Tag Archive for ‘Britain’ at LIRNEasia

Tag Archive for 'Britain'

Call for Papers: Infrastructure Regulation: What works, Why, and How do we know?
Deadline: 05 December 2008.

What is the cheapest remittance mechanism of them all?

on November 3, 2008

Last year as many as 190m migrant workers sent cash home, according to the World Bank. These remittances amounted to US$337 billion, of which US$251 billion went to developing countries. But the cost of sending hard-earned cash depends on both the source and destination. On average, sending US$500 from Spain to Brazil will incur a modest charge of US$7.68, or a 1.5% fee. Sending the same sum from the Netherlands to Indonesia costs a whopping US$86.41, a 17.3% charge. The Netherlands, Germany and Japan tend to be the priciest places to send money from. Costs are generally lowest in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Singapore, America and Britain. (economist.com)

With hard times at our doorsteps, all we can say is a remittance mechanism that employs mobile communications…

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Tags: America, Brazil, Britain, Germany, Indonesia, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Japan, mobile communications, remittance mechanism, remittances, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, The Netherlands, USD.

India adds 9.22 million mobile users in July

Chanuka Wattegama

on August 26, 2008

Indian mobile telecoms firms added 9.2 million users in July, taking subscribers in the world’s fastest growing wireless market to nearly 300 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said on Monday.

Leading mobile firm Bharti Airtel signed up 2.7 million customers, enough for it to overtake state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd as India’s largest telecom firm by total subscribers, including fixed-line subscribers.

Second-ranked mobile firm Reliance Communications added 1.75 million customers, and No. 3 Vodafone Essar, controlled by Britain’s Vodafone Plc, added 1.76 million.

India is the world’s fastest-growing market for wireless services and the second-largest market for such services after China, with growth fuelled by cheap handsets and call rates as low as 1 U.S. cent a minute.

See the full story in Reuters here.

…

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Tags: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Bharti Airtel, Britain, China, India, Reliance Communications, Reuters, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, United States, Vodafone Plc, wireless market, WIRELESS SERVICES.

This is how a technology dies: Telex phases out

Rohan Samarajiva

on February 1, 2008

Telex | A faint ping | Economist.com

In March Britain’s BT will be the latest big company to cease offering telex services. “All good things come to an end,” says a spokesman. Britain will then join around 30 countries including Austria, Germany and Russia that no longer provide telex through their national telecoms operators.But that clears the way for nimble, low-cost competitors. These have turned round the technology. As well as maintaining the old-fashioned service involving terminals and dedicated lines, they provide telex services both over phone lines and over the internet—in effect, making it a secure and ultra-reliable variant of e-mail. One, SwissTelex, is a spin-off from the Swiss national telecoms operator that offers international telex services and has taken over BT’s network. Another is…

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Tags: America, Austria, Britain, Germany, internet—in effect, Russia, technology dies, telecoms operator, telex services.

Telecom Cook Islands Completes Commercial Deployment Of GSM Softswitch

Chanuka Wattegama

on January 15, 2008

Telecom Cook Islands Ltd, the sole provider of telecommunications in the Cook Islands, has completed commercial deployment of ADC’s UltraWave GSM softswitch. Telecom Cook Islands, which has been in operation since July 1991, is a private company owned by Telecom New Zealand Ltd. (60%) and the Cook Islands Government (40%).

The new softswitch - which upgrades Telecom Cook’s core wireless network to more efficient, IP-based technology in order to reduce costs and enable value-added services such as integrated SMS, voicemail, GPRS and pre-paid calling, has been in deployment since September 2007, and the final network cutover was accomplished last week. The UltraWave solution includes an overall expansion of the network’s capacity to 15,000 from 8,000 GSM subscribers.

Read the full story here.

(Background info: This group of islands…

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Tags: ADC, Britain, Central Intelligence Agency, Cook Islands, Cook Islands Government, GPRS, GSM, Hawaii, integrated SMS, IP-based technology, New Zealand, Of GSM Softswitch Telecom Cook Islands Ltd, pre-paid calling, SMS, South Pacific Ocean, Telecom Cook, Telecom Cook Islands, Telecom New Zealand Ltd., telecommunications, voicemail, Wireless Network.

GPhone aims to conquer mobile net

Lorraine Salazar

on October 11, 2007

Miguel Helft
October 11, 2007, New York Times

For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google have been working in secret on a mobile-phone project.

As word of their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists before a speech by Steve Jobs.

But the GPhone is not likely to be the second coming of the iPhone and Google’s goals are very different from Apple’s.

Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile internet, a small market today but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile-phone makers to offer phones based on its software,…

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Tags: ad systems, advertising services, Android, Andy Rubin, Arun Sarin, AT&T, Boston, Britain, Celunite, Dan Olschwang, DoubleClick, Doug Smith, Envisioneering Group, Eric Schmidt, Federal Communications Commission, Google, IDC, JumpTap, Karsten Weide, large group, last carrier, Linux, Mahesh Veerina, Medio Systems, Microsoft, Miguel Helft, mobile advertising, mobile communications, mobile Internet, mobile internet portals, mobile phones, mobile search, mobile software, mobile versions, mobile-phone operators, mobile-phone platform applications, mobile-phone software, New York Times, online advertising, online success, operating system, operating systems, phone software platform, Rich Miner, Richard Doherty, Scott Cleland, search engine, search engines, software applications, start-up, Steve Jobs, technology*, telecommunications, United States, United States Senate, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone Group, web browser, wireless carriers, wireless industry, wireless market, wireless spectrum.

The trials and tribulations of connecting Rwanda to the WWW

Tahani Iqbal

on July 23, 2007

How the technical, political and business realities in Africa hinder technological development and connectivity there.

Africa, Offline: Waiting for the Web

Attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses have made little headway on the continent. Less than 4 percent of Africa’s population is connected to the Web; most subscribers are in North African countries and the republic of South Africa.

A lack of infrastructure is the biggest problem. In many countries, communications networks were destroyed during years of civil conflict, and continuing political instability deters governments or companies from investing in new systems. E-mail messages and phone calls sent from some African countries have to be routed through Britain, or even the United States, increasing expenses and delivery times. About 75 percent of African Internet…

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Tags: Africa, Britain, communications networks, fiber optic, high-speed Internet, high-speed Internet service, Internet access, Internet Age, Internet service, Internet traffic, Lawrence H. Landweber, Republic of South Africa, Rwanda, slower satellite technology, telecommunications, United States, University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin.

Britain’s digital divide remains unbridged: Ofcom Report

saeed

on May 2, 2006

by Martyn Warwick - 28/4/2006 11:57:47

http://www.telecomtv.com/news.asp?cd_id=6652&url=news.asp?cd_id=6652

Ofcom, the UK’s uber-regulator of telecoms and the media has just published its Communications Market Report for the Nations and Regions of the UK. It analyses the availability, take-up and usage of telecoms, Internet and broadcasting services and applications across the whole of the British Isles. The watchdog will use the comprehensive new report as the empirical basis for much of its ongoing and future regulation

Ofcom conducted the research late last year, and, although things have moved on a bit since, the new report provides the most up-to-date snapshot of the British telecoms, web and broadcasting landscape that we have, and it shows not only that the UK has a marked digital divide but also that it is proving difficult…

2 Comments
Tags: ABC, bandwidth services, Blair administration, Britain, British Isles, Broadband, broadband access, broadband infrastructure, broadband Internet access, cellular telephone, Digital TV, Ed Richards, GBP, Internet access, London, Martyn Warwick, mobile and fixed telecoms services, Northern Ireland, Ofcom, phone services, satellite TV, SMS, socio-economic group, United Kingdom, Wales.

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