singapore. I thought that at the end of the year I would have enough spare time, so I agreed. But this November I was again too busy with requests in the office, plus the preparation of Indigo Fellowship 2011 and the IEEE Tencon 2011, plus others. The result was like a déjà vu of Hong Kong.

But at last I landed in Singapore on the first evening of December. The weather was still fresh, sprinkled with spotty rain, with scattered clouds in the sky. Disregard the proposal of the conference organisers, I chose to stay at Porcelain Hotel, on Mosque Street, around Chinatown. I am indeed nosy: always try to find a different atmosphere each time I visit this small island. This time I got the right choice: Porcelain is a small hotel but fresh and comfortable. And with the MRT, I was just about 10-15 minutes only from Resort World Sentosa.

This conference series discusses the Carrier Ethernet, which is the backbone, regional, and access network to deliver information in high-speed packets. In the backbone network, CE is implemented with DWDM with tera routers. Regional networks are developed using Metro Ethernet as aggregator that is connected via DWDM or SDH. And the access networks are deployed using various schemes of optimised GPON FTTX with MSAN and XDSL. Various schemes of networks architecture and design optimisation will require interconnection and interlayer supports among network, service, and applications. This is the theme I presented at this conference, titled Service-Optimised Broadband Internet Technologies.

My presentation was scheduled on the second day, 2 December at 12:55, just before lunch & networking time. The presentation began with a general view about Indonesia and how the public consumes information here. Then I jumped into the development of tera routers and metro ethernet by Telkom Indonesia, and then also its broadband access network. IPTV is also presented, emphasized to the usage of metro ethernet, GPON, and MSAN/XDLS in its network. For the upper layer, I described how the network planning would be linked to service development, that are expected to grow through a new partnership, incubation, and community-generated applications (Internet 2.0). Here the schemes of IMS and SDP are discussed. We intend to set up future products and business models that are personalised and customisable, integrated with the network, and easily commercialised to market (as opposed to the current expectation of startups for advertising or acquisitions only).

This year, I was not the only speaker from Indonesia. There were two other speakers: Mr. Ahmad Rosadi Djarkasih, who presented Enabling Cloud Services to the Enterprise; and Ms. Candra Agnesia Sulyani (aka Mrs. Djarkasih), who presented Driving Profitability in Carrier Ethernet Services for Business the previous day. Unlike last year, this year I refused Ingerid’s request to speak at the panel session. But during the break session (a.k.a. networking session) I talked quite a lot to some of the participants of the conference, discussing the interesting things we had presented, and also discussed the opportunities for them to enter Indonesia IT industry.

After the conference finished, I wandered to Somerset, to visit my favorite bookstore: Harris Bookshop. I knew this unique bookstore last year by accident. I used to visit HMV at Orchard to hunt music CDs that were not easily found in Jakarta. But then HMV moved to Somerset in 2010. And next to HMV, I found Harris: a bookstore with a niche segment. Even for a fans of eBooks like me, who could easily enter Kinokuniya without buying any books (other than buying eBooks even more via the Kindle), Harris is always tempting and enchanting.

The next Carriet Ethernet World Forum will be carried out next year in Hong Kong. Again. I don’t know whether I will be invited. But, with or without me, I suggest you, professional Internet network and service providers, to attend the event next year in Hong Kong.

Comnetsat

2011-08-12 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 0 Comments

This morning (12-08-2011) I attended an IEEE Indonesia Section officer meeting. Held in UI Salemba, the meeting continues the discussion on our plan to carry out our own conferences. The conferences themselves will be carried out next year, optionally in Bali. The proposed names will be:

International Conference in Communications, Network, and Satellite (ICCNS). Site = comnetsat.org
International Conference in Cybernetics, Information, and Computing (ICCIC). Site = cyberneticscom.org

Also in that meeting, I met Mr Arifin Nugroho for the first time. He’s a prominent expert in satellite communications. I guess I would get some more tasks in technical issues with ICCNS.

Groovia IPTV

2011-07-13 / Kuncoro Wastuwibowo / 10 Comments

The last weekend before my departure to Kyôto, I attended the grand launching of Telkom Group’s IPTV product. We call this new product Groovia. The name was obviously taken after the word groovy. But Telkom also planned to have a kind of product with similar success to Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Joomla, and other 2.o products (i.e. products with two consecutive letters o).

Groovia is not just the implementation of IPTV to distribute television content over the Internet. IPTV is intended as a synergy between the power of the Internet with its web interactions, with the power of broadcast television media. IPTV is regarded as the next step in developing the service platform for multimedia interactions services.

In the first year, Groovia planned to include the following services:

TV on Demand: a service to offer television content with interactivity, and with a recording facility in the network; which allows such control as the video service: pause, rewind, replay, scheduled reports, and others.
Video on Demand: non-television multimedia contents that are included in this service, including video films, music, karaoke, etc., with various forms of interaction.
Web Service: the interactivity of the cyber world that is integrated into the television system. The services consist among others the social networks, news, weather, stocks info, and others.

The next year, more services such as e-advertising, e-transaction and e-shopping are expected to be integrated into Groovia. In infrastructure layer, the integration of IPTV, SDP, and other platforms, such as store content & applications, is expected to be carried out smoothly, establishing an efficient and comfortable multimedia interaction ecosystem.

But the users will ask: ain’t it costly? The customers of Telkom Speedy with data rate 1, 2, or 3 Mb/s will need only to pay about US$ 5 more to its Speedy monthly subscription to have the Groovia service. Not too expensive for the status as a taste-maker :). Richer contents could be selected according to individual needs of every user. Unfortunately, Groovia is still in the initial deployment phase, and is available only in certain areas in Jakarta. Deployment to other Indonesia cities will begin later this year.

For more information, please visit: Groovia.TV