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India: Mobile phone ownership and toilets
by Don Rodney Junio In 2001, half of Indian households (50.4%) did not own any of the specified modes of communication- radio/ transistor, television, telephone. 10 years later, this figure is down to just 27.4% of total households. This is just some of the interesting data in the Houselisting and Housing Data 2011 recently released [...]
The Treasury’s Annual Report 2010
The 2010 Annual Report issued by the Ministry of Finance and Planning is a comprehensive review of sector-wise economic development, economic reforms, foreign investment and financial statements (among others). It is an impressive document that highlights and compares core statistics from 2005 and 2010. The particular index I was looking at (computer literacy rate) seemed [...]
Etisalat promises to deliver ‘Book Hub’
Etisalat pioneered the ‘App Store’ in Sri Lanka with AppZone - Sri Lanka’s first SMS based mobile application platform that allows software developers to create, test and monetize applications, while operators use their existing consumer base to promote the use of these value added services and thereby their networks. They now promise to take it a [...]
Will Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) alter the net as we know it?
In their paper ‘The end of the net as we know it? Deep packet inspection and internet Governance‘, authors Ralf Bendrath and Milton Mueller explore the ways in which internet governance is responding to DPI. At present, the structure and dynamics of the internet is such that the intelligence is at the edge of the [...]
Broadband QoSE methodology presented at ITU meeting
I recently presented the LIRNEasia methodology for measuring the user experience of broadband quality at the ITU World Telecom Indicators (WTI) meeting held in Marutitius, 7-9 December 2011. Measuring broadband quality in a comparable manner is a challenge faced by many. Regulators and policy makers are now increasingly engaging in broadband quality measures. As such [...]
TRC’s Broadband Quality Diagnostic Tool Publicly Available
Finally! After years of LIRNEasia‘s efforts in promoting broadband QoSE monitoring the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) of Sri Lanka unveils its diagnostic tool to the public. It’s a shame the press release says (among other things), “There were no facilities available for subscribers to check and verify whether the operators were providing the internet services [...]
Broadband: Does truth in advertising exist?
One aspect that we tend to use frequently is advertised vs. delivered performance of broadband packages. This year LIRNEasia tested broadband packages in 10 cities across 6 countries, out of which the worst three in terms of offering far less than promised were India’s Airtel 2 Mbps packages (tested in Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore) [...]
mPayments in Sri Lankan Busses
Following research conducted by Dr. Harsha de Silva on the potential techniques of introducing electronic bus passes, the Private Bus Owner’s Association of Sri Lanka scheduled the launch of its implementation for the 24th of September 2011. The solution however, has multiple aspects that need to be considered. The immense cash flow brought upon such a service [...]
International Roaming in India: A Raw deal for fellow SAARC citizens
The purpose of SAARC is defied, in terms of electronic connectivity. The lack of uniformity and transparency in international voice tariffs has been ongoing despite the Colombo Declaration of the 15th SAARC summit. The disparity is more so for international roaming. The most recent benchmarking report published by LIRNEasia demonstrates the inconsistencies. On average Indian [...]
LIRNEasia COO at ITU ICT Indicators Meeting
LIRNEasia COO, Helani Galpaya was recently invited by the ITU to present LIRNEasia‘s proposed methodology for measuring Internet users of the world (WSIS Target 10). The current methodology measures the Internet users as a multiplier of the number of Internet subscriptions. At present, the multiplier is an arbitrary number proposed by national administrations. As a [...]
Broadband Quality in Manila: The worst RTT in the region
In its latest QoSE report, LIRNEasia compared download speeds, Round Trip Time (RTT, or the time delays in data transfer), Jitter (the variation in time between the arrival of data packets) and Packet Loss (the percentage of data packets that did not reach its destination) of broadband packages in 11 cities across 7 countries in [...]
Broadband Quality in India: 256Kbps package performs better than 2Mbps ones
Recent Quality of Service Experience (QoSE) tests carried out by LIRNEasia show that BSNL’s 256Kbps package (offered in Chennai) delivers more than promised in download speeds when compared to a 512Kbps package offered by the same operator in Bangalore. It also performs better in comparison to similar offerings by Airtel and MTNL in Chennai, Bengaluru, [...]
Broadband Quality in Sri Lanka: Dialog performs well on download speeds; badly on latency and jitter
LIRNEasia‘s recent Broadband QoSE tests report Dialog Telekom’s 1Mbps postpaid broadband package (HSPA) delivers higher download speeds than what was promised in comparison to similar offerings by Mobitel and SLT. However, it does not maintain this trend in measures for latency and jitter. Although there is a difference in underlying technology which most certainly impacts performance, [...]
Willing to die for an international call?
Make one from North Korea and you will!Make one from North Korea and you will! In a rare occasion where international journalists were invited to North Korea to cover a week long celebration commemorating the 65th Anniversary of the Workers Party, CNN correspondent Alina Cho got a chance to speak to the public, albeit being [...]
Benchmarking International Leased Circuit (ILC)
We would like your comments and suggestions in helping us define a methodology for benchmarking ILC prices. As part of our annual international voice and broadband price benchmarking reports (Indicators continued) we have decided to include ILC prices for selected countries within the region (Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia). The first step [...]
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