Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Singtam town »

Abstract This study examines the water supply systems, their sociopolitical dynamics, and the future of water management in two Indian towns in the Eastern Himalaya, Kalimpong in West Bengal and Singtam in Sikkim. The research was centred around issues of demand and supply, water scarcity and stress, equity, water governance, and the sustainable conservation and management of water resources in a climate change context. Methodologically based on surveys, focus group discussions, and key informants' interviews, this study finds that spring sources are drying alarmingly in Singtam, even as demand is increasing dramatically due to a floating population that is more than the number of local inhabitants. The town suffers from the lack of an adequate reservoir facility and the frequent damage of water supply pipes during the monsoon. Kalimpong faces acute water shortages all year round. The political tug of war between the state government agencies and the local government around the management and supply of water, declining water discharge in spring sources, the lack of water infrastructure for repair, maintenance, and supply, and the glaring inequity between the higher, middle, and lower income groups are the immediate issues around water in Kalimpong. The spring sources that supply drinking water to Kalimpong and Singtam need immediate conservation measures to arrest the declining state of discharge. Micro-planning at the local level, reviving drying springs, and the adoption of appropriate soil and water conservation practices on a watershed basis are all important ways forward. The development of water security plans and their strict enforcement through multi-institutional collaboration can contribute to improved water governance and socioecological restoration for sustainable water resources management.

This paper introduces a new art style, Singa Transitional, found painted onto a mountainside near the modern town of Singa in the north of Huánuco, Peru. This style was discovered during a recent regional survey of rock art in the Huánuco region that resulted in the documentation of paintings at more than 20 sites, the identification of their chronological contexts and an analysis of the resulting data for trends in changing social practices over nine millennia. I explore how the style emerged from both regional artistic trends in the medium and broader patterns evident in Andean material culture from multiple media at the time of its creation. I argue that the presence of Singa Transitional demonstrates that local peoples were engaged in broader social trends unfolding during the transition between the Early Horizon (800–200 bc) and the Early Intermediate Period (ad 0–800) in Peru. I propose that rock art placed in prominent places was considered saywa, a type of landscape feature that marked boundaries in and movement through landscapes. Singa Transitional saywas served to advertise the connection between local Andean people and their land and was a medium through which social changes were contested in the Andes.

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This study is about child-friendly city (KLA). This research is motivated by the lack of attention of the local government in protecting children and the issuance of Law No. 35 of 2014 on Protection of Children, which mandates local government obligations in the care of the child. This study sought to describe the various efforts made by the government of Surakarta and Makassar in realizing the KLA, the following supporting factors and obstacles surrounding the KLA embodiment. By using descriptive method and combine it with a qualitative approach, this study found some important points about the efforts of local governments in realizing the KLA. In Surakarta, for example, there have been several child-friendly community health centers (puskesmas). The Puskesmas is equipped with a private lounge complete with a childrens playground. In addition, services for children such as nutrition garden, corner of breast milk, pediatrician, child counseling services and a child abuse victim services also continue to be equipped, and many other programs. No wonder the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection Republic of Indonesia assessment scoring 713 from a total value of 31 indicators contained in the KLA who had filled the city of Surakarta. Meanwhile, Makassar City has not done a lot of local government programs, because the relatively new Makassar proclaimed KLA and is still central to reform. Among the new programs are being implemented and the Government of Makassar is giving birth certificate free of charge, to build flats in slums, and make the two villages as a pilot project KLA. The factors that affect the embodiment of the KLA it is a commitment. Not only the commitment of the head region, but also all relevant parties. As a cross cutting issue, the KLA also requires institutional capacity. Not only is the capacity of Women Empowerment and Child Protection Agency as a leading sector in the KLA, but also all work units other related areas. The success of the KLA in a city / county is also very dependent on the commitment of all parties concerned built. In addition, the program can not be done KLA in a short time, and require no small cost. Penelitian ini adalah tentang kota layak anak (KLA). Penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh kurangnya perhatian pemerintah daerah dalam melindungi anak dan keluarnya UU No 35 Tahun 2014 tentang Perlindungan Anak yang mengamanatkan kewajiban pemerintah daerah dalam mengurus anak. Penelitian ini berusaha menggambarkan pelbagai upaya yang dilakukan pemerintah Kota Surakarta dan Makassar dalam mewujudkan KLA, berikut faktor pendukung dan penghambat yang melingkupi perwujudan KLA tersebut. Dengan menggunakan metode deskriptif dan memadunya dengan pendekatan kualitatif, penelitian ini menemukan beberapa poin penting tentang upaya pemerintah daerah dalam mewujudkan KLA. Di Surakarta, misalnya, sudah ada beberapa puskesmas ramah anak. Puskemas itu dilengkapi dengan ruang tunggu khusus anak lengkap dengan alat bermainnya. Selain itu, layanan-layanan untuk anak seperti taman gizi, pojok ASI, dokter spesialis anak, layanan konseling anak dan tempat pelayanan korban kekerasan terhadap anak juga terus dilengkapi, dan masih banyak program lainnya. Tidak heran kalau penilaian Kementerian PPPA memberikan skor 713 dari total nilai yang terdapat dalam 31 indikator KLA yang sudah dipenuhi Kota Surakarta. Sedangkan, Kota Makassar belum banyak program yang dikerjakan pemerintah daerah. Pasalnya, Makassar relatif baru mencanangkan KLA dan kini masih tengah melakukan pembenahan. Di antara program yang baru dan sedang dilaksanakan Pemerintah Kota Makassar adalah pemberian akta kelahiran secara gratis, membangun rumah susun di kawasan kumuh, dan menjadikan dua kelurahan sebagai proyek percontohan KLA. Adapun faktor yang memengaruhi perwujudan KLA itu adalah komitmen. Tidak hanya komitmen kepala daerah, tetapi juga semua pihak terkait. Sebagai sebuah isu yang melibatkan pelbagai pihak, KLA juga membutuhkan kapasitas kelembagaan. Tidak hanya kapasitas Badan Pemberdayaan Perempuan dan Perlindungan Anak sebagai leading sector KLA, tetapi semua satuan kerja perangkat daerah terkait lainnya. Selain itu, program KLA tidak bisa dilakukan dalam waktu singkat, dan memerlukan biaya yang tidak sedikit.

Objective: The present survey aimed to interact with the vendors, analyze, examine, and document the herbal medicinal products sold in retail stores, pharmacies, AYUSH stores, generally closed and open markets in the local area of Sikkim, mainly rural towns – Gangtok, Ranipool, Singtam, and Rangpo. It was a first of its kind study on the selected topic in Sikkim – India. Material and Methods: The methodology followed during the survey was a cross-sectional study, open ended semi-structured questionnaire, and survey data collection tools were employed; descriptive and inferential statistics were done. Results: The results were summarized in the different tables. From, it was found that old age (46+) uses most of the herbal products (66.6%), adult (20–45 years) uses 42.6% of herbal products, adolescent (13–19) uses 16.6%, and child (1–12) uses 14.5%. Females use more herbal products than males at 57%, and males at 43%. It was found that a large number of herbal products in Sikkim are manufactured outside Sikkim (98%) and 2% of the products were manufactured in Sikkim. Herbal product packaging is mostly secondary (66%), followed by primary (28%) and tertiary packaging (6%). It was found that a large number of solid dosage (47%) form of herbal products is available in the market followed by liquid dosage form (38%). According to brand wise or company wise, Patanjali (41%) products accounted for a big share on the market followed by Baidyanath (19%), other brands (15%), AYUSH (11%), Himalaya (8%), and Dabur (6%). Based on diseases treated, digestion, and metabolism (21%) followed by bone and joint pain (17%), diabetes mellitus (14%), cough and cold (12%), piles (11%), hypertension (7%), thyroid (3%), and other other common diseases categories represents about 15%. Highlights the situation after the COVID-19 pandemic indicating drastic increases in market value (in Lakhs) and the sale of herbal products in Sikkim. Conclusion: The data highlighted above were the first of its kind in a study done in Sikkim – India; no data were available in any scientific repositories to date.

AbstractUnderstanding biodiversity of plants depends on detailed knowledge of floristics and environmental parameters. According to the Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea (FEE; 1989–2009), the latest academic flora of these two topographically complex countries, the number of taxa (including non-indigenous ones) is 6027 of which 647 are endemic. Since 2009, 56 indigenous taxa have been described from the FEE area. Based on FEE data and later information, the number of indigenous species is here counted at 5219. In the RAINBIO database Sosef et al. (BMC Biol 15:1–23, 2017) counted the number of indigenous species in Ethiopia at 4481 (Eritrea not counted). Studies of local diversity and endemism produce different results with varying methods and sources: FEE data show highest diversity in the southern part of Ethiopia near the borders with Kenya, while RAINBIO data show highest diversity in the south-west and around the town of Harar. Wang et al. (J Syst Evol 58(1):33–42, 2020) found the highest ‘weighted endemism’ in the central Ethiopian mountains, while our FEE data indicates highest single-region endemism near the borders with Kenya and Somalia; Hawthorne and Marshall (Gard Bull Singap 71(Suppl. 2):315–333, 2019), weighting species according to rarity, found the highest ‘bioquality score’ in the same areas as our highest single-region endemism. Studies of altitudinal diversity show a ‘mid-elevation diversity bulge’ at 1400–2100 m a.s.l. More data are needed before we understand the complex diversity of the two countries, including altitudinal diversity. We review needs for additional data gathering and modelling that may help answering outstanding questions. Graphic abstract

Dharmais Cancer Hospital is surrounded by many residences that have been converted into temporary shelters that do not meet standards and an environment that does not support the needs of its residents, most of whom are cancer survivors. However, a place to live is urgently needed by cancer patients at Dharmais Cancer Hospital because many are undergoing long-term treatment and are from out of town. To get the relationship between the role of the environment and emotional problems of cancer sufferers through architecture, data collection was carried out using qualitative methods. Therefore, through everydayness design methods and healing environments, palliative housing projects can be produced. This project aims to provide an ideal resting space for cancer patients by presenting a functional space within the elongated core to support the treatment process and accommodate emotional issues from an architectural point of view. The function presented also aims to provide support to the patient's family so that the patient has a quality end of life and is psychologically and spiritually ready. Keywords: cancer; healing architecture; palliative; residence Abstrak Rumah Sakit Kanker Dharmais dikelilingi banyak hunian yang dialihfungsikan menjadi rumah singgah sementara yang tidak memenuhi standar dan lingkungan yang kurang mendukung kebutuhan penghuni yang kebanyakan adalah para penderita kanker. Akan tetapi hunian sangat dibutuhkan oleh pasien penderita kanker Rumah Sakit Kanker Dharmais karena banyak yang menjalani pengobatan jangka panjang dan berasal dari luar kota. Untuk mendapatkan keterhubungan peran lingkungan dan masalah emosional penderita kanker melalui arsitektur dilakukan pengumpulan data dengan metode kualitatif. Maka dari itu, keseharian dan healing environment dapat dihasilkan proyek hunian paliatif. Proyek ini bertujuan untuk menghadirkan ruang beristirahat yang ideal bagi para pasien kanker dengan menghadirkan fungsi – fungsi ruang di dalam core memanjang untuk mendukung proses perawatan dan mewadahi permasalah emosional dari sudut arsitektur. Fungsi yang juga dihadirkan bertujuan untuk memberikan dukungan bagi keluarga pasien sehingga penderita akan memiliki akhir hidup yang berkualitas dan siap secara psikologis dan spiritual.

Housing has always been a necessity in the lives of modern man. Anyone who was already working needs to own at least some form of housing. Development of a city plays a part in determining the prices of the housing sold whereas in the central and business district houses can be very expensive, the one’s at the outskirt of the town can be cheaper or it can be which will be shown in this research. The government concerned offered developers a project which is known as Subsidized Housing, a house which is cheap with lots of benefits to encourage low income buyers. The industrial sector is known for its High Workforce which implies that a lot of manpower is involved, this creates ample market opportunities. Why don’t we see a lot of subsidized housing? This concerns the fact that not all houses built for this manner yields enough profit to entice developers to actually build them. Thus the research for counting the actual benefit must be done in order to convince developers that there is an acceptable return to be gained when developing Subsidized Housing. The analysis conducted in this research include location analysis, site analysis, legality analysis, comparative object study analysis, preference analysis and financial analysis. The analytical tool used is the analysis of proximity, Discounted Cashflow, Sensitivity Analysis, descriptive and quantitative. The results of this study are the amount of returns obtained by the developer in n years, the length of the return and the percentage of profits. Keywords: building material; developer’s profit; industrial district; subsidized housing ABSTRAKRumah sudah menjadi sesuatu yang wajar dimiliki oleh masyarakat di berbagai kalangan, rumah tidak hanya berperan dalam memberikan perlindungan terhadap cuaca tetapi juga sebagai tempat untuk keluarga berkumpul dan menikmati waktu bersama dengan keluarga maupun orang lain. Tentu tidak semua orang bisa memiliki rumah dengan berbagai alasan, oleh sebab itu pemerintah melakukan intervensi dalam bentuk penyediaan subsidi. Namun mengapa tidak banyak perumahan subsidi dikarenakan pihak pengembang hanya melihat secara singkat seberapa besar pengembalian yang didapat pengembang tingkat pengembalian tersebut yang menentukan apakah pengembang mau atau tidak mengembangkan perumahan subsidi. Dengan pertanyaan tersebut dilakukanlah penelitian pengembangan perumahan perumahan subsidi untuk menunjukkan tingakt keuntungan yang akan didapatkan seorang pengembang beserta lamanya pengembalian modal. Analisis yang dilakukan yakni analisis lokasi, analisis tapak, analisis legalitan, analisis objek studi banding, analisis preferensi dan analisis keuangan. Alat analisis yang digunakan adalah analisis proximitas, Discounted Cashflow, Sensitivity Analysis, deskriptif dan kuatitatif. Hasil dari penelitian ini adalah besarnya pengembalian yang didapatkan pengembang pada tahun n, lama pengembaliannya dan persentase keuntungannya.

ABSTRAKSuasana kota umumnya tercipta dari karakteristik fisik berbagai tata ruang kota dan interaksi sosial di dalamnya. Komponen visual yang dirasakan memberikan beragam sensasi yang mengarahkan individu menangkap kualitas dari situasi secara emosional yang mampu mempengaruhi mood atau suasana hati mereka. Di saat interaksi sosial terjadi, ekspresi tersenyum duchenne dapat terjadi ketika individu merasakan emosi-emosi positif. Namun, suasana kota dapat berubah di saat ada pembangunan ulang fasilitas publik. Hal tersebut dapat mempengaruhi bentuk tata ruang kota dan potensi interaksi sosial yang dapat mempengaruhi suasana hati individu. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat seberapa banyak ekspresi senyum duchenne yang ada pada area kota yang ramai di pusat kota Kendari dan Jakarta Selatan. Penulis memilih pusat kota Kendari dan Jakarta Selatan karena memiliki fasilitas publik yang baik. Adapun kota Kendari saat ini membangun ulang beberapa pusat kotanya sejak tahun 2019. Hasil penelitian memperlihatkan, kedua area kota memiliki jumlah frekuensi senyuman duchenne yang sama banyaknya di area suasana jenis consumerism dan peaceful and quiet. Namun, ada perbedaan jumlah di area suasana jenis vibrant dan historic, karena beberapa fasilitas di kota tua dan pusat kota Kendari saat observasi berada di tahap pembangunan ulang. Suasana kota merupakan hal yang penting untuk image kota karena memberikan pengalaman emosi positif bagi orang yang singgah atau berinteraksi sosial di lingkungan perkotaan.Katakunci: duchenne, suasana kota, vibrant, peaceful and quiet, consumerism, historic ABSTRACTThe atmosphere of the city created from pshysical characteristics of various urban spatial plans and social interaction in it. The perceived visual component provided sensations that directs individual to capture quality of situation emotionally which can affect their mood. When social interaction occurs, duchenne smile expressions can appear when individual feel positive emotion. However, city atmosphere can change when there is unfinished redevelopment of public facilities. This can affect the form of urban spatial and potential social interactions that can affect individual moods. This study aims to see how much duchenne smile expressions appear in downtown area in Kenadi and South Jakarta. The author chose city center of Kendari and Jakarta because they have good public facilites. The city of Kendari is currently rebuilding several of its facilities in city centers since 2019. Result show that both city areas had same number of duchenne smiles in areas of consumerism and peaceful & quiet type. However, there are differences in the number of vibrant and historic areas, its perhaps because some of the facilities in the old town and downtown Kendari at the time of observatio were in the reconstruction stage. City atmosphere is important for the image of the city becauses it provides positive emotional experiences for people who stop by or interact socially in urban environment.Keyword: duchenne, city atmosphere, vibrant, peaceful and quiet, consumerism, historic

Connecting I’ve moved house on the weekend, closer to the centre of an Australian capital city. I had recently signed up for broadband, with a major Australian Internet company (my first contact, cf. Turner). Now I am the proud owner of a larger modem than I have ever owned: a white cable modem. I gaze out into our new street: two thick black cables cosseted in silver wire. I am relieved. My new home is located in one of those streets, double-cabled by Telstra and Optus in the data-rush of the mid-1990s. Otherwise, I’d be moth-balling the cable modem, and the thrill of my data percolating down coaxial cable. And it would be off to the computer supermarket to buy an ASDL modem, then to pick a provider, to squeeze some twenty-first century connectivity out of old copper (the phone network our grandparents and great-grandparents built). If I still lived in the country, or the outskirts of the city, or anywhere else more than four kilometres from the phone exchange, and somewhere that cable pay TV will never reach, it would be a dish for me — satellite. Our digital lives are premised upon infrastructure, the networks through which we shape what we do, fashion the meanings of our customs and practices, and exchange signs with others. Infrastructure is not simply the material or the technical (Lamberton), but it is the dense, fibrous knotting together of social visions, cultural resources, individual desires, and connections. No more can one easily discern between ‘society’ and ‘technology’, ‘carriage’ and ‘content’, ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, or ‘infrastructure’ and ‘applications’ (or ‘services’ or ‘content’). To understand telecommunications in action, or the vectors of fibre, we need to consider the long and heterogeneous list of links among different human and non-human actors — the long networks, to take Bruno Latour’s evocative concept, that confect our broadband networks (Latour). The co-ordinates of our infrastructure still build on a century-long history of telecommunications networks, on the nineteenth-century centrality of telegraphy preceding this, and on the histories of the public and private so inscribed. Yet we are in the midst of a long, slow dismantling of the posts-telegraph-telephone (PTT) model of the monopoly carrier for each nation that dominated the twentieth century, with its deep colonial foundations. Instead our New World Information and Communication Order is not the decolonising UNESCO vision of the late 1970s and early 1980s (MacBride, Maitland). Rather it is the neoliberal, free trade, market access model, its symbol the 1984 US judicial decision to require the break-up of AT&T and the UK legislation in the same year that underpinned the Thatcherite twin move to privatize British Telecom and introduce telecommunications competition. Between 1984 and 1999, 110 telecommunications companies were privatized, and the ‘acquisition of privatized PTOs [public telecommunications operators] by European and American operators does follow colonial lines’ (Winseck 396; see also Mody, Bauer & Straubhaar). The competitive market has now been uneasily installed as the paradigm for convergent communications networks, not least with the World Trade Organisation’s 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services and Annex on Telecommunications. As the citizen is recast as consumer and customer (Goggin, ‘Citizens and Beyond’), we rethink our cultural and political axioms as well as the axes that orient our understandings in this area. Information might travel close to the speed of light, and we might fantasise about optical fibre to the home (or pillow), but our terrain, our band where the struggle lies today, is narrower than we wish. Begging for broadband, it seems, is a long way from warchalking for WiFi. Policy Circuits The dreary everyday business of getting connected plugs the individual netizen into a tangled mess of policy circuits, as much as tricky network negotiations. Broadband in mid-2003 in Australia is a curious chimera, welded together from a patchwork of technologies, old and newer communications industries, emerging economies and patterns of use. Broadband conjures up grander visions, however, of communication and cultural cornucopia. Broadband is high-speed, high-bandwidth, ‘always-on’, networked communications. People can send and receive video, engage in multimedia exchanges of all sorts, make the most of online education, realise the vision of home-based work and trading, have access to telemedicine, and entertainment. Broadband really entered the lexicon with the mass takeup of the Internet in the early to mid-1990s, and with the debates about something called the ‘information superhighway’. The rise of the Internet, the deregulation of telecommunications, and the involuted convergence of communications and media technologies saw broadband positioned at the centre of policy debates nearly a decade ago. In 1993-1994, Australia had its Broadband Services Expert Group (BSEG), established by the then Labor government. The BSEG was charged with inquiring into ‘issues relating to the delivery of broadband services to homes, schools and businesses’. Stung by criticisms of elite composition (a narrow membership, with only one woman among its twelve members, and no consumer or citizen group representation), the BSEG was prompted into wider public discussion and consultation (Goggin & Newell). The then Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics (BTCE), since transmogrified into the Communications Research Unit of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA), conducted its large-scale Communications Futures Project (BTCE and Luck). The BSEG Final report posed the question starkly: As a society we have choices to make. If we ignore the opportunities we run the risk of being left behind as other countries introduce new services and make themselves more competitive: we will become consumers of other countries’ content, culture and technologies rather than our own. Or we could adopt new technologies at any cost…This report puts forward a different approach, one based on developing a new, user-oriented strategy for communications. The emphasis will be on communication among people... (BSEG v) The BSEG proposed a ‘National Strategy for New Communications Networks’ based on three aspects: education and community access, industry development, and the role of government (BSEG x). Ironically, while the nation, or at least its policy elites, pondered the weighty question of broadband, Australia’s two largest telcos were doing it. The commercial decision of Telstra/Foxtel and Optus Vision, and their various television partners, was to nail their colours (black) to the mast, or rather telegraph pole, and to lay cable in the major capital cities. In fact, they duplicated the infrastructure in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, then deciding it would not be profitable to cable up even regional centres, let alone small country towns or settlements. As Terry Flew and Christina Spurgeon observe: This wasteful duplication contrasted with many other parts of the country that would never have access to this infrastructure, or to the social and economic benefits that it was perceived to deliver. (Flew & Spurgeon 72) The implications of this decision for Australia’s telecommunications and television were profound, but there was little, if any, public input into this. Then Minister Michael Lee was very proud of his anti-siphoning list of programs, such as national sporting events, that would remain on free-to-air television rather than screen on pay, but was unwilling, or unable, to develop policy on broadband and pay TV cable infrastructure (on the ironies of Australia’s television history, see Given’s masterly account). During this period also, it may be remembered, Australia’s Internet was being passed into private hands, with the tendering out of AARNET (see Spurgeon for discussion). No such national strategy on broadband really emerged in the intervening years, nor has the market provided integrated, accessible broadband services. In 1997, landmark telecommunications legislation was enacted that provided a comprehensive framework for competition in telecommunications, as well as consolidating and extending consumer protection, universal service, customer service standards, and other reforms (CLC). Carrier and reseller competition had commenced in 1991, and the 1997 legislation gave it further impetus. Effective competition is now well established in long distance telephone markets, and in mobiles. Rivalrous competition exists in the market for local-call services, though viable alternatives to Telstra’s dominance are still few (Fels). Broadband too is an area where there is symbolic rivalry rather than effective competition. This is most visible in advertised ADSL offerings in large cities, yet most of the infrastructure for these services is comprised by Telstra’s copper, fixed-line network. Facilities-based duopoly competition exists principally where Telstra/Foxtel and Optus cable networks have been laid, though there are quite a number of ventures underway by regional telcos, power companies, and, most substantial perhaps, the ACT government’s TransACT broadband network. Policymakers and industry have been greatly concerned about what they see as slow takeup of broadband, compared to other countries, and by barriers to broadband competition and access to ‘bottleneck’ facilities (such as Telstra or Optus’s networks) by potential competitors. The government has alternated between trying to talk up broadband benefits and rates of take up and recognising the real difficulties Australia faces as a large country with a relative small and dispersed population. In March 2003, Minister Alston directed the ACCC to implement new monitoring and reporting arrangements on competition in the broadband industry. A key site for discussion of these matters has been the competition policy institution, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and its various inquiries, reports, and considerations (consult ACCC’s telecommunications homepage at http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm). Another key site has been the Productivity Commission (http://www.pc.gov.au), while a third is the National Office on the Information Economy (NOIE - http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/access/access/broadband1.htm). Others have questioned whether even the most perfectly competitive market in broadband will actually provide access to citizens and consumers. A great deal of work on this issue has been undertaken by DCITA, NOIE, the regulators, and industry bodies, not to mention consumer and public interest groups. Since 1997, there have been a number of governmental inquiries undertaken or in progress concerning the takeup of broadband and networked new media (for example, a House of Representatives Wireless Broadband Inquiry), as well as important inquiries into the still most strategically important of Australia’s companies in this area, Telstra. Much of this effort on an ersatz broadband policy has been piecemeal and fragmented. There are fundamental difficulties with the large size of the Australian continent and its harsh terrain, the small size of the Australian market, the number of providers, and the dominant position effectively still held by Telstra, as well as Singtel Optus (Optus’s previous overseas investors included Cable & Wireless and Bell South), and the larger telecommunications and Internet companies (such as Ozemail). Many consumers living in metropolitan Australia still face real difficulties in realising the slogan ‘bandwidth for all’, but the situation in parts of rural Australia is far worse. Satellite ‘broadband’ solutions are available, through Telstra Countrywide or other providers, but these offer limited two-way interactivity. Data can be received at reasonable speeds (though at far lower data rates than how ‘broadband’ used to be defined), but can only be sent at far slower rates (Goggin, Rural Communities Online). The cultural implications of these digital constraints may well be considerable. Computer gamers, for instance, are frustrated by slow return paths. In this light, the final report of the January 2003 Broadband Advisory Group (BAG) is very timely. The BAG report opens with a broadband rhapsody: Broadband communications technologies can deliver substantial economic and social benefits to Australia…As well as producing productivity gains in traditional and new industries, advanced connectivity can enrich community life, particularly in rural and regional areas. It provides the basis for integration of remote communities into national economic, cultural and social life. (BAG 1, 7) Its prescriptions include: Australia will be a world leader in the availability and effective use of broadband...and to capture the economic and social benefits of broadband connectivity...Broadband should be available to all Australians at fair and reasonable prices…Market arrangements should be pro-competitive and encourage investment...The Government should adopt a National Broadband Strategy (BAG 1) And, like its predecessor nine years earlier, the BAG report does make reference to a national broadband strategy aiming to maximise “choice in work and recreation activities available to all Australians independent of location, background, age or interests” (17). However, the idea of a national broadband strategy is not something the BAG really comes to grips with. The final report is keen on encouraging broadband adoption, but not explicit on how barriers to broadband can be addressed. Perhaps this is not surprising given that the membership of the BAG, dominated by representatives of large corporations and senior bureaucrats was even less representative than its BSEG predecessor. Some months after the BAG report, the Federal government did declare a broadband strategy. It did so, intriguingly enough, under the rubric of its response to the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry report (Estens), the second inquiry responsible for reassuring citizens nervous about the full-privatisation of Telstra (the first inquiry being Besley). The government’s grand $142.8 million National Broadband Strategy focusses on the ‘broadband needs of regional Australians, in partnership with all levels of government’ (Alston, ‘National Broadband Strategy’). Among other things, the government claims that the Strategy will result in “improved outcomes in terms of services and prices for regional broadband access; [and] the development of national broadband infrastructure assets.” (Alston, ‘National Broadband Strategy’) At the same time, the government announced an overall response to the Estens Inquiry, with specific safeguards for Telstra’s role in regional communications — a preliminary to the full Telstra sale (Alston, ‘Future Proofing’). Less publicised was the government’s further initiative in indigenous telecommunications, complementing its Telecommunications Action Plan for Remote Indigenous Communities (DCITA). Indigenous people, it can be argued, were never really contemplated as citizens with the ken of the universal service policy taken to underpin the twentieth-century government monopoly PTT project. In Australia during the deregulatory and re-regulatory 1990s, there was a great reluctance on the part of Labor and Coalition Federal governments, Telstra and other industry participants, even to research issues of access to and use of telecommunications by indigenous communicators. Telstra, and to a lesser extent Optus (who had purchased AUSSAT as part of their licence arrangements), shrouded the issue of indigenous communications in mystery that policymakers were very reluctant to uncover, let alone systematically address. Then regulator, the Australian Telecommunications Authority (AUSTEL), had raised grave concerns about indigenous telecommunications access in its 1991 Rural Communications inquiry. However, there was no government consideration of, nor research upon, these issues until Alston commissioned a study in 2001 — the basis for the TAPRIC strategy (DCITA). The elision of indigenous telecommunications from mainstream industry and government policy is all the more puzzling, if one considers the extraordinarily varied and significant experiments by indigenous Australians in telecommunications and Internet (not least in the early work of the Tanami community, made famous in media and cultural studies by the writings of anthropologist Eric Michaels). While the government’s mid-2003 moves on a ‘National Broadband Strategy’ attend to some details of the broadband predicament, they fall well short of an integrated framework that grasps the shortcomings of the neoliberal communications model. The funding offered is a token amount. The view from the seat of government is a glance from the rear-view mirror: taking a snapshot of rural communications in the years 2000-2002 and projecting this tableau into a safety-net ‘future proofing’ for the inevitable turning away of a fully-privately-owned Telstra from its previously universal, ‘carrier of last resort’ responsibilities. In this aetiolated, residualist policy gaze, citizens remain constructed as consumers in a very narrow sense in this incremental, quietist version of state securing of market arrangements. What is missing is any more expansive notion of citizens, their varied needs, expectations, uses, and cultural imaginings of ‘always on’ broadband networks. Hybrid Networks “Most people on earth will eventually have access to networks that are all switched, interactive, and broadband”, wrote Frances Cairncross in 1998. ‘Eventually’ is a very appropriate word to describe the parlous state of broadband technology implementation. Broadband is in a slow state of evolution and invention. The story of broadband so far underscores the predicament for Australian access to bandwidth, when we lack any comprehensive, integrated, effective, and fair policy in communications and information technology. We have only begun to experiment with broadband technologies and understand their evolving uses, cultural forms, and the sense in which they rework us as subjects. Our communications networks are not superhighways, to invoke an enduring artefact from an older technology. Nor any longer are they a single ‘public’ switched telecommunications network, like those presided over by the post-telegraph-telephone monopolies of old. Like roads themselves, or the nascent postal system of the sixteenth century, broadband is a patchwork quilt. The ‘fibre’ of our communications networks is hybrid. To be sure, powerful corporations dominate, like the Tassis or Taxis who served as postmasters to the Habsburg emperors (Briggs & Burke 25). Activating broadband today provides a perspective on the path dependency of technology history, and how we can open up new threads of a communications fabric. Our options for transforming our multitudinous networked lives emerge as much from everyday tactics and strategies as they do from grander schemes and unifying policies. We may care to reflect on the waning potential for nation-building technology, in the wake of globalisation. We no longer gather our imagined community around a Community Telephone Plan as it was called in 1960 (Barr, Moyal, and PMG). Yet we do require national and international strategies to get and stay connected (Barr), ideas and funding that concretely address the wider dimensions of access and use. We do need to debate the respective roles of Telstra, the state, community initiatives, and industry competition in fair telecommunications futures. Networks have global reach and require global and national integration. Here vision, co-ordination, and resources are urgently required for our commonweal and moral fibre. To feel the width of the band we desire, we need to plug into and activate the policy circuits. Thanks to Grayson Cooke, Patrick Lichty, Ned Rossiter, John Pace, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Works Cited Alston, Richard. ‘ “Future Proofing” Regional Communications.’ Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Canberra, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115485,00.php> —. ‘A National Broadband Strategy.’ Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Canberra, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115486,00.php>. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Broadband Services Report March 2003. Canberra: ACCC, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm>. —. Emerging Market Structures in the Communications Sector. 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MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "Broadband" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/02-featurebroadband.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2003, Aug 26). Broadband. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/02-featurebroadband.php>