Monthly Archives: November, 2008
The alleged takeoff of mobile advertising and the role of quality of experience
The Economist, which has been quite skeptical about mobile advertising, has a story which reports takeoff has occurred. What I find interesting is the analysis of which roadblocks have been removed. Here, the relevance of the broadband quality of service experience work we have been doing is noteworthy. Assuming that mobile operators want ad revenues [...]
Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne, Sarvodaya, Big Brother and Broadband
Big Brother might not have liked Dr. A.T Ariyaratne. When visited Google headquarters, Sri Lanka’s Savrodaya leader was shown a central system that tracked every Google search and displayed the aggregate outcome in a huge globe. Dr. Ariyaratne’s first reaction was shock. He thought about the immense possibilities the omnipotent technology offers to Big Brother. [...]
Mobile and Internet are eating your soul: Vatican
Mobiles are bad for your soul, the Vatican warned on Monday (November 24, 2008). Phones and computers are making the world so noisy and hectic that people cannot cultivate their spiritual dimension. And without a spiritual life ‘you will lose your soul’, said Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope’s spokesman. ‘In the age of the mobile [...]
Skype says 25% calls are from mobile
A staggering 4 billion minutes on the Skype network are now considered mobile minutes following the company’s move to put Skype clients onto handsets. According to Skype executive, Chris Lewis, responsible for strategy and new business for Asia, out of the 16 billion Skype to Skype minutes on the company’s network every quarter, 25 per [...]
Cyberchondria: An opportunity for telecenters?
The New York Times carries a story on the wrong conclusions people jump to when they try to self-diagnose on the web. The story does not say that the findings of the study identify a market opportunity for telecenters, but I do. Apparently two percent of all web searches are health related. Given the massive [...]
LIRNEasia at IGF, Hydrabad, India
Helani Galpaya will represent LIRNEasia at the third Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting to be held in Hydrabad, India, from 3-6 December, 2008 at the Hydrabad International Conference Center (HICC). Helani will be among panelists a workshop entitled, ‘Digital convergence beyond technology: socio-economic benefits, SMEs & public policy’; this workshop aims to discuss the evolving [...]
LIRNEasia at ITU Asia-Pacific Workshop on Use of ICTs in Response to Disasters
LIRNEasia’s Nuwan Waidyanatha will be making a presentation on ‘Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)’ at the ‘ITU Asia-Pacific Centres of Excellence Training/Workshop on Effective Use of Telecommunications/ICTs in Response to Disasters: Saving Lives, to be held on 24-28 November, 2008, in Kedah, Malaysia. The Training Workshop will focus on concepts and hands-on training on various technologies and [...]
Lalith Weeratunga elected to Chair, ICT Committee, UN-ESCAP
Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka, was recently elected to the chair of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Committee of ESCAP – the Economic & Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Speaking to Sandeshaya Weeratunga said that “during the past three years computer literacy in the country has increased from 5 [...]
Passage to India
In 1997, NTT bought 35 per cent of a badly managed government phone company called SLT along with the right to manage it for five years for USD 225 million. The decision was bracketed by the Central Bank attack (on a per capita basis more devastating than the World Trade Center hit of 11 September [...]
Canada regulator ruling a blow to net neutrality advocates
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today announced that it has denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ (CAIP) application to end Bell Canada’s practice of “throttling” its wholesale internet services. In a decision that defies all logic, the federal agency told the coalition of 55 ISP’s that Bell Canada’s decision to discriminate against [...]
An antidote to the scare stories
The Internet is a public space, and like any public space it is not without danger. But the scare stories are overhyped as the NYT story based on a USD 50 million research project shows: Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, [...]
What do we know about Sri Lanka’s Telecentres?
Here are the summarised results from the telecenter operator survey done by LIRNEasia at the weCan workshop in October 2008. Sample was not representative, but large enough to get a general idea about the telecenter operations in Sri Lanka. Out of a total of 147 operators surveyed, the bulk, 101 were from Nenasalas, the 500 [...]
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