International Data Communications Essay

Just resembling in residual terminal / customer premise equipment (CPE) distribution, countries in European countries experience new applications and data services comparatively in the same time with other sections like Asia and North America (USA and Canada). Figure 1 shows the contemporary figure of retrieve users in the world based on regions. Figure 1 Main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants (1994 -2004)Source ITU. The Digital Divide at a glance. 2005. Retrieved December 10, 2007 from http//www.itu. int/wsis/tunis/newsroom/stats/ In toll of mobile service penetration says, 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 pose in which Africa only accounts for 9%, America records 42%, and 19% in Asia Pacific. The high penetration browse has put mobile subscribers in Europe to surpass those in fixed phone lines.This situation similarly ho lds 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 ChallengesMoreover, the advancement of telecommunications and profits 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 save 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 a t a cahier, she finds that her account card has no bounteous residuum to pay the clothes or her credit cards are out of limit. In this situation, she called her husband to modify some money to her account. Although her husband is in a meeting that is far from a bank, he is sleek over able to do the fund transfer by using his mobile phone and log into a banks mobile portal. Finally, in few minutes, the womans 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 peddling 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 persons prepaid balance or to add a transaction into his next billing statement.