Early warning regarding tsunamis depends on skilled interpretation of earthquake data from seismic monitors like the one at Pallekale and data from ocean based buoys that detect fast moving bodies of water. The ocean between Sri Lanka and Thailand now has one. It is up to us to make sure that the warning that get communicated from international and regional warning centers will be communciated to the affected communities promptly and that those communities will be prepared to respond properly. NOAA Provides First Tsunami Detection Buoy for the Indian Ocean: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance Following a ceremony in Phuket, Thailand, where the 2004 Boxing Day event caused the most extensive tsunami damage in Thailand, the MV SEAFDEC set sail today to deploy the buoy about mid-way between Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Here is what Telegeography has to say on the subject: Computer-based Voice over IP (VoIP) is nothing new, but Skype is the first such service to break into the mainstream, attracting millions of users worldwide. Skype had 1 million simultaneous users within six months of the release of its first version for Windows in July 2004. By the end of the third quarter of 2006, Skype had 136 million registered users, and the number of users online now regularly exceeds 8 million. These users generated about 6.6 billion minutes of traffic in the third quarter of 2006, and are on track to make over 27 billion minutes of PC-to-PC calls this year.
In 2004, 4.1 percent of Sri Lankan households had computers. As the data comes in from our six-country study, we will post the numbers for those countries as well. Looks like this will change the nature of the debate. The report states that Intel and Microsoft are not happy with Negoponte’s baby.
Very good. Now will the Indian government walk the walk? Will the other countries take the lead? Govt. committed to develop a robust disaster management system: PM Addressing the First India Disaster Management Congress here, Dr.
LIRNEasia, Sarvodaya and the partners of the HazInfo project have been saying this and more importantly implementing this. Hope the message will be heard. Reuters AlertNet – News – Prevention spending must be doubled Governments, aid agencies and humanitarian actors must spend twice as much on disaster preparedness activities that could save millions of lives, the British Red Cross has urged.Almost two years on from the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, risk reduction remains low on the international agenda despite encouraging progress in tsunami-affected regions themselves. “The tsunami highlights the importance of proactively preparing for disasters and this lesson must be learnt and risk reduction must become a high priority in all disaster-prone areas,” said David Peppiatt, British Red Cross head of policy.
A story worth checking out. Have the Bangladesh mobile operators solved the problems of providing reliable and cost-effective Internet connections over GSM networks? Internet Extends Reach Of Bangladeshi Villagers – washingtonpost.com Villages in one of the world’s poorest countries, long isolated by distance and deprivation, are getting their first Internet access, all connected over cellphones. And in the process, millions of people who have no land-line telephones, and often lack electricity and running water, in recent months have gained access to services considered basic in richer countries: weather reports, e-mail, even a doctor’s second opinion.
Here is an issue that will feature large in India and even Bhutan, but not Sri Lanka. The reason is that the former countries have a sizable number of cable connections, which will in the future be used to provide broadband access in competition to phone companies. Because of the profligacy of frequency-based broadcast licensing in Sri Lanka, there is no cable industry to speak of. What there is uses frequencies. That means it cannot easily be turned into a conduit for broadband.
18 November, 2006 In an auction, which lasted four hours with the bid climbing 168 times, the Tashi Group clinched the deal to operate the first private mobile service in the country with a Nu. 777 million (USD 17.32 million) offer. The Tashi Group outbid three other joint venture companies in the auction that was held in Thimphu on October 16 to operate the license for a period of 15 years. The three other local companies vying for the license were the Singye Group, which had tied up with Reliance mobile in India, Druktel Private Limited, a consortium of Bhutanese companies, which had joined Airtel also in India and Bhutan Steel, which had tied up Thai company, Shin Satellite Public Corporation Limited.
What I predicted would happen in 2005, has happened. Pakistan is now ahead of all South Asian countries in basic telecom access other than Maldives.LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO
Beyond the horizon, but worth keeping en eye on . . . BBC NEWS | Technology | Physics promises wireless power US researchers have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players wirelessly. The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres, the researchers said.
To get thinking started on a topic that we will be studying in more detail in 2007. Are there historical figures like this, for example in India, that we can refer to in our work? Looking Back on Louis Brandeis on His 150th Birthday – New York Times
Cost is USD 50 a month; is this higher or lower than what is paid by the Nanasalas in Sri Lanka? With a Dish, Broadband Goes Rural – New York Times Craig Clark, who works from home in Rindge, made do with a sluggish dial-up line until he signed up for broadband service from the satellite provider WildBlue Communications last autumn. With a 26-inch dish outside his home and a modem inside, Mr. Clark now connects to the Internet at speeds similar to those offered by the phone company. “It’s not a perfect technology, but it is one of the best options for those of us in rural areas,” he said.
Why BPOs insist on route and supplier redundancy. :: bdnews24.com :: Dhaka, Nov 13 (bdnews24.com) – A suspected act of sabotage derailed telecommunications transmission optical fibre cable links between Dhaka and Chittagong Monday night.Submarine cable subscribers in Dhaka got disconnected at 7:30pm.
LIRNEasia HazInfo project partner Nalaka Gunawardene has written an excellent piece on ICTs and disasters, referring in some detail to the ongoing HazInfo project. Bridging the long ‘last mile’ in Sri Lanka / 2006/4 / Media Development / Publications / Home – World Association for Christian Communication While the countries of South and Southeast Asia were largely unprepared to act on the tsunami, it was not really a complete surprise. As the killer waves originating from the ocean near Indonesia’s Sumatra Island radiated across the Indian Ocean at the speed of a jetliner, the alert about the impending tsunami moved through the Internet at the speed of light. Scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) in Hawaii, who had detected the extraordinary seismic activity, issued a local tsunami warning one hour and five minutes after the undersea quake. That was a bit too late for Indonesia – which, being closest to the quake’s epicentre, was already hit – but it could have made a difference in countries further away, such as India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
CPRsouth Chair and LIRNEasia international advisory board member, Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala was on a blue-ribbon panel discussing ICTs and rural access last night on NDTV. CIOL : .NET & Windows : Make bandwidth available to all, says Kalam NDTV’s Prannoy Roy moderated a discussion in which Ballmer, N R Narayana Murthy, Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Manvinder Singh of Ranbaxy participated. He started off by asking Ballmer about the contrasting personalities of the top two at Microsoft: small, shy and geeky versus flambuoyant and six feet six. Opposites make for the best partnerships was the reply.
Looks like we have a virtuous cycle of investment going on. Not only the mobiles, but the fixed operators too are engaging in significant investment. Possibly the unusual predilection of the Sri Lankan consumer for fixed phones, over mobile, keeps Suntel going. For those not from Sri Lanka, 1 USD = 106 LKR, just lopping off two zeros will you a good sense of what is being discussed. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Telecom operator Suntel, a unit of Sweden’s Overseas Telecom AB, plans to spend 3.