Category Archives: General
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India announces 3G auctions: but are all the ducks lined up?
Despite the fact that not all the frequencies have been cleared, India has announced the 3G auctions will be held in April. The original date was January 2009. Perhaps the driving force was the government’s need for money, rather than the conditions being right.
India’s long-delayed auction of third-generation (3G) mobile phone bandwidth will [...]
Gurstein makes the case for telecenters
In an interesting post, that we recommend you read in full, Micheal Gurstein makes the case for telecenters despite the Nenasala debacle of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka.
Here is his key question:
Or to put the question another way—what do we lose if we (or rural Sri Lankans) only have mobile communications with optional access [...]
Not my wish list, but as good a starting point as any in thinking about the next handsets
This is definitely not the appropriate set of new features that we need at the Bottom of the Pyramid in emerging Asia and elsewhere. Voice commands, greater convenience in reading/viewing, more location-sensitivity, etc. would be among mine. Of course we could also consider what the surveys say about flashlights and radios. But [...]
On the benefits of services trade
Services trade, especially mode 1 services trade where the buyer remains in the buyer’s country and the seller remains in the seller’s country, is critical to the development of emerging economies. India has been one of the greatest beneficiaries of liberalized trade, but the NYT article below shows that the US is also a [...]
5 billion USD for Zain, African foothold (finally) for Bharti, and budget telecom network model for African consumers?
One way business models and innovations travel is through mergers and acquisitions. We have been waiting to see more African consumers benefit from the low prices and greater connectivity afforded by the Budget Telecom Network Model. Finally it looks like a big Indian telecom operator has got a foothold in Africa, with the [...]
How mobile handsets are doing
A story on the Barcelona GSM World conference had this interesting summary on the state of the handset market. With our focus on infrastructure we have not written much about handsets over the years, but it’s becoming difficult, especially in the context of the Mobile 2.0 narrative. As I said in a recent [...]
Quo warranto, TRC?
Following the appointment of Director of Information (or Propaganda) as part-time Director General of Telecom, I have been getting a lot of calls asking about Internet censorship, prohibition of Face Book, and licensing of news websites.
While I do believe that (a) the Director of Information is on the face unqualified to serve as [...]
WiFi makes the bus quiet and the students better behaved
Back in 2004, LIRNEasia got on the WiFi bandwagon. Ours was one of the first WiFi offices in Colombo (we had trouble getting suppliers who knew what they were doing) and we installed WiFi temporarily at the Mount Lavinia Hotel for our launch conference.
One of the unexpected results was that it caused [...]
Pakistan Competition Commission appears to have mobile telcos on the ropes
It started with something innocuous. Within a very short period of around a week all the mobile operators in Pakistan announced they would charge 10 Paise for balance inquiries. The Competition Commission of Pakistan naturally initiated an inquiry. The mobile operators said there was no price fixing and that this move was [...]
Latest on Indian ITES performance
An excerpt from a trade newsletter published by the Govt of India:
According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), the apex body for software services in India, the revenue of the information technology sector has risen from 1.2 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in FY 1997-98 to an estimated [...]
Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka: Quo Vadis?
Perhaps it is time for Sri Lanka Telecom Regulator to be renamed ‘Telecom Revenue Commission’ as it generates more revenue for the government than two state banks and Port and the Petroleum Corporation, suggests Rohan Samarajiva in his column to Lanka Business Online. The 3.5 billion rupee question: Does it regulate?
The answer may interest the [...]
Photo exhibition at LIRNEasia@5
As part of LIRNEasia’s 5th year anniversary conference, “research -> policy -> knowledge based economies“, a photo exhibition was commissioned at the event to capture different aspects of the use of mobile phones by those at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The images which were sourced from Flickr from both budding as well as [...]
Spectrum hoarding in India and the available remedies
Voice and Data has done a story on spectrum hoarding. Among the main sources is Payal Malik, who did the spectrum/licensing study that was part LIRNEasia’s mobile 2.0 work.
According to Payal Malik, sr research fellow, LIRNEasia, “It is difficult to verify whether the spectrum is actually being hoarded, but given the way allocation has [...]
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