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“Internet access is NOT a human right”
Vinton Cerf, Google’s chief Internet evangelist, has challenged the U.N. report and questioned the merit of accessing Internet a human right. He said, “It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. For example, at one time if you didn’t [...]
Warning: Ultra low-cost smartphones are coming
Chinese chipmaker Spreadtrum Communications has introduced two low-cost Android smartphone platforms based on a low power, cost efficient architecture that lower total phone cost between $40 and $50. It means: Smartphones will be initially sold at bellow $100 retail prices. And the prices will nosedive, as it has happened with feature phones. It will be [...]
BSNL’s market exit mirrors 2G scam
BSNL has received one of the BWA (WiMax) licenses before the private sector did. Being a state-owned enterprise was its only qualifying criteria for this license. Later it paid the same price the Indian government has forked from auctioning more licenses. BSNL has predictably failed to make money out of the BWA license that landed [...]
Asian cities more ICT savvy than Europeans
Asian cities are ahead of their European counterparts in using ICT for the benefit of citizens, reveals research by Ericsson and Arthur D. Little. Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo have extensively invested in ICT to offer public services including e-health programs, traffic management, and reducing environmental impact. Only three European cities – Stockholm, London and Paris [...]
Phantom of the Opera(tor)
Faking “Caller ID” is cheating by any standard. It’s like a stranger is wearing a mask to impersonate someone innocent and knocking at the door. And you have opened the door. Similarly when it displays “F.B.I.” or “I.R.S.” the Americans answer the call. But the caller is, in fact, a telemarketer. This is illegal. Legitimate companies display their names, as they want [...]
Is Pyongyang’s FDI policy better than Ottawa’s?
It is possibly a credible reason for the cheerleaders of ”Dear Leader” to celebrate. Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris has said that he regrets getting involved in the Canadian telecoms market. “It was a bad idea,” he said referring to the Canadian law that mandates majority ownership and control of the telecoms networks to the native residents. He has [...]
Smuggled mobiles erode profit of US prisons’ phone buisness
The increase of smuggled mobile phones in prisons across America has prompted the Government Accountability Office investigating any links between the high cost of landline phone calls and mobile phone use. It has been found that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) charges high on landline calls as it uses the funds to pay for inmate [...]
Call traffic clogs networks during emergency. What’s next?
Citizens got panicked when an earthquake rocked New York last week. They immediately started calling family and friends from mobile phones. This is how everyone reacts during emergency worldwide. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile phone. Mobile networks of New York, however, failed soon after getting overloaded with so many simultaneous calls. It naturally made [...]
India’s mobile market looks like a candyfloss
Findings of Wireless Intelligence suggests that India’s mobile subscriber base is 30% lesser than what it appears to be. It said India has long been perceived to be trailing China in terms of gigantic mobile market. The fact is: nearly a third of the estimated 850 million Indian mobile customers are inactive. Almost 250 million [...]
The Colonel’s demise and Internet’s revival
The Libyans are about to share the best gift of Eid – freedom. If blood is the currency of liberty, the Libyans have overpaid compared to the Tunisians and Egyptians combined. Renesys’ CTO Jim Cowie, writing in the Huffington Post, has been trying to track what’s been happening to the country’s Internet connection in the [...]
Internet added US$12b to Hong Kong’s GDP
How much the internet contributes to an economy? We find specific answers from the West but the Asians remain mum on this important issue. Because, no Asian country has conducted any study in this regard. Google Hong Kong has, however, broken the silence and engaged Boston Consulting Group to study the impact of internet in [...]
Americans bid farewell to TV sets
Television, also known as the second screen, is declining in terms of ownership in America. Thanks to the digital revolution, as the New York Times reports quoting Nielsen. It suggests two reasons. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas. The [...]
Yes we ‘can’ the liberty
The police can siphon all kinds of data from a suspect’s mobile phone. Yes they can. And it’s in the State of Michigan in the United States of America. Sounds quite similar to the aliens sucking a victim’s memory. The Michigan police are using the Data Extraction Devices that are commonly used to transfer data [...]
FCC informs the composition of Aspirin
It’s another example of universal stupidity of the civil servants. The Federal Communication Commission has decided to “educate” the Americans about broadband. It’s fine with informing the consumers about megabits-per-second. How about telling people about latency, jitter, peak-hour performance, and short-term speed increases? Mitchell Lazarus observes: Broadband service has become a utility, like electricity, gas, [...]
Rebels launch own mobile network in Libya
Libya’s highly centralized telecoms network remains in Gaddafi’s grip at the country’s western front. And the Colonel has promptly shutdown both the mobile networks (State-owned Almadar and Libyana) across the rebel-held eastern front. He also jammed the satellite-phone signals, which equally impacted the rebels, the international media and the humanitarian workers. NATO bombings have evidently [...]
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