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Monthly Archives: November, 2006


Applications now open for LIRNEasia Young Scholar Tutorials, hosted by NUS, Singapore. Click here for info on how to apply.

Evidence-based policy advocacy

To get thinking started on a topic that we will be studying in more detail in 2007.
Are there historical figures like this, for example in India, that we can refer to in our work?
Looking Back on Louis Brandeis on His 150th Birthday – New York Times

Satellite broadband

Cost is USD 50 a month; is this higher or lower than what is paid by the Nanasalas in Sri Lanka?
With a Dish, Broadband Goes Rural – New York Times
Craig Clark, who works from home in Rindge, made do with a sluggish dial-up line until he signed up for broadband service from the [...]

Unreliable connectivity

Why BPOs insist on route and supplier redundancy.
:: bdnews24.com ::
Dhaka, Nov 13 (bdnews24.com) – A suspected act of sabotage derailed telecommunications transmission optical fibre cable links between Dhaka and Chittagong Monday night.Submarine cable subscribers in Dhaka got disconnected at 7:30pm.
Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board rushed a maintenance team to the spot on the outskirts of [...]

Afghans glow with Roshan’s one million mobile users

Dhaka, Nov 13 (bdnews24.com) — Telecom Development Company Afghanistan reached the mark of one million mobile subscribers on October 30.
With the brand name “Roshan” or light, the second mobile operator rolled out services in June 2003.
“We are very excited and proud of reaching the million subscribers milestone,” said Karim Khoja, chief executive of Roshan.
In more [...]

Training Course in Telecom Reform: Strategies to achieve connectivity and convergence

An executive course on telecom regulation, including World Dialogue on Regulation Expert Forum on Sector and Regulatory Performance Indicators
Offered by LIRNEasia and CONNECTasia Forum Pte. Ltd.
February 25th – March 3rd, 2007. Changi Village Hotel, Singapore
The 2007 course is designed to enhance the strategic thinking of a select group of senior decision makers in the [...]

India adds record 6.6m mobile phone subscribers in October

(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Cellular phone subscribers rose in India by a record 6.6 million in October, keeping the country’s place as the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone market, according to data released over the weekend.
Subscribers for the GSM network grew by 4.7 million in September, while the number of mobile phone subscribers using CDMA technology [...]

Bridging the “last mile”

LIRNEasia HazInfo project partner Nalaka Gunawardene has written an excellent piece on ICTs and disasters, referring in some detail to the ongoing HazInfo project.
Bridging the long ‘last mile’ in Sri Lanka / 2006/4 / Media Development / Publications / Home – World Association for Christian Communication
While the countries of South and Southeast Asia were [...]

Ashok Jhunjhunwala in prestigious panel discussion

CPRsouth Chair and LIRNEasia international advisory board member, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala was on a blue-ribbon panel discussing ICTs and rural access last night on NDTV.
CIOL : .NET & Windows : Make bandwidth available to all, says Kalam
NDTV’s Prannoy Roy moderated a discussion in which Ballmer, N R Narayana Murthy, Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Manvinder Singh of [...]

Benefits of telecom reform

Looks like we have a virtuous cycle of investment going on.  Not only the mobiles, but the fixed operators too are engaging in significant investment.  Possibly the unusual predilection of the Sri Lankan consumer for fixed phones, over mobile, keeps Suntel going. 
For those not from Sri Lanka, 1 USD = 106 LKR, just lopping [...]

Bangladesh the ‘Golden Boy’ of South Asia: Global UNDP Report

Dhaka, Nov 9 (www.bdnews24.com) – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report for 2006, launched globally Thursday, revealed that Bangladesh had shown impressive gains in water and sanitation sector although Asia’s emerging giants were lagging.
“Income matters, but public policy shapes the conversion of income into human development,” said the report, entitled “Beyond Scarcity: [...]

Colloquium: Indonesia Sector Performance/Indicators study

As part of the Six Country Indicators Project, Divakar presents the interim findings from the Indonesia country study. The study assesses Indonesia’s telecom sector and regulatory performance. It employs the common methodology and list of indicators adopted for the Six Country study.

The new new thing in WiFi

A Wi-Fi Express Lane – New York Times
IT’S axiomatic in the computer world that nothing is ever fast enough. And so it goes with popular wireless Wi-Fi networks, which already seem overcrowded and slow. The growing interest in video sites like YouTube and streaming TV programs online has served to underscore the problem. [...]

Build it, but will they come?

Maldives is a country with a population of around 300,000, around 32,000 fixed phones and around 232,000 mobiles [this has to level off, because pretty much the entire population is now using mobiles].
It has a lot of high-end hotel rooms, but the USP of the tourist industry there is not business travel, it is utter [...]

Who adds more phones a month in South Asia?

Massive mobile growth is reported from Bangladesh in 2006, with over two million being added in September alone, according to the BTRC.  The question now is whether Pakistan still leads the pack.

 

Mobiles

Net addition/month

Jan-06

10,275,869

 

Feb-06

10,543,898

268,029

Mar-06

10,954,285

410,387

Apr-06

11,781,560

827,275

May-06

13,440,836

1,659,276

Jun-06

14,190,606

749,770

Jul-06

14,798,440

607,834

Aug-06

15,510,000

711,560

Sep-06

17,647,537

2,137,537

Bangladesh’s GrameenPhone tops 10 mln subscribers | Reuters.com
Bangladesh’s top mobile phone operator GrameenPhone Ltd. said on Sunday the number of its subscribers has [...]

Village with a mesh network, but not a single telephone

Sri Lanka’s first outdoor wireless computer network is now up and running.
 
Surprisingly, it is not in Colombo. It is not even in any of the other key places. It was installed in Mahavilachchiya, a little known village, 40 km from the nearest town Anuradhapura, and surrounded three sides by the Vilpattu [...]

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