Monthly Archives: May, 2008
Will you be virtual too?
LIRNEasia might not be as high tech as some of the big IT players but in our own way we have made a successful effort to make ourselves a virtual team. Not a choice – that was the only way we could operate in multiple countries (For example, in this cycle, TRE surveys will be in nine [...]
Africa: Fastest Growing Market For Mobile Phones??
Africa is the world’s fastest growing market for mobile phones over the last three years with 65 million new subscribers in 2007 alone, according to the head of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Hamadoun Touré, ITU Secretary-General, said the figure is cited in the United Nations agency’s regional report entitled “African Telecommunication/ICT Indicators 2008: At [...]
LIRNEasia Knowledge Sharing Workshop, 10 – 12 May 2008
Yesterday, LIRNEasia successfully concluded 1.5 day Knowledge sharing workshop on methods for ICT user research in emerging markets in Negombo, Sri Lanka. The workshop brought together researchers from the region to share methods (quantitative as well as qualitative) for accurately capturing the teleuse experience of those at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) or in [...]
No Early Warning Signs for China
Is accurate early warning possible for earthquakes? Chinese authorities have said they did not pick up any warning signs ahead of Monday’s earthquake. “Monitoring before the earthquake did not detect any macroscopic abnormalities, and did not catch any relevant information,” Deng Changwen, deputy head of Sichuan province’s earthquake department, said. AlJazeera.net | No Early Warning
Sri Lanka: Mobile phone interruptions in East today??
Chief ministerial candidate Rauff Hakeem told ‘Lanka Dissent’ that the Ministry of Defence has ordered service providers to interrupt mobile phone services in the Eastern Province, which goes to polls tomorrow (May 10th). He also said that the government was preparing to stage a massive vote rigging on election day and the move seems to [...]
Cyclone “Nargis” – time series before, during, and after
This article summarizes the series of event leading up to the impact, the events during the devastation, and other noteworthy information pertaining to cyclone Nargis’ encounter in Myanmar (Burma). Before the impact 26-04-2008: The early signs of Nargis developing in the Bay of Bengal were detected by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) and the Joint [...]
Paying for Wi-Fi
There has been a continuing discussion on this website about “free” WiFi. We were of the opinion that sustainability depended on some kind of payment, directly or as part of a bundle of services. The lights are going out on the metropolitan WiFi networks in the cities that did not address this issue. The linked [...]
India’s Bharti Airtel may buy South Africa’s MTN
It would be the biggest thing to pass between India and South Africa since Mahatma Gandhi moved from one country to the other. This week it emerged that Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile-phone operator in India, is holding “exploratory” talks to buy South Africa’s MTN, the biggest operator in Africa. According to the Financial Times, [...]
Building Digital Life Lines during Disaster
“Mom, where are you calling from? Your voice is trembling, are you sure everything is alright?” These were the first words Carmen Hernandez heard after getting through to her son on the phone following the massive earthquake that struck Peru in August 2007. Mrs Hernandez lived in Pisco, where the quake hit hardest. “Please keep [...]
Bhola Cyclone contributed to toppling Pak rule of Bangladesh; will this topple the Burma junta?
What these kinds of failures of warning (and of relief and response) do is destroy the legitimacy of the government. US First Lady Bush should know: her husband’s downward slide in popularity had much to do with fiasco of the Katrina response. Myanmar’s military rulers were under fire Tuesday after revealing more than 10,000 people [...]
Watching TV thru Internet
NEARLY a third of Hong Kong’s households watch television via the internet, according to a new report from Telecommunications Management group, a consultancy. Because internet protocol television (IPTV) uses the same technology as that which links computer networks, smaller countries with high broadband penetration tend to have more subscribers. As well as plain old programmes, [...]
Death of the public pay phone?
Those who are old enough might remember the days where you lived in a house that had no telephone. When you want to take a call you went to post office or a public place where telephone facilities are available. In India, Sam Pitroda’s name went into history for the ubiquitous, yellow-signed Public Call Offices [...]
RIA convenes research planning & dissemination meeting in Cairo
LIRNEasia’s sister organization in Africa is meeting May 6-11 in Cairo to plan its future research activities and disseminate finding from the research already done. LIRNEasia’s Executive Director will participate, presenting on governance, interconnection and banded forbearance and also sharing experiences on conducting studies on teleuse at the BOP and on telecom regulatory environment. Workshop [...]
Telecom operators continue to dominate FDI inflows
Contrary to jingoistic claims that foreign owned telcos draining out local resources, the telecom sector continues to bring in new investment from outside. In Pakistan, at one point, 50% of the FDI was telecom. If the breakdown is provided, it may well be that the telecom sector accounts for 50% of FDI in Sri Lanka [...]
Framing the knowledge economy debate better than most
The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes [...]
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