Monthly Archives: May, 2007
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Insurance through prepaid mobile
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 a product,” Hans Wijayasuriya, CEO Dialog Telekom told reporters.
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Reliance makes India’s 2007 negative growth
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.
Opacity leads to confusion in SLTL share sale
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 Lanka. The no-USO provision continues to date, though the international exclusivity ended with the issuance of external gateway licenses in March 2003.
Why LBO’s anonymous source is claiming that provisions that were in force since 1997 are newly being imposed in 2007 is a mystery. And how the humpty dumpty of SLTL’s ambiguous international exclusivity can be put back again, the Rip van Winkle interviewed by LBO does not tell us.
If ..read more
Emerging markets are driving innovation: Gartner
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.”
Telcos eye South Asian investment opportunities as 3G begins to roll
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 3G tariffs said to be similar to that of prepaid rates. The service launched in the Ring Road area of the capital city Kathmandu. The launch hit an early snag within days, with the independent regulator objecting to Nepal Telecom’s setting a new subscription fee for 3G services without its permission. A spokesperson for the Authority said that under the country’s Telecommunications Act, prices levied by a service provider must first be approved by the ..read more
Tectonic shifts as Asia drives global telecom business growth
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 of global telecom business that is inexorably moving to emerging markets especially in Asia. It is time that consulting firms and equity analysts also smell the coffee…
Source: Ericsson Annual Report 2006
The Dragon is on the move
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.
Wireless Unbound – Mckinsey Report on wireless benefits
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
A different model for supplying payphone services; let’s hope it will work
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 watchdog, Kanchana Ratwatte said.
Google proposes real-time auction for efficient spectrum use
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 by permitting companies to resell the airwaves in a real-time auction would make it possible to greatly improve spectrum use and simultaneously create a robust market for innovative digital services. For instance, a company could resell its spectrum on an as-needed basis to other providers, the executives said in their formal proposal to the federal agency.”
Reed Hunt, the former FCC chief, is now heading a consortium that will bid for new spectrum that the ..read more
Mobile phone call from the top of Mount Everest
A British climber has set a world record by making a mobile phone call from the top of Mount Everest.In the early hours of 21 May, Rod Baber made two calls from the mountain’s north ridge.
In the first call Mr Baber described the view, how cold it was and what he wanted to do when back at base camp; he then rang his wife and children.
The calls were made possible when China set up a mobile base station with a line of sight to the north ridge.
Mr Baber set off from the UK for the Himalayas on 30 March and since mid-April has been getting used to living at high altitude.
Prior to 15 May, when the final ascent began, Mr Baber and the other members of the expedition had been trekking up and down Everest to familiarise themselves with the route and prepare their bodies for the punishing ordeal.
To make the call at the summit, 8,848 metres, Mr Baber had to contend with high winds and temperatures of -30 degrees. The call was made to a voicemail account created by sponsor Motorola to ensure the attempt was recorded.
Mr Baber also did not have much time to make the call ..read more
Bhutan getting into BPOs
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.
Mobile phone banking being piloted in India
ICICI Bank is gearing to conduct a test run next month. The bank has tied up with Airtel and mChek for the purpose, said Mr Sachin Khandelwal, Head – Cards Product Group of ICICI Bank.
“A virtual card will be created on the phone through which an individual can carry out complete banking transactions.”
Mr Khandelwal said all a customer had to do was to give his mobile number and the payment to be made to the merchant.
The merchant will furnish the information given via his mobile to mChek, a mobile payment platform, which in turn will channel it to the bank for authorising the transaction, before which mChek will seek customer authorisation (PIN entered authorisation) to carry forward the transaction.
Once cleared by the customer, the confirmation will be sent to the customer again and the merchant to enable him to receive payment from the bank.
Consumers would want it just for the convenience it offered, said Mr Khandelwal.
Connect the young, and the old
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.
Tsunami warning in 45 minutes
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 having technology to alert coastal areas within 45 minutes of a possible tsunami triggering earthquake in the region.Addressing reporters at the Disaster Management Ministry yesterday, he said the set up was not 100 per cent perfect but the country was better prepared now than before the December 2004 tsunami.
“When there was this recent Sumatra quake of 7.5 points, a message from the Hawaii Tsunami Warning Centre reached my desk ..read more
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