We have periodically carried stories on non-traditional uses of mobiles. Here is one about buying accident insurance that are bought and paid for through the mobiles.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE - LBO
The accident insurance cover package premiums are priced between five and 20 rupees which can be paid at any Dialog reload centre in Sri Lanka that entitles the connection holder up to 50,000 rupees worth of claims.
The accident cover targets the population who does not have comprehensive knowledge of insurance and low-income families.
Customers can apply for the ‘eZ insurance’ cover at the time of a reload and the cover expires when the credit of the reload finishes.
“eZ insurance is a manifestation of the deployment of advanced electronic commerce infrastructure towards enhancing the affordability and availability of…
The Indian mobile market has added 20.55 million new customers in the first four months of 2007 - less than the 20.96 million recorded in the same period in 2006. There are two reasons for this shortfall.
Firstly, in April 2006 Reliance Communications made an adjustment to the way it counted mobile subscribers, including its fixed-wireless customers in the figures for the first time and boosting its ranks as a result.
Secondly, March 2007 saw the termination of India’s customer re-verification procedure whereby the personal details of all of the country’s mobile subscribers had to be checked by the operators - and a procedure which saw the same operator, Reliance, disconnect some 4 million unverified customers. Read more.
The usually well-informed LBO.LK appears to have gotten confused in the “fog of war” created by interested parties seeking to extract rents from the sale of 25% of SLTL shares by NTT to GTH, both private companies, and by the unfortunate opacity of the transaction (something that is quite surprising because SLTL is a publicly traded company and the interests of thousands of shareholders are affected by the transaction).
The source quoted by LBO below appears to have been quite familiar with the ORIGINAL shareholders agreement signed between the Government of Sri Lanka and NTT in 1997, but appears to have been comatose since then. Provisions regarding no universal service obligations (USO) and international exclusivities were in that agreement and did bind the Government of Sri…
China and India are emerging as powerhouses of innovation and creativity. “In 2005, the number of patent filings in China outnumbered those in the US,” said Partha Iyengar, vice-president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.
“Slightly less than one-tenth of world intellectual property organisation international patents were attributed to emerging markets. If the growth rates remain constant, the emerging market share could reach almost one-fifth in 2012.”
The government of Pakistan seems set to issue three 3G licences by the end of this year, according to recent Reuters reports. Pakistan is one of a number of populous Asian nations whose hunger for more widely available communications services are proving to be a major growth engine for telecoms groups with global ambitions. However, it does remain to be seen if there exists a solid business case for investment in third generation networks in a region where the most basic prepaid voice and SMS services are stimulating economic activity by providing consumers and businesses with connectivity.
This has not deterred the state-owned GSM operator in Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, from launching 3G services. The 3G SIM card reportedly costs about US$64.50 with…
Tags: 3G, 3G services, communications services, generation networks, GSM, Kathmandu, Nepal, Nepal Telecom, Pakistan, Reuters, Ring Road, SMS, USD.
BSNL, the former incumbent fixed line and mobile carrier in India, is finalizing a $4.5-4.7 billion deal with Ericsson and Nokia Siemens to deploy 45.5 million GSM lines. Ericsson’s share of this deal is about $2.82 billions. What is remarkable about this deal is that it represents about 10.8% of Ericsson’s total sales of $25.9 billions in 2006. Ericsson’s sales to the USA represented 8% of its total sales in 2006. We are talking about one company in India generating more sales than the entire USA.
As can be seen in the graph below, sales to emerging markets like China, India, Indoesia, Brazil etc is what is and will drive Ericsson’s telecom equipment business globally.
The equipment suppliers are already aware of the tectonic shift in the structure…
Mobile phone production in China is expected to rise by nearly 17% during 2007 - to reach 560 million units, according to information released by China’s Ministry of Information Industry.
In 2006, handsets produced in China totaled 480 million units, accounting for a 47% share of global production. During Q1 of this year, handset production had totaled 134 million units - a rise of 34.5% on the same quarter the previous year.
The report states that the primary production areas in China are Tianjin, Beijing and Shenzhen - each capable of producing over 100 million handsets per annum each. Production of network infrastructure is also reported to have jumped by over 16% in the quarter.
The report examines the untapped potential that the mobile / wireless devices have in provisioning of next generation of business and public services.
This report , prepared and published by Mckinsey and Company, can be a very valuable tool for the professionals in the public sector as well as the industry. It makes a point that the next generation of services for the evolving knowledge society would be provisioned through mobile / wireless devices.
http://mckinsey.com/clientservice/telecommunications/WirelsUnbnd.pdf
The title of the article “Sri Lanka to de-regulate payphone business,” is a little deceptive, but then that is probably not the fault of the Director General, but of the editor of LBO.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE - LBO
Sri Lanka plans to allow third parties to operate payphone booths in an attempt to popularise them in far flung areas outside the city of Colombo, a top official said.The island’s eight public switched telephone network (PSTN) operators will now be allowed to appoint a third party to operate and maintain a public phone booth on a revenue sharing model.
“Its a scheme similar to selling lottery tickets, where the lottery operator does not undertake the burden of running, maintaining and collecting the money,” the head of Sri Lanka’s telecom…
Google has proposed to the FCC that instead of getting into long-term contracts for allocating spectrum, companies buying spectrum should be free to resell the spectrum in real-time auctions. This would probably not involve human beings in protracted auction negotiations but rather negotiations between devices in real-time. Since FCC’s auction is done at the wholesale level it would probably involve companies reselling spectrum that they won to consumers on real-time basis.
NYT: “The driving reason we’re doing this is that there are not enough broadband options for consumers,” said Adam Kovacevich, a spokesman for Google’s policy office in Washington. “In general, it’s the belief of a lot of people in the company that spectrum is allocated in an inefficient manner.”
“In their proposal, Google executives argue that…
Tags: Adam Kovacevich, Broadband, digital services, Federal Communications Commission, Google, Internet access, real-time auction, Reed Hunt, retail prices, the New York Times, Washington, wireless handsets, wireless spectrum.
It is learned that a fiber optic cable has been laid to connect Thimphu, the capital with the Indian backbone network, that an IT park is being established in Thimphu, and that Bhutan will soon be undertaking BPO work.
If any of our Bhutanese readers (or other knowledgeable persons) can shed additional light on this subject it will be much appreciated.
Rohan Samarajiva examines what is required to connect families at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) in South Asia, drawing from the findings of a five-country Teleuse@BOP study that included the elicitation of responses from around 9,000 teleusing households (respondents were between the ages of 18 and 60) in Socio Economic Classifications D and E (SEC D&E). His article was published by bdnews24.com on World Telecoms day.
It is good to have a confident Minister. Of course, we would sleep better if we were shown the results of some on-the-ground simulations, rather than given bland assurances. After all some of us remember his statements about the large number of warning towers that would be erected and operational by the second anniversary of the tsunami (and the actual outcome was . . . .One?):
Another noteworthy matter is that the Minister has increased the time get the warning out within the country to 30 mts from 23 mts. More realistic? Perhaps he will give us a corrected, realistic figure on warning towers as well?
Sri Lanka News | Online edition of Daily News - Lakehouse Newspapers
Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe assured Sri Lanka was now…
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