Chief among its goals, the F.C.C. wants future broadband investment to be focused on the areas where gaps in service remain. It will direct this investment in part through the Universal Service Fund, a program for telephone and Internet access, costing $8 billion annually, paid through a phone bill surcharge. Over time, the subsidies for Internet will increase and those for phone will dissipate, with the knowledge that people can make online calls.

“Some of the details are lacking, particularly on Universal Service Fund reform,” said Dan Mitchell, a vice president for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, a group that represents rural providers and worries that the proposals to change phone carrier costs will curtail the providers’ abilities to expand infrastructure.

The FCC is asking broadband and smartphone users in USA to use their broadband testing tools to help the feds and consumers know what speeds are actually available, not just promised by the nations’ telecoms, reports wired.com. Starting yesterday (March 11), netizens can go to the FCC’s Broadband.gov site, enter their address and test their broadband speed using one of two testing tools.

Broadband connection testing isn’t new, and is freely available online, but this might mark the first time that individual tests help to lead to informed policy making, says the writer Ryan Singel.

That is not correct Mr. Singel, as nothing is new here. LIRNEasia has been doing it for at least one and half years.

Broadband users in Chennai, Colombo, Dhaka and New Delhi could have used our own broadband test application AT-Tester, from www.broadbandasia.info the same way now the US broadband users will do. They could even enter that information to our central database, which can be then analysed.

That’s not all. Just read the following para from the same report. Don’t you find anything familiar?

Crowdsourcing this data is a brilliant move, given that telecoms have long fought against telling federal regulators what areas they cover and at what speed, arguing that information will be used by competitors to poach their customers. The data can also be used as a way to prevent telecoms from over-promising and under-delivering on upload and download speeds. If you listen closely you might actually hear the telecom companies hitting the backspace key to revise the speed numbers on their promotional fliers.

Isn’t this exactly what we have been doing?

FCC,  welcome to the club!

Read the full story in wired.com here.

Here are few more news reports on FCC’s move.

FCC releases Internet speed test tool – Reuters

FCC Unveils Speed Test - Bloomberg Business Week

FCC Launches Broadband Test Site for Consumers – PC World

“Google, indeed, appears to be playing a chess game,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “If they can create an even mildly credible commitment to offer superfast broadband to the home, it could strike fear in the hearts of cable and telcos, stimulating an arms race of investment — just as they did in the auction for spectrum a few years ago.”

In a post on its corporate blog, Google said it planned to build and test a high-speed fiber optic broadband network capable of allowing people to surf the Web at a gigabit a second, or about 100 times the speed of many broadband connections. Thase trial could be offered in several communities and extend to as many as 500,000 people.

In an interview, Richard S. Whitt, Google’s Washington telecommunications and media counsel, said Google was not entering the broadband or Internet service provider business, but rather was using the test to push the industry into offering faster Internet access at lower cost. “This is a business model nudge and an innovation nudge.”

The answer may interest the new boss, Anusha Palpita, who took over the reins few days back. “There is no problem with the administrative aspects, but I will have to get a grip on the technical side of TRCSL’s functions and duties”, he said to The Island- Sunday Edition yesterday. “As financial management is my forte, I need to study the technical factors involved”.

The new Director General is going to run the TRC on a part-time basis, writes Samarajiva, in addition to running the government information department. He too does not appear to have any special expertise in telecommunication or in regulation. With the part-time, ex officio Chair being the most over-burdened official in the country, the Secretary to the President, one wonders who is actually going to run the TRC. Or perhaps the thinking is that it is beyond redemption. Is it that the Special Committee to Develop Broadband is seen as an adequate substitute.

Read Rohan Samarajiva’s column in LBO.

For further informaton please click here.

Admission Free but seats. PRIOR REGISTRATION IS MANDATORY.

The NYT today carried a story that says many of the things we have been talking about for the past two years.

Tracking the speed of Internet service is becoming more and more important as everyone asks the Internet to do more than handle e-mail messages and Web pages. A few lines of text can take its time arriving, but applications sending voice calls or streaming video become unusable if there is too much delay in delivery.

Some Web sites and software packages let users test the speed of data through their Internet service provider, or I.S.P. All the providers offer a glimpse at the quality of the connection, but that information is just one bit of data; each new request for a Web site or a file involves dozens of computers, and any of them could be a weak link.

“Even in Web browsing, pages are getting more complicated,” Professor Odlyzko said. “You click on a link and you end up setting dozens of connections. Ads are being served. You end up doing a database lookup. Any extra latency gets compounded because you have many, many stages.”

The difference between the QoSE problem in the US and the rest of the world is that they live practically inside the Internet cloud. The entire discussion about what the ISP is responsible for does not apply in our parts, where the ISP has to get us to the Internet cloud through Singapore or wherever. ISP’s responsibility is not limited to the ISP domain, but extends to the first landing in the continental US (a point we took from the Singapore IDA). When we used the AT Tester in N America, we tested it using sites in Europe.

“The Telecom Regulatory Commission is conducting its own investigations on mobile broadband speeds advertized by operators,” Priyantha Kariyapperuma, director general of the TRC said.

“If any mobile operator is found guilty of providing slower speeds than advertized, the TRC will take action against them. Our report will be out in about two to three weeks.”

A study on broadband speeds in South Asian countries conducted by the regional think-tank LIRNEasia showed Sri Lankan surfers were getting less speed than claimed by telecom companies.

I hope that the TRC will become more reasonable after a few weeks pass by and the grumpiness wears off. Otherwise we will have to ask someone to investigate why the TRC was inactive all these years while consumers were complaining, bloggers were ranting and peer regulatory agencies taking action.

In the meantime, we invite the TRC to use the rich information accumulated in our website since 2006 May (3.5 years ago) when we ran the first post on the subject. Prior to that Mr Sanath Siriwardene, who communicated with us through the blog had made extensive presentations to the TRC in writing and in person and had even published some articles in the media. I am sure Mr Siriwardene will also be happy to share his expertise. In particular, we invite the TRC to look at our benchmark data where we show that both Bangladesh and Bhutan now have lower leased-line prices than Sri Lanka. When competition forces retail prices down while input costs remain high, quality is bound to suffer.

At LIRNEasia, we all do our own CSR. Rohan and Harsha are perhaps among the most invited speakers to business conferences. Helani taught Information Systems to Masters students. Call this mine.

I do not blog. That is, if you do not count occasional posts at this site and comments on few others. I hate being called a blogger (Contrast to ‘Kathandara-kaaraya’ or story-wallah, whose Embarkation card identifies him a ‘Blogger’. Come on, what is wrong with ‘Engineer’?) Neither I have free time like Akkandi of UNDP Afghanistan, who enjoys the break after being airlifted few weeks back, or Beyond Frame – the bizarre character, going by the frequency of his posts, who should certainly be jobless.  Apart from that, typing Sinhala is a pain.

Still I blend with Sinhala bloggers – virtually, most of the time. These are nice people, though a bit weird. I start my day reading blogs, not newspapers.  Once in a while I find myself in the middle of a heated discussion. Sinhala bloggers have added significantly to our project on Broadband QoSE, so that some formally work with us. Malinthe, for example, does QoSE testing and Kalinga beta tests mobile versions of AT-Tester.

Sinhala bloggers do worthy job. If not for them, the online Sinhala content in the net would have been pathetic. These volunteers bridge that gap bringing content of diversified subjects varying from Buddhism to Politics and Cosmology to Literature, catering to a massive readership more conversant with vernacular. As of the last count the Sinhala blog reader syndicates 600 blogs, more than what Kottu.org does.

First Sinhala bloggers’ meeting at Excel World yesterday, was mostly an informal gathering. Finally we give faces to those avatras in cyber space. Sudaraka discovers every Sinhala blogger taller, while I find the frivolous ‘Makara’ (Dragon) is a PhD student in NUS. Pity that we miss the anonymous political bloggers – Beyond Frame, Taboo Subjects, Ramachandra, W3Lanka, Migara and the Boondi crowd. Perhaps they fear the white vans. I do not blame them – given the nasty stuff they pen.

I am happy that I make a positive outcome. Stating soon Sunday Lakbima will publish extracts of Sinhala blogs, just like Sunday Leader does English ones. Sundara Nihathamani De Mel, Editor, Lakbima Sunday Edition readily agrees to my proposal. It is more work as we are yet to settle the issues with Sinhala fonts (Donald, art thou listening?) but the good news is it will happen soon.  

Finally, thanks Kalinga for the opportunity. Sinhala bloggers, keep up your good work.

(Photos: Ravimal Bandara and Rachintha Jayawardhana)

Capital investment in Sri Lanka’s telecom infrastructure has plummeted amid a price war and high taxation which will crimp expansion in the future and broadband roll out in the island, top telecom operators said.

“Before the price war each operator was spending about 150 to 200 million (US dollars) a year in capital expenditure,” Dumindra Ratnayake, head of Tigo Sri Lanka said at a forum organized in Colombo by LirneAsia, a regional policy research body.

“This year all operators put together may have invested about 150 million.”

We pointed out that LIRNEasia’s recommendation about imposing contention ratios of 1:20 (Business) and 1:50 (Residential) had been adopted by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), with minor changes.  TRAI mandates contention ratios of 1:30 for Business and 1:50 for Residential.

The advertisement also presented “models to emulate”:  India and Singapore.  Even though the two countries have set different parameters, they exemplify good regulatory practice.

We also compared value for money in Sri Lankan broadband in relation to Canada and the USA.  This clearly demonstrated that Sri Lankan users get less value for their money than the North American users, in contrast to the situation with regards to mobile telephony.

The advertisement also invited users to download the free AT tester software from www.broadbandasia.info.

The advertisement.

As neither we nor most of our readers do not have access to the thread it was posted, we like to continue the discussion here.

__________________________________________________________________

Hi people,

I come from one of the ten largest economies in the world, with nearly 200 million people, 8.5 million km2, and 5.564 municipalities, where 94% of the people do *not* have access to any form of broadband – the “B” in the famous BRIC acronym.

I am just coming out of the IGF workshop “Expanding broadband access for a global Internet economy: development dimensions”. I left the workshop a bit shocked with the concepts expressed, not by the AT&T representative (who not surprisingly said AT&T subdsidiaries countries other than the USA should be considered local companies because they employ local people), who as usual is just doing his job in defending the so-called “market”, but by other speeches which seemed to completely ignore that, in most of our contries, there is a de facto monopoly or cartel situation regarding the telco infrastructure, and that public policy ought to centrally take this into account if the aim is to universalize broadband access with quality to all families.

One of the speakers (from LIRNEasia) said that “lower prices require lower costs” and therefore one should just “phase out universal access levies and rationalize taxes”. I retorted that pricing per Mb/s of ADSL broadband in São Paulo might be 65 times higher than the same price charged by the same company in London — and therefore no amount of levies or taxes would justify such scandalous pricing difference, not to speak of the much lower QoS.

I suggested that, instead of eliminating the universal service funds (whose levies are a very small portion of price composition of broadband), we should insist on reforming policy regarding the use of these funds. The reply I heard was that it makes no sense to keep funds that are not used or are squandered (!!). Impact of the fund’s levy in Brazil is just 1% of the price of the fixed line telephone connection — its impact in the price of broadband (a separate bill even if the service is not unbundled) is zero.

There was also a recommendation that we should be “gentle on QoS” to facilitate things regarding universalization of access — fascinating. Again, examples abound in which telcos guarantee only 10% of the nominal contracted rate, and in practice this might be even less. Should we just agree with absurds like this in the name of “it is better to have something than nothing”???

And then there is the crucial question of unbundling, central to the policy debate in the developed countries as it directly impacts universalization through an effective reduction of prices for the final user. It is a major challenge for broadband public policy in developing countries, where regulators are usually in the hands of the telco cartels. The word was not mentioned (not a single time) by anyone in the panel, as if irrelevant to the development dimensions of broadband.

The speaker also mentioned that the “need” to reduce costs for the big telcos would require reduction of international bandwidth costs. One of the two big carriers in Brazil, a Brazilian conglomerate, owns redundant fiber running from Brazil to Miami in rings passing through countries in the Caribbean and Central America. They own their own international link, in summary. So do the other carrier in the de facto duopoly — a major operator from Europe. This does not make any difference in pricing for the final user, although it does contribute to their profits in Brazil being far higher than in Europe for example.

Finally, the fascination with mobile. Of course the AT&T speaker started his talk by waving a fancy iPhone to the audience — mostly natural for a commercial wireless giant. But the infoDev representative and others mentioned mobile as a “solution” for the poor, and not even bothered to separate the discussion in the two main topics here: first, the mobile phone as a connectivity device to enable the user to fully use the Internet through a friendly human-machine interface, be it a common PC or special equipment for people with disabilities; second, the phone itself as *the* alternative to the full user experience that a PC or similar might provide. It seems the agency bureaucrats are satisfied with having two castes of users: a small minority of the ones who can fully use the Internet as it evolves requiring more and more multimedia capabilities on both sides (server and client), and the ones relegated to a small device on which it is barely possible to type small messages.

In the first regional LA&C preparatory meeting for the IGF, in 2008, a representative of a major telco said we should not worry about bringing the next billion to the Internet — they have cell phones, so they are connected already, problem solved. I wonder if this executive would take the place of a carpenter looking for a job, who has to compose and send by email his CV together with images of letters of recommendation to his would-be employer, and had nothing but a cell phone (smart or not) to do it. Not to speak of comparing the executive’s thin-fingered hands of a pianist with the big callous hands of the carpenter.

fraternal regards

–c.a.

How it applies to Internet and broadband is what Rohan Samarajiva, Chair and CEO, LIRNEasia explained in his keynote speech at the workshop ‘Expanding access to the Internet and broadband for development’ on November 16, 2009, at the Internet Governance forum 2009.  His presentation entitled, ‘How the developing world may participate in the global Internet Economy:  Innovation driven by competition’, can be downloaded here.

The session was chaired by Dimitri Ypsilanti, Head of Information, Communication and Consumer Policy Division, OECD. The discussants were Tim Kelly, Lead ICT Policy Specialist, infoDev – World Bank, Olfat A. Monsef, Vice President of National Telecommunication Regulator, Telecom Services, Egypt, Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director, Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Virat Bhatia, President – External Affairs, AT&T, South Asia will be the discussants.

The workshop is jointly organized by OECD and infoDev.

We participated in the 1st conference in 2007 and found it to be quite useful. Our work on broadband benchmarking started as a result.

This was how a reader responded when Indian Express online carried a story on the dissemination of the findings of LIRNEasia’s broadband research at the GRT Grand Hotel convention centre in Chennai on November 3.

Another story in ‘The Hindu’ quoted Timothy Gonsalves PhD, Head of Computer Science and Engineering Department, IIT-Madras, our research partner from IIT Madras saying the implication [of the latency introduced by complex routing of network traffic] for consumers is that though a user may get close to the speeds advertised by the operator while accessing servers within India, the download speeds from an international server for even a supposedly fast broadband connection would only be in the 200 kbps range.

The event was attended by broadband operators, users and researchers. Helani Galpaya, Chanuka Wattegama and Timothy Gonsalves, PhD made presentations while Ashok Jhunjhunwala, PhD chaired the panel discussion.

Apart from the reported, the following were stories published by Indian, Sri Lanka and UK media.

“Broadband speed suffers most in accessing international servers” – The Hindu

Sri Lankan broadband users getting less: study – Lanka Business Online

South Asian broadband stuck in international bottleneck: study – Lanka Business Online

Developed countries getting better value from broadband – top 10 broadband

Sri Lanka’s broadband shows over advertising and under delivery – Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Excerpt below:

“There is disparity in the advertised broadband speed and the actual speed, according to the findings of a research project jointly carried out by Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies Asia (LIRNEasia), TeNeT Group of the IIT Madras.There is disparity in the advertised broadband speed and the actual speed, according to the findings of a research project jointly carried out by Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies Asia (LIRNEasia), TeNeT Group of the IIT Madras.

“Prof Timothy A Gonsalves, professor and head of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT-M said the actual speed, measured using an open source-based software application named AT-Tester, showed that the advertised broadband speeds in the country can rarely help in selecting a broadband package.

“In the south Asian context, it is usual for the operators to advertise higher speed than they could offer. This has been observed in the testing done in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,” he said.”

Download the presentations made by Helani Galpaya, Chanuka Wattegama and Timothy Gonsalves, PhD.