Monthly Archives: October, 2008
CPRafrica 2012/CPRsouth7: call for abstracts and young scholar applications. Click here for details.
Can Telecoms escape Financial Crisis?
When the economy goes rock bottom, it makes little sense asking what it would mean to one component. But what exactly the impact of the present financial crisis on telecoms? This is what Spencer E. Ante thinks: The $1 trillion telecommunications industry has long been one of the most resilient parts of the economy. But [...]
Cloud Computing: The Silver Lining in Economic Crisis?
Interesting point Kelly Glynn makes in apache.sys-con.com: It isn’t easy to look on the bright side of an economic crisis. The unstable stock market is provoking widespread talk of “belt-tightening,” and already thousands of people have lost their jobs. However, there is a silver lining for cloud-based services: companies looking to cut IT spending are starting to [...]
Economic freedom and consumer rights
This was the title for a presentation I was asked to do for a seminar organized by the SAARC Chamber of Commerce, the FCCISL and the Naumann Foundation. The presentation examined the broadening of consumer rights in the Sri Lanka industry as a result of the increased economic freedom in the telecom industry enabled by [...]
LIRNEasia research on international roaming in the news
Last month at the GSM Asia Pacific conference in Colombo, LIRNEasia’s Helani Galpaya presented some evidence on the way roaming charges have evolved in the region. She showed that overall South Asia’s roaming charges were higher than those in South East Asia and that South Asian operators also seemed to discriminate among visitors from different [...]
Sri Lanka: Senior citizen plans legal action against Telecom Regulator
Senior citizen and former left wing politician Vasudeva Nanayakkara, who drew attention as a public activist as the successful petitioner in the Lanka Marine Services Ltd., (LMSL), is now threatening to take up another public interest issue in court – failure of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission’s (TRC) to comply with a Supreme Court (SC) order of [...]
Natasha at UN workshop to link Disaster Management to Space Technology
From 13-15 October, 2008, The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with support from the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction – Platform for the Promotion of Early Warning (UNISDR-PPEW) and the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) organized the Second United Nations [...]
Sri Lanka: Tsunami warning towers, a day late and a penny short
One and a half years after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the government of Sri Lanka stated that it had obtained funds for three warning towers and was on track to build 25 more by the second anniversary: The Ministry has already received funds from UNESCAP to build three tsunami warning towers in the Eastern, [...]
Wholesale broadband from the sky by 2010
An intriguing move from a consortium that includes Google that seeks to provide cheap and plentiful broadband to areas around the Equator: O3b, by contrast, intends to offer bandwidth on a wholesale basis to internet-service providers, and transmission services to telecom operators, to link remote base stations to their core networks. Furthermore, O3b’s service will [...]
Handset maker profits with focus on BOP
We don’t write enough about handsets, a crucial element in extending connectivity to those at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Here is an Economist piece on a rapidly rising handset maker. “Although ZTE supplies phones to big names such as Vodafone and Telefónica, most of its customers are in the developing world, where overall handset [...]
Volunteers agree RTBP m-Health will benefit community
The Sarvodaya Suwadana Center Volunteers (Community Healthcare Workers) assembled at the Medical Officer of Health office in Kuliyapitya (Kurunegala District, Sri Lanka). This was a workshop organized by Sarvodaya and LIRNEasia as part of the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP), launched in July this year – evidence based healthcare research aiming to evaluate the use of [...]
Pakistan numbers come crashing down
It appears that we were all fooled by the PTA’s data collecting and reporting practices. It now appears that the overcount of mobile SIMs may be over 10 million! Mea culpa for having believed PTA numbers. When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Bangladesh doesn’t need a universal service tax
An article written by Rohan Samarajiva on Bangladesh’s proposed universal service taxes has been published in The Daily Star, Bangladesh; an excerpt follows. Bangladesh currently has the lowest mobile prices in the world and perhaps the world’s highest mobile growth rate. Pretty good, by any measure. A universal service tax can ruin the business model [...]
More talk on intra-SAARC talk
The South Asian Telecom Regulators Council (SATRC) met in New Delhi 12-14 October 2008 and discussed among other things, the implementation of the SAARC Declaration commitment on reducing intra-SAARC voice telephony call charges. This is the policy memo we sent to all the SAARC regulatory agencies immediately after the SAARC Summit: Options for lowering intra-SAARC [...]
Canada: Rural broadband – A chicken and egg question
They call it the fourth utility: Wiring for broadband Internet service in urban areas is more or less taken for granted these days, along with hydro, water and gas. “High-speed access, both in terms of speed and overall capacity, are fundamental prerequisites for certain development decisions,” said Franklin Holtforster, president and chief executive officer of [...]
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