Monthly Archives: October, 2008
Will missed calls be made history by per-second billing and low, low rates?
In our work on teleuse@BOP, reports on the use of missed calls attracted a great deal of attention. It seems to be generating even more press at the MobileActive conference in South Africa: “Donner said in a phone interview with MobileActive.org: “I started writing on [missed calls], based on being an outsider. We just simply [...]
UAE launches mobile tariff for migrant workers
A new mobile package has been launched in the United Arab Emirates which has been designed for the country’s large expat manual labourers. The new package, called ‘alo’, which means ‘hello’ in Arabic, was launched on Monday by the Permanent Committee of Labour Affairs in Dubai and mobile network, du. The alo brand is designed [...]
Dialog narrows digital gap with HSPA
Dialog Mobile has proven that broadband has a massive potential in under-penetrated markets. HSPA has all of the necessary qualities – the ability to utilise existing infrastructure, low cost devices, high throughput – making broadband commercially viable even among the poorest people. But it’s not simply a matter of technology deployment, as Dialog has discovered. [...]
World Bank in action: Disaster Risk Management in the Information Age
“We must realize the fact that disasters threaten sustained economic growth of the society and the country.” These were the words of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani addressing the opening ceremony of the first National Disaster Risk Management Conference. The function, reported Associated Press of Pakistan, was organized to mark the Disaster Awareness Day [...]
Talking contention ratios at Telecoms World South Asia
At the end of a long day at Telecoms World South Asia in Dhaka, I presented some of the preliminary results of the Broadband QoSE work being done with IIT Madras. I talked about the finding that the bottleneck in Chennai and Colombo appeared to be the international segment and that the first results from [...]
LIRNEasia research published in Telektronikk
An article entitled, ‘Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Beyond Universal Access’, co-authored by Harsha de Silva and Ayesha Zainudeen, has been published in Telektronikk, a leading telecommunications journal, published by Telenor, Norway. Appearing in the journal’s second issue for 2008, aptly titled, ‘Emerging Markets in Telecommunications’, the article explores the extent to which “universal [...]
Malaysia proposes to slash ASEAN roaming charge
International roaming charges may be reduced by up to half throughout the Asian region if a proposal from Malaysia’s Communications Minister, Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor is accepted by his ASEAN counterparts. “We plan to reduce the roaming charges with Singapore first. In fact, I told the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) two weeks ago [...]
BTRC gets $1.46 mn bonus to punish mobile operators
Bangladesh government has rewarded the telecoms regulator with Tk.10 crore (Tk.100 million or $1.46 million) bonus, according to a press report. This windfall is the result of penalizing four mobile phone operators $121.58 million for bypassing the state-owned monopoly of international gateway. But another report questions the legitimacy of this punishment.
Price war ends receiving party pays in Sri Lanka
In a fullpage advertisement that will be published in the Sunday papers on October 5th, Tigo, Sri Lanka’s “third” mobile operator (not that we place that much stock in market share calculations based on numbers of active SIMs), will effectively end the unloved receiving-party-pays regime in Sri Lanka. Its tariff scheme is about the simplest [...]
Interview with Pakistan universal service fund CEO
Telecompk.net is carrying a multi-part interview with one of the recent and more active universal service funds in the region. Part 1 is here.
Harmonization of cell broadcasting channels
Mark Wood, who among other things coordinates the group that is working harmonizing the address space for cell broadcasts on mobiles at ITU-T, had an intensive discussion with representatives of Sri Lanka mobile operators at a meeting organized at very short notice by LIRNEasia on 2nd of October 2008. He was on his way back [...]
Colloquium: TRE Pakistan study 2008
Joseph Wilson, PhD presented the findings of the TRE study in Pakistan Started with the industry outlook. The mobile sector, Mobilink licence was renewed last year from providing the service. The licence cost UDS 291 mn. The cost is the same for everyone. Paktel purchased by China mobile for USD 400 mn. Growth in mobile [...]
LIRNEasia engages in act of “social corporate responsibility”!
Large corporations engage in acts of Corporate Social Responsibility. Non-profit organizations like ours sometimes engage in acts of Social Corporate Responsibility. SCR differs from CSR because the beneficiary here is a corporation. We recognize that large corporations can affect the course of events in countries and in some cases, the world. Therefore, when a large [...]
Bangladesh takes LIRNEasia advice, belatedly and partially
In December 2005 Bangladesh became connected to the SEA-ME-WE 4 undersea cable, but it took much longer for the people of Bangladesh to actually use the connectivity, because the incumbent government-owned monopoly BTTB had not been able to connect the country’s networks to the landing station in Cox’s Bazar in time. I was invited to [...]
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