There was a time when Mira Lira wasn’t able to run her online business effectively out of this former mining town 60 miles east of Phoenix. Not on a dial-up connection.
“I use the Internet daily for e-mail and marketing,” Lira said.
But today Lira is enjoying broadband Internet access as she provides virtual administrative help for offices around the country through Miracle Executive Services.
The relief came in the form of small white boxes with tiny antennas atop homes, the school, even a light pole at the baseball field. Lira happily shows these to a visitor to illustrate what a wireless Internet network means to this community.
“Having high-speed in rural communities is like having a sewer system; it’s needed for a healthy community,” Lira said. Since 2007,…
Tags: Arizona, Broadband, broadband Internet access, e-medicine, former mining town, HIGH-speed Internet access, Mira Lira, online, online education, Phoenix, United States, USD, WI-VOD, wireless Internet network.
Everyone is betting big on the telecom growth story as it is steadily gaining traction amidst the global financial turmoil. This sector has emerged as a big contributor to the GDP and has recorded a 42.2% growth in the quarter ended Sep ‘08.
Telecom is being seen as a significant contributor to the country’s foreign direct investment (FDI). The launch of 3G will give a big boost to services. The ministry has allowed foreign players to bid for 3G licences, that will in turn ensure increased attention from foreign investors. The industry attracted about $2bn as FDI during April to September this year, which is a significant jump from $1.2bn during the last calendar year.
India currently has a subscriber base of 373 million. The figures are…
For a country that stood at the bottom of the pyramid in terms of telecom penetration a decade ago, 2008 was a watershed when India’s subscriber base topped 350 million users to make its network the second largest in the world after China, displacing the US.
The significant achievement was made possible by the mobile telephony segment of communications, which was once thought to be a gizmo for the rich - what with a tariff of Rs.16.80 per call when the telecom revolution began in the country in the early 1990s. But with tariff falling to 40 paise a call and incoming calls becoming free, mobile telephony began to appeal to the masses.
In fact, 2008 also saw Indian telecom operators add a whopping 8-10 million new…
Electricity is said to be the only infrastructure the twentieth century communist rulers have truly cared for. The practice may have had its origins in Lenin’s efforts for full electrification of the Soviet state, started in 1920 (aka GOELRO Plan). Nevertheless it makes perfect sense. Let the masses have electricity so that they can switch on television sets. They will not worry about anything else.
The further you travel from Colombo, the more you wonder whether Sri Lanka too had been an ex-communist state. The roads get narrower and mucky – sometimes even 20 kmph is high speed - and mobiles work intermittently – only when you reach within a cell town. Still you have electricity – almost anywhere. Even at Pitakumbura Navodya School, where we…
Tags: ADSL, Broadband, Colombo, electricity, GOELRO Plan, Lenin, Ministry of Education, Pitakumbura Navodya School, Soviet state, Sri Lanka, term solution, the Ministry, USD, WiMax.
Of the 4,283 bribery payments documented by the investigators, 2,505 (more than half) were made in relation to telecom contracts. Of the total of USD 1,400.7 million disbursed, USD 813.9 million (more than half) were for telecom. However, the complaint documents only three specific cases of large bribes paid in Vietnam, Bangladesh and Nigeria, all to government officials or politicians (including functionaries in government owned telecos). These three instances account for only slightly over USD 18 million, less than 3% of the total spent on telecom. This suggests rich pickings await the investigator who starts work on the court documents.
In 2002, Siemens COM paid approximately $140,000 in bribes in connection with a tender worth approximately $35 million for the supply of equipment and services related…
Four years to history, ‘Your tears are mine’ (see below) was my reaction to Asian tsunami. Reproduced in multiple sites, it was recited once in a remembrance event. Though written more in a Sri Lankan context, let me pick it again today, to remember all 225,000 lives lost, in the worst tsunami in recent history - that caused vast damage to four countries LIRNEasia closely works in, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India.
Not my every wish was granted. The aftermath of tsunami, instead of creating a division-free society demonstrated how pathetically the disparities were amplified. Still the humanity did not collapse on December 2004. We did not let tsunami block our way.
Four years later, having completed the recovery process, most tsunami victimized societies stand on…
Tags: Chanuka Wattegama, Disaster Management, India, Indonesia, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Lanka Software Foundation, Maldives, Nargis, Sahana, Sri Lanka, Telecom Authority of the Maldives, Thailand, tsunami, Your tears are mine.
The looks may deceive, but this is a radio station. Prabhavi Community Radio - the first Internet community radio in Sri Lanka comes from Prabhavi Resources Center, Weranketagoda, Ampara - the post-conflict district in Eastern province (8 hours travel from Colombo). It operates from a Nenasala, one of the 500 odd telecenters funded by the World Bank under e-Sri Lanka program. A brainchild of Ajith Karunarathne, it runs as a nonprofit venture entirely by volunteers Asiri (red shirt, first photo) and his team.
Strangely, this radio station connects to Internet thru a 128 kbps pipe. That is all available, though both major broadband providers claim they cover the Ampara town – 15 km away. The link is from not any of them. The unidirectional antenna - in…
Tags: Ajith Karunarathne, Ampara, AT-Tester, Batticaloa, Broadband, Broadband benchmarking, e-Sri Lanka, Nenasala, Nenasala Information Technology Training Centre, Prabhavi Community Radio, telecentre, Weranketagoda, World Bank.
LIRNEasia’s annual report for the 2007-08 period is now available. Click here to download. Click here for previous annual reports.
On January 16, 2008 a bus bomb went off killing 25 and injuring more than 60, in a remote area of Moneragala, arguably the least connected district in the island. Within less than two hours, the international news channels were up with clips. Nuwan Sameera (inset) FTPed them from his Nenasala telecenter in Bibile town – about one hour journey away.
Nuwan operates just within 200 m from a telecom tower (see photo) but bureaucracy is bureaucracy. Spending World Bank money generously, ICTA, the implementation agency of Nenasala telecenter network under the e-Sri Lanka program, first provided a VSAT link from a different operator. (Perhaps the tower came later and fortunately, and Nuwan does not have to foot the bill, about US$ 750 per month, in…
Tags: Bibile, ICTA, implementation agency, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Moneragala, Nenasala, Nuwan Sameera, Rs, Sri Lanka, telecenter network, USD, VSAT.
Ambuluwawa, about 1,100 m above sea level, is probably the highest point in the vicinity of Gampola. Not surprisingly, all telecom operators exploit the geography. Transmission stations/towers encircle the summit. (See above) That is what one calls infrastructure.
Just 10 km away, Sirimalwatte Ananda thero, a young and energetic Buddhist monk, runs a Nenasala, a telecenter established under the World Bank funded e-Sri Lanka program. He is not content with the Internet facilities. He pays Rs. 11,250 (about USD 100) per month for a 128 kbps link of inconsistent speed. This is twice more what a user in Colombo pay for her, not 128 k but 2 Mbps link – from the same operator.
Use simple maths. Ananda thero pays THIRTY TWO (32) times more per kbps than…
Tags: Colombo, e-Sri Lanka, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Internet facilities, Nenasala, Nenasala Information Technology Training Centre, Rs, Sri Lanka, telecenter network, telecenter operator, telecentre, USD, World Bank.
There are still some who talk about the value of government ownership of telecom operators. In their talk of national interest and local control, rarely is mentioned the word corruption.
The recent case in which Siemens pleaded guilty to massive “accounting violations” and paid large fines should be of interest to all who care about transparency. More than the fines, the court record is of great significance. Investigators and the law firm for Siemens amassed massive amounts of data, starting from the five terabytes of information seized from Siemens offices at the start. They have 100 million documents from 1700 interviews conducted in 34 countries. The lawyers and forensic auditors had more than 1.5 million billable hours. This is the treasure trove that corruption hunters…
Undersea cable operators have a nasty habit of laying cables close to each other. When they get cut, they tend to go in sets. The first question I have is why Maldives would lose 100% of traffic when it is connected by two undersea cables, one to Colombo and the other to India. That’s serious redundancy, especially for a tiny country of 300,000+ people. I can understand the traffic on Reliance’s Flag system going down because it was Atlantic focused. But most of Sri Lanka’s Internet traffic runs west via the Pacific. The very fact that I am posting this is evidence that Sri Lanka’s connectivity to the US is unaffected.
So it is possible that Dhiraagu was unaffected. Can readers from the Maldives shed…
“Sri Lanka’s leading mobile operator is creating a broadband revolution. By leveraging HSPA mobile broadband technology, it is bringing affordable access to all levels of society, from the wealthiest businesses to the poorest villages.”
Thus starts the GSMA case study on the Dialog mobile broadband. It is just four pages and in easily readable format – but still enough new stuff, that makes it a worthy read.
Selected extracts:
- Dialog estimates that the rural economy generates $350 million per month compared to $110 million in the urban economy.
- Dialog’s success lies in pioneering the low ARPU business model. Eighty-seven percent of the operator’s 5 million mobile customers are prepaid with an ARPU of less than US$4.
- In 2007, the expanding nationwide network was supercharged with HSPA, giving users access to…
BizFirst this week will focus on LIRNEasia’s Broadband benchmarking research. This will be broadcast over MTV and Shakthi TV simultaneously, on December 19, at 9.30 pm.
Apart from me, R. Tirumurthy of IIT Madras – the thought leadership of the team that developed the test software package will participate in this program. We talk about the Broadband scenario in Sri Lanka, with the issues and how we propose to approach the Quality of Service issues.
The same program will be repeated on Sunday Dec 21, 2008 at 12 noon over the same channels.
More information about LIRNEasia’s Broadband Benchmarking work is available at:
http://www.broadbandasia.info
http://lirneasia.net/projects/2008-2010/broadband-benchmarking-qos-20
http://lirneasia.net/projects/2006-07/bbqos
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