citizenship exam emphasizes principles
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services releases 100 questions to study for civics exam.
By AMY TAXIN and VANJA PETROVIC
The Orange County Register
Can you name one of the country’s longest rivers? A Native American tribe? What makes Benjamin Franklin famous?
Immigrants aspiring to become U.S. citizens will be expected to answer these and other questions on a new naturalization exam that officials hope will deepen their understanding of civics and history and discourage rote memorization of facts and figures.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has been working on the test redesign for more than two years and administered a pilot version to more than 6,000 volunteer applicants. On Thursday, the agency released the final set of 100 test questions that immigrants should study to prepare for the exam, which will be given in their interview to become U.S. citizens starting in October 2008.
The goal of the redesign is to encourage a deeper understanding of U.S. government and an attachment the country and its principles. “Citizenship is not only a benefit but it’s also an identity,” said Alfonso Aguilar, chief of the agency's office of citizenship.
The new test has questions on U.S. geography and 20th century history that aren’t on the current exam. It also has open ended questions with an array of possible answers, designed to get applicants to think more about how U.S. government works and the relevance of historic events.
For example, current test questions include the colors of the flag and a definition for the Constitution. The new exam asks why the flag has 13 stripes and what the Constitution does.
THOUGHTFUL ANSWERS
Tom Donahoe, coordinator of the citizenship program at Santiago Canyon College, said he thought some of the questions had little to do with the meaning of citizenship, for example, the ability to name rivers. But he was pleased to see the test required more thoughtful answers on U.S. civics and government than the current exam.
“I don’t think it’s that much harder but it does require more thinking and it does require something more than a memorized answer,” he said. “We do want an informed electorate. We do want an informed populace. As a nation I think that’s what we want, regardless of whether its people who are born in this country or people who choose to become citizens in this country.”
To become U.S. citizens, applicants must have a green card for five years, show good moral character and pass a civics and English exam. The U.S. has seen a surge in applications for citizenship this year prior to a July fee increase that made the process more expensive; more than 784,000 applications have been filed so far this year, according to USCIS.
Immigrants who apply to become U.S. citizens after Oct. 1, 2008, will take the new exam. Those who apply earlier may have a choice of which exam they prefer to take.
On Thursday, students in a citizenship preparation class in Anaheim Hills quizzed each other on the U.S. Constitution and economic system using the new test questions as a guide. Several students said there’s not much difference between what they’re studying and the new material.
Misako Coleman, 75, of Yorba Linda, has her citizenship interview in November – but said the new questions look similar to what she had expected.
“I’m just studying because I received the paper two days ago and I said, I’ve got to do it,” said Coleman, who is originally from Japan. “I’ve never learned this, so I’m just beginning.”
PASSAGE RATE
Aguilar said the pilot exam had a 92 percent passage rate compared with an 84 percent passage rate for first-time takers of the current test. He said USCIS also tried the new test out in adult education classes to ensure it was fair to English-language learners.
Rosalind Gold, senior director of policy, research & advocacy for the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials, said the key will be ensuring community groups have ample materials to prepare immigrants for the test so it doesn’t discourage people from naturalizing.
“The testing doesn’t seem to indicate this is going to be a major new barrier,” Gold said. “The real proof of this is going to be in how it’s implemented.”
In Washington, several of Orange County’s lawmakers welcomed the changes.
“Being granted U.S. citizenship is a privilege and I don't think it is unreasonable for a citizen to know the name of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or that as citizens they have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7722 or ataxin@ocregister.com

Blackwater Faced Bedlam, Embassy Finds
'First Blush' Report Raises New Questions on Shooting
By Steve Fainaru and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 28, 2007; A01

The initial U.S. Embassy report on a Sept. 16 shooting incident in Baghdad involving Blackwater USA, a private security firm, depicts an afternoon of mayhem that included a car bomb, a shootout in a crowded traffic circle and an armed standoff between Blackwater guards and Iraqi security forces before the U.S. military intervened.

The two-page report, described by a State Department official as a "first blush" account from the scene, raises new questions about what transpired in the intersection. According to the report, the events that led to the shooting involved three Blackwater units. One of them was ambushed near the traffic circle and returned fire before fleeing the scene, the report said. Another unit that went to the intersection was then surrounded by Iraqis and had to be extricated by the U.S. military, it added.

Separately, a U.S. official familiar with the investigation said that participants in the shooting have reported that at least one of the Blackwater guards drew a weapon on his colleagues and screamed for them to "stop shooting." This account suggested that there was some effort to curb the shooting, with at least one Blackwater guard believing it had spiraled out of control. "Stop shooting -- those are the words that we're hearing were used," the official said.

The report, by the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, details the events as described by Blackwater guards -- details that are now at the center of an intense debate in Iraq and in Congress over the larger role of private security firms in Iraq. Tens of thousands of armed, private guards operate in Iraq, protecting everything from U.S. and Iraqi officials to supply convoys. The shooting incident is being scrutinized in at least three separate investigations.

Witnesses and the Iraqi government have insisted that the shooting by the private guards was unprovoked. Blackwater has claimed that its guards returned fire only after they were shot at. The document makes no reference to civilian casualties. Eleven Iraqi civilians were killed and 12 wounded in the incident. The report said Blackwater sustained no casualties.

According to the report, which was obtained by The Washington Post, the incident occurred shortly after noon as three Blackwater teams moved to escort one "principal" back to Baghdad's Green Zone. The official had been visiting a "financial compound" when a car bomb detonated about 25 yards outside the entrance, the report said.

Two of the Blackwater teams returned to the Green Zone with the official, who was apparently unharmed. But the third team came under fire from "8-10 persons" who "fired from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi police uniforms," the report said.

A State Department official cautioned that the "spot report" is only an initial account. "They're not intended to be authoritative reports of what occurred in any given incident." The report was drafted by the watch officer for the embassy's regional security office and approved by the deputy regional security officer in Baghdad.

The official, who declined to be identified because of the ongoing investigations into the shooting, said the report, which was dated the same day as the attack, reflected only what embassy officers were told by the Blackwater guards immediately after the incident. He said details could change as the investigations move forward.

According to the document, Blackwater's guards were completing written statements and the embassy's regional security officer had launched an investigation. Previous press accounts have alluded to the spot report's existence, but the full report had not been made public.

The report, which is designated sensitive but unclassified, differs significantly from the account of the Iraqi Interior Ministry and several witnesses interviewed at the scene. According to those accounts, the Blackwater guards moved into the traffic circle in a convoy of armored vehicles, halting traffic and then firing on a white sedan that had failed to slow down as it entered the area. The car burst into flames, killing the occupants, according to these accounts. The Blackwater team then unleashed a barrage of fire into the surrounding area as people tried to flee in the pandemonium.

Sarhan Thiab, a traffic policeman who was in the circle at the time, said Iraqi police did not fire on Blackwater. "Not a single bullet. They were the only ones shooting," said Thiab, who said he and other traffic officers fled to nearby bushes once the shooting began.

"All the vehicles were shooting. They were shooting in every direction," said a senior Iraqi police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. "They used a rocket launcher or grenade launcher to hit the car. They were supported by two helicopters who were shooting from the air."

After about 15 minutes, the guards sped away under cover of the smoke, eyewitnesses said.

A joint U.S.-Iraqi government investigation is expected to examine the incident, along with at least a half-dozen other shooting incidents involving Blackwater.

According to the report, the sequence of events leading up to the shooting began at 11:53 a.m., when a car bomb exploded 25 yards outside of the Izdihar financial compound, just over a mile northwest of the Green Zone. One principal was inside, accompanied by a Blackwater personal security detail identified as Team 4. A Blackwater team normally consists of three or four armored vehicles manned by multiple security contractors armed with assault rifles and pistols.

A Blackwater tactical support team, identified as TST 22, drove to the location to help Team 4 extract the principal. The two teams escorted the official back to the Green Zone "without incident," according to the report. "It is unknown who was the target of the" car bomb.

According to the report, a third Blackwater team, identified as TST 23, was dispatched from the Green Zone to assist after the car bomb detonated. Upon arriving at Nisoor Square, in Baghdad's affluent Mansour neighborhood, the report said, TST 23 was "engaged with small arms fire" from "multiple nearby locations."

The report said TST 23 returned fire and tried to drive out of the ambush site. However, one of the company's tactical armored vehicles, a BearCat, became disabled during the shooting. In the middle of the firefight, according to the report, the other tactical support team, TST 22, was ordered back out of the Green Zone to assist TST 23 in Nisoor Square, identified in the document as Gray 87.

Before TST 22 could arrive, according to the report, TST 23 had towed the BearCat and returned to the Green Zone. TST 22 found itself alone in the congested traffic circle and confronted by an Iraqi quick-reaction force. "Over the next several minutes, additional Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police units arrived and began to encircle TST 22 with vehicles," according to the report. "The Iraqis had large caliber machine guns pointed at TST 22."

The Blackwater team contacted the tactical operations center for the U.S. Embassy's regional security office, which oversees private security movements, according to the report. The report said the embassy's regional security office deployed the embassy's air assets, believed to be Blackwater's armed "Little Bird" helicopters, for "route reconnaissance and additional coverage."

"The U.S. Army QRF" -- quick-reaction force -- "arrived on scene at 12:39 hours and mediated the situation," the report said. "They escorted TST 22 out of the area and successfully back to the [Green Zone] without further incident."

Some U.S. officials have questioned why the Blackwater team decided to evacuate the principal and return to the Green Zone, rather than remaining inside the compound. "It doesn't make sense," said one U.S. official. "Why would they go back out there when they were already safe?"

The report said Blackwater's armored vehicles incurred superficial damage from small-arms fire. Although the report made no mention of civilian casualties, the document added, "The nature of the Bearcat malfunction is under investigation."

Fainaru reported from El Cerrito, Calif., and Raghavan from Baghdad. Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Why We're Winning Now in Iraq
Anbar's citizens needed protection before they would give their "hearts and minds."

BY FREDERICK W. KAGAN
Friday, September 28, 2007 12:01 a.m.

Many politicians and pundits in Washington have ignored perhaps the most important point made by Gen. David Petraeus in his recent congressional testimony: The defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq requires a combination of conventional forces, special forces and local forces. This realization has profound implications not only for American strategy in Iraq, but also for the future of the war on terror.
As Gen. Petraeus made clear, the adoption of a true counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq in January 2007 has led to unprecedented progress in the struggle against al Qaeda in Iraq, by protecting Sunni Arabs who reject the terrorists among them from the vicious retribution of those terrorists. In his address to the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also touted the effectiveness of this strategy while at the same time warning of al Qaeda in Iraq's continued threat to his government and indeed the entire region.

Yet despite the undeniable successes the new strategy has achieved against al Qaeda in Iraq, many in Congress are still pushing to change the mission of U.S. forces back to a counterterrorism role relying on special forces and precision munitions to conduct targeted attacks on terrorist leaders. This change would bring us back to the traditional, consensus strategy for dealing with cellular terrorist groups like al Qaeda--a strategy that has consistently failed in Iraq.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the consensus of American strategists has been that the best way to fight a cellular terrorist organization like al Qaeda is through a combination of targeted strikes against key leaders and efforts to discredit al Qaeda's takfiri ideology in the Muslim community. Precision-guided munitions and special forces have been touted as the ideal weapons against this sort of group, because they require a minimal presence on the ground and therefore do not create the image of American invasion or occupation of a Muslim country.
A correlative assumption has often been that the visible presence of Western troops in Muslim lands creates more terrorists than it eliminates. The American attack on the Taliban in 2001 is often held up now--as it was at the time--as an exemplar of the right way to do things in this war: Small numbers of special forces worked with indigenous Afghan resistance fighters to defeat the Taliban and drive out al Qaeda without the infusion of large numbers of American ground forces. For many, Afghanistan is the virtuous war (contrasting with Iraq) not only because it was fought against the group that planned the 9/11 attacks, but also because it was fought in accord with accepted theories of fighting cellular terrorist organizations.

This strategy failed in Iraq for four years--skilled U.S. special-forces teams killed a succession of al Qaeda in Iraq leaders, but the organization was able to replace them faster than we could kill them. A counterterrorism strategy that did not secure the population from terrorist attacks led to consistent increases in terrorist violence and exposed Sunni leaders disenchanted with the terrorists to brutal death whenever they tried to resist. It emerged that "winning the hearts and minds" of the local population is not enough when the terrorists are able to torture and kill anyone who tries to stand up against them.

Despite an extremely aggressive counterterrorism campaign, by the end of 2006, al Qaeda in Iraq had heavily fortified strongholds equipped with media centers, torture chambers, weapons depots and training areas throughout Anbar province; in Baghdad; in Baqubah and other parts of Diyala province; in Arab Jabour and other villages south of Baghdad; and in various parts of Salah-ad-Din province north of the capital. Al Qaeda in Iraq was blending with the Sunni Arab insurgency in a relationship of mutual support. It was able to conduct scores of devastating, spectacular attacks against Shiite and other targets. Killing al Qaeda leaders in targeted raids had failed utterly either to prevent al Qaeda in Iraq from establishing safe havens throughout Iraq or to control the terrorist violence.

The Sunni Arabs in Iraq lost their enthusiasm for al Qaeda very quickly after their initial embrace of the movement. By 2005, currents of resistance had begun to flow in Anbar, expanding in 2006. Al Qaeda responded to this rising resistance with unspeakable brutality--beheading young children, executing Sunni leaders and preventing their bodies from being buried within the time required by Muslim law, torturing resisters by gouging out their eyes, electrocuting them, crushing their heads in vices, and so on. This brutality naturally inflamed the desire to resist in the Sunni Arab community--but actual resistance in 2006 remained fitful and ineffective. There was no power in Anbar or anywhere that could protect the resisters against al Qaeda retribution, and so al Qaeda continued to maintain its position by force among a population that had initially welcomed it willingly.

The proof? In all of 2006, there were only 1,000 volunteers to join the Iraqi Security Forces in Anbar, despite rising resentment against al Qaeda. Voluntarism was kept down by al Qaeda attacks against ISF recruiting stations and targeted attacks on the families of volunteers. Although tribal leaders had begun to turn against the terrorists, American forces remained under siege in the provincial capital of Ramadi--they ultimately had to level all of the buildings around their headquarters to secure it from constant attack. An initial clearing operation conducted by Col. Sean MacFarland established forward positions in Ramadi with tremendous difficulty and at great cost, but the city was not cleared; attacks on American forces remained extremely high; and the terrorist safe-havens in the province were largely intact.

This year has been a different story in Anbar, and elsewhere in Iraq. The influx of American forces in support of a counterinsurgency strategy--more than 4,000 went into Anbar--allowed U.S. commanders to take hold of the local resentment against al Qaeda by promising to protect those who resisted the terrorists. When American forces entered al Qaeda strongholds like Arab Jabour, the first question the locals asked is: Are you going to stay this time? They wanted to know if the U.S. would commit to protecting them against al Qaeda retribution. U.S. soldiers have done so, in Anbar, Baghdad, Baqubah, Arab Jabour and elsewhere. They have established joint security stations with Iraqi soldiers and police throughout urban areas and in villages. They have worked with former insurgents and local people to form "concerned citizens" groups to protect their own neighborhoods. Their presence among the people has generated confidence that al Qaeda will be defeated, resulting in increased information about the movements of al Qaeda operatives and local support for capturing or killing them.
The result was a dramatic turnabout in Anbar itself--in contrast to the 1,000 recruits of last year, there have already been more than 12,000 this year. Insurgent groups like the 1920s Revolution Brigades that had been fighting alongside al Qaeda in 2006 have fractured, with many coming over to fight with the coalition against the terrorists--more than 30,000 Iraq-wide, by some estimates. The tribal movement in Anbar both solidified and spread--there are now counter-al Qaeda movements throughout Central Iraq, including Diyala, Baghdad, Salah-ad-Din, Babil and Ninewah. Only recently an "awakening council" was formed in Mosul, Ninewah's capital, modeled on the Anbar pattern.

A targeted raid killed Abu Musaab al Zarqawi, founder of al Qaeda in Iraq, near Baqubah in June 2006. After that raid, al Qaeda's grip on Baqubah and throughout Diyala only grew stronger. But skillful clearing operations conducted by American forces, augmented by the surge, have driven al Qaeda out of Baqubah almost entirely. The "Baqubah Guardians" now protect that provincial capital against al Qaeda fighters who previously used it as a major base of operations. The old strategy of targeted raids failed in Diyala, as in Anbar and elsewhere throughout Iraq. The new strategy of protecting the population, in combination with targeted raids, has succeeded so well that al Qaeda in Iraq now holds no major urban sanctuary.

This turnabout coincided with an increase in American forces in Iraq and a change in their mission to securing the population. Not only were more American troops moving about the country, but they were much more visible as they established positions spread out among urban populations. According to all the principles of the consensus counterterrorism strategy, the effect of this surge should have been to generate more terrorists and more terrorism. Instead, it enabled the Iraqi people to throw off the terrorists whose ideas they had already rejected, confident that they would be protected from horrible reprisals. It proved that, at least in this case, conventional forces in significant numbers conducting a traditional counterinsurgency mission were absolutely essential to defeating this cellular terrorist group.

What lessons does this example hold for future fights in the War on Terror? First, defeating al Qaeda in Iraq requires continuing an effective counterinsurgency strategy that involves American conventional forces helping Iraqi Security Forces to protect the population in conjunction with targeted strikes. Reverting to a strategy relying only on targeted raids will allow al Qaeda to re-establish itself in Iraq and begin once again to gain strength. In the longer term, we must fundamentally re-evaluate the consensus strategy for fighting the war on terror. Success against al Qaeda in Iraq obviously does not show that the solution to problems in Waziristan, Baluchistan or elsewhere lies in an American-led invasion. Each situation is unique, each al-Qaeda franchise is unique, and responses must be tailored appropriately.
But one thing is clear from the Iraqi experience. It is not enough to persuade a Muslim population to reject al Qaeda's ideology and practice. Someone must also be willing and able to protect that population against the terrorists they had been harboring, something that special forces and long-range missiles alone can't do.

Mr. Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author most recently of "No Middle Way: The Challenge of Exit Strategies from Iraq." (AEI, 2007).

Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company,

Iraqi leader rejects division of nation
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 38 minutes ago
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Friday rejected a Senate proposal calling for the decentralization of Iraq's government and giving more control to the country's ethnically divided regions, calling it a "catastrophe."

The measure, whose primary sponsors included presidential hopeful Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., calls for Iraq to be divided into federal regions for the country's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities in a power-sharing agreement similar to Bosnia in the 1990s.

In his first comments since the measure passed Wednesday, al-Maliki strongly rejected the idea, echoing the earlier sentiments of his vice president.

"It is an Iraqi affair dealing with Iraqis," he told The Associated Press while on a return flight to Baghdad after appearing at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. "Iraqis are eager for Iraq's unity. ... Dividing Iraq is a problem and a decision like that would be a catastrophe."

Iraq's constitution lays down a federal system, allowing Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north to set up regions with considerable autonomous powers. But Iraq's turmoil has been fueled by the deep divisions among politicians over the details of how it work, including the division of lucrative oil resources.

Many Shiite and Kurdish leaders are eager to implement the provisions. But the Sunni Arab minority fears being left in an impoverished central zone without resources. Others fear a sectarian split-up would harden the violent divisions among Iraq's fractious ethnic and religious groups.

On Thursday, Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said decisions about Iraq must remain in the hands of its citizens and the spokesman for the supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr agreed.

"We demand the Iraqi government to stand against such project and to condemn it officially," Liwa Semeism told the AP. "Such a decision does not represent the aspirations of all Iraqi people and it is considered an interference in Iraq's internal affairs."

A spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite spiritual leader, dismissed the proposal during Friday prayers in Karbala.

"The division plan is against Iraqi's interests and against peaceful living in one united Iraq," Sheik Abdul Mahdi al Karbalaei told worshippers. "Any neighboring country supporting this project will pay the price of instability in the region."

Al-Maliki said he discussed the role of U.S. troops and private security contractors in the country, stressing that Iraq is a sovereign nation and it should have control over its own security.

Security "is something related to Iraq's sovereignty and its independence and it should not be violated," he said.

Al-Maliki's comments follow a Sept. 16 shooting in central Baghdad that killed 11 Iraqi civilians allegedly at the hands of Blackwater USA guards providing security for U.S. diplomats.

The Moyock, N.C.-based company said its employees were acting in self-defense against an attack by armed insurgents. Iraqi officials and witnesses have said the guards opened fire randomly, killing a woman and an infant along with nine other people, but details have widely diverged.

The Washington Post reported Friday that a preliminary U.S. Embassy report found the shooting involved three Blackwater teams.

It said one was ambushed near a traffic circle and returned fire before fleeing the scene, another was surrounded by Iraqis when it went to the intersection and had to be extracted by the U.S. military and a third came under fire from eight to 10 people in multiple locations.

The report said the three teams had been trying to escort a senior U.S. official who had been visiting a "financial compound" back to the U.S.-protected Green Zone when a car bomb struck about 25 yards outside the entrance. The official was unharmed, it said.

An unidentified State Department official described the report to the newspaper and stressed it was only an initial account.

The New York Times also reported Friday that the shootings occurred as Blackwater was trying to evacuate senior U.S. officials with the United States Agency for International Development after an explosion occurred near the guarded compound where they were meeting.

Participants in the operation said at least one guard continued firing on civilians while colleagues called for the shooting to stop, according to the newspaper's account, which cited American officials who have been briefed on the investigation.

It also said those involved have told U.S. investigators they believed they were firing in response to enemy gunfire but at least one guard also drew a weapon on a colleague who did not stop shooting.

American officials have publicly remained mum on their findings pending the results of a series of investigations.

Also Friday, U.S. Army Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval was acquitted of charges he killed two unarmed Iraqis. He was convicted of a lesser charge of planting evidence on one of the bodies to cover up the crime. Sandoval, 22, of Laredo, Texas, was expected to be sentenced Saturday.

In other violence, 10 civilians were killed and 12 others were wounded Friday in an attack on an apartment complex in a primarily Sunni neighborhood in southern Baghdad. And north of Baghdad, at least six people were killed in a busy cafe late Thursday and people celebrated the end of the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Australia, meanwhile, said it has taken command of the multinational naval task force guarding Iraq's two oil terminals in southern Iraq for the third time. The job protecting the vital facilities rotates between Australia, Britain and the United States.

___

Associated Press Writer Katarina Kratovac contributed to this report.

Mobile Phone Software and Standards
A couple of my recent posts have discussed mobile phones and the benefits of standardization [Relief, Development, and the Digital Divide] and the challenges faced when such standards are lacking [see postscript to Two Sigma Solutions]. A New York Times article by Michael Fitzgerald talks about how software could provide the answer to the mobile phone standardization problem ["Software That Fills a Cellphone Gap," 23 September 2007].

"Vanu Bose is the son of a fabled engineer, but he garnered no mercy when he presented his big idea at a technical conference in 1996. Mr. Bose’s graduate work at M.I.T. involved using software to handle the radio function in a cellular phone. He remembers that after he successfully demonstrated his technology, an audience member stood up and dismissed it with: 'Congratulations! You've just invented the world's most expensive cellphone.' Mr. Bose, a personable man, shrugged off the criticism. He expected that over time, the increasing processing speed of chips would make such phones much cheaper. But he didn't want to make the phones. He wanted to remake the wireless base station, the guts of the world's cellular networks, by changing them from complex systems that incorporate hardware, software and the electronics needed for wireless communications into systems run primarily with software."

For consistent readers of this blog, you'll understand my interest in automated software solutions. What Bose is trying to do in the cellphone industry, Enterra Solutions is doing in other fields. Enterra Solutions' technology approach for enhancing service oriented architectures choreographs legacy systems using software to integrate data. Bose's approach is to use software to integrate legacy mobile phone standards.

"Most of us don't think of our cellphones as radios, but they are. Any wireless device uses a radio. Figuring out a way to operate the radio with software has obvious potential advantages: for one, it's easier and cheaper to upgrade software than it is to send field technicians to cellular towers to add components. And a software-based radio — the industry calls it software-defined radio — could handle multiple cellular signals at the same time, the way a computer can run a browser, a word processor and a spreadsheet all at once. So, in theory, letting cellular companies accommodate new spectrum or technologies by doing software upgrades could expand coverage and services while possibly reducing what we pay for them."

Two years after introducing his ideas at the MIT conference, Bose started Vanu Inc. The article informed readers that Bose had to use his first name for the company since his father, Amar, had already founded a company that uses the Bose family name. The article also notes that most of Bose's work has been for the military, which also has a standardization problem. "The armed forces typically use different kinds of radios but need them all to talk to one another, which has prompted two large research projects, Speakeasy and the current Joint Tactical Radio System." Bose, however, never forgot his original idea and has returned to it.

"As cheap semiconductor technology caught up with the needs of his software, he was able to pursue commercial markets. He now has several customers for the company's AnyWave wireless base stations for cellphone networks. Mr. Bose is not the first to pursue converting radios to software. The idea had been developed in the late 1980s, and Joseph Mitola, an engineer now at the Mitre Corporation, a research organization, is credited with being the first to discuss an effective software radio architecture, at a conference in 1991. Well-established companies like Motorola and Ericsson now use elements of software-defined radio for their base stations. But Mr. Bose was the first to come to market with software that could handle multiple networks with the same equipment. Software radio appears to offer an elegant solution to what has been a vexing problem: how to have a single handset, like a cellphone, communicate across multiple networks. For instance, the G.S.M. standard, for global system for mobile communications, is used broadly in Europe, and most notably in the United States by AT&T. But it does not work with phones built for the C.D.M.A. standard, for code division multiple access, that is used in the United States by Verizon and others and is popular in South Korea. Mr. Bose’s software makes it possible for the network to switch modes automatically."

As a frequent traveler overseas, I've had to pay for a couple of different cellphones in order to conduct business. Bose's invention could end all that. Bose could also make a lot of money if the idea catches on.

"While the AnyWave Base Station still includes components like wireless transmitters and receivers, the company ultimately would like to focus on selling its software to other businesses that build base stations. That would position Vanu to become 'the Microsoft of the wireless base station industry,' said Bruce Sachs, a general partner at Charles River Ventures, which recently put money into an $8 million funding round for Vanu. Mr. Sachs says that the market for base stations is worth billions of dollars by itself and that as cellular operators upgrade over time to technologies like WiMax or H.S.D.P.A., for high-speed downlink packet access, wireless markets worldwide will be open to Vanu. There is also potential for markets that are just emerging, like that for 'femto cells.' (In mathematics, a femto is a quadrillionth.) The cells will plug into a power outlet and bolster cellular coverage for a home or business. But that is in the future: Ian Cox, an analyst at ABI Research, projects that the market for software-based radio won't start to boom until 2012."

Where Vanu Inc. has taken hold presently is in rural cellular markets where local carriers make money when larger carriers pay to connect to their modest networks.

"The present is more modest, and it rests in rural markets like De Leon, Tex., home of Mid-Tex Cellular, Vanu’s first commercial customer. Toney Prather, the chief executive of Mid-Tex, said he was intrigued by the technology because the company makes a good deal of its money from roaming charges for people who aren’t already its customers, and Vanu would give him a way to add more networks without having to add expensive base stations. He first used Vanu's software to upgrade his existing network to G.S.M., and in the next few weeks he intends to add C.D.M.A. Rural cellularization may not sound like much, but Mr. Bose is a follower of Clayton M. Christensen, the management guru, who also happens to serve on Vanu’s board. Mr. Christensen told him that the best place to start a new business is where there isn't yet an established market. So Vanu is starting a project, its largest yet, in Alaska, and is involved with I.B.M, on a demonstration for a project to bring villages in India onto the cellular network. No longer, then, is Vanu Bose building the world’s most expensive cellphone. In fact, he may help make the cellphone possible everywhere."

This approach fits neatly into the philosophical framework of Development-in-a-Box™. Vanu Inc. focuses on standards, understands the economics of the bottom of the pyramid, appreciates the power of connectivity, and realizes that partnerships are the best way to move forward. Watching this progress over the next five years should be interesting, especially for global business people.