The country’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has decided to bundle the 800 MHz band plan with the lower duplexer (2 X 30 MHz) – as a baseline – of the Asia Pacific (APT) 700 MHz band. It will revolutionize affordable network deployment and benefit wider population with mobile broadband connectivity. Deputy Director General of TRA Majed Al Mesmar explains:

By maximising the spectrum for mobile broadband in harmony with the growing economies of scale for both bands, the TRA decision will enable nearly global interoperability and roaming. The UAE is predicting a rising demand for global harmonization of the APT 700 MHz band benefiting in the growing ecosystem of devices from Asia Pacific across the Middle East and Africa, through to Latin America.

TRA’s whitepaper titled, “Channel Planning & Availability for Mobile Broadband in the UAE” can be downloaded from here.

Disasters are unstoppable. Early warning systems and preventative measures, however, significantly minimize the loss of life, as it did in Bangladesh this month. The then regime of Myanmar was criticized for poor forecasting of Nargis and inefficient post-disaster relief operations. A functional communication system was the missing link. Now the authorities, with the help of Japan, have taken bold steps to fortify its emergency communications networks. And being a “green field” – the best possible solutions have been planned to deploy nationwide.

The communications infrastructure built under this plan consists of a high-speed, high-capacity core optical transmission network capable of transmitting 30Gbps between the cities of Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyidaw, as well as LTE, fixed-line telephones and optical transmission networks capable of 10Gbps internet transmissions within each city.

This infrastructure will support the simultaneous use of services for approximately 40,000 LTE subscribers, roughly 1.5 million fixed-line telephone users and about 1 million internet subscribers. LTE communications systems will also be supported by 50 LTE base-stations deployed within the three cities.

Full report is here.

Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu at a media call on the same day said the government would take the help of ‘special technology’ to bar objectionable materials from being viewed on the social media websites.

It would be easier to remove disagreeable contents from Facebook once this technology was put in place, said Inu.

Read full report here.

By far four out of six operators have paid Tk. 2.4 billion (US$31 million) to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, according to press report. The regulator is, however, unable to spend the money, as the government is yet to approve the rule in this regard.

What the press report has overlooked is: neither the stipulation of sharing 1% of gross revenue as SOF in the renewed license nor its realization is consistent with the law. Subsection 4 under Section 21A of the telecoms law says:

The maintenance of accounts and operation of the Social Obligation Fund, its administration, procedure for withdrawal of money of the said Fund and the rate of subscription for the Fund to be realized from the licensed operators, shall be prescribed by rules.

Who makes the rules? Section 98 of the law answers that question:

For carrying out the purposes of this Act, the Government may, by notification in the official Gazette, make rules consistent with the provisions of this Act.

The fact is – the government is yet to publish the rule pertaining to the rate, collection and spending of the SOF. And the entire process commences from the date of publishing the rule in an official gazette.

Therefore, BTRC’s collection of SOF prior to following this process is vulnerable to legal challenge. One may wonder why four out of six mobile operators have made payments. Answer of this $31 million question may be revealed at the court of law.

Therefore, the FCC has, by far, filled its trashcan with more than 120 outdated regulations. A petition from the trade body, USTelecom, has prompted this belated housekeeping. Calling it “A Timid Step Toward Modernization” the petitioner has, however, urged further cleaning of old dirt:

Leaving these antiquated and burdensome rules in place is a missed opportunity, given how much the communications world has changed.  Eliminating regulation that no longer serves a purpose should be the starting point for developing a new regulatory approach based on competitive and technological realities and consumer needs. Outmoded regulatory requirements, for example, to collect and maintain an entire set of purely regulatory books of data that the commission has not even looked at in five years, are a burden on the marketplace, on innovation and ultimately on consumers.

We recognize and appreciate that the commission is undertaking further review of these legacy rules. Given the fact that we have already gone through 15 months of study we would hope that this further review could be completed by the end of the year.

Modernizing networks has been business as usual across the telecoms industry.  Why ‘modernizing the regulation’ should be any different, especially in Asia? After all – technology dictates regulation, it’s never other way around.

BTRC said, according to a report of Dhaka Tribune:

“I have gone through the matter and found that there were no irregularity on our part for allocating the spectrum,” BTRC Chairman Sunil Kanti Bose told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday. “BTRC cannot deny a request from the PMO and the 800MHz band allocation is not only for Ollo, it was allocated to other ISPs before also. A2I planned to use it for digital zila Jessore as well as for the whole country.”

Bose also said as far as he is aware, Ollo has special plans to provide internet in rural areas through dongles. He added that at the time the spectrum was allocated, he was the telecommunication secretary and was not entitled to receive any files about spectrum allocation.

And the A2I chief has refuted:

“Primarily A2I have made a lot of request to BTRC and other organisations about different things. But I cannot recall the details,” Nazrul, who is also the secretary of the newly-formed Information and Communications Technology (ICT) ministry, told the Dhaka Tribune over phone. He was travelling to the northern part of the country at the time.

“Whoever came to me at that time, I recommended them to be provided support. There was no ill-motive there,” the veteran bureaucrat said.

“We made many such requests, but BTRC should follow its own rules and regulations. Why are they putting this sort of blame on us?”

Meanwhile the High Court has stayed the assignment of 800 MHz spectrum to Ollo for 10 days and sought explanation from BTRC in this regard, said another report.

Often people are misconstrued by alert messages and act inappropriately because they have not fully understood the message; especially, when they are short-text messages with partial information. There are many challenges with cognition, or understanding, of public warning messages. UNESCO estimates, on average, 30% of South/West Asians and Sub-Saharan Africans to be illiterate. Those countries combined account for ~40% of the world’s population. Physically and mentally challenged persons, such as those diagnosed with Autism disorder are better served with symbology.

World Bank tourism statistics have estimated over 955 million departures over the past 4 years (2008-2012) and the numbers to rise to 1.6 billion per annum by 2020. Could a Chinese tourist in USA, or any other person alien to English for that matter, understand a rapid-onset Tornado warning text-message? Paris is the most visited city but they fully function in French.

Studies show that every country in the world is home to more than one language; on average 6 languages, according to recent studies by Ethnologist. In most cases it is above 50, if we consider regions such as Europe, Asia, and Central Africa. Addressing alerts in each language is cumbersome. Although the Common Alerting Protocol content standard allows for carrying a message in multiple languages, delivering the message in each language overwhelms the communications networks.

“Symbols in Alerting” was the basis of my talk at the 6th Common Alerting Protocol Implementation Workshop that took place in Geneva, Switzerland (23-25 April 2013). There were seventy participants (70) from thirty severn (37) countries representing and several International organizations, Sahana Software Foundation was one of them; whom I represented serving as the Chair of the Standards and Interoperability Committee.

CLICK TO READ FULL REPORT

It is best to focus on “symbols in alerting for mobiles”. The challenges are in addressing all makes and brands. The most effective way may be is to host a small applet along with the pictograms in the mobile phone memory. Thereafter, trigger the appropriate pictogram using short-text CAP message for display. A customizable generic applet can be developed, then Cellular Operators can adopt that applet. Thereafter, customize it for the country-context, based on the country CAP-profile. The customized applet can be deliver, over the air, to the subscribers. The subscriber could further customize as to which alerts they would like to see and at what threat levels. The symbol-based alerts on the mobile can be triggered using Cell-broadcast, SMS, or HTTP(S) (REST-ful) strings.

Symbols are indeed effective provided they carry both the hazard and the required response action, as shown in the two images above. Colours and Numbers are a good way to present the priority (or the severity, certainty, and urgency) of the message. The common consensus of the workshop participants was that “symbols in alerting” is important and some initiatives must be exercised to research and develop a framework that is in in-line with the CAP standard. It may take time to understand the functional requirements, design parameters, and the process variables.

And it is my pleasure to announce to you today … [pause] … that we are not taking over the Internet.

The UN peacekeepers, in their blue helmets, … [pause] … are not coming to take over the world’s IXPs.

The UN peacekeepers are not coming to take over the Internet’s critical resources – including the root servers and the DNS.

And my good friend Fadi Chehadé, the CEO of ICANN, can continue doing his good work over there – without me telling him what to do.

Seriously – we never intended to take over the Internet.

The Internet’s doing just fine!

Here is the full text of Dr Hamadoun I. Touré’s speech.

BTRC commissioner, ATM Monirul Alam, admitted that the 800MHz band was declared very important by the International Telecommunication Union, only to point out that the spectrum was allocated to NGGL before the international body’s declaration.

The spectrum was allocated on August 10, 2011 for a year on condition of using it properly. The government renewed its contract last December, 15 months after the original allocation. .

The regulators also denied allegations of wrongdoing and said that NGGL was given the spectrum to help digital connectivity of rural people, which is why it was given free.

However, NGGL, which operates on two bands, 806-816MHz and 847-857MHz, have gone into a joint venture with another local ISP and Moscow-based Multinet to launch a wimax service branded “Ollo”, which provides service only in Dhaka city.

Dhaka Tribune reports.

“There is major demand coming from IT-enabled service providers, online portals, e-commerce companies, stock brokerages, and insurance firms,” said Sunil Gupta, president and chief operating officer at Netmagic Solutions, a data centre company which was acquired by Japan’s NTT in January 2012. “But the ecosystem does not encourage setting up own centres.”

The ecosystem Gupta refers to is hampered by unpredictable power supply, patchy internet connectivity, limited bandwidth and unreliable optical fibre connectivity between different parts of the country. When companies want their systems operating at nearly 100%, infrastructure breakdowns of the sort that India regularly witnesses are simply not acceptable.

Moreover, unlike Singapore, India does not have a data security privacy law, which is vital for companies and governments.

“Singapore offers an ideal combination of reliable infrastructure, a skilled workforce and a commitment to transparent and business-friendly regulations” is how Google explains its choice of the city. Oracle cites “excellent telecommunications infrastructure and efficient, well-qualified manpower”.

Much like India set up software technology parks to nurture its IT services and BPO industry, Singapore is setting up a 13-hectare Data Center Park and inviting companies from across the world. It already has some 20 data centre hubs and offers tax and other incentives.

The report.

“MTNL’s net worth is likely to be completely eroded in the first quarter of the financial year 2013-14, while BSNL’s is likely to remain at Rs 50,000 crore, most of which is locked in fixed assets, at the end of the 2012-13 financial year,” said DoT. The ministry asserted that both the telecom providers faced several legacy issues that have also dented their bottom lines. Further, cost towards employees is far higher than other operators in the industry. In MTNL’s case, for instance, the employee cost as a percentage of revenue was over 103% and for BSNL, nearly half or 49% of the revenues were channeled towards employee costs, as against an industry average of less than 5%.

Privatizing now may not help. They are so behind, it will be almost impossible to revive them. Can you imagine: employee costs are 103 percent of revenue at MTNL.

But the company says they will offer smart phones for as little as 15,000 rupees to close in the market gap of feature phone in the island.

“We will offer smart phones at low prices to the masses to close the market gap of feature phones” Kalpa Perera, Samsung’s manger, mobile business in Sri Lanka said.

Last year the phone company had sold half a million handsets of all types in Sri Lanka. This year the company is trying to double sales, with Smartphones making up 40 percent.

Samsung said consumers lack the knowledge of what a smart device can be used for and they want to create more awareness.

“There is a knowledge gap in the market, for this we have setup Samsung experience zones were the public can go and get the real experience and the feeling of using a smartphone.” Perera said.

The company has setup 25 Samsung experience zones outlets and plans t o set up 100 more this year

Why did Assad act on Tuesday? Perhaps just from fear and a sense that the Internet is, overall, an aid for insurrection. Perhaps it was just a way to send a signal, or maybe it was more tactical. If the Internet gets shut down, rebels may try to access information in ways easier to track. It may be the equivalent of cutting the power to a house and then waiting to see where the flashlights go on. The fact that the Internet came back on a day later gives more credence to that idea. The most sinister possibility is that YouTube videos generally follow massacres. Perhaps the government was planning something that it wanted to keep from the Web.

The war in Syria has been fought in fog, even in this era of supposedly total information. As Dexter Filkins writes so powerfully in the magazine this week: we aren’t sure what’s happening and we don’t know what to do. Having one of the main sources of information shuttered—for a day now, and maybe again later—just leaves us even more in the dark.

The speculation.

But privacy and internet freedom advocates are predictably critical. Pranesh Prakash, director of policy at the Centre for Internet and Society, said:

“In the absence of a strong privacy law that promotes transparency about surveillance and thus allows us to judge the utility of the surveillance, this kind of development is very worrisome. Further, this has been done with neither public nor parliamentary dialogue, making the government unaccountable to its citizens.“

Pavan Duggal, a cyberlaw specialist, said the government has given itself unprecedented powers to monitor private internet records of citizens.

“This system is capable of tremendous abuse,” he said. The Central Monitoring System, being set up by the Centre for Development of Telematics, plugs into telecom gear and gives central and state investigative agencies a single point of access to call records, text messages and emails as well as the geographical location of individuals.

Duggal, who closely follows New Delhi’s battle with internet firms, said there hasn’t been much details from the government on what exactly the system intends to monitor and under what conditions.

Times of India reports.