The Pakistan Telecom Authority in their December 2008 quarterly review gives the reasoning behind the government’s decision to impose high taxes on mobile phone use. To reduce the high fiscal deficits, the government had increased taxes. The increase for the telecom sector was over 40 percent; for other sectors it was only seven percent. However, the end result was unexpected, though it could have been predicted from economic theory. In the two quarters after the tax increase, the tax revenue from mobile declined.

How was the telecom market affected? In the same report, a figure shows how the subscriber base increased over time. However, the rate of growth declined in recent quarters. In 2007, the rate of growth was 9.9 percent; 2008 ended with a minus 0.3 percent growth.…

In Thailand, the mean price of a new mobile phone purchased by a bottom of the pyramid user is USD 96 and a used phone costs USD 38. In this context the whole idea that a laptop designed to connect with the Internet will cost USD 49-99, is mind boggling. This will make our thesis of a mobile-centric path to the Internet that much more realistic.

And wireless phone carriers might well start calling them something else entirely as they race to begin selling laptops with bundled data plans directly to consumers.

“We have been flying the carriers around the world,” said Michael Rayfield, the general manager of mobile products for Nvidia, one of many chip companies producing parts for these new laptops. “They all want to…

We have, for some time, been talking about the budget telecom network business model being a disruptive innovation. Looks like the word disruptive is very popular. Here is Ratan Tata describing mobile technology per se being disruptive, and modeling the Nano on that.

About 100 delegates — from academia, industry and the financial and entrepreneurial worlds — participated in the event, which concluded Wednesday evening with a lively roundtable discussion that included Mr. Gore and Mr. Hart, as well as Ratan N. Tata, the chairman of the Indian carmaker Tata Group and the manufacturer of the new, low-priced Nano automobile, and H. Fisk Johnson, the chairman and chief executive of the household product giant, S.C. Johnson & Son.

Mr. Johnson, whose company was praised by Mr.…

Several of the pilot projects presented at the 2nd Pan Asian evidence-based e-Health adoptation and application (in short form – Panacea), were m-Health projects. One of the Panacea projects THIRRA and LIRNEasia lead RTBP share some aspects one being working on disease information communication in Sri Lanka; however, differs in the goals where THIRRA aims to digitize the H-544 health form at the Public Health Inspector’s point of service – at the patient’s home. On the other hand, RTBP will digitize minimal set of parameters: location (postal code), disease (ICD Code), symptom, sign, age, and gender collected from health provider facilities. Some of the other m-Health projects; especially in Philippines, involved Filipino rural community health care workers strictly using SMS with prearranged formatted strings for communicating field data to a…

Dialog Telekom PLC in collaboration with its partners Dialog University of Moratuwa Mobile Communications Research Laboratory and Microimage Technologies together with the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) of Sri Lanka launched Sri Lanka’s first ever mass alert warning system; the ‘Disaster and Emergency Warning Network’ (DEWN) yesterday under the patronage of Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe.

Speaking on the launch of DEWN Group Chief Executive Officer, Dialog Telekom PLC, Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya said that “There are 10 million people in this country who have access to telecommunication and mobile services. Now the mobile has become a powerful tool which could be called as a ‘Digital Empowerment Device’ and our citizens are digitally empowered into the digital network”. Dr. Wijayasuriya went onto say that now…

Qatar Telecommunications Co QTEL said on Saturday it would begin tender offers for shares in Indonesian telecoms firm PT Indosat on Tuesday to lift its stake to 65 percent, the maximum allowed.

Indonesia limits foreign ownership in the telecommunication sector to a maximum of 65 percent for mobile phone operators and 49 percent for fixed-line operators.

Two tender offers would begin concurrently in Indonesia and the United States at 7,388 rupiahs ($0.661) per share and would expire on Feb. 18, Qtel said.

“The Indonesian government has determined that Qtel’s total ownership will be limited to 65 percent of Indosat,” Qtel said in a statement.

“Guided by this ruling, Qtel is thus offering to acquire an additional stake of up to approximately 24.19 percent of Indosat, after taking into account…

China’s telecommunications supervisor on Wednesday issued long-awaited third-generation (3G) mobile phone licenses to three mobile operators, a move that is expected to lead to billions of dollars being invested in building new networks.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said China’s biggest mobile operator, China Mobile, was awarded a license for TD-SCDMA, the domestically-developed 3G standard.

The other two main carriers, China Telecom and China Unicom, received licenses for the US-developed CDMA2000 and Europe’s WCDMA, respectively.

The 3G high-speed networks can handle faster data downloads, allowing handset users to make video calls and watch TV programs.

Read the full story in China Daily here.

India’s Department of Telecommunications, or DoT, Friday said the auction of radio bandwidth for third generation, or 3G, mobile phone services will take place as per schedule on Jan. 30 and that there will be no further delay.

Analysts and industry players, however, expect the process not just to be further delayed, but also to attract fewer participants for the bidding process.

Their apprehension follows recent media reports, citing government documents, that the finance ministry has sought to double the auction price for pan-India 3G radio bandwidth, or spectrum, to INR40.40 billion.

“There is no (further) delay. The auction is on schedule,” said Akshay Rout, a spokesman for India’s ministry of communication, told Dow Jones Newswires.

The Indian government had already delayed the auction to Jan. 30 from Jan.…

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…

Verizon is a standout cell-phone carrier for most people, based on our exclusive best cell phone service survey of readers in 23 cities. The company received high marks from survey respondents in overall satisfaction and customer service, and service is available in most of the country.

Overall, cell-phone service has become significantly better, judging by the annual survey conducted in September by the Consumer Reports National Research Center. Contract terms for cell-phone service are less onerous, and there were fewer problems with call quality in this year’s survey. The best carriers even came through after a hurricane hit one of our survey cities.

Sixty percent of readers were completely or very satisfied with their service. That appears to be a substantial improvement over 2007, even though we…

China will issue third-generation mobile phone licenses as early as this month and expects companies to spend 200 billion yuan ($30 billion) on installing equipment, the industry minister said Friday.

China has the world’s biggest population of mobile phone users and adoption of 3G — which has been long delayed — was eagerly anticipated by equipment suppliers, which are seeing demand elsewhere decline due to the global financial crisis.

“The 3G licenses will be issued either later this year or early next year,” Li Yizhong, whose ministry regulates telecoms, said at a news conference.

Third-generation mobile phone technology supports Web surfing, video downloads and other added services. Its adoption in China is expected to boost demand for mobile service and spur growth of new services.

China’s mobile phone market…

Even as SIM cards have become the focus of investigations to establish the identity of the Mumbai attackers, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has found that at least two lakh mobile phone users, almost 20% of the total vetted connections so far, had provided fake identity papers and their addresses were unverified.

In an ongoing audit, ordered by the government to establish the genuineness of customers, DoT found that out of 10 lakh connections verified so far, more than 2 lakh had been issued to customers whose identity could not be established.

The extent of fake identities has rattled the government which has started penalising service providers at Rs 1,000 for every fake user found.

Sleuths suspect that the Mumbai attackers, like in the past, had obtained SIM…

AT&T and Nokia each announced severe belt-tightening measures this week, but each laid out different approaches to address market share issues.

Suffering from the loss of landline subscribers, AT&T announced Thursday that it will cut its employment base by 4%, or 12,000 employees. The company, however, said it plans to increase staff in broadband, wireless, and video. AT&T has been riding its exclusive deal with Apple’s iPhone, and the telecom company expects to gain market share in the mobile phone category next year.

At its annual Capital Markets Day, this year in Brooklyn, N.Y., Nokia again cut its estimates for handset deliveries and indicated that it, too, will make staffing cuts. Nokia is also lining up for increased market penetration in the United States. The Finnish company…

Sakwithi ‘I-was-born-to-teach’ Ranasinghe knew the power of media. Few full page advertisements in Lankadeepa, the largest selling weekly in the island were all necessary to convert the virtually unknown English teacher to a national level businessman. That, with the endorsement from a self-proclaimed media guru was adequate to attract thousands of gullible individuals who deposited their hard earned money with him for attractive interest rates, way above the market. When Ranasinghe disappeared, media conveniently washed their hands. Content of paid advertisement, we were reminded, is not their responsibility. Buyers beware. Ironically Lankadeepa became the newspaper that hit their former client the hardest!

Moral of the story: Rely on media any time to promote your business – don’t worry it is legal or otherwise.

Others too have learnt.…

Supreme Court today (Nov 01, 2008) ordered the suspension of three environmental levies imposed recently, reported Lanka Dissent.

Accordingly, the levies imposed on telecommunication towers, CFC bulbs of more than 40 Watts as well as the levy imposed on vehicles in the Western Province were directed to be suspended.

Should we open a bottle of Champaign? May be not. It was not LIRNEasia that took Environment Ministry to courts. Still we take pride in fighting against these irrational environmental levies which would have served nobody.

Some of our earlier blog posts:

Small Victory for LIRNEasia: Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court issues Interim Order against Tax on Mobile Phones and Telecom Towers (Sept 23, 2008)

Digital cigarettes (Sept 21, 2008)

Sri Lanka: Udaya Gammanpila says Environmental Levy does not burden public (Aug 19, 2008)

Sri Lanka: Road to ‘Dharma…