The European Commission will urge the 27 European Union countries Wednesday to reserve a uniform slice of broadcast spectrum for a pan-European mobile broadband network, one that could enable flat-rate, international voice and data calling plans.

A copy of the proposal, reviewed by the International Herald Tribune, sets out technical guidelines for E.U. countries that choose to redeploy part of their low-frequency spectrum, a bandwidth that has been used exclusively by television broadcasters since the inception of the industry more than 50 years ago.

Full story.

The measures will slash the cost of sending a text while abroad and reform the way phone operators charge for data calls made when customers roam.

The changes to charges are due to come in to force across the EU’s 27 member nations from July 2009.

Some nations and industry groups said the changes could mean higher charges for other services.

“We want to avoid so-called bill shock, when someone gets back from a holiday and gets a nasty surprise,” said Luc Chatel, French minister for industry and consumer affairs.

Read the full story in BBC here.

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 the future.

Read the full story in ‘Financial Times’ here.

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 34 pence a minute for making calls, and 17 pence to receive a call.

This is now set to be cut again, if EU Commissioner for telecommunications Viviane Reding’s plans go through.

Customers downloading data would then be able to set a maximum cost level before their service cuts out.

Read the fully story in BBC here.

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 of the basic office broadband package offered by Grameen Cybernet Ltd is USD 8,016. This is more than thirty times when compared with the equivalent in India (and 67 times that of EU average). These prices indicate a serious mismatch between demand and supply. So opening the market for broadband services is commendable, but the true impact will be felt only if this results in significant drop in prices.

We are glad to find our trademark in multiple places in the RFP document, specifically in following imrpovements (from the earlier one):

1. Operators should now guarantee QoS not just in last mile, but at least till the first foreign entry point, by purchasing adequate international bandwidth. (Earlier the focus was only on last mile.)

2. Contention ratios and download/upload speed ratios are defined, ensuring capacity increase parallel to the number of subscribers

3. Connectivity need not be confined to WiMax (except in Dhaka and Chittagong Metropolitan area). Operators have the flexibility in using other media (eg Fiber or Copper wires) in conjunction

4. Operators have to ensure QoS as per BTRC guidelines. There will be regular monitoring. (Glad to learn that BTRC will an eye on broadband QoSE! Not many regulators have!)

5. Operators now have a better understanding on backbone/backhaul design. The system can be point-to-multipoint or mesh radio systems consisting of BWA distribution hub stations and their associated subscriber stations (or BWA access devices).

Our complete response is here.

With this, is it too much to expect the same reaction from Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Sri Lanka too for our response on the ‘Planning and Implementation of a National Backbone Network (NBN)’?

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 as steel and software.

Sources said this gives the lie to Reding’s claim that it is making excessive profits from “roaming” services in the EU.

Read the full stiry in the Guardian here.

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.

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 as well because, one day, everything will be the Internet anyway.

The judgment is yours!

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.

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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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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 critics.

Read the full story in BBC News

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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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.

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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 profile was field tested in the World. The same problem appears in the European Union, for example, where they have a plan to use CAP for internetworking between emergency communicators of the member states in their “command control and coordination system”.

Gordon Gow is an Assistant Professor, Graduate Program in Communications and Technology (MACT), Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta, Canada Currently, his research interests include development of WLL voice and data systems, especially with respect to regulatory concerns such as spectrum policy and management, telecom reform, technical standardization, public safety, and location based services.

Report on WRECOM Conference by G. Gow

Power Point Presentation used by G. Gow in his talk at WRECOM

Paper on Wireless ICTs for Community-based Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka

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 research findings that proved the need for a CAP Broker to improve the performance of the Hazard-Information-Hub at Sarvodaya in order to make the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System highly reliable and relatively effective. A LIRNEasia paper on CAP relating to the “challenges of internetworking with CAP” was also published in the ISCRAM conference in Delft, Netherlands in May this year and was invited to present at the conference.

CAP is widely accepted by emergency communicators but practically adopted by very few. However lags in being used for Internetworking and Multilingual communications were it has its strengths. Those who discussed CAP including representatives from the European Union and United Sates of America expressed that the Multilingual and Physically Challenged issues are yet to be addressed in their CAP research, which means Sri Lanka may be in the forefront of CAP research.

Paper on HazInfo CAP Message Broker, ISCRAM-CHINA proceedings –
N. Waidyanatha, G. Gow, P. Anderson (2007 August). “Common Alerting Protocol Message Broker for Last-Mile Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka: An Essential Component”. Proceedings of the 2^nd International ISCRAM Workshop, Harbin, China (B. Van de Walle, X. Li, and S. Zhang, eds.), Pages 59 – 65

Presentation – CAP Message Broker, An Essential Component

Report ISCRAM-CHINA 2007