Straight talk from the head of Thailand’s National Disaster Warning Center. This is even more reason for Sri Lanka to improve its national and last-mile warning systems. Phuket Gazette – online English newspaper for Phuket, Thailand, with daily news, classified ads, yellow pages, business listings, upcoming events, event calendar, phuket events Because of its location, the lone tsunami direct detection buoy deployed last month in the middle of the Indian Ocean would offer little advance warning to Phuket in the event of another tsunami generated off the Indonesian Coast, Dr Smith Dharmasaroja, head of the National Disaster Warning Center (NDWC) in Nonthaburi, has told the Gazette.Dr Smith said that the location of the first buoy was chosen so that it would provide equal benefit to all Indian Ocean Rim countries, not just Thailand. “I made the suggestion that we put the first buoy there so that we wouldn’t appear selfish by putting our own data needs before that of other countries in the region,” he said.
Seems like a good business idea for entrepreneurs in countries like Bngladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, with large migrant populations. Even at double the US set up costs, it won’t take long to start earning returns. Of course, good broadband is a necessary condition. Abroad at Home – New York Times Because of stricter border enforcement since 9/11, increased broadband access and reduced cost of video equipment, more businesses are offering videoconferencing services to reunite immigrants with their families back home. Typically found in or near places immigrants frequent like money-transfer operations or consular offices, these kinds of services are often reserved for weeks in advance.
The significance of capitalizing the Internet (which LIRNEasia religiously does) and latest effort to decapitalize it and bring it under the thrall of international bureaucracy: What’s in an ‘i’? Internet governance – Technology & Media – International Herald Tribune When David Gross heard last month that the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, wanted to lower-case the word Internet as a matter of official policy, he did not know whether to be alarmed or amused. “We immediately thought, ‘Gee, what’s up with that?'” Gross, the coordinator for international communications and information policy at the U.S.
A citizen journalist brings good news. But there is a question mark is regarding the comment on bills. Most of the phones in Jaffna are mobile and most of the mobiles are prepaid. So the line re bills must refer to Sri Lanka Telecom. Clarifications most welcome.
CDMA has been a major force in helping drive down per-line costs of telephony. Has this been possible even with excessive royalties extracted by Qualcomm? Qualcomm Under Scrutiny by Korean Antitrust Agency – New York Times The South Korean antitrust agency has formed a task force to investigate the licensing and business practices of the wireless technology company Qualcomm, the latest in a string of legal battles for the company, officials said on Tuesday. In Japan, Europe and the United States, Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego, faces accusations by rivals that it has abused its market dominance in wireless technology to demand excessive royalties and block fair competition. Qualcomm is known for developing code-division multiple access, or CDMA, wireless technology, which is a rival standard to the global system for mobile communications, or GSM, technology.
More on the Negroponte laptop. It has built-in wireless and a completely different interface. BBC NEWS | Technology | $100 laptop project launches 2007 The so-called XO machine is being pioneered by Nicholas Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab in 2004. Test machines are expected to reach children in February as the project builds towards a more formal launch. Wireless networking Mr Negroponte told the Associated Press news agency that three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks.
Thailand conducted tsunami preparedness drills in 2005. Now Indonesia has too. Organizations such as Sarvodaya/LIRNEasia in Sri Lanka have conducted drills, but isn’t it time the government got involved directly? Northwest Herald – Asian nations remember those killed in 2004 natural disaster Indonesia said its tsunami drill on Bali was aimed at raising the public’s awareness of safety measures and testing technology deployed over the last two years.Warnings were sent from the capital, Jakarta, to radios along the beach.
The views of the joint coordinator of the Post-graduate Degree Program on Disaster Management at the University of Peradeniya. Two years on: How safe are we from a future tsunami? In connection with early warning, it must be added that the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been coordinating the efforts of the international community led by the Government of the United States of America to develop a tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean, similar to that currently used in the Pacific, by the end of 2007. The proposed Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning Network, though by no means a foolproof system, will help improve Sri Lanka’s tsunami early warning capability and reliability. Yet, the more difficult and challenging task will be the dissemination of such tsunami warnings fast and effectively to the vulnerable communities so as to enable their evacuation to safe locations before the arrival of the tsunami.
According to the Independent, Sri Lanka is the best prepared to communicate tsunami warnings to at-risk populations on the coast. We wish to believe this. But unlike the highly-trained journalist from the Independent, we have taken the trouble to ask a few questions: 1. Does Sri Lanka have a single national multi-hazard warning center? NO.
Indian Ocean tsunami warning system on slow track: Tsunami Warning Remains Elusive – Council on Foreign Relations The wave which swept so many away two years ago (BBC) has faded from memory in many parts of the world, even though as many as two million people remain in temporary shelters in parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. But surely the less onerous task of setting up a skeletal tsunami warning network must be well along, right?Not quite. While enormous sums of aid flowed in for relief and reconstruction efforts, the less glamorous work of positioning seismic warning buoys around the rim of the Indian Ocean lags financially and organizationally. As this new Backgrounder explains, several piecemeal systems are up and running, but the goal of creating an Indian Ocean early-warning system to rival the ones run by the United States and Japan in the Pacific remains a long way from being reached (TIME).
Several weeks ago we speculated on why the Maldives, with its tiny population, needed two undersea cables. The answer is that the first cable is a collaboration between the new entrant Wataniya and India’s disruptive competitor, Reliance (through its FLAG unit). This created enormous pressure on the complacent incumbent Dhiraagu, the result being the cable to Colombo. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO A new fibre optic undersea cable that connects Maldives to Sri Lanka will bring down international call charges from the Indian Ocean coral atoll, officials said Tuesday.Until the cable was commissioned this month, bilateral traffic of 600,000 minutes per month was routed via more expensive satellite links.
Faculty of Humanities, The University of Manchester The BWPI de Silva PhD Scholarship for Sri Lanka Award of this scholarship has been made possible by the generosity of Dr Harin de Silva (BSc Mech Eng 1982). Value of award: Total award = US$90,000 (this will be augmented through BWPI support for fees and maintenance) Criteria: This scholarship is open to Sri Lankan nationals to research poverty and poverty reduction in Sri Lanka. The award seeks to support a Sri Lankan citizen in their intellectual development and it is hoped that the successful candidate will subsequently work on poverty analysis from a Sri Lankan base and push forward the understanding of how to reduce poverty in the country.
Until 2005, Sri Lanka had one undersea cable (if one did not count the aged SEA-ME-WE 2) and one operator controlling access to it. Then came SEA-ME-WE 4 and the BSNL cables. More cables, but still one operator, SLTL. Now finally, we have operator redundancy. This should be sweet music to the BPO industry.
Just returned from the sensory overload of the ITU Telecom World exhibition and forum in Hong Kong. One of the buzzwords/phrases floating around this year is multiple play. Triple play is passe though a few are hanging on with quadruple play. Given my recent column in LBO, my mind was on payments. Where in the multiple play talk was payments?
One hour warning possible for tsunamis originating from the Sunda Trench. What we do with that one hour is the key question. People’s Daily Online — Nations progess on tsunami detection Thailand launched the first of 22 US-made tsunami-detection buoys to be positioned around the Indian Ocean as part of a regional warning system against giant waves caused by earthquakes under the sea. The satellite-linked deep-sea buoy, unveiled at a ceremony on the tsunami-hit island of Phuket, will float 1,000 kilometres offshore, roughly midway between Thailand and Sri Lanka. “This will give us the capability to provide 1 hour warning to most of the countries in the northern part of the basin,” Curtis Barret of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
LIRNEasia regulatory website assessment has been mentioned prominently in an official Pakistan government document, The Economic Survey 2005-06 from the Ministry of Finance “Best Regulator’s Website Of Asia Pacific Region LIRNEasia is a regional ICT policy and regulation capacity building organization funded by IDRC and infoDev of World Bank. The organization evaluated 27 websites from the Asia Pacific region covering 62 economies. The website of PTA was declared as the best website among all the national websites of regulators of Asia Pacific and regional economies. The website was declared best on the basis of availability of legislative & consumer information, future plans, continuous updating, user friendliness, links to external sites and availability of information on mission statement, organizational chart, contact and online forms.”