Monthly Archives: November, 2008
Applications now open for LIRNEasia Young Scholar Tutorials, hosted by NUS, Singapore. Click here for info on how to apply.
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 (not a hard assumption), this shows that it is in their interest to improve the quality of service experience from the dismal levels that exist today.
Faster networks and lower rates also help. Having to wait for an advert to download, while being charged for the privilege, was unlikely to inspire warm feelings about the product being advertised. But with download speeds increasing and flat-rate “all you can eat” data plans, mobile services and applications are becoming more popular—and, increasingly, funded by advertising.
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. Isn’t somebody tracking all our information needs too scary? Will that be post-modern form of information slavery? He is still waiting for answers.
Yesterday’s workshop – ‘Know your Broadband’ - LIRNEasia jointly organized with Sarvodaya’s ICT for Development arm Fusion too promoted a monitoring system, but the similarities ended there. Instead of Big-Brotherly approach our AT-Tester (developed jointly with a team from IIT Madras) depends on Public Source Computing (an arm of Distributed Computing or Grid Comuting). There is no central control. Each volunteer does his/her monitoring and feed the individual data to a central web site – open to public.
What does that mean? Visualise the map of Sri Lanka. Pick a district of your choice. Click to see the broadband quality parameters of different packages at different times of the day. We are hardly there yet, ..read more
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 phone and the internet it is probably more difficult than before to protect silence and to nourish the interior dimension of life,’ said Fr Lombardi. ‘It is difficult but necessary. ‘Today this is a very grave threat, and it is the most irreparable misfortune,’ he said, adding that if the spiritual dimension of a person was not guarded and nourished or it could ‘become barren to the point of drying up and, indeed, dying. Daily Mail and Cellular News report.
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 cent now involve mobile devices.
The company currently offers a Java-based downloadable client for mobile phones, a client for Windows Mobile devices, as well as a dedicated device called the Skypephone with 3. Read more.
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 number of searches devoted to Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton and other luminaries, this is a very significant number. Of the people who search the web for health matters, many want to know about symptoms they are experiencing. And, according to the researchers, a significant number take the first few hits way too seriously and in addition jump to extreme conclusions like thinking that their head ache is caused by a brain tumor and not by caffeine withdrawal or a blocked sinus (that’s my explanation for everything!).
They found that Web searches for things like headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare.
For example, there were just as many results that ..read more
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 definition of digital convergence as well as the benefits and opportunities to key stakeholders – with a special focus on SMEs. Digital convergence refers to the evolution of previously distinguishable digitalized information formats, services, applications, networks, and business models in ways that reduce or blend the distinctions.
This workshop will focus on what kind of information and skills various stakeholders must have to address digital convergence issues and the implications for the policy environment, users and enterprises of all sizes.
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 applications that are suitable for deployment and aimed at facilitating rescue and relief operations in emergencies, especially in the aftermath of a disaster. The stated aims of the workshop are to:
create awareness and demonstrate telecommunication technology options, facilities and services applicable for use in response to disasters or emergencies especially in disaster relief operations; provide practical experience to participants in using the telecommunication/ICT facilities and services during these operations; strengthen partnerships in disaster relief among international agencies/organizations, NGOs, industry, and governments as well as encourage roles of public sector or NGOs identify issues and challenges in countries in order to find ways to overcome them.This workshop is organized jointly by the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the ITU, Universiti Utara Malaysia (ITU CoE ASP UUM), the Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications (MEWC), Malaysia and sponsored by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE), Government of Australia.
A draft version of ..read more
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 per cent to over 20 per cent”
He elaborated that the ‘e-Sri Lanka’ initiative has enabled people to obtain authenticated copies of Death, Marriage and Birth Certificates – essential documents within a few minutes.
Responding to a question that some rural tele centers have been dysfunctional Weeratunga said there are about 600 Telecenters and it’s not unusual for a few to fall behind.
“However we will relocate them if necessary”, he said.
Commenting on the Sri Lankan expertise of the diasporas, Weeratunga said that there are those who want to help but in actual fact most of them are really in search of jobs.
“We cant pay them the salaries they expect but if anyone wants to genuinely help they could log in to the ICTA web site (www.icta.lk)” said Weeratunga.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/news/story/2008/11/081122_weeratuge.shtml
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 2001) and the bombing of an empty [Sri Lankan] World Trade Center. Many wondered what the logic was. One explanation was that NTT saw Sri Lanka as a stepping stone to India. But no step was taken.
Others saw it as the only sensible foreign investment made by NTT, a high-cost operator that was completely unaccustomed to the challenger role, but was the quintessential incumbent. Their culture meshed perfectly with the monopoly culture at SLT. In contrast to the losses incurred in Thailand and Indonesia, they did well in Sri Lanka, in the process turning SLT into some kind of modern organization, even if they could not make it efficient.
Now the Economist talks of the return of the Japanese. No stepping stone, now. Directly to India.
HERE we go again. When NTT DoCoMo, ..read more
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 particular applications and types of content was “not discriminatory” because Bell throttled both wholesale and retail customers in an equal fashion.
“Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory. Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C., Chairman of the CRTC.
CAIP and advocates of Net Neutrality argued that, if Bell and other internet service providers can’t keep up with subscriber demands and must throttle traffic, then they should implement neutral measures for dealing with internet congestion rather than arbitrarily picking on one type of application and content.
Read the full story in Digital Home Canada here.
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, according to a new study by the MacArthur Foundation.
“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”
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 odd telecenter network created under the World Bank funded e-Sri Lanka programme. 10 were from Sarvodaya multi-purpose telecenters and 6 from others (eg. public libraries) 30 have not specified the type of the telecenter.
Do telecenters in Sri Lanka make money? Yes. They report an average monthly income of Rs. 22,119. (=USD 201) This is associated with a relatively large standard deviation of Rs. 21,714 (= USD 197) indicating a variation within a wide range. Not a surprise since some telecenters are running at a loss (presumably temporarily) and few reporting a monthly income of over Rs. 100,000 (= USD 900).
However, providing Internet services ranked only third among telecenter income components (16%). The key sources of income are education and training (43%) and providing fax, photocopy and printing series (21%). They also make money from VoIP (4.5%), bill payments (2.5%) telephone calls (2.5%) selling ..read more
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