The FCC is asking broadband and smartphone users in USA to use their broadband testing tools to help the feds and consumers know what speeds are actually available, not just promised by the nations’ telecoms, reports wired.com. Starting yesterday (March 11), netizens can go to the FCC’s Broadband.gov site, enter their address and test their broadband speed using one of two testing tools.

Broadband connection testing isn’t new, and is freely available online, but this might mark the first time that individual tests help to lead to informed policy making, says the writer Ryan Singel.

That is not correct Mr. Singel, as nothing is new here. LIRNEasia has been doing it for at least one and half years.

Broadband users in Chennai, Colombo, Dhaka and New Delhi could have used our own broadband test application AT-Tester, from www.broadbandasia.info the same way now the US broadband users will do. They could even enter that information to our central database, which can be then analysed.

That’s not all. Just read the following para from the same report. Don’t you find anything familiar?

Crowdsourcing this data is a brilliant move, given that telecoms have long fought against telling federal regulators what areas they cover and at what speed, arguing that information will be used by competitors to poach their customers. The data can also be used as a way to prevent telecoms from over-promising and under-delivering on upload and download speeds. If you listen closely you might actually hear the telecom companies hitting the backspace key to revise the speed numbers on their promotional fliers.

Isn’t this exactly what we have been doing?

FCC,  welcome to the club!

Read the full story in wired.com here.

Here are few more news reports on FCC’s move.

FCC releases Internet speed test tool – Reuters

FCC Unveils Speed Test - Bloomberg Business Week

FCC Launches Broadband Test Site for Consumers – PC World

Starting in around 2013, points Rohan Samarajiva, Bangladesh will enter the best period for realising the demographic dividend, with the lowest levels of combined child and adult dependency in its history. It will be the closest to the ‘pot’ shape. This golden period will last until around 2033 when the more burdensome adult dependency (ratio of adults over 65 years of age to the working population aged 15-65 years) reaches significant proportions.

What does this mean to Bangladesh? How can that be exploited?

It is here that information and communication technologies can make a difference. In the past, only agricultural and manufacturing goods could be exported. Now, thanks to telecom, even services can be exported. Bangladesh is currently said to have 30,000 persons working in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.

In 2005-06, it was estimated that India created 1.3 million direct jobs in the IT and IT enabled services sector, with another 3 million jobs created indirectly, to serve the industry. The proportionate numbers for Bangladesh, which has one-seventh the Indian population will be 182,000 direct jobs and 421,000 indirect jobs.

Read the full article in The Daily Star.

Mobile 2.0 describes the use of mobiles for “more‐than‐voice”. Mobiles are increasingly becoming payment devices which can also send/process/receive voice, text and images; it is envisaged that in the next few years, they will also be fully capable of information‐retrieval and publishing functions, normally associated with the Internet.

Mobile 2.0@BOP has been researched from two aspects: vertical and horizontal issues. Horizontal issues are the basic competitive and regulatory conditions that affect the emergence of Mobile 2.0@BOP. The vertical components explore how particular aspects such as micro‐payments and remittances, agriculture applications, voting applications, e‐government services, disaster warning, etc are taking shape and form.

The research findings will be disseminated by the respective researchers as follows.

New Delhi, India on March 4 and 5, 2010

Payal Malik – Issues in licensing and Spectrum allocation
Tahani Iqbal – Mobile Number Portability

Dhaka, Bangladesh on March 28-29, 2010

Erwin Alampay, PhD – Mobile payments
Tahani Iqbal – Mobile Number Portability

Nirmali Sivapragasam – Mobiles, payment and logistics, based on a case of study of CellBazaar, Bangladesh

Bangkok, Thailand on March 30, 2010

Erwin Alampay, PhD – Mobile payments
Puree Sirasoontorn, PhD – Mobile value-added services, based on Buzzcity case study

Media coverage will be added here as they happen.

The answer may interest the new boss, Anusha Palpita, who took over the reins few days back. “There is no problem with the administrative aspects, but I will have to get a grip on the technical side of TRCSL’s functions and duties”, he said to The Island- Sunday Edition yesterday. “As financial management is my forte, I need to study the technical factors involved”.

The new Director General is going to run the TRC on a part-time basis, writes Samarajiva, in addition to running the government information department. He too does not appear to have any special expertise in telecommunication or in regulation. With the part-time, ex officio Chair being the most over-burdened official in the country, the Secretary to the President, one wonders who is actually going to run the TRC. Or perhaps the thinking is that it is beyond redemption. Is it that the Special Committee to Develop Broadband is seen as an adequate substitute.

Read Rohan Samarajiva’s column in LBO.

We reproduce the news story in today’s Daily News below. (Sorry for the scan quality. Online text is not available.)

ICTA’s version: Government initiative to develop high speed broadband Internet.

LIRNEasia with groundviews and W3Lanka blew the whistle first now it is the turn of the mass media.
We reproduce here news item and the editorial carried by the Financial Times. The delay and scanned versions are explained by the unavailability of an online edition of the newspaper.

Editorial:

News Story:

(Please click on images for bigger views)

At least some have first assumed it a practical joke, but Daily Mirror online confirmed President did send a New Year wish to all mobile users today. Using romanised Sinhala President wrote “Kiwu paridi obata NIDAHAS, NIVAHAL RATAK laba dunnemi. Idiri anagathaya sarwapparakarayenma Wasanawantha Wewa! SUBA NAWA WASARAK WEWA! Mahinda Rajapaksa” (As promised I delivered you an independent and free country. May your future be a success. Happy New Year!)

At the cost of LKR 1 per SMS message, this might have cost approximately USD 150,000 – equivalent to publishing roughly 75 full-page colour advertisements in national newspapers.

Sender’s number was hidden so the millions of mobile users, now constitute at least half of the population, could not return the greetings.

Had Cell Broadcasting (CB) been available in Sri Lanka, President would not have to use SMS – which is relatively too cumbersome for both the sender and receiver. CB would have been more economical too. Given that it uses a different band and sends messages together, it wouldn’t have congested the networks and the cost would have been certainly less than USD 150,000. As CB, unlike SMS differentiates users President could have even used a romanised Tamil message in Northern Province.

LIRNEasia have been a promoter of CB – mainly for, but not limited to early warning. It can be used effectively for other commercial and non commercial messages. Rohan Samarajiva highlighted some of its advantages over SMS in his short presentation in ‘Beyond the typical Early Warning Systems’ session at LIRNEasia at 5 conference. Download the presentation slides for more details.

Abhayagiriya before restoration, 19th century. Photographer unknown

Observed few things fresh on my day at the Abhayagiri monastery complex. One was a rock inscription in ancient devanagari. It was not about a donation made by a king or a minister, as usual, or even a notification of a new regulation. The Sanskrit stanza was meant for Buddhist monks. Not a rule; but more a guide.

Why in Sanskrit? The local language could have been more appropriate if not for the sizable foreign student population at this ancient university. An academy as famous as Takshila, Vikramashila and Nalanda in the ancient Buddhist world, the Abhyagiriya University was said to have hosted 5,000 student monks in its hey days according to Fa Xian, a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled to Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka to acquire Buddhist scriptures in 5th CAD. The complex would have been larger than any of the present Sri Lankan university premises and of the same size of the ancient Anuradhapura city centre.

The cost of construction and maintenance couldn’t have come only from the government. No matter how pious the kings and the subjects were, they couldn’t have made such colossal allocations from the treasury for no return. The only modes of survival were by levying tuition fees or producing outcomes of not religious, but true economic value. Probably the institution did both. Unlike Theravada, Mahayana doctrine did not prevent monks from studying non-religious ‘lay’ subjects. Couldn’t it be here they designed the sophisticated irrigation system in ancient Lanka? Couldn’t this be the place where they did Ayurvedic medical research?

Couldn’t this have been the independent economic centre for knowledge in the latter Anuradhapura period?

Not a surprise if we have no records, because all chronicles were done by the Theravada monks at Mahavihara, the arch rivals of Abhayagiri.

December 25 was just another working day at OnTime Technologies at Mahavilachchiya and things were going on at full throttle when I stepped-in to this rural BPO, arguably the first such initiative in Sri Lanka.

Here is the good and bad news.

Good news: The wheels are still in motion. Unlike most of the ICT4D projects (especially telecenters) that survive on donors’ oxygen, now it is self sustainable and taken seriously by the employees and villagers, who initially thought it would soon end. Employee turnover is low and what they do is seen as a career, rather than a pause till a better opportunity. Overall, the business prospects look good.

Bad News: The much hyped expansion to 50 seats has never happened. It still has 11.

Why it never took off? Certainly not because there is no work. The demand is still not met. Not the infrastructure issues too. Bandwidth is guaranteed. Capacity? Perhaps. Talent is in short supply in a village that had advanced level classes only in the arts stream, but it cannot be the only reason. It might be a management issue. Running a 50 seat BPO is certainly riskier. That needs strong management skills which someone cannot provide on voluntary basis.

Interestingly, the same issues never blocked Sri Lanka’s entry to apparel industry in the early 1990s. Nearly two decades later, garment factories provide employment for thousands of rural youth. Why only rural BPOs don’t advance? Aren’t we still mature enough or too shy to ride on the waves of digital economy?

At LIRNEasia, we all do our own CSR. Rohan and Harsha are perhaps among the most invited speakers to business conferences. Helani taught Information Systems to Masters students. Call this mine.

I do not blog. That is, if you do not count occasional posts at this site and comments on few others. I hate being called a blogger (Contrast to ‘Kathandara-kaaraya’ or story-wallah, whose Embarkation card identifies him a ‘Blogger’. Come on, what is wrong with ‘Engineer’?) Neither I have free time like Akkandi of UNDP Afghanistan, who enjoys the break after being airlifted few weeks back, or Beyond Frame – the bizarre character, going by the frequency of his posts, who should certainly be jobless.  Apart from that, typing Sinhala is a pain.

Still I blend with Sinhala bloggers – virtually, most of the time. These are nice people, though a bit weird. I start my day reading blogs, not newspapers.  Once in a while I find myself in the middle of a heated discussion. Sinhala bloggers have added significantly to our project on Broadband QoSE, so that some formally work with us. Malinthe, for example, does QoSE testing and Kalinga beta tests mobile versions of AT-Tester.

Sinhala bloggers do worthy job. If not for them, the online Sinhala content in the net would have been pathetic. These volunteers bridge that gap bringing content of diversified subjects varying from Buddhism to Politics and Cosmology to Literature, catering to a massive readership more conversant with vernacular. As of the last count the Sinhala blog reader syndicates 600 blogs, more than what Kottu.org does.

First Sinhala bloggers’ meeting at Excel World yesterday, was mostly an informal gathering. Finally we give faces to those avatras in cyber space. Sudaraka discovers every Sinhala blogger taller, while I find the frivolous ‘Makara’ (Dragon) is a PhD student in NUS. Pity that we miss the anonymous political bloggers – Beyond Frame, Taboo Subjects, Ramachandra, W3Lanka, Migara and the Boondi crowd. Perhaps they fear the white vans. I do not blame them – given the nasty stuff they pen.

I am happy that I make a positive outcome. Stating soon Sunday Lakbima will publish extracts of Sinhala blogs, just like Sunday Leader does English ones. Sundara Nihathamani De Mel, Editor, Lakbima Sunday Edition readily agrees to my proposal. It is more work as we are yet to settle the issues with Sinhala fonts (Donald, art thou listening?) but the good news is it will happen soon.  

Finally, thanks Kalinga for the opportunity. Sinhala bloggers, keep up your good work.

(Photos: Ravimal Bandara and Rachintha Jayawardhana)

I am skeptic how they would take my presentation – all Asian experiences to an almost hundred percent European audience except for two gentlemen from Botswana. Developed vs. Developing world. Connected vs. Unconnected. Are the issues similar? Or is it a different scenario?

I am glad we find some common ground. Bridging last mile isn’t an issue as serious as in Asia, but ‘Cell Broadcasting’ generates an interest. A DRR professional from audience talks about their efforts to introduce the same in France, with some success. One gentleman from Botswana asks why not in Africa. He is also interested in SMS based solutions. I introduce the Sahana SMS module to him.

Other than that, the discussion focuses more on the issues technology creates, rather than ones it solves. They talk about ‘over dependence’ on technology and the problems old find using technology. “Technology is fine, but KISS” (Keep It Simple and Stupid) says one speaker.

One pleasant surprise was to find the Director General, Civil Protection, Netherlands highlighting the benefits of Cell Broadcasting in the closing session. I am not sure whether he attended Seminar F.

Download my presentation slides from here.

As neither we nor most of our readers do not have access to the thread it was posted, we like to continue the discussion here.

__________________________________________________________________

Hi people,

I come from one of the ten largest economies in the world, with nearly 200 million people, 8.5 million km2, and 5.564 municipalities, where 94% of the people do *not* have access to any form of broadband – the “B” in the famous BRIC acronym.

I am just coming out of the IGF workshop “Expanding broadband access for a global Internet economy: development dimensions”. I left the workshop a bit shocked with the concepts expressed, not by the AT&T representative (who not surprisingly said AT&T subdsidiaries countries other than the USA should be considered local companies because they employ local people), who as usual is just doing his job in defending the so-called “market”, but by other speeches which seemed to completely ignore that, in most of our contries, there is a de facto monopoly or cartel situation regarding the telco infrastructure, and that public policy ought to centrally take this into account if the aim is to universalize broadband access with quality to all families.

One of the speakers (from LIRNEasia) said that “lower prices require lower costs” and therefore one should just “phase out universal access levies and rationalize taxes”. I retorted that pricing per Mb/s of ADSL broadband in São Paulo might be 65 times higher than the same price charged by the same company in London — and therefore no amount of levies or taxes would justify such scandalous pricing difference, not to speak of the much lower QoS.

I suggested that, instead of eliminating the universal service funds (whose levies are a very small portion of price composition of broadband), we should insist on reforming policy regarding the use of these funds. The reply I heard was that it makes no sense to keep funds that are not used or are squandered (!!). Impact of the fund’s levy in Brazil is just 1% of the price of the fixed line telephone connection — its impact in the price of broadband (a separate bill even if the service is not unbundled) is zero.

There was also a recommendation that we should be “gentle on QoS” to facilitate things regarding universalization of access — fascinating. Again, examples abound in which telcos guarantee only 10% of the nominal contracted rate, and in practice this might be even less. Should we just agree with absurds like this in the name of “it is better to have something than nothing”???

And then there is the crucial question of unbundling, central to the policy debate in the developed countries as it directly impacts universalization through an effective reduction of prices for the final user. It is a major challenge for broadband public policy in developing countries, where regulators are usually in the hands of the telco cartels. The word was not mentioned (not a single time) by anyone in the panel, as if irrelevant to the development dimensions of broadband.

The speaker also mentioned that the “need” to reduce costs for the big telcos would require reduction of international bandwidth costs. One of the two big carriers in Brazil, a Brazilian conglomerate, owns redundant fiber running from Brazil to Miami in rings passing through countries in the Caribbean and Central America. They own their own international link, in summary. So do the other carrier in the de facto duopoly — a major operator from Europe. This does not make any difference in pricing for the final user, although it does contribute to their profits in Brazil being far higher than in Europe for example.

Finally, the fascination with mobile. Of course the AT&T speaker started his talk by waving a fancy iPhone to the audience — mostly natural for a commercial wireless giant. But the infoDev representative and others mentioned mobile as a “solution” for the poor, and not even bothered to separate the discussion in the two main topics here: first, the mobile phone as a connectivity device to enable the user to fully use the Internet through a friendly human-machine interface, be it a common PC or special equipment for people with disabilities; second, the phone itself as *the* alternative to the full user experience that a PC or similar might provide. It seems the agency bureaucrats are satisfied with having two castes of users: a small minority of the ones who can fully use the Internet as it evolves requiring more and more multimedia capabilities on both sides (server and client), and the ones relegated to a small device on which it is barely possible to type small messages.

In the first regional LA&C preparatory meeting for the IGF, in 2008, a representative of a major telco said we should not worry about bringing the next billion to the Internet — they have cell phones, so they are connected already, problem solved. I wonder if this executive would take the place of a carpenter looking for a job, who has to compose and send by email his CV together with images of letters of recommendation to his would-be employer, and had nothing but a cell phone (smart or not) to do it. Not to speak of comparing the executive’s thin-fingered hands of a pianist with the big callous hands of the carpenter.

fraternal regards

–c.a.

How it applies to Internet and broadband is what Rohan Samarajiva, Chair and CEO, LIRNEasia explained in his keynote speech at the workshop ‘Expanding access to the Internet and broadband for development’ on November 16, 2009, at the Internet Governance forum 2009.  His presentation entitled, ‘How the developing world may participate in the global Internet Economy:  Innovation driven by competition’, can be downloaded here.

The session was chaired by Dimitri Ypsilanti, Head of Information, Communication and Consumer Policy Division, OECD. The discussants were Tim Kelly, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, infoDev – World Bank, Olfat A. Monsef, Vice President of National Telecommunication Regulator, Telecom Services, Egypt, Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director, Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Virat Bhatia, President – External Affairs, AT&T, South Asia will be the discussants.

The workshop is jointly organized by OECD and infoDev.

Natasha Udu-gama, former HazInfo Dissemination Manager and Researcher, presented “Implementing Inclusive ICTs: Mobile Cell Broadcasting for Public Warning and Commercial Use” based on the LIRNEasia study in the Maldives” completed in May 2009. Her presentation was made during the Early Warning and Disaster Communications session on Friday, 6 November. The session was chaired by Mr. Rohit Magotra, COO, Ekgaon Technologies and Mr. RC Bhatia, Former ADG, India Meteorological Department (IMD).

Doenload the presentation and the paper.

Financial Chronicle (New Delhi edition) quoted Subhash Bhatnagar, adjunct professor, IIM-A who did a Mobile 2.0 study for LIRNEasia on m-government – use of mobile handsets for delivering government services.

Read the full story here.