On this week's podcast, Jon spoke with Ross MacLeod. He's an Ottawa-based telecom consultant, and was quite involved with the Voice 2.0 conference that took place last week in Ottawa. Ross talked about the forces that brought this event into being, along with the key topics addressed there. The key takeaway for Ross was the idea that Voice 2.0 offers tremendous promise, and will deliver far more than just VoIP or reduced network costs. The podcast explores this in more detail, and you can also read further on Ross's blog, TelecomVistas.
Ross MacLeod has over 23 years of experience in the computing and telecommunications industries, and has held a wide range of senior management and executive roles. Mr. MacLeod is currently an independent consultant in Ottawa, Canada. Prior to this he was VP Engineering and General Manager of Next Generation Network Products at RadiSys corporation, in Portland, Oregon. Mr. MacLeod started his career as a senior consultant with Andersen Consulting, and later provided senior management and executive leadership at Bell-Northern Research and Nortel Networks. While at Nortel, he was, at different times, responsible for the company's Computing Technology Lab, the main product R&D lab in China, as well as executive leadership of the multi-national wireless 3G R&D program from Nortel's labs outside Paris, France.
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
October 22, 2006
THE corruption scandal in Shanghai that had already taken down one of China’s most powerful officials claimed two smaller scalps last week: the chief of the national statistics bureau was fired, and an official with the Formula One racing circuit was hauled in for questioning. The contrast between the statistician and the racing executive may have been incidental, but it underscored the perception, fair or not, that official corruption is everywhere in China.
To some extent, the ruling Communist Party does not disagree.
In an economic boom gilded with excess and profiteering, official corruption is so widespread, and increasingly so brazen, that it is almost taken for granted. The latest World Bank governance survey found that China had seriously backslid in the category of “containing corruption” when much of the rest of the world, if not improving, was basically unchanged on the issue.
President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have warned that corruption threatens the credibility and legitimacy of Communist Party rule and have vowed to stamp it out. But many experts say that truly stamping out corruption would involve the type of broad political reform and a full embrace of the rule of law that the party has long resisted. The current corruption sweep authorized by Mr. Hu in Shanghai and other cities is widely viewed as more of a purge of allies linked to his predecessor, President Jiang Zemin, than an unfettered crackdown.
“The problem with China today is that if you want to pursue corruption, so many people are tainted,” said Minxin Pei, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. As a result, Mr. Pei noted, Mr. Hu could never investigate corruption solely on its merits because it would topple so many of his own political allies.
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