When scientists publish their research, they also make the underlying data available so the results can be verified by other scientists.

At least that is how the system is supposed to work. But lately social scientists have come up against an exception that is, true to its name, huge.

It is “big data,” the vast sets of information gathered by researchers at companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft from patterns of cellphone calls, text messages and Internet clicks by millions of users around the world. Companies often refuse to make such information public, sometimes for competitive reasons and sometimes to protect customers’ privacy. But to many scientists, the practice is an invitation to bad science, secrecy and even potential fraud.

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There’s a vast market of consumers in countries like Brazil, China, India, and the Phillipines who want access to financial services like credit cards, loans, or insurance,” says Jonathan Hakim, Cignifi’s chief executive. “But while they may have jobs, and some have bank accounts, there really is no credit history for them.” One thing they do have? Mobile phones.

Cignifi has developed sophisticated modeling software that can look at usage data from consumers’ mobile phones and make predictions about who that person is and how they live. There’s no single data point —like making lots of short calls between 2 and 5 a.m. every morning —that suggests that someone is a bad credit risk. But Hakim says, “The way you use your phone is a proxy for your lifestyle. It’s not random. So we’re looking at things like the length of calls, the time of day, and the location you make them from. Also things like whether you top up [a pre-paid SIM card] regularly. We want to see how stable the patterns are. When you look at that, you can create these behavioral clusters that give you information about users’ appetite for new [financial] products, and their ability to repay a debt.”

The rally in Citi Field on Sunday was sponsored by a rabbinical group, Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachane, that is linked to a software company that sells Internet filtering software to Orthodox Jews. Those in attendance were handed fliers that advertised services like a “kosher GPS App” for iPhone and Android phones, which helps users locate synagogues and kosher restaurants.

Nat Levy, 25, who traveled from Lakewood, N.J., to attend, said he frequently surfed the Web at a cafe, overseen by a local rabbi, that filtered out certain types of online content and monitored which Web sites he visited.

He said he often used the Internet to deal with customers for his company. “You get to do business the same way,” he said. “I have unlimited access, but it’s done in a kosher manner.”

Eytan Kobre, a spokesman for the event, delivered a more intense message to reporters outside the stadium. “The siren song of the Internet entices us!” he pronounced in a booming voice. “It brings out the worst of us!”

Still, Mr. Kobre confirmed that the event would be broadcast live on the Internet, via a stream available to homes and synagogues in Orthodox communities around the New York area. He said the general public would not be able to gain access, but several unauthorized streams appeared soon after the rally began.

Agriculture employs about half of India’s work force, for example, yet the agricultural revolution that flourished in the 1970s has slowed. Crop yields remain stubbornly low, transport and water infrastructure is poor, and the legal system is hostile to foreign investment in basic agriculture and to modern agribusiness. Note that the earlier general growth bursts of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were all preceded by significant gains in agricultural productivity.

“This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators,” said Daniel Webster, a first-term Republican congressman from Florida who sponsored the relevant legislation.

“We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective,” he continued, “especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.”

In fact, the randomness of the survey is precisely what makes the survey scientific, statistical experts say.

Each year the Census Bureau polls a representative, randomized sample of about three million American households about demographics, habits, languages spoken, occupation, housing and various other categories. The resulting numbers are released without identifying individuals, and offer current demographic portraits of even the country’s tiniest communities.

It is easy to see why the company continues to look outside its home market despite the risk of complications. Pressed by Dubai’s agile operator, du, Etisalat has seen eroding domestic profits and market share.

Meanwhile, revenues from the company’s international operations, driven by strong performance in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Afghanistan, grew 21 percent in the first quarter of 2012, compared with the same period last year. Etisalat’s international gains helped first-quarter total revenue rise 2 percent to 8.2 billion dirhams, or $2.23 billion, offsetting a 2.6 percent drop in domestic revenue to 6.09 billion dirhams.

In Africa, Etisalat also has operations in Sudan, Egypt and Tanzania, as well as Ivory Coast. International revenues account for about 28 percent of total sales.

In a move that will no doubt irk MTN and Vodacom, Knott-Craig says he wants the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) to drop the rates even further beyond the 40c/minute they will reach in March 2013.

“To Icasa, I say: ‘Drop mobile termination rates even further, provide Cell C with asymmetrical rates to help us achieve the scalability we need to compete even more fiercely with the large incumbents, and we will surprise you and them with our response.’”

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Today, after just eight years in existence, Facebook now has more than 750 million users all by itself. At that astonishing rate of growth, the company is on track to accomplish much more than just a multibillion-dollar IPO. Facebook is on the cusp of becoming a medium unto itself—more akin to television as a whole than a single network, and more like the entire web than just one online destination. The evidence for that transformation goes well beyond the sheer number of users. Many businesses now bypass the traditional web altogether, limiting their online presence to Facebook. Already the platform has spawned one billion-dollar company (the social gaming giant Zynga) and swallowed another (the photo network Instagram). The average time people spend on the site has increased from four and a half hours per month in 2009 to nearly seven hours—more than twice that of any major web competitor.

The results were far more dramatic. Well after the financial help and hand-holding had stopped, the families of those who had been randomly chosen for the BRAC programme were eating 15% more, earning 20% more each month and skipping fewer meals than people in a comparison group. They were also saving a lot. The effects were so large and persistent that they could not be attributed to the direct effects of the grants: people could not have sold enough milk, eggs or meat to explain the income gains. Nor were they simply selling the assets (although some did).

LIRNEasia is a regional think tank that has, among other things, conducted research on VAS in Bangladesh. The comments below are based on (a) examination of the policy, regulatory and business issues pertaining to mobile VAS in the context of LIRNEasia’s 2008-2010 research program on mobile 2.0; and (b) detailed analysis of the practical experience of CellBazaar, a successful VAS developed in Bangladeshi conditions. The peer-reviewed journal article on a successful Bangladeshi value-added service, CellBazaar, is attached. LINK.

I also contributed to a report on ICT development in LDCs, of which Bangladesh is one: ITU, The role of ICT in advancing growth in least developed countries: Trends, challenges and opportunities. Geneva: ITU. This report outlines policy and regulatory good practices and makes specific references to value-added services offered by ANS operators. It does not recommend that ANS operators be prohibited from offering VAS.

No need for VAS licensing (entire document)
There is no rationale for VAS licensing that would be supported by present knowledge on ICT policy and regulation. Licenses are rarely issued at this granular level. At most, they would be “class licenses” that would impose certain minimal obligations and enable the regulator to contact the VAS provider if necessary.

Licensing is especially inappropriate at the present time, when mobile apps (primarily for smartphones but also for feature phones) are attracting significant venture capital (for example: Worthham, Jenna (2012, April 10), A billion-dollar turning point for mobile apps, New York Times). When the trend is for vast numbers of micro enterprises to develop applications that would be bought and sold on virtual “app stores,” the last thing one should do is impose onerous licensing requirements.

The enforcement of the prohibition of unlicensed apps on smartphones will be exceedingly difficult. The unintended consequence will be discouragement of local entrepreneurship and the widespread use of apps obtained from foreign sources.

Provision of mobile apps on feature phones requires active participation by ANS operators, since the app would have to “live” on the network given the limitations of the handset. In particular, “discovery” (ensuring that the potential customers become aware of VAS on offer) and payment for services (in the context of countries like Bangladesh where credit-card penetration is low) operators will play a critical role. The exclusion of operators from the provision of VAS would be inimical to the development of VAS for feature phones, used predominantly by the poor. The proposed licensing rules may thus be justifiably described as being anti-poor.

Intention appears to be disintegration of value chain (Clauses 6, 7 & 8)
The draft appears to be based on the faulty premise that it is necessary to enforce vertical disintegration of value added services and the provision of access network services. There is no international precedent for this. While it may be necessary to encourage fair treatment of VAS providers, it is unwise and impractical to (a) prevent ANS operators from offering VAS; and (b) expropriating the VAS services they have already developed legally and in full expectation of future revenues and synergistic support to other service offerings.

As documented in the ITU Report cited above (p. 48), standard contracts with 30:70 revenue splits that favor app developers are becoming the norm without regulatory intervention. It appears that forced disintegration is seeking to solve a non-existent problem.

The LIRNEasia study of CellBazaar shows that (a) it is possible for an independent VAS producer to become successful in Bangladesh without government licensing and intervention; and (b) that it may make sense for all concerned including the VAS entrepreneur to sell the service to the ANS at a certain point. The proposed rules seek to solve a non-existent problem and create a new one by depriving developers of access to capital and ready buyers for their businesses.

Expropriation of legally developed services creates a harmful precedent (Clause 8.8)
If we stay with the concrete example of CellBazaar, clause 8.8 results in the forcible expropriation of a business developed by Kamal Qadir and purchased in good faith by Grameenphone. The implications are broad and can negatively affect the entire sector and indeed the investment climate of the entire country.

I shall be pleased to elaborate on any of the above points or assist the Ministry to find productive ways to achieve the objectives of Digital Bangladesh. This proposal is harmful to the achievement of Digital Bangladesh objectives and should be withdrawn.

With the spread of affordable telecom services, most Asians now use their own phones to stay connected. Can talking on the phone help those responding to emergencies to be better organised? How can voice be used more efficiently in alerting and reporting about disasters? Where can computer technology make a difference in crisis management?

These questions were investigated in an action research project by LIRNEasia in partnership with Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka’s largest development organisation. Experimenting with Sahana disaster management software and Freedom Fone interactive voice response system, it probed how voice-based reporting can fit into globally accepted standards for sharing emergency data. It found that while the technology isn’t perfect yet, there is much potential.

FOR the past decade, technical support has been in the vanguard of globalisation. With the costs of intercontinental communication shrivelling to virtually nothing, phone and online customer services have migrated to wherever they can be managed most efficiently and cheaply. India blazed the trail, building a $5 billion outsourcing business on helping Westerners solve high-tech niggles.

Recently, the Philippines has taken over as the world’s call-centre hotspot, offering comparable wage costs to India, with the added benefit—at least to North American ears—of a Yankee drawl. But even as half a million Filipino customer-service representatives urge callers to have a nice day, they may want to peer over their shoulders.

Some of the biggest brands in software, consumer electronics and telecoms have now found a workforce offering expert advice at a fraction of the price of even the cheapest developing nation, who also speak the same language as their customers, and not just in the purely linguistic sense. Because it is their customers themselves.

The Library of Congress will award the $1 million John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime intellectual achievement in the humanities and social sciences to Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who had a distinguished international career as a scholar before twice being elected president of Brazil. An official announcement will be made in Washington on Monday, with an awards ceremony there on July 10.

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European lawmakers on Thursday approved a plan to extend and lower the Continent’s limits on mobile phone roaming charges paid by consumers for another five years, and added the first controls on mobile Internet use.

In addition to the caps, the legislation adopted by the European Parliament will allow E.U. residents to buy roaming services from a carrier besides their regular operator beginning in 2014, an attempt to create competition in the market that will lower prices and supplant the need for price controls.

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