Tag Archive for ‘European Union’ at LIRNEasia

Tag Archive for 'European Union'

LIRNEasia’s Mobile Benchmarks (South Asia and Southeast Asia) and Broadband Benchmarks Report for October 2008 has been released. Click HERE for more information.

Net neutrality can raise broadband prices

Chanuka Wattegama

on October 22, 2008

Broadband prices could rise by up to one-third if regulators in Europe insist on strict “net neutrality” rules that would block carriers from charging content providers premium prices to prioritise certain web traffic, a leading think-tank is set to warn.

Net neutrality has become a big issue in the US as internet congestion has increased. In Europe, regulators and industry players have claimed that the situation is different because users have more choice of network providers, and the debate has been more muted.

However, there have been growing concern among big telecoms companies that changes introduced in the European Parliament into the so-called telecoms package – the sweeping legislation which is designed to overhaul European Union telecoms laws – could open doors to net neutrality regulation in…

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Tags: Broadband, Europe, European Parliament, European Union, Financial Times, internet congestion, net neutrality, United States, web traffic.

European Union to slash mobile charges

Chanuka Wattegama

on September 23, 2008

Proposals to slash the cost of using mobile phones abroad, for text, data and voice calls, could become law next July following a vote in Brussels.

The European Parliament is to vote on whether roaming costs for text messages should be capped.

The cost of sending a message is expected to eventually fall by 60% from an average of 23 pence to 9 pence.

Voice calls would fall from 36 to 27 pence a minute and customers would be able to set limits on data downloads.

A reluctant mobile phone industry first had limits on its roaming charges imposed by the EU in September 2007.

However, those applied only to voice calls, not those for texting or browsing the internet.

Mobile phone companies were limited to charging a maximum of around…

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Tags: BBC, Brussels, cellular telephone, data and voice calls, European Parliament, European Union, mobile phones, pence, telecommunications, Viviane Reding.

LIRNEasia’s rapid response kindles quality in Bangladesh broadband

Chanuka Wattegama

on August 8, 2008

LIRNEasia’s ‘Rapid Response Program’ is exactly what the name suggests. We react to immediate information needs of telecom regulators, at short notice. The response might not be lengthy and as comprehensive as we would like it to be, but nevertheless helpful, as Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) have realised.

LIRNEasia saw BTRC’s move to issue three new Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) licenses a positive development, as Bangladesh is certainly not a country that can boast of quality and affordable broadband.

This is what we learnt from our research:

Exceptionally high cost of broadband remains a key barrier that prevents the development of the BPO industry in Bangladesh. This is apparent when the prices are compared with similar packages offered by the operators in neighbouring countries. The annual cost…

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Tags: access devices, Bangladesh, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, Broadband, broadband services, broadband wireless access, DHAKA, European Union, Grameen Cybernet Ltd, India, Quality of Service, radio systems, Sri Lanka, Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Sri Lanka, USD, wireless access.

Europe mobile phone operators warn that price caps hinder investment

Chanuka Wattegama

on July 3, 2008

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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Tags: cellular telephone, Europe, European Union, GSM, GSM Association, steel, The Guardian, Viviane Reding.

EU Allows Mobile Phones on Airplanes

Nirmali Sivapragasam

on April 9, 2008

EU Allows Mobile Phones on Airplanes, ABC News

The European Union on Monday opened the way for air travelers to use mobile phones to talk, text or send e-mails on planes throughout Europe’s airspace.

Under the plan approved Monday, cell phone users could make and receive calls through an onboard base station. They will be allowed to turn their phones on after the plane reaches 10,000 feet, when other electronic devices such as portable music players and laptops are permitted.

But a host of issues remain, from the cost of mid-flight phone service, to backlash from those who dread the thought of being trapped for hours listening to one-sided conversations.

1 Comment
Tags: ABC, cellular telephone, electronic devices, Europe, European Union, mobile phones.

Terminating the (telecoms) Terminator

Abu Saeed Khan

on March 7, 2008

First the EU said: Network interconnection by means of the Internet Protocol (IP) has been a vital enabler of the Internet’s ubiquity and success. IP-based interconnection has usually been achieved without explicit regulatory obligations, and has for the most part been highly effective.

Given the rapid evolution of the economic, technological and social environment this study of the European Union investigates whether IP interconnection is still better left unregulated.

Martyn Warwick of telecomtv slammed: You have to wonder if some “analysts” live in the same world as the rest of us. Take for example a hefty new report, commissioned by the European Commission and written by a German research organisation, that goes so far as to recommend the abolition of termination fees – on the peculiar grounds that we might…

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Tags: European Commission, European Union, Internet Protocol, IP, Martyn Warwick.

Indonesia tsunami detection system

Rohan Samarajiva

on January 3, 2008

CORDIS : News

Funded by the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), the DEWS project will aim to strengthen early warning capacities in the region by building an open and interoperable tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean.

The system to detect tsunamis will be based on an open sensor platform and integrated sensor systems for earthquake (seismic), sea level (tide gauge, buoys) and ground displacement (GPS land stations) monitoring.

These sensor systems will be one of the most important innovations in the project as they will be responsible for sending reliable data from the seafloor to the warning centre.

1 Comment
Tags: European Union, GPS, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, integrated sensor systems, sensor systems.

Mobile only

Rohan Samarajiva

on December 1, 2007

Asian National Statistical Offices should consider inserting a question on telephones into their household surveys that will capture this.

Telephony | Mobile homes | Economist.com

NEARLY half of Lithuanian households now use just a mobile phone rather than having a fixed line at home too, according to the European Union’s statistical office. The Finns, fast adopters of technology, are close behind with 47% of households ditching the home phone. People from Central and Eastern Europe are more likely to have only a mobile phone, perhaps because fewer households had a fixed line in the first place. But the home phone is not yet dead. The number of fixed lines per 100 people in the EU increased from 44 in 1996 to 48 in 2005.

…

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Tags: cellular telephone, eastern Europe, European Union.

EU sets out new strategy for a single European telecom market

Chanuka Wattegama

on November 14, 2007

A single European Union-wide telecoms market could be in place from 2010 after the European Commission set out plans to increase competition. Under the new plans, a regional watchdog would be created and former monopolies could be forced to split up their network and services operations.

The planned changes are designed to offer consumers cheaper broadband services and phone calls from fixed line and mobile handsets, the Commission also argues. It claims that consumers are currently losing out because in many member countries, including Poland, Italy and Germany, the former state telecoms monopolies still dominate, particularly in the broadband market.

The proposals will now be debated in the European Parliament.

However, analysts said there is likely to be opposition to the changes with Germany and Spain seen as…

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Tags: BBC, Broadband, cheaper broadband services, European Commission, European Parliament, European Union, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain.

Interesting development in the EU

Tahani Iqbal

on October 18, 2007

BBC News | Mobile phone use backed on planes

Passengers could soon be using their mobile phones on planes flying through European airspace.

Plans have been developed across EU countries to introduce technology which permits mobile calls without risk of interference with aircraft systems.

Regulators around Europe are calling for consultation on the potential introduction of the technology.

If given the go ahead, the service would allow calls to be made when a plane is more than 3,000 metres high.

Individual airlines would need to decide if they wanted to introduce the technology, if the green light is given by national regulators.

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Tags: aircraft systems, cellular telephone, Europe, European Union, mobile phones.

Nordic countries, Germany, Netherland top in IT skills in Europe

Chanuka Wattegama

on October 16, 2007

THE distribution of computing skills across Europe shows a clear pattern according to a recent report from the European Union. The inhabitants of southern and eastern Europe are the least adept at using computers and the internet. Computer whizzes are more likely to be found in a wedge running from Germany up to the Nordic countries. Bulgarians seem a little baffled by the online revolution. But IT skills correlate closely with long-standing access to computers, broadband penetration and the like. As these improve, countries that now lag may encourage a new wave of nerds to emerge. The index was compiled looking both at users’ abilities and at their use of the internet to interact with government and business.

Full Story

1 Comment
Tags: Broadband, eastern Europe, Europe, European Union, Germany, Netherland, Nordic countries, online revolution.

HazInfo Canadian Researcher speaks at the 1st WRECOM Conference in Rome

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on October 5, 2007

Gordon Gow, a lead researcher in the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System (LM-HWS) Pilot (HazInfo project), presented the paper titled – “Community-based Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka: Performance of Alerting and Notification in a Last-Mile Message Relay” at the 1^st Wireless Rural and Emergency Communications (WRECOM) Conference in Rome, Italy, Oct 01-02.

One of Gordon Gow’s key contributions to the HazInfo project was the Common Alerting Protocol Profile for Sri Lanka, which was a hard case as far as integrating the multi-language scenario as it is the case in Sri Lanka. The CAP Profile for Sri Lanka was designed for disseminations in Sinhala, Tamil, and English languages. Such a complex profile of CAP was field tested in Sri Lanka’s HazInfo project. This was the first time a Multilanguage…

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Tags: Alberta, Community, European Union, Faculty of Extension, Gordon Gow, Graduate Program, Italy, Mile Message Relay, Rome, Sri Lanka, st Wireless Rural, University of Alberta, voice and data systems, Wireless ICTs.

Talking CAP in Harbin, ISCRAM-CHINA 2007

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on September 3, 2007

Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) was the talk of the town in Harbin at the ISCRAM-CHINA workshop, which took place August 26-27, 2007. The event was jointly organized by the ISCRAM-Community and the School of Economics and Management – Harbin Engineering University. The workshop was a post-conference meeting to the International Disaster Reduction Conference (IDRC), which took place 21-25 August, 2007.

LIRNEasia project manager, Nuwan Waidyanatha, was 1 of 2 Sri Lankan delegates invited to present a research paper and the other was Chamindra De Silva of Lanka Software Foundation – Sahana Project. LIRNEasia presentation titled “Common Alerting Protocol Message Broker for Last-Mile Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka: An Essential Component” was 1 of 115 papers published in the workshop proceedings. The paper was based on the…

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Tags: America, China, Delft, European Union, Harbin, Harbin Engineering University, Lanka Software Foundation, Last, Mile Hazard Warning, Mile Hazard Warnings, Nuwan Waidyanatha, School of Economics and Management, Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, Van de Walle.

Sri Lanka’s telecommunications commitments under GATS: Assessment and issues for the future

Ayesha Zainudeen

on July 25, 2007

Rohan Samarajiva will present a paper on ‘Sri Lanka’s telecommunications commitments under GATS: Assessment and issues for the future’ in the “Trade in Services’ session at the International Trade Law Conference 2007, on 1 August, organised by the Sri Lanka Law College in collaboration with The Department of Commerce of Sri Lanka and The World Trade Organization. The topic of this year’s conference is “The Doha Development Agenda and the Future of the Multilateral Trading System.” The conference will seek to facilitate an extensive discussion on the critical issues that have arisen in the course of the Doha Development Agenda negotiations. The panel of speakers consisting of policy makers, academics and professionals of outstanding calibre have been drawn from the developed and developing world such…

1 Comment
Tags: Department of Commerce, European Union, India, Rohan Samarajiva, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Law College, telecommunications commitments, United States, World Trade Organization.

VoIP is a four-letter word in USA

Abu Saeed Khan

on July 10, 2007

A new report from the North American research house, Instat, reveals that the US is way behind its European cousins in consumer Voice over IP (VoIP) adoption – and this despite the fact that 2006 was a particularly good year for the technology globally with the wordwide total of VoIP subscribers increasing by 34 million.

The leading European VoIP adopters over the course of 2006 were France, Germany, and the
Netherlands. According to Instat analyst, Keith Nissen, “The EU market increased by over 14 million subscribers last year largely due to local loop unbundling, the introduction of cable telephony and triple-play service bundles as well as operator consolidation.”

By contrast the US added a mere four million new VoIP subscribers over the same period. Keith Nissen says US…

2 Comments
Tags: cable telephony, European Union, France, Germany, Instat, Keith Nissen, The Netherlands, United States, voice-over-IP, VOIP.

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