Category Archives: General
OFCOM rolls out a significant white spaces trial
The pilot project being implemented by the UK regulator should yield useful learnings for all who want to make better use of spectrum. Ofcom is inviting the industry to take part in the pilot, which is scheduled for the third quarter of 2013. Locations will be chosen once the trial participants are on-board. It also [...]
Some cities beginning to use big data (and others that are clueless)
The Economist talks about how New York and Chicago are using different approaches to the analyze big data generated from within their operations. Sadly, no such activity can be reported from our part of the world. Many cities around the country find themselves in a similar position: they are accumulating data faster than they know [...]
Innovation in blended learning at universities
We have not written much about MOOCs so far on this blog, but have been following developments avidly. As LIRNEasia’s work in capacity building begins to take up more of our time, we need to think about how we can effectively mobilize ICTs in our work. The report that we highlight here seems to point [...]
Apps: Beginning of the (SMS) end?
A study, jointly conducted by Financial Times and Informa, reveals WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage have overtaken the text message substituting SMS. It said the OTT messaging will be more than double to 41 billion per day this year, which will be more than twice the number of text messages to be sent. It will impact [...]
Appreciation: Radley Dissanayake, Telecom reformer
I recall a Sinhala poem from my time at Peradeniya University. It asked who had actually built Sigiriya and the great irrigation works: The kings who routinely get the credit or the unnamed many who did the actual building? The telecom reforms in Sri Lanka are now seen as an unqualified success. The reforms did [...]
Not yet with license, Telenor announces its plans for Myanmar
With long experience in neighboring Bangladesh, where they may have well discovered the Budget Telecom Network model, Telenor appears to be pulling out all the stops in its Myanmar campaign. Telenor plans to sell SIM cards for free—or with a minimal charge of about 20 kyat (US$0.02)—and offer its phone service by a pay-per-minute plan. [...]
India DOT’s protectionism questioned by Prime Minister’s Office
It takes guts to question protectionism, but I guess it’s not that difficult when you are in the Prime Minister’s Office: The Prime Minister’s Office is worried about the IT and Communication Ministry’s policy of encouraging domestic manufacturing. The PMO has sent the Ministry a note asking for comments on how the policy aims to [...]
What does the effect of killswitch look like?
We’ve had some discussion about the effects of killswitch on this blog. Here is a discussion about full and partial killswitch effects with some nice graphics. When you deliver nearly a third of global Web traffic, you get to see a lot of crazy stuff happen. Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), the global Internet traffic provider, [...]
Behavioral economics applied to the peak-load problem
In our recent intervention on Sri Lanka’s electricity tariffs, we offered to help the regulatory agency and the service suppliers apply the learnings of behavioral economics to the task of reducing the five percent of peak-load demand that was responsible for 17 percent of the total cost. In this oped, an author we quoted in [...]
How the government manages supply in Myanmar
Today was the day Myanmar lowered the price of SIMs. Here are the conditions imposed. 350,000 SIM cards will be divided among states and divisions on a monthly basis. In order to prevent the common practice of transferring SIM card ownership, the cards will be disabled if they are not used in the first 15 [...]
Iran and Russia throw lifeline to Internet
We were serious about the sabotage in SEA-ME-WE4 at Egypt that impaired Internet across Asia, notably in Pakistan, last month. Our ongoing research about the fragility of Eurasian submarine cable connectivity refers to multiple terrestrial initiatives to link Middle East with Europe. EPEG or Europe-Persia Express Gateway is one of them. And Renesys Corporation, which [...]
Seoul plans free mobile connection by 2015
The Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning of South Korea has decided to ban charging new subscribers a sign-up fee from 2015. The government will initially ask the country’s three mobile operators – SK Telecom, KT Corp and LG Uplus – to reduce their sign-up fees by 40% this year and a further 30% [...]
Indian lawmakers demand a muscular TRAI
India’s Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) has strongly recommended amending the law and making Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) truly effective. It observes that ‘once TRAI forwards its recommendations, the government is at liberty to accept, reject or keep it pending, without citing any tangible reason.’ The JPC found that many TRAI recommendations were ignored [...]
Using mobiles to solve the toilet problem
We’ve had quite a bit of discussion about the failure to supply toilets on our site and elsewhere. Now there’s movement on using mobiles to help get working toilets in schools and elsewhere. “It’s something that can have a little more impact than helping someone find the nearest bar or restaurant,” said Gary Gale, director [...]
Hong Kong bids farewell to interconnection regulation
Hong Kong doesn’t regulate the mobile-mobile, fixed-mobile and fixed-fixed broadband interconnection charges. They are solely determined through commercial negotiations between the operators. Now the Communications Authority (CA) of Hong Kong has decided to stop regulating the narrowband interconnection between fixed carriers, which is the only remaining type of carrier-to-carrier local interconnection subject to regulatory guidance [...]
Recent Comments