October 2007 — Page 3 of 4 — LIRNEasia


Prof. Rohan Samarajiva and Tahani Iqbal discuss issues regarding implementing mobile number portability in Sri Lanka in a leading local English daily Daily Mirror. Sri Lankan mobile users and service providers can be optimistic about MNP. It has resulted in better rates even in countries which had lower rates than ours before MNP. It will result in an overall improvement of the quality of services.
Net user base shrinks as Indians go mobile- Internet -Infotech-The Economic Times Even as net connections are falling, the number of people accessing the web on their cellphones increased by a whopping 7 million to cross the 38 million mark. This emphasises how the cellphone is fast becoming the primary medium for Indians to connect to the net as the number of people using their mobile handsets to access the web is now over four times those using a PC. That means over a fifth of India’s 200 million-plus mobile subscribers use their cellphones to log in to their favourite websites. Powered by ScribeFire.
Miguel Helft October 11, 2007, New York Times For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google have been working in secret on a mobile-phone project. As word of their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists before a speech by Steve Jobs. But the GPhone is not likely to be the second coming of the iPhone and Google’s goals are very different from Apple’s. Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile internet, a small market today but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile-phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has invited bids to operate international telecoms services by the private entities Sunday. It will issue licenses for two interconnection exchanges (ICX) and three licenses of International Gateway (IGW) facilities. The ICX will be linked with the IGW. The fixed and mobile operators’ outbound calls will first terminate in one of the six ICX. Then the calls will be processed in the IGW followed by getting routed to the overseas destinations via BTTB’s submarine cable station.
Please continue discussion from Village with a mesh network, but not a single telephone, on this thread. Previous discussion is archived in the following thread: Village with a mesh network, but not a single telephone
Rohan Samarajiva will deliver the keynote speech at the 2nd BuzzCity-NUS Digitial Media Series, presented by the NUS Enterpreneurship Center Techno-Venture Forum on the 19th of October, 2007, at the NUS Business School, National University of Singapore. Entitled, ‘More than Voice at the Bottom of the Pyramid’, the presentation will be based on the Teleuse@ Bottom of The Pyramid (T@BOP) research conducted by LIRNEasia in five South and South-East Asian countries, and will examine the potential for the take-up of “more than voice” applications among the fast growing user populations in Socio-Economic Categories (SEC) D and E. Presentations will also be made by Prof. Sam Ge, Chairman and Founding Director, Personal E-Motion Pte Ltd, and Ms. Aileen Sim, COO & Co-founder, First Meta Pte Ltd.

SMS use declining in India?

Posted on October 8, 2007  /  11 Comments

TRAI: SMSs losing their flavour | The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Are text messages slowly losing their flavor with India’s growing cellular base? Even as operators say it’s too early to take a call and make such a ‘sweeping statement’, the figures, however, suggest so. Data compiled by telecom regulator TRAI reveal that SMS use has steadily fallen from September 2006. Consider this: GSM operators have witnessed close to 9% drop in the outgoing SMSs during the April – June quarter, as per the latest performance indicator report by TRAI. This implies, an average GSM user now sends about 35 SMSs per month as compared to 39 during the previous quarter.
For Google, Advertising and Phones Go Together – New York Times Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile Internet, a small market today, but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project. The cost of those phones may be partly subsidized by advertising that appears on their screens. Google is expected to unveil the fruit of its mobile efforts later this year, and phones based on its technology could be available next year. Some analysts say that the Google project’s affect on the wireless industry is not likely to be as profound, at least initially, as that of Apple’s iPhone, whose revolutionary look and features have redefined consumer expectations for mobile phones.
Looks like international law is being made as we speak. According to the UN, basic human rights are violated when countries cut off Internet access. Burma is not the first. King Gyanendra of Nepal cut off everything in his palace coup. If cutting off Internet is a violation of human rights, what is cutting off phone service to entire regions like Jaffna?
Harsha de Silva, who studied the first least-cost-subsidy auction in Asia in Nepal as part of the 3rd cycle of WDR research, draws out the lessons for Sri Lanka in an op-ed piece published in Sri Lanka’s leading English language daily.   Now that Nepal is considering another least-cost-subsidy auction, the subject has become topical in Nepal too.   The detailed study is available  on the web. The article can be downloaded here. :: Daily Mirror – FINANCIAL TIMES :: An effective access regime that will allow optimal use of the existing backbone, better interconnection enforcement throughout the country, transparent licensing that would remove the pall of corruption or allegations of corruption hanging over the Telecom Regulatory Commission and the licensing authorities, more transparent and efficient spectrum management including the complete unlicensing of WiFi frequencies; deregulation of tariffs to the extent possible like in India are the low-cost option that will enable more people to use telecom and Internet services, not high-cost and low-thought subsidy schemes.
On October 25, 2007, LIRNEasia will hold its first regional dissemination workshop for the “Evaluating Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) pilot project at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) through its Bangladesh Network Office for Urban Safety (BNUS) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The purpose of the workshop is to gather experts, practitioners and community organizations to discuss the findings of the HazInfo project and determine ways in which the project may be developed to suit community-based hazard information dissemination regionally. The “Sharing Knowledge on Disaster Warning: Community-based Last-Mile Warning Systems” workshop in Dhaka will feature five presenters from government, academia and NGOs. Dr. A.
On 12 September 2007 the Tamil Nadu Government asked the coastal districts to remain on alert following fears of tsunami in the wake of the 7.9 magnitude powerful earthquake that rocked Sumatra near Indonesia. After the Union Home Ministry sounded an alert, the State Government instructed the district collectors of Chennai, Kancheepuram, Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Thanjavur and Kanniyakumari to remain on high alert to meet any eventuality. On being alerted, the district administrations sounded the alert. In the aftermath of the events following the alert a lightning survey was conducted by the Academy for Disaster Management Education, Planning and Training’s (ADEPT) community volunteers (Community Support Leaders or CSLs).
The final report from the World Dialogue on Regulation (WDR) 3rd research cycle has been released and can now be downloaded or ordered in hardcopy. Edited by Amy Mahan and William H. Melody, this most recent collection of the network’s research and case studies elaborates on inclusive and propoor strategies for extending network development. Title: Diversifying Participation in Network Development: Case studies and research from WDR Research Cycle 3 Editors: Amy Mahan and William H. Melody
Gordon Gow, a lead researcher in the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System (LM-HWS) Pilot (HazInfo project), presented the paper titled – “Community-based Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka: Performance of Alerting and Notification in a Last-Mile Message Relay” at the 1st Wireless Rural and Emergency Communications (WRECOM) Conference in Rome, Italy, Oct 01-02. One of Gordon Gow’s key contributions to the HazInfo project was the Common Alerting Protocol Profile for Sri Lanka, which was a hard case as far as integrating the multi-language scenario as it is the case in Sri Lanka. The CAP Profile for Sri Lanka was designed for disseminations in Sinhala, Tamil, and English languages. Such a complex profile of CAP was field tested in Sri Lanka’s HazInfo project. This was the first time a Multilanguage profile was field tested in the World.
Since Bangladesh was connected to the world through an undersea cable a year or so ago, it has had great difficulty keeping connected.   The dry portion of the cable snapped twice in August 2007.   Contrast this with Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which have had problems only once each in the past five years.  Obviously redundancy is a key issue in Bangladesh. :: bdnews24.
LIRNEasia lead economist Harsha de Silva recently had the honor of hosting 2006 Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus on his weekly television show; Biz1st: In- Focus, which runs on MTV and Shakthi TV in Sri Lanka.   A five minute cut on the discussion, where Professor Yunus discusses how a “digital genie” will appear from the “Aladdin’s lamp” [the mobile phone] to empower the poor, has been linked below.