Tag Archive for 'cellular telephone'

Pakistan focuses on expanding broadband services

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on August 29, 2008
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Chairman Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Dr. Muhammad Yaseen has said that data usage is increasing in Pakistan and proliferation of broadband services will help establish Information Society. He was talking in a seminar on The Future of Mobile Communications in Pakistan.

Chairman PTA said that for mobile phone industry future direction could be value addition and innovation in services including mobile commerce, video streaming, and high speed mobile internet.

He said presently broadband costs are high in the country but broadband usage was showing growth in the recent quarter. He said that PTA has carried out surveys to know the socio economic impact of mobile phone, which revealed that with the introduction of mobile communications productivity has increased significantly.

He said that the spectacular rise of telecom industry…

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Bahrain too forces mobile users to re-register (but for a different reason)

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on August 25, 2008
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A campaign to crackdown on people making nuisance calls as well as hoax calls to emergency services was launched yesterday.It will require all mobile phone owners in Bahrain registering with their operators before the end of the year.

Telecommunication Regulatory Authority general director Alan Horne said that there were around 600,000 Batelco and Zain mobile telephone owners whose names were not registered.

People who use pre-paid cards will be asked to register their telephones at Batelco and Zain offices as from September 1 and those who fail to do so will only be able to receive and make emergency calls as of January 1.

They will have to turn up at one of the operators’ offices with identification.

That means that more than 5,000 people a day will have…

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Sri Lanka: Udaya Gammanpila says Environmental Levy does not burden public

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on August 19, 2008
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Responding to Rohan Samarajiva’s views on newly implemented Environmental levy in Lankadeepa last week, Central Environmental Authority Chairman Udaya Gammanpila calls it essential and the ‘first progressive tax’ in Sri Lanka. Assuring it does not burden public, he says any tax can be initially unpopular but the impact should be seen in long term. (Lankadeepa, August 19, 2008)

These are his points in brief:

1. If not for the Environmental levy, the government has to find money to address environmental issues by increasing either VAT or customs charges. That will raise prices in general. It is unfair. Why should villagers who have never seen a mobile phone contribute for its removal whenever they buy flour to make rotis? Instead we have introduced a tax only on pollutants.…

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Sri Lanka: Road to ‘Dharma Rajya’ does not look ‘toll-free’

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on August 14, 2008
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Central Environmental Authority Chairman Udaya Gammanpila calls the new ‘Environmental tax’ essential, pro-poor and progressive. Releasing used mobile phones and CFL bulbs to environment is dangerous, he warns, with a long list of hazardous chemicals that would perhaps put a chemistry professor to shame. He wants to collect them for recycling.  The tax money will be used to build recycling plants.

Not everybody agrees.

Talking to Sunday Observer, Chartered Accountant cum Tax Consultant N.R. Gajendran, Partner, Gajma and Co. claims the Green levies have been introduced to cover the Government’s expenditure on the SAARC Summit and the Provincial Council elections. Revenue proposals, says he, should be made through the budget and not as interim proposals.

“A mobile phone is not a luxury item. A tax on the phone will…

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Sri Lanka: Taxing poor to clear the e-waste of rich

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on August 3, 2008
.

Two thousand and five hundred years ago, Gautama Buddha correlated tax collectors to bees. A righteous ruler, said he, taking the Liccavis as an example, collects tax without making it a burden on people, in the same was a bee collects honey from a flower (without damaging it).

Such wise words were not always heeded.

Four new levies, reported Financial Times today, will come into force this month under the Environmental Conservation Levy Act No. 8 of 2008.

All communication towers will be charged Rs 50,000, according to the Central Environmental Authority (CEA) Chairman Udaya Gammanpila, who explained it was done to ‘induce telecommunication companies to share the towers’.

Sharing telecom towers is good, but if Mr. Chairman thinks that happens just by forcing them to pay for erecting…

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California judge rules early cell phone termination fees illegal

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on August 1, 2008
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In one of the most significant legal rulings in the tech industry this year, a Superior Court judge in California has ruled that the practice of charging consumers a fee for ending their cell phone contract early is illegal and violates state law.

The preliminary, tentative judgment orders Sprint Nextel to pay customers $18.2 million in reimbursements and, more importantly, orders Sprint to stop trying to collect another $54.7 million from California customers (some 2 million customers total) who have canceled their contracts but refused or failed to pay the termination fee.

While an appeal is inevitable, the ruling could have massive fallout throughout the industry. Without the threat of levying early termination fees, the cellular carriers lose the power that’s enabled them to lock customers into…

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Pakistan has lowest international telecom prices (in the world!) but not to SAARC neighbors

by
Rohan Samarajiva
on July 17, 2008
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A recent LIRNEasia media outreach effort timed to coincide with the upcoming SAARC Summit in Colombo has been picked up by AFP.

Leaving aside the question of the operators in the SAARC countries collectively lowering their termination rates to make possible more reasonable intra-SAARC call charges, the data also show that Pakistan has the overall lowest international telecom prices and Nepal has the highest. Hopefully, some of these prices will come down, now that the comparisons have been made!

South Asian leaders urged to slash telco tariffs - LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE

Calls were cheapest in Pakistan, where fixed and mobile phone users pay three US cents a minute to call many non-SAARC destinations, including the United States and Hong Kong.

But users pay 12 US cents to call Bangladesh and…

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Will the TRC allow parents to keep in touch with their children using mobiles?

by
Rohan Samarajiva
on July 15, 2008
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In a TV interview yesterday, I said that the new anti-sharing and certificate-carrying rules promulgated by the TRC would affect the poor disproportionately, because the rich could buy their children phones, while sharing was the only option for most Sri Lankans. Indeed, a special package for parents wanting to be in touch with their children in these uncertain times has been just announced (below).

But the question that a commenter raised on the other discussion thread is whether it is any longer possible to buy a mobile for your own child.

If a National ID is required to own a SIM, and the child does not have a NIC, it seems to follow that the child cannot have a mobile.

Has anyone studied the ramifications of the rule…

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Europe mobile phone operators warn that price caps hinder investment

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on July 3, 2008
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Europe’s mobile phone industry will today mount a last-ditch effort to ward off strict price caps on text messages and data downloads within the EU by warning that heavy regulation is cutting capital spending and profit margins.

With Viviane Reding, EU telecoms commissioner, poised to propose a new round of price caps this month, mobile operators claim their capital spending has already slipped from 13% of revenues in 2005 to 11% last year - and could fall further.

The GSM Association - the global trade body representing more than 750 GSM mobile phone operators - citing data from a study by management consultants, says the industry’s return on capital employed was as low as 7% in 2007 or less than half that of other significant sectors such…

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Indonesian Mobile Phone Providers Found Guilty of Price Fixing

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on June 24, 2008
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Indonesia’ competition watchdog found six mobile phone providers guilty of price fixing, which may have cost consumers more than $300 million in additional rates. The Business Competition Supervisory Commission says the companies formed a cartel to keep tariffs for text messaging artificially high.

The companies include Telkomsel, Telkom and Smart Telecom. They were given fines totaling more than eight million dollars.

Source: Voice of America

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‘Free’ mobile broadband next year?

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on June 13, 2008
.

Mobile broadband could be bundled with standard contracts as early as 2009, a broadband comparison site has claimed.

If the current rate of price-cutting continues, mobile broadband will soon be perceived as free of charge, according to Top 10 Broadband.

“Competition is reaching its zenith in the mobile broadband market,” said Jessica McArdle, a spokeswoman at Top 10 Broadband.

“It is only a matter of time before mobile broadband modems are offered for free in conjunction with mobile phone packages in the same way as ISPs such as TalkTalk currently offer ‘free’ home broadband with home phone deals.”

Read the full story here.

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An Easy Guide for Mobile Phone Repairing (for less than one Dollar!)

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on May 29, 2008
.

An inevitable outcome of mobile phone penetration among BOP is longer average life time of a unit. At that level replacing cost is significant. The only alternative is to repair and use the same for a longer period. This explains the mushrooming of mobile repair centers in many developing countries.   

Internet has loads of technical information about repairing, but in English. That is why guides like the above, published by Wijeya Newspapers, Sri Lanka and priced at Rs. 75 (US cents 70) are useful. Written in the local language with ample colour illustrations it provides step by step guidelines to repair mobile phones. We hope the technicians at ground level get the best use of it.

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Sri Lanka: Mobile phone interruptions in East today??

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on May 10, 2008
.

Chief ministerial candidate Rauff Hakeem told ‘Lanka Dissent’ that the Ministry of Defence has ordered service providers to interrupt mobile phone services in the Eastern Province, which goes to polls tomorrow (May 10th).

He also said that the government was preparing to stage a massive vote rigging on election day and the move seems to prevent the outside world from getting information on those violations in the East.

As a former Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Mr. Hakeem said the Defence Ministry could give such orders only on matters pertaining to national security.
 
The chief ministerial candidate added that he would initiate legal action against any service provider and other responsible officials if such undue interruptions are effected tomorrow.

http://www.lankadissent.com/allnews/2008_05_09_12_news.htm

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The rise and rise of mobile data usage

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on April 18, 2008
.

After two decades of mobile voice services through mobile phones, and nearly a decade of mobile data usage through SMS services, mobile data services (MDS) of a more traditional Internet style is finally on the up in a big way.

The m.Net and University of Adelaide study notes that: “It has taken a while, but mobile data services (MDS) use is now disseminating beyond a small number of high level users to the wider market, according to the Wireless data services study 2007.”

The study is done on an annual, international basis, and “investigates mobile phone user engagement beyond voice and looks at the current type and levels of MDS, the influencing factors and barriers to the use of MDS, and the use of MDS across global…

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Mobile market will decline, says Nokia

by
Chanuka Wattegama
on April 18, 2008
.

The world’s largest mobile phone company makes roughly two out of every five mobiles sold globally. It said it expected the number of phones sold to increase by 10%, from the 1.14bn phones sold last year. But the Finnish group explained that the overall value of the market would be lower than in 2007 thanks to the weak dollar, the economic slowdown in the US, and “some economic slowdown in Europe”. Shares in the company dropped 10%.

Nokia also expects the average price of mobile phones to decrease this year because of intense competition in mature markets. Nokia’s downbeat trading outlook came as its announced first-quarter results, which missed analysts’ forecasts. Profits for the three months to March were up 25% on last year to €1.2bn…

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