In addition to giving the keynote at the OECD/infoDev workshop on the Budget Telecom Network Mode at the IGF in Sharm el Sheikh, I attended several sessions, one being that on reducing interconnection costs. The key recommendations seemed to cluster around two actions, creating Internet Exchanges in each country and reducing leased line costs by introducing competition and breaking incumbent control on essential facilities such as cable stations. Our findings from countries that have had working Internet Exchanges at various times such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka show that their effects fluctuate (there is an unfortunate tendency of internal dissension in these things) and that getting leased line prices (both domestic and international) down is, on balance, more important. That unless the leased-line problem is not solved, the good work done on Internet Exchanges will be washed out. There is an assumption that every country should have an IX.
The Directorate of Environment, European Commission organises the conference ‘The Civil Protection Forum – Towards a more resilient society’ that aims to explore the concept of resilience. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and impact of disasters, and Europe has to be prepared for this challenge. The Forum will start a debate on a comprehensive European disaster management strategy to enhance resilience. Around 500 delegates, speakers and exhibitors from politics, academia, the civil protection services and international organisations are expected to participate. Chanuka Wattegama, Senior Research Manager, LIRNEasia will be one of the speakers in the six practice-oriented seminars will look more closely at how European civil protection works in the field – how does it integrate with other international actors, three major phases of an emergency (prevention, preparedness, and response) and the roles of different stakeholders (institutions, civil protection professionals and civil society).
The 2nd South Asia Broadband Communications Conference and Workshop will be held at the Taj Samudra, Colombo, 26-27 November 2009. We participated in the 1st conference in 2007 and found it to be quite useful. Our work on broadband benchmarking started as a result.
When we asked the people of Jaffna what good came of the ceasefire of 2002-05, they said phones and the opening of the road connecting them to the rest of Sri Lanka. Looks like the Iraqis are similar. I love my mobile like a baby, says on Iraqi mother. De facto m-payments are also significant, though there are some problems, according to the Economist. Criminal rings are among the parallel currency’s busiest users.
LIRNEasia’s future work will focus on knowledge-based economies, which makes us very interested in stories like this, which place innovation at the center. China’s productivity has been lifted by a massive expansion of private enterprise, and a shift of labour out of agricultural work and into more productive jobs in industry. China’s average return on physical capital is now well above the global average, according to Goldman Sachs. A decade ago it was less than half the world average. Why have the Asian economies led the pack?
Call it “The Phantom of the Operators” or whatever. It is fraud. Your long distance carrier, possibly, uses False Answer Supervision (FAS) and charges for the calls you could not make. Carriers can earn minimum 21 per cent extra profit through such fraudulent act. And organized criminals are there to help.
The last time LIRNEasia was associated with the ITU’s annual Global Symposium on Regulation was the year they picked the lighthouse logo, 2001. It is good to see our work being used, interestingly by an author from the private sector. In the second half of 2008, LIRNEasia, a non profit research organization, conducted a survey in eight emerging Asian economies: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The study scored stakeholder perceptions regarding investing and operating in the markets in question based on the regulatory framework for mobile, fixed and broadband networks. The regulatory framework was defined by seven major dimensions namely: market entry, access to scarce resources, interconnection, tariff regulation, anti-competitive practices, universal service obligations and quality of service.
“The government is spending a lot on e-governance by putting up kiosks in villages. These kiosks cost a lot and need electricity, which is not always available in rural areas. An internet kiosk costs the government about Rs 1.5 lakh, while this would cost Rs 22,000.” Financial Chronicle (New Delhi edition) quoted Subhash Bhatnagar, adjunct professor, IIM-A who did a Mobile 2.
Google has acquired a leading firm in mobile advertising, causing observers to think that mobile advertising will take off in a big way. The growing popularity of the iPhone and other powerful mobile devices ensures that mobile ads will become more ubiquitous, but predictions for the growth of the business vary widely. “We see mobile as a huge growth opportunity for us,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president for product management at Google, said in an interview. “We see an opportunity working with AdMob to really accelerate our efforts in an important industry for Google.” Google is already ahead of its rivals, Microsoft and Yahoo, in one segment of the mobile advertising business: ads linked to search queries.
“I can’t imagine how and based on what measure TRAI set 256kbps internet connection as broadband. It’s very difficult for users to work with this speed. Please don’t compare Bangladesh and Sri Lanka while setting standard for India.” This was how a reader responded when Indian Express online carried a story on the dissemination of the findings of LIRNEasia’s broadband research at the GRT Grand Hotel convention centre in Chennai on November 3. Another story in ‘The Hindu’ quoted Timothy Gonsalves PhD, Head of Computer Science and Engineering Department, IIT-Madras, our research partner from IIT Madras saying the implication [of the latency introduced by complex routing of network traffic] for consumers is that though a user may get close to the speeds advertised by the operator while accessing servers within India, the download speeds from an international server for even a supposedly fast broadband connection would only be in the 200 kbps range.
The days of making good money through bad services will be, theoretically, over in Bangladesh. The regulator has decided to publish monthly ratings for mobile network operators from January 2010. Among the various issues; the regulator will state each of the six mobile operator’s coverage, dropped calls and customer care. To measure these parameters, the BTRC is procuring “the equipment” from SwissQual, reported Cellular-News quoting the Helvetic vendor’s press release. It says that following consultation with operators, BRTC will publish a draft regulation regarding the rating procedure in mid November.
Martin Cooper, a researcher in Motorola, invented the handheld cellular mobile phone. He also made the first call using a handheld cell phone prototype on April 3, 1973, in front of reporters and passers-by on a New York City street. It landed Motorola’s mobile unit on the July 1973 cover of Popular Science magazine, which called it a ”new type of computerized, walkie-talkie-size portable.” Well, cordless phones didn’t even exist on those days although non-cellular car phones had been used since the late 1950’s. Nevertheless, we know pretty well rest of the story, as mobile is now the DNA of our daily life.
Nuwan Waidyanatha’s RTBP project at LIRNEasia examines how mobiles can be used to communicate epidemiological information from the field for analysis through data mining. Here, the mobile can be used to directly gather data from patients. MICROSCOPES are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive. Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.
Does Facebook make you less social? Not necessarily. Not if you’re American, according to a NYT report. Hundreds of daily updates come from friends on Facebook and Twitter, but do people actually feel closer to each other? It turns out the size of the average American’s social circle is smaller today than 20 years ago, as measured by the number of self-reported confidants in a person’s life.
Findings from LIRNEasia’s latest round of broadband quality of service experience (QoSE) testing has been published in Chennai’s Financial Chronicle and The Indian Express, two leading print newspapers in India. Read the two of the articles here and here. There is disparity in the advertised broadband speed and the actual speed, according to the findings of a research project jointly carried out by Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies Asia (LIRNEasia), TeNeT Group of the IIT Madras. Excerpt below: “There is disparity in the advertised broadband speed and the actual speed, according to the findings of a research project jointly carried out by Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies Asia (LIRNEasia), TeNeT Group of the IIT Madras.There is disparity in the advertised broadband speed and the actual speed, according to the findings of a research project jointly carried out by Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies Asia (LIRNEasia), TeNeT Group of the IIT Madras.
Think twice before you make fun out of them. Mr. Karzai may have flunked in the exam of a “credible” election. But he has passed with distinction while shaping the future of his country’s connectivity. Afghanistan is leasing out 500 MHz of duplex Ku-band satellite frequency for 15 years.