Tag Archive for 'broadband networks'


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




Canada’s broadband quality below threshold?

Canada is woefully positioned for future internet usage and the quality of current broadband networks is barely enough to cope with current traffic because of a lack of investment by providers, according to a new study.

The survey, conducted by the Oxford Said Business School in London and the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain and released Friday, found that Canada is below the global broadband quality threshold, which measures the proliferation of high-speed internet in a country, as well as the speeds available and the reliability of connections.

While Japan was the only country to meet the study’s standards for future readiness, broadband networks in countries such as Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria scored better than Canada, which ranked 27th out of the 42 nations covered. The United…

Malaysia to cancel WiMAX licenses

The Malaysian government will withdraw some WiMAX licenses “as the market is too crowded.” Earlier this year, the government gave licenses to four companies to operate WiMAX. But they have failed to perform, the country’s concerned minister has alleged. And that’s why the Malaysian government has now decided to revoke the licenses. Read more.

The Malaysian mobile phone providers were denied WiMAX licenses in the first place. The regulator in Bangladesh is also considering to follow the Malaysian footprint.

Are the ISPs (or small and medium enterprises) capable enough to successfully proliferate affordable Internet using broadband wireless in the emerging economies? 

CAPEX and OPEX to run voice networks are fast decreasing, thanks to the evolutionery solutions. But the investment is “huge” for a green field data provider in a developing or underdeveloped economy. How realistic it is to forbid WiMAX for…

Big picture of telecom reforms

Yesterday, I spoke to a large and restive crowd (made so by lack of air conditioning and a delayed start) in Matara (main city in the South of Sri Lanka) at the launch of the Pathfinder Foundation’s first book, a Sinhala translation of Janos Kornai’s Toward a free economy. I was asked to talk about globalization and the relevance of Kornai’s ideas for facing the challenges posed by globalization. In this talk that I pieced together thanks to time zone differences that caused me to wake up at 3 in the morning while in the US, I illustrated the issues referring to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), a broad area of service exports for which efficient, flexible and low-cost telecom is a pre-condition.

I think the talk provides…