2nd week Starhub case study and HTML

After one week preparation, our group finally go for Starhub case presentation. It turned out to be GREAT! Although some minor mistakes here and there, it was still considered a good presentation given the time we have! Tian Yi, thanks for the Power Point preparation! Cris, thanks for bringing down Hip Hop 'uniform' and the time to dress up yourself! Well done, Team! Next time we should video record our presentation and preparation process. haha!!

After this case study, I really amazed by Starhub's capabilities and her potential which initially I think that Starhub is there just to compete with Singtel. However, it turns out to be not entirely correct. To a certain extent, it is Singtel who is in the offensive mode (especially during the bid for the EPL boadcast rights) trying to have a cut in the paid-TV market. However after Starhub won the bid, Singtel seems to tone down and focus more on retaining her own customer base by providing more integral services like "Mio" which is to integrate mobile, fix-line and broadband package to the consumers.

I believe the reason that Starhub was awarded for the EPL rights is also they have a stronger technological infrastruture (the cable of course) to deliver TV program services to the customers. I think this is important in the e-commerce and m-commerce. In this industry, high fix cost is required for the infrastructure. In other to increase Internet access speed for their customers, Starhub has pumped in $600m just on upgrading. However, it is still profitable if you got many customers (Economics of scale)because the cost of deliver the service is almost $0(variable cost is low)since the transfer of data per cable is being fully utilised. Well, it all talks about scale and NUMBERS!


This week lesson is a bit 'techy'! Well, I will still try to follow the lesson. Well we talk about usual matter like the origin of WWW and its application etc. I think what is more important here is the understanding of the technology available; its strength and its limitation. First of all, Prof Gilbert bring in the topic on TCP/IP. He had actually explain to us as simple as it is but I think I need to understand better by gathering more information. I googled to this website http://www.yale.edu/pclt/comm/tcpip.htm to have a better understanding of the technology. In short, TCP is meant for packaging and IP is meant for addressing

The TCP/IP is described as robust and able to automatically recover from any node or phoneline failure. This design allows the construction of very large networks with less central management. Although the recent Taiwan earthquak was serious, network was affected but the fact is we still can go online. This illustrates the robustness of TCP/IP protocol. The technology behind is Internet Ptotocol version 4 (32-bit number of addresses) which allows data packages to deroute if any catastrophic event happens that damage the network cables. However, this will be compensated by a slower speed as the 'flow' of the data will not be steady because the packages are scatter around everywhere in the network.

In accord to the limitation of IPv4, IPv6 is using 128-bit number of addresses which implies that it is faster due to the larger data packages can be transferred in the network. However, it also mean that it will be harder to deroute the data packages. So what we really want? Actually it is depends more on the industry. Industries like TV and stock information require real-time data streaming. Therefore, these industries will need IPv6 more as compared to other industries.


The good news is that TCP/IP can allow both versions to co-exist. TCP/IP serves as a standard for the Internet industry. As the diagram has shown , TCP/IP can do a lot more. Having a better understanding of the technology, I undestand why Starhub is willing to spend $600m to upgrade their infrastruture to DOCSIS3.0 for their cable TV and gaming.

In the lesson, we also discussed about email. It is not a complicated technology but it has indeed change the way how communication is being done. Email is a lousely-coupled form of communication as compared to phone-to-phone verbal communication which is tighly-coupled. I think this is an important attribute especially to the business users as what is more important are the delivery of the message rather than immediacy(moment of greatest value)

End of the day, I think the most beneficial part is to be able to write some simple html scripting. Haha! Anyway, I still got a lot more stuff to know about technology. It's really about self-learning!