which oversees domain name and address allocation. Countries like India

unfortunately have zero participation on the boards of many of these

organisations, and need to get their act together or be left out of

critical decisions affecting their Internet space.

While much analysis about the Internet in emerging economies focuses on

B2C space, even greater benefits of the Net may lie for them in B2B

space. Emerging economies have been much slower to catch up in

innovations like third-party marketspaces (such as ChemConnect or

FruitExchange) founded in OECD countries.

An increasingly popular way to keep Internet costs down is by leveraging

open source and free software, such as the Linux kernel and Apache

server.

The writer can be reached at madanr@microland.net