Subscription-free service proves profitable in Egypt

Cairo, Egypt By now, subscription-free Internet service has pretty much proven itself an unprofitable anachronism.

Except in Egypt.

In this nation beset by creaky Net connections and outdated circuits, where computers remain a luxury for the vast majority, a free Internet strategy is boosting Internet access.

Since January, Egyptian users in the Cairo region have not been charged for dial-up Internet connections. All they pay is the cost of a phone call less than 25 cents an hour.

That fee is split between state-owned Telecom Egypt and local Internet service providers. The higher the number of users and the longer they spend online, the bigger the profit.

Free Internet evaporated with the dot-com boom in the United States, Europe and Latin America. ISPs couldn’t generate enough advertising revenue to cover costs.

In Egypt, however, the model appears to work. This country of 63 million counts just 900,000 Internet users among some 4.2 million across the Middle East.

Above, signs on a street in Cairo advertise “Free Internet.”

Nanotechnology could help environment

New York For scientists who study it, nanotechnology is considered a clean technology perhaps even the key to solving some current environmental ills.

And the field is advancing rapidly.

The National Science Foundation has been cutting its timetable for the release of nanotech-fueled products from five or 10 years to two or three years, said Mihail Roco, NSF’s senior adviser on nanotechnology.

First products likely to emerge are in medicine, Roco said.

Nanotechnology will so thoroughly impact the way science addresses medicine, food, electronics and the environment, that within a decade or so, Roco envisions a $1 trillion yearly market in products that carry nano-components, including all computer chips, half of pharmaceuticals and half of chemical catalysts.

Free webcast reaches Major League fans

The folks at Major League Baseball must have been feeling lucky to have booked the first live video webcast of a full game four days before the players’ scheduled strike date. But 30,000 people logged on Aug. 26 to watch the New York Yankees shell the Texas Rangers, 10-3 and the strike, of course, was averted with a new contract Aug. 30.

The league put on the free webcast as an experiment in reaching fans who can’t get satellite feeds. The live coverage, in Real Networks’ RealVideo format, was blocked for hometown fans in Dallas and New York (would-be viewers had to submit a credit card number and a billing address).