ICT, Cable, Telephony, Global: The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) publishes a lively newsletter called APC News. The latest issue contains features which many Developing Telecoms readers may find useful in keeping up to date with some of the issues we have been reporting on over the last few months...

Those following the low-cost laptop debate might like to read about the Fantsuam Foundation in Nigeria. A computer for Africa, will it work? describes a computer that is encased in wood to resist tropical temperatures and that consumes thirty times less electricity than the standard PC. The Solo is described as a unique computer that fights rural Africa’s heat, dust and unreliable power supply. It is being tested in Nigeria and will be ready for commercial production shortly. APC News takes the opportunity to interview Ochuko Onoberhie, a technician from the Fantsuam Foundation, the APC member responsible for testing the Solo.

For those who can not wait for the new laptops, there is the UK’s non-profit Computer Aid International. Under the title UK computers avoid mid-life crisis by migrating south APC News describes how the lack of access to information and communication technologies is a daily reality for 92 million Latin Americans. Computer Aid International believes that supplying computers for institutions that work with vulnerable communities is a good place to start tackling the inequity.

Then there is an update for the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) APC News is putting a lot of trust in this project: “Africa currently has to pay for some of the most expensive bandwidth in the world. All this will change if the proposed cable is built, as it will connect countries on the eastern side of the continent, and if this new capacity is offered in a way that maximises use and lowers price.”

East Africa clearly needs a fair entry-ticket for cyberspace to be affordable. APC has, in turn, launched a new website Fibre-for-Africa, and on March 10 held a consultation with more than 80 key stakeholders from all over Eastern and Southern Africa to ensure that access to EASSy - which will serve eight coastal and eleven land-locked countries - will be easy, affordable and open. In a related article APC News staff writer Frederick Noronha has gathered statements from two civil society stakeholders in what is to become a determining project for African equitable access to the web.

APC is, it must be said, highly concerned about the price structure of EASSy. According to the South African weekly the Mail and Guardian, which organised the March 210 conference on EASSY, the good news is that excessively high international bandwidth prices in Africa are to be challenged says the M&G but the benefits might be curtailed if operators maintain monopoly control. More outspoken is the BBC’s online article on March 15 which features APC's reluctance as to the method wit which EASSY will be implemented. The BBC report even has its own bloggers from Ethiopia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Namibia and many other countries.

Finally, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has published a follow-up to its recent highly successful conference: "WSIS: the beginning of a global information society discourse" attempts to place WSIS within the present geopolitical context and discusses its outcomes. It concludes that "WSIS may need to be judged more from the processes that it has set into motion than what it has achieved substantively." UNESCO’s support for WSIS is its new online platform to facilitate initial contacts among stakeholders and to launch activities under the Action Lines of the Geneva Plan of Action that are in the area of competence of the organisation. Such action lines include: access to information and knowledge, e-learning and e-science, cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content, and ethical dimensions of the Information Society Online platform.