March 2011 — Page 2 of 4 — LIRNEasia


Some people ask me about 3G. Is this the ISDN [I Still Don’t kNow] of our time? But I tell them that new, new stuff gives zing to an operator. That Mobitel in Sri Lanka got a lot of energy from 3G, even on the 2G side. Now comes more concrete support: If not for the i Phone, T Mobile would not have been sold, say some.
My response to incessant complaints in the region about profits disappearing and investment drying up because of excessive licensing has been to say that liberal and transparent market entry policies must be accompanied by clearly stated exit policies that are consistently enforced. I have also pointed out that in many South Asian markets the levels of competition, as measured by the HHI, are relatively higher than in the US and that what applies in S Asian markets does not necessarily apply in N American markets and vice versa. In this light, it is worth tracking what happens to the AT&T acquisition of T Mobile. AT&T customers, though, could benefit in one notable area: service. Both AT&T and T-Mobile operate on the same technology, known as GSM, so the combination should provide better coverage.
At LIRNEasia we consider every disaster, however tragic, an opportunity to learn. Among the disasters we have analyzed are the 2010 evacuation orders in Sri Lanka, the reaction to the Bengkulu earthquake and ensuing tsunami alert in 2007, and even the Cyclone that devastated Burma/Myanamar. Here is our contribution to the analysis of the Great Tohoku Earthquake and the ensuing local tsunami and teletsunami. It has been published in multiple places. The excerpt below is from Asian Sentinel.
The US wireless industry is at the cross-road. Spectrum is becoming dearer as the smart devices are flooding the market. It’s multiplying the consumers voracious appetite for bandwidth by manifolds. This phenomenon is pushing the small and medium telcos to acquire more airwaves. But there is none left.
Ovum said that broadband access is now as important as other essential utilities such as gas, water, and electricity. In developed countries, fixed broadband is available in the majority of homes and penetration is above 60% of households in many markets. However, mobile broadband usage is growing rapidly in both developed and emerging markets. Will the future of broadband see the convergence of broadband-based fixed and mobile services? Or will mobile broadband substitute for fixed services?
Europe’s model of auctioning spectrum has failed to generate competition. It helps big players to become bigger and marginalizes the small ones simultaneously. The market also remains out of bound for the new entrants. As a result the Consumers appear to be in danger of losing out because the largest operators are using their superior financial and political clout to shut newcomers out of the bidding process and out of the mobile market. Limiting competition is likely to have the effect of increasing the cost of mobile Internet services, slowing the adoption of its use and realization of the European Commission’s ambitious goal of providing broadband service with ultrafast, 30 megabit-per-second download speeds to every European household by 2020.
Authorities across the Arab world are getting allergic to Internet and social media. Government of the United Arab Emirates is, however, reversely comfortable. With almost half of its population owning Facebook accounts, the UAE government has released a set of policy guidelines for social media usage by its government departments. The introduction to the document says that social media tools “have eclipsed the static, publish-and-browse Internet and become a new force that could shape the future of governments through reinventing their structures and public services”. It says that the popularity of social media sites has been increasing rapidly, and that the number of subscribers at Facebook alone has exceeded 500 users.

Raw material for useful apps

Posted on March 15, 2011  /  0 Comments

LIRNEasia in partnership with Lanka Software Foundation and several other partners has spent a lot of time figuring out how we could catalyze the growth of useful apps on mobiles, in connection with a project proposal we just submitted. Unlocking the wealth of data sitting inside government, as described in this op-ed by Richard Thaler is a great way to go. The US is doing it. Can we get our governments also to follow? Not surprisingly, San Francisco, with its proximity to Silicon Valley, has been a pioneer in these efforts.
It seems like overkill when there are only 50 subscribers to Twitter in the whole country, but the Cameroon President seems ultra insecure. He should be, perhaps. He has been in the same job since 1982, a West African Ben Ali. And predictably, the Minister of Communication has equated the President’s security with that of the Nation. What next?
Japan is the transit of most of the transpacific cables connecting Asia with the USA. The earthquake of 3/11 has ruptured numerous undersea cables in the Pacific ocean. It has impacted the internet traffic. Optical Fiber is made of silica, the primary raw material of glass. The quake has again demonstrated the fragility of undersea optical fiber cable networks.
Operators in Singapore will have to allow customers to cap data roaming charges at S$100 (US$78.90) under new consumer protection regulations proposed by IDA. The operators will have to introduce the ability to automatically switch-off roaming once this cap is reached by the first quarter of 2012. It is likely to hit the local operators’ ARPU. IDA will also require operators to provide consumers with a free premium rate services (PRS) barring service by 2012, which will prevent consumers from accidentally subscribing to these services.
The MIT Technology Review is taken seriously by many people, especially those who see technology as part of the policy solution mix. When it more or less endorses cell broadcasting as an effective public warning technology, citing our work to boot, we cannot but be pleased. The technology is also being tested in a very different part of the world in which disaster may strike with very little warning: Israel. EViglio is working on an SMS-CB system that will warn residents of incoming rockets within seconds after they have been fired. Testing of the system will begin in June 2011.
LIRNEasia CEO, Rohan Samarajiva, recently spoke at a workshop organized for the telecom reporters in Bangladesh to strengthen their understanding and know-how on telecom, especially regarding legal, regulatory and business issues. The event has received extensive media exposure. While noting that Bangladesh boasts of the some of the lowest tariffs in the world, largely a result of budget telecom network business model, Rohan argued that the government’s vision for a “digital” Bangladesh can only be met “by extending the budget telecom network model to broadband, building wireless access networks capable of handling data cost-effectively, backed up by non-discriminatory, cost-oriented access to backhaul, including redundant capacity, and offering applications that are of value to consumers, giving them reason to use broadband.” Click here to read the full article in the Daily Star. More coverage will be tracked here in the coming days.
We first explored the idea of embedding sensors in dams so there would be better information about potential failures back in 2005 in the course of our dam safety research project. We were talking about relatively unproven RFID or electronic dust systems back then. Today it’s a proven technology, according to the NYT. Traditionally, most systems that monitor structures’ responses to earthquakes or strong winds have been wired ones. But wireless alerts may one day be an alternative.

Public phones salvaging Japan

Posted on March 13, 2011  /  1 Comments

Japan is shattered by the catastrophic earthquake in every respect and communication has become critical thereafter. Mobile phone is one among the first victims at infrastructure front. The rescuers have immediately switched on two-way radio and possibly satellite communication gears. But the citizens’ mobile phones are predictably sunk into silence. And the emergency hot-lines were getting as hot as the dysfunctional nuclear reactor.
We are saddened by the multiple tragedies of the earthquake, dam break, nuclear station problem, local tsunami and teletsunami. We offer our condolences to the victims and our admiration and encouragement to the brave men and women doing the hard work of providing succor to the survivors. More concretely, we are working on a media note summarizing lessons from our post 2004 tsunami research, which was on risk reduction, not on relief and recovery. Here below is a excerpt from the note. The full text is Pacific tsunami revised.