LIRNEasia’s Mobile Benchmarks (South Asia and Southeast Asia) and Broadband Benchmarks Report for October 2008 has been released. Click HERE for more information.
Both panel sessions at the Government Programme of the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, November 13, 2007 were moderated by LIRNEasia: the session on public and private objectives by Executive Director Rohan Samarajiva and the session on mobile broadband by Senior Policy Fellow Abu Saeed Khan.
The slides used by Rohan Samarajiva are here: gsm-asiafinal.ppt
In yet another blow to the existing GSM operators, the Communication Ministry has decided to auction spectrum for third generation (3G) mobile services and wireless broadband services through technologies such as Wi-Max.
The auction will be open to new companies wanting to foray into the telecom sector as well as established foreign telecom players. The existing operators had wanted the auction for 3G services to be limited to the licence holders.
The Ministry’s decision to open up the bidding to all players is also a move away from the telecom regulator’s recommendations that it be restricted to existing operators. The move gives a chance to the likes of Deutsche Telecom, AT&T and new Indian players such as Unitech and Hindujas, which may not get spectrum in the…
The simmering tension over spectrum allocation among Indian telecom companies has erupted into a public spat with warring mobile phone operators leaving no stone unturned in their battle to acquire more air waves.
The fight is so intense that Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin too jumped in, dashing off letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and communications minister A Raja, complaining against the stiffer spectrum allocation norms proposed by the Telecommunication Engineering Centre, an arm of the department of telecommunications.
Reliance Communications chief Anil Ambani, whose company uses CDMA technology, too wrote to the Prime Minister. He accused some “large GSM players”, a reference to Vodafone and Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Telecom, of spreading “misleading and false propaganda” to block fresh competition in telecom, hoard spectrum and indulge…
Paper titled: Challenges of Optimizing Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) for SMS based GSM Devices in Last-Mile Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka (authors N. Waidyanatha - LIRNEasia, D. Dias – University of Moratuwa, and H. Purasinghe – Microimage) was presented at the 19th Meeting of the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF), in Chennai, India, 5-7 November, 2007. The paper was discussed in Working Group 1 – Human Perspective and Service Concepts (WG1).
LIRNEasia advocated Community-based Last-Mile Hazard Warning System pilot research (HazInfo project) field tested two GSM Terminal Devices: J2ME applet embedded Trilingual (Sinhala, Tamil, & English) mobile phone and GSM module/microcontroller based Remote Alarm Device (RAD). These two devices were developed as part of the Disaster and Emergency Warning Network (DEWN) under the umbrella of Dialog Telekom…
Foreign telecom investors, who hold significant stake in India telecom companies, are exploring the possibility of joining hands and initiating an arbitration proceeding against the government of India and department of telecom (DoT) in foreign courts against the new telecom policy.
The move comes as some of the foreign investors say the that the new policy announced last week, which allows dual technology “favoured only CDMA players, especially, Reliance Communications”. Besides, the new policy has also enhanced subscriber-linked criterion for spectrum allocation by multiple times - this implies, operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular cannot get additional spectrum in their existing circles unless they increase their subscriber base between two-six times, a process that will take anywhere between 18-48 months. This has also led…
TRAI: SMSs losing their flavour | The Economic Times
NEW DELHI: Are text messages slowly losing their flavor with India’s growing cellular base? Even as operators say it’s too early to take a call and make such a ‘sweeping statement’, the figures, however, suggest so. Data compiled by telecom regulator TRAI reveal that SMS use has steadily fallen from September 2006.
Consider this: GSM operators have witnessed close to 9% drop in the outgoing SMSs during the April – June quarter, as per the latest performance indicator report by TRAI. This implies, an average GSM user now sends about 35 SMSs per month as compared to 39 during the previous quarter.
Little wonder that GSM operators’ total revenue from SMS has now fallen below the 5% mark. Ditto…
The implications of mobile number portability (MNP) were discussed at a Workshop on Implementing Mobile Number Portability, held in August 2007 in Islamabad, Pakistan. The forum, comprising participants from the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, provided insight into the technical, regulatory and operational aspects impacted by the porting process, with a focus on the Pakistani MNP experience.
The reasons cited in favor of MNP were classified into advantages to subscribers and regulators. The former were benefited by an increase in choice (of packages) and the eliminated costs of having to inform third parties of a number change, while the latter saw MNP as an approach to attract new investment and generate healthy competition. Operators on the other hand, were split in their views; new entrants…
The Minister is to be commended for initiating the review of the alert process that went from alert to evacuation in minutes.
Sri Lanka News | Online edition of Daily News - Lakehouse Newspapers
Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, called for an immediate review of the tsunami alert process that was put into operation on September 12 to learn from the experience and refine procedures the Disaster Management and Human Rights Ministry in a release said.He stated that the successful exercise could prove a platform for future improvements to the early warning process making it more effective and efficient.
The HazInfo paper titled “Last-Mile Hazard Warning in Sri Lanka: Performance of WorldSpace Satellite Radios for Emergency Alerts”, coauthored by Srinivasan Rangarajan, PhD (Senior Vice President Engineering, WorldSpace), Peter Anderson (Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University), Gordon Gow, PhD (Assistant Professor, University of Alberta), and Nuwan Waidyanatha (Project Manager, LIRNEasia) was accepted for oral/poster presentation at the Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC) at The Birla Science and Technology Center in the heart of Jaipur, India, December 03 – 06, 2007.
WorldSpace, a lead technology partner in the HazInfo research project, field tested 16 Addressable Radios for Emergency Alerts (AREAs) in the Sarvodaya Communities and 34 AREAs in the Sarvodaya District Centers. Although the AREA solutions lacked bi-directional communication and seemed the least effective, the AREA solution proved to…
In a move that could enhance competition and spur mergers in an industry waiting to consolidate, India’s telecom regulator TRAI has recommended that there be no limit on the number of players in this sector.
The TRAI also pushed for the relaxation of stringent merger and acquisitions norms, technology neutrality for telecom licences, in addition to suggesting that both GSM and CDMA players pay an entry fee and higher spectrum fee additional 2G radio frequency allocation.
TRAI has called for the setting up of a multi-disciplinary committee consisting of representatives from the department of telecom, the Telecom Engineering Centre, the telecom regulator, the wireless planning and co-ordination wing and operators’ associations be set up to frame the new spectrum allocation criteria, different from the subscriber…
The Business Standard (Nokia focuses on rural markets)
Sapna Agarwal / Pune July 16, 2007The rural markets account for around 5 per cent of the national GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) handset sales. The figure is expected to rise to 25-30 per cent, adding around 100 million new cellular subscribers by 2009, according to a recent study by LIRNEasia and AC Nielson.
Deploying W-CDMA 850 to cannibalise the CDMA mobile as well as to launch 3G without having the so called “3G license” is on the move. Telstra (Australia) and Vivo (Brazil) have done it quite well.
Now the French telecoms regulator has approved plans to allow the incumbent GSM network operators to reuse their 900Mhz bands for 3G services.
ART has also announced that any 3G new entrant authorised following the application procedure for the fourth UMTS licence would also have access to the 900 MHz spectrum once it has been returned by the existing 2G operators. Read more.
Tourists, businessmen and other travellers that might want to use their GSM handsets to roam around South Africa will henceforth face some intrusive bureaucracy before they can call home to enthuse about the delights of Cape Town or send pictures of the elephants and lions they see on safari.
A new piece of legislation, the “Regulation of Interception of Communication Amendment Bill” now making its stately way through the South African parliament requires visitors to the country to go to a local services provider in person to register their name, address, passport number and a whole raft of other personal details before being allowed the privilege of using the GSM network. The new law will also require anyone who buys a mobile phone in South Africa…
The government of Pakistan seems set to issue three 3G licences by the end of this year, according to recent Reuters reports. Pakistan is one of a number of populous Asian nations whose hunger for more widely available communications services are proving to be a major growth engine for telecoms groups with global ambitions. However, it does remain to be seen if there exists a solid business case for investment in third generation networks in a region where the most basic prepaid voice and SMS services are stimulating economic activity by providing consumers and businesses with connectivity.
This has not deterred the state-owned GSM operator in Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, from launching 3G services. The 3G SIM card reportedly costs about US$64.50 with…
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