Chief among its goals, the F.C.C. wants future broadband investment to be focused on the areas where gaps in service remain. It will direct this investment in part through the Universal Service Fund, a program for telephone and Internet access, costing $8 billion annually, paid through a phone bill surcharge. Over time, the subsidies for Internet will increase and those for phone will dissipate, with the knowledge that people can make online calls.

“Some of the details are lacking, particularly on Universal Service Fund reform,” said Dan Mitchell, a vice president for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, a group that represents rural providers and worries that the proposals to change phone carrier costs will curtail the providers’ abilities to expand infrastructure.

Facebook’s trajectory suggests that it will soar ahead of Google.com in the coming months. However, social networking sites have fallen in the past. Google.com had led since September 2007, when it overtook MySpace.com. Internet users worldwide spent more than five-and-a-half hours a month on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82 per cent increase over the previous year, according to the Nielsen Company research firm. Read more.

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.

Finally the consumers are being given an explicit choice at the behest of the European Commission, and they are taking it.

Rivals of Microsoft’s market-leading Web browser have attracted a flurry of interest since the company, fulfilling a regulatory requirement, started making it easier for European users of its Windows operating system to switch.

Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is the strongest competitor to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer worldwide, said that more than 50,000 people had downloaded Firefox via a “choice screen” that has been popping up on Windows-equipped computers in Europe since the end of last month. The screen displays links to a dozen browsers, including Explorer, Firefox, Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Opera.

Opera Software, based in Oslo, said downloads of its browser in Belgium, France, Britain, Poland and Spain had tripled since the screen began to appear.

“It’s definitely being taken up, so consumers are paying attention and taking advantage of the choice being offered to them,” said Thomas Vinje, legal counsel to the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, a lobbying group based in Brussels whose members include Opera.

Full story.

Here below is a discussion of network effects in Face Book, that is among other things, causing us to place advertisements on it.

For an individual member, the most powerful network effects may be indirect ones that come from the huge number of unknown other people in the Facebook world. Their mass attracts, in turn, suppliers of complementary products and services.

For Windows, the enormous installed base attracted third-party software developers, which in turn drew more users. Apple’s iPhone has had a similar virtuous cycle. So, too, on Facebook, developers of applications like FamilyLink, Marketplace and iLike’s Music create a software universe with seemingly infinite choices. And that attracts more users — and still more developers.

Facebook’s decision to open its site to outside developers in May 2007 was a “transformative moment,” said Charlene Li,founder of the Altimeter Group, a strategy consulting firm.

“Because Facebook allows developers on their site, the people who would have developed the next social networking site are now working with Facebook,” she said.

Nick O’Neill, founder of AllFacebook.com, a site with Facebook-related news and statistics, said, “Games are the killer app for Facebook.” Because of their social nature, popular Facebook games produce direct network effects. The dedicated farmers of the FarmVille game — it attracts 83 million users a month — nudge friends to play and become virtual neighbors, enhancing their own game experience. (That pull gives Facebook an advantage Windows lacked; its signature game was Solitaire.)

Businesses, nonprofits, government offices and celebrities use Facebook pages to disseminate information, thus forming an ever-growing simulacrum of the Web within Facebook’s walls. Network effects are at work here, too: users attract well-known names, which, in turn, draw more users to Facebook.

Full story.

Etisalat’s new Sri Lankan mobile subsidiary is in talks with banks to offer financial services on mobile phones, such as money transfers for migrant workers in the Middle East, a senior company official said.

Riyaaz Rasheed deputy chief executive of Etisalat Lanka said the mobile operator is seeking to tie-up with banks to offer the financial services. “We’re already talking to two of the biggest banks in Sri Lanka,” he told LBO. Rasheed declined to identify the banks, citing non-disclosure agreements signed with them.

Etisalat, the United Arab Emirates-based telecom firm, acquired 100 percent of the Sri Lanka operation called Tigo from Millicom International in October 2009 and has renamed it Etisalat Lanka.

Full story.

Objectives: To share LIRNEasia’s Mobile 2.0 (i.e., the second wave of mobile use –beyond voice applications) research results among regulators, operators, policy makers and researchers of SAARC and ASEAN countries to: obtain feedback from key stakeholders on improving the research outputs, create a dialogue on policy and regulatory processes affecting Mobile 2.0 and explore replication opportunities for good practices

Click here for the draft agenda.

Mobile 2.0 is a term used to describe 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 capable of information-retrieval and publishing functions, normally associated with the internet.

The Mobile 2.0 @ BOP project consists of thirteen studies, researched in terms of ‘horizontal’ issues and ‘vertical’ aspects.  The horizontal studies explores the basic competitive and regulatory conditions that affect the emergence of Mobile 2.0@BOP. The vertical studies  explores  and explain how a particular aspect such as in-depth micro-payments and remittances, agriculture applications, voting applications, e-government services etc is taking shape and form among countries in the developing world.

For more information on the Mobile 2.0 project, click here.

The trick for Bharti, which pioneered low-cost telecoms in India, will be to bring down Zain’s high cost base and win subscribers, say analysts — and to get subscribers to talk more using lower tariffs.

Bharti is famous for its so-called “minutes factory” business plan — the low-cost, high-volume model that has made it India’s leading mobile company.

Mittal said Bharti expects to be able to “substantially increase usage” and sign up more callers that would boost call traffic and improve margins.

Bharti’s strength is “bringing down costs of operations and prices”, said Romal Shetty, head of Indian telecom at global consultancy KPMG.

In case licenses are not de-linked, there will be rollout obligations. Some analysts suggest penalties to be enforced, like taking away extra/unused bandwith for spectrum that is not used optimally. According to Kunal Bajaj, MD, BDA Connect, “Open auction will remove all these problems. Adequate spectrum will be allocated to the best player. However, there should be local benchmarks like existing players should get the first right of refusal.” According to Malik, “There should be no restriction on services as this inhibits competition. In fact, licenses should be given free, as they are meaningless without spectrum. After trading or auctions, those players who have enough spectrum should be allowed to use it the way they want.”

In this scenario, Tata Teleservices has suggested the formation of a spectrum pool, wherein players can pool their extra spectrum and trade it in a free and fair market. Furthermore, it is argued that currently a large chunk of the spectrum is being wasted as each operator requires start-up frequencies as well as guard frequencies to ensure that there is no interference between networks. “The concept of introducing a single radio frequency (RF) network based on the maximum available spectrum and controlled by an independent body will address this problem of scarce spectrum. It will provision the RF network in such a way that the complete spectrum is available to operators a on-required basis. This will resolve all the contentious issues related with spectrum, and provide an efficient RF network to all the existing as well as future service providers. This concept will drastically reduce the capital expenditure and operating expenditure of individual operators, and result in the most efficient use of the available spectrum,” it said on its official website.

Malik explains, “I am in favor of re-sale of spectrum. However, it depends on the micro market structure of pool for resale.” However, according to Satyen Gupta, “Whatever spectrum you can afford to put in a pool should be de-linked from license, as this procedure cannot work while being linked to a license.”

The Internet has become the third most popular news platform for American adults, trailing only local and national television stations, according to a survey released on Monday.

Seventy-eight percent of the 2,259 adults surveyed for the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Project for Excellence in Journalism said that on a typical day they get news from a local TV station.

Seventy-three percent said they get news from a national TV network such as CBS or a cable TV news station such as CNN or Fox.

Sixty-one percent said that on a typical day they get news online while 54 percent said they listen to a radio news program at home or in the car.

Fifty percent said they read news in a local newspaper and 17 percent said they read news in a national newspaper such as The New York Times or USA Today.

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 main way they plan to do it is by turning people’s mobile phones into information displays and ordering devices. Can’t find the flour at the grocery store? Grocers will offer phone applications that tell shoppers exactly where to go. Is the department store out of size 8 jeans? Retailers want to make it simple to punch a couple of buttons and have the desired size shipped home.

Some supermarkets intend to offer real-time coupons while people shop. For example, a promotion for milk may be sent to a shopper’s mobile phone the moment her cart rolls into the dairy aisle. Drugstores will offer loyalty programs on cellphones, not on plastic cards. And specialty chains will allow shoppers to breeze through the aisles compiling a wedding registry, just by pointing at merchandise.

Of course, this stuff makes even more sense in the developing world, where there are phones aplenty (even if not all smartphones) and shortcoming in the alternative mechanisms for making shopping more efficient.

IEEE Spectrum magazine has interviewed via e-mail a Haitian engineer, Charles-Edouard Denis, who helped build Haiti’s first cellphone company, Haitel, and who describes the impact of Haiti’s cellular infrastructure before and after the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince. Read full story.