Natasha Udu-gama, former HazInfo Dissemination Manager and Researcher, presented “Implementing Inclusive ICTs: Mobile Cell Broadcasting for Public Warning and Commercial Use” based on the LIRNEasia study in the Maldives” completed in May 2009. Her presentation was made during the Early Warning and Disaster Communications session on Friday, 6 November. The session was chaired by Mr. Rohit Magotra, COO, Ekgaon Technologies and Mr. RC Bhatia, Former ADG, India Meteorological Department (IMD).

Doenload the presentation and the paper.

The danger of course is the money question. When the many well meaning people who work on disabled access issues look around for money to advance their causes, they first look to government. And where in government? Universal service funds. Tax the poor mobile users to develop websites and audio-visual channels that will be more accessible. Wrong, even if this will actually happen. But we all know from the real experience of a decade or more of the mismanagement of universal service funds throughout the world that even what the proponents want will not happen. The bads (tax collection) will happen; the goods will not.

We have the evidence. We have communicated the evidence. Our research has been presented to the US Congress and to the Indian Department of Telecommunication (world’s 1st and 2nd largest Universal Service funds). No need to repeat mistakes.

The result is the creation of a de facto island of monopoly power (qualified only by the existence of mobile phones). This is waht happens in hotels too. Now, within this island, the payphone operator can mercilessly fleece the consumer who does not have choices, as in the case below. US Congress made a mistake it should undo. If not, the airport authority should include price limits in its contract with the payphone operator. In the meantime, beware of airport phones.

In 1996, Congress essentially deregulated the price of pay-phone calls, hoping to make this shrinking business a little more enticing.

The upshot is that today, making a collect call on a pay phone is like stepping in one of those net traps that ensnare people in every other movie set in a jungle. Dial “0,” ask for an operator and, suddenly, you’re dangling from a rubber tree.

So Legacy is within its rights to charge huge sums. But, seriously, $32 for a quick collect call? And then brush-off rudeness on top of that? Is this how Legacy does business?

Barack Obama, self-confessed BlackBerry addict, will undoubtedly be the most tech-savvy president in history. But being tech-savvy isn’t the same as being tech-smart.

The combination of Obama in the White House and new leaders of key tech-related committees in Congress should send warning flags up for all who cherish the freedom and vitality of the Internet.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the technology sector. Waxman-like Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee-is a strong proponent of so-called “net neutrality.” Despite its innocent-sounding moniker, net neutrality is hardly neutral.

A federal law mandating net neutrality would strip Internet service providers (ISPs) of the ability to control how they manage Web traffic over the broadband infrastructure they developed, built, own, and market to the public.

Read the full article by James G. Lakely in News Blaze here.

“We must realize the fact that disasters threaten sustained economic growth of the society and the country.”

These were the words of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani addressing the opening ceremony of the first National Disaster Risk Management Conference. The function, reported Associated Press of Pakistan, was organized to mark the Disaster Awareness Day observed annually after the catastrophic earthquake which struck country’s northern areas in October 2005, killing 73,000 people and leaving 3.5 million homeless.

On the other side of the border Congress President Sonia Gandhi has said there is a need of effective disaster management to mitigate the woes of the people in future calamities, with floods affecting several districts of Bihar and other parts of the country. “The people of India have contributed generously to our relief efforts but we need to strengthen and streamline our responses to all disasters and ensure that rehabilitation of the flood-affected continues on a war footing,” Gandhi said in her “Letter to Congresspersons” in the latest issue of party mouthpiece ‘Congress Sandesh’.

More or less the same sentiments but in a more action oriented manner were expressed at Washington DC at the two day workshop on ‘Disaster Risk Management in the Information Age’ on Oct 8-9.

I made two presentations. The first one, the opening remarks, was more a panoramic view how ICTs can be used in different phases of disaster management, while the second one focused on two projects, Sahana by Lanka Software foundation and our own Haz-Info – a pilot for a Community based Early Warning System.

More details with presentation slides of all speakers are available here.

“The Obama campaign is the broadband campaign and the McCain campaign is the dial-up campaign,” said Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecom and the Internet.

Markey and other members of Congress were on hand at the Democratic National Convention in Denver for several technology panels hosted by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado.

“On McCain’s watch, the U.S. fell from third to fifteenth in broadband penetration,” said Julius Genachowski, technology advisor to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. That is “shocking.”

Genachowski attacked McCain’s record as chairman of the Commerce Committee, a position McCain held from 1997 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2005. McCain did nothing to spur growth in the technology industry, create jobs, help create an open Internet, or ensure competition, Genachowski said.

Read the full story in PCMag here.

Several months ago, the government of Sri Lanka blocked access to Tamil Net, a website used by many, including almost all the important journalists, to find out the other side of our one-sided news stories on the war. Of course, this was easily circumvented by those who wanted to. But I now regret that I did not speak out against it at that time. When the government shut down phone networks in the North and the East, I posted the facts, but did not explicitly protest. Few others did.

The lack of strong opposition to their censorious actions has now led the government to take another step: to shut down SMS use on Independence morning. Censorship is coming close to home.

Mobile or fixed phones (the million plus CDMA phones can also for this while people are moving around) can be used to convey messages and coordinate actions. So can SMS. If the government believes that SMS poses a security threat, it should come out and tell us exactly what that threat is, before shutting down a service we have paid for and are entitled to use.

The Telecommunications Act lays down specific provisions for these kinds of actions. I want to know whether these lawful provisions were followed. Were these provisions followed when the phone networks were shut down for long periods in the North and the East?

If not, the actions taken last night to shut down SMS were unlawful. The shutting down of the phone networks in the North and East were illegal. I believe that it is necessary to protest these unlawful and arbitrary actions if we are to prevent the extension of the Great Firewall to this country as well. Otherwise we will not end up like China; our fate will be that of Burma.

Great Firewall of China Faces Online Rebels – New York Times

In almost every instance, the resistance has been fired by the surprise and indignation when people bumped up against a system that they had only vaguely suspected existed. “I had had an impression that some kind of mechanism controls the Internet in China, but I had no idea about the Great Firewall,” said Pan Liang, a writer of children’s literature and a Web site operator who first learned the extent of the controls after a friend’s blog was blocked. “I was really annoyed at first,” Mr. Pan said. “Then the 17th Party Congress came, and I received an order that my Web site, which is about children’s literature, had to close its message board. It made me even angrier.”Like others, Mr. Pan used his Web page to post solutions for overcoming the restrictions to some banned sites, and then he used a historical allusion to mock his country’s censorship system.

“Many people don’t know that 300 years after Emperor Kangxi ordered an end to construction of the Great Wall, our great republic has built an invisible great wall,” he wrote. “Can blocking really work? Kangxi knew the Great Wall was a huge lie: just think how many soldiers are needed to guard those thousands of miles.”

A 17-year-old blogger from Guangdong Province who posted instructions on how to get to YouTube, overcoming the firewall’s restrictions, was no less philosophical. “I don’t know if it’s better to speak out or keep silent, but if everyone keeps silent, the truth will be buried,” wrote the girl, who uses the online name Ruyue. “I don’t want to be silent, even if everyone else shuts up.”

The commission on January 24 will kick off a four-to-six week lab test of equipment that will allow ISPs to access this spectrum, known as “white spaces.” That will be followed by an additional six-week field test period, the FCC said.

At issue is the transition from analog to digital TV signals. In an effort to free up spectrum for public safety use, Congress has ordered TV broadcasters to shift their signals from analog to digital by February 2009. When this happens, there will be open, unregulated spectrum between the digital channels, or white spaces, that companies like Google and Microsoft want to use for wireless broadband service.

Broadcasters insist that use of these white spaces for broadband service will result in reduced-quality digital TV viewing. Internet companies, meanwhile, view the use of the spectrum as a low-cost way of getting broadband service to underserved areas.

Read the full story in ‘PC Mag’ here.

Home to some 1.5 billion people, South Asia is paying a high price to access the Internet as service providers have been slow to deliver cheaper broadband connections, analysts say.

The region has embraced telephones, mobile phones and computers and India has a flourishing software and outsourcing industry, noted industry watchers at the first South Asia Broadband Congress here earlier this month.

But South Asia has lagged behind in hopping onto the broadband bandwagon, observed Sanjay Gupta of India’s Midas Communication Technology.

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Rohan Samarajiva made a presentation on ‘Performance indicators for effective policy and regulation.’
Presentation slides

In a press conference held yesterday to announce South Asia’s first Broadband Communications Congress and Expo (SABCCE) General Manager/ Head of Consumer Market Development Division of Sri Lanka Telecom SLT M.Z Saleem said CDMA Broadband technology will be introduced to the local market by SLT soon.

Most of the service providers in the local telecommunication industry are in the process of introducing this technology to the market. However the equipment needs higher investments for introducing this technology,
he said.

‘Broadband communications are very cost effective. It provides high-speed data transformation to the users, he said. The SABCCE will be held from September 4 to 6 in Colombo. The SABCCE will establish ties between decision makers of broadband industry in the region and provide the forum for sharing information and experiences.

Executive Director of Lirneasia Prof. Rohan Samarajiva said broadband communications are important for the country’s economy. These technologies will help businesses to be much more competitive in the market.
‘When using broadband communications people face technical problems and regulatory problems. SABCCE will provide the platform to discuss and share knowledge among the countries in the region on using broadband communications.
We need to have these type of congress in Sri Lanka, he said.

Our friend and colleague Abu Saeed Khan is reporting on a major development on these lines from the GSM Congress in Barcelona:

:: bdnews24.com ::

Spearheaded by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers, GSMA believes the programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than one trillion dollars by 2012.

To combine the strengths of the mobile and financial ecosystems, mobile operators are partnering with banks at a local or regional level, while GSMA is setting up a pilot project with MasterCard Worldwide, a global payments leader whose cards and network provide international authorisation, clearing and settlement.

GSMA and MasterCard, which has a 25,000 member-bank network, plan to pilot a global hub that will link together national markets and the local payment systems run by mobile operators in partnership with those local banks.

The hub will enable migrant workers to transfer money and notify their families via mobile phone.

“The creation of a global hub will enable the mobile networks, which now cover more than 80 percent of the world’s population, to offer the world’s burgeoning migrant population a convenient way to securely and cost-effectively transfer money to their families back in their home countries,” said Rob Conway, CEO of GSMA.

“The programme will resonate with governments because it makes the international payment market more transparent, encourages financial inclusion, reduces crime and boosts the flow of hard currency into their countries,” added Conway.

Now will the Indian government walk the walk?

Will the other countries take the lead?

Govt. committed to develop a robust disaster management system: PM

Addressing the First India Disaster Management Congress here, Dr. Singh called for a paradigm shift in disaster management from a “relief-centric” and “post-event” response.

Pointing to the draft National Policy on Disaster Management, he said that it placed greater emphasis on efficient management of disasters, rather than focusing only on immediate response to disasters.

“Such an approach should place emphasis on improving early warning systems, ensuring the reach and efficacy of dissemination, creating awareness and building capacities at all levels of public administration,” he said.