Sponsored by the IDRC, Canada, the conference will bring together distinguished scholars and practitioners who are experts in the area to address essential issues in regulations through conceptual and empirical studies.

The conference will address the following questions: Does regulation work? What kind of regulation works? What kinds don’t work? Why do some forms of regulation work and not others? How do we know whether they work or not? How do we isolate the effects of different political, economic and legal contexts? Are there systematic differences among water, telecommunications, energy and transport infrastructure that necessitate particular regulatory design?

Proposals including a short abstract (500 words), professional position and contact email address must reach the organizers by 5 December 2008. Please send proposals to regulate[at]hku.hk. A limited number of travel grants covering the cost of travel, accommodation, and meals are available to participants on a competitive basis.

More information on the conference, including its tentative program, can be found here.

Themed, ‘Trends in Global Communications: Capturing the High Ground in an Uncertain World’, the conference seeks to examine the impact of current trends and twists in the telecom market, against the backdrop of developing regulatory policy and the inevitably huge demands of infrastructure investments.

Some of the questions the conference hopes to address are:

• What new scenarios will tomorrow’s broadband, internet, mobile and media markets present for business, government, regulators and consumers?
• How can critical bottlenecks in broadband development be overcome?
• What does increasing competition from broadband mean for traditional media services?
• What are the implications for content of a multi-platform, on-demand environment?
• Where will new creative ideas and the funding to deliver them come from?
• How are public policy and regulatory frameworks evolving?
• To what extent will they be ‘fit for purpose’ in the newly emerging environment

An on-line version of the full programme is available here.

This is what ITU’s Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Report for the Asia-Pacific region 2008 says. It was released at ITU TELECOM ASIA 2008, Bangkok, Thailand yesterday (Sept 2, 2008).

The Report finds evidence that ICTs and broadband uptake foster growth and development, but the question remains as to the optimal speed that should be targeted in view of limited resources.

The area in which the region really stands out is the uptake of advanced Internet technologies, especially broadband Internet access. The Asia-Pacific region is the world’s largest broadband market with a 39 per cent share of the world’s total at the end of 2007. In terms of broadband access, Asia-Pacific has made remarkable progress in the past few years, with subscriber numbers growing almost five-fold in five years: from 27 million at the beginning of 2003 to 133 million at the start of 2008.

In the region’s high-income economies, ubiquitous access is progressing through a competitive race to provide ever faster fixed broadband access. Operators in Hong Kong (China) and Japan have launched one-Gigabits per second (Gbps) broadband and triple-play services aimed at the residential market, featuring applications such as Internet telephony and television. The Republic of Korea leads the world in terms of the percentage of households with fixed broadband access, and no less than five economies in the top ten are from Asia-Pacific. The Republic of Korea, Hong Kong (China), and Japan also lead the world in terms of the proportion of households with fibre optic connections, essential for supporting the next generation of ultra-high speed Internet applications.

These high-income economies are also leaders in terms of third generation (3G) mobile cellular deployment. Fixed and mobile broadband technologies complement each other and users enjoy continuous high-speed Internet access. In Singapore, a ubiquitous Internet access plan combining unlimited 8 Megabits per second (Mbps) fixed broadband, 2 Mbps mobile broadband and access at some 800 Wi-Fi hotspots is available for just USD 35 per month.

At the other extreme, in most of the region’s low and lower-middle income economies, high-speed Internet access is limited to urban areas at best, typically expensive, and often not available at all. The regional broadband divide is striking, with poor economies having a close-to-zero broadband penetration, compared to that of rich economies where one in four persons is a broadband subscriber (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Fixed broadband Internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants, 2007

The gap in available broadband speeds between rich and poor countries is as wide as broadband penetration. In Japan, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong (China), the minimum advertised broadband speed is faster than the maximum broadband speed in Cambodia, Tonga, Laos and Bangladesh.

While in low and lower-middle income economies mobile phones have become a substitute for the shortage of fixed lines, they are not yet fulfilling the potential of broadband access. By the end of 2007, only Indonesia, the Maldives, the Philippines and Sri Lanka had commercially deployed WCDMA networks. The region’s two largest mobile markets, China and India, have yet to launch mobile broadband. By the end of 2007, there were over 120 million mobile broadband subscribers in the region (Figure 2), but almost all (97 per cent) were in high income economies.

Figure 2: Mobile cellular broadband subscribers in Asia-Pacific

While the region’s high-income economies are pushing the frontier of broadband bandwidth to a point where applications have yet to catch up, many Asia-Pacific developing economies are bandwidth starved, inhibiting the development of their information societies.

The ITU Report argues that broadband uptake enables a range of socially desirable and valuable online services in areas such as government, education and health. The use of broadband technologies can help overcome many of the basic development challenges faced by poor countries. The Report provides a number of examples where broadband connectivity has acted as a catalyst for development. These include the provision of education through distance learning in the Solomon Islands, the creation of jobs through business incubators for women in China, and the supply of communication services for disaster management in Myanmar.

Read the press release here. Full report is not yet available in the public domain.

(Please click on the images for a better view)

The US market, of course, was heavily wired to start with: twisted-pair copper from the phone company and co-ax from the cable company coming to most homes and offices. In this context, the Negroponte Switch made eminent sense. The refarming, for mobile uses, of 700 MHz frequencies that were inefficiently used for television, earlier in 2008 was a manifestation of the Negroponte Switch.

The difference in developing countries was that the incumbents had failed to roll out copper to most homes to start with. They were content with serving the government and business elites and themselves with the perks that come with monopoly. So when the entry barriers were removed, people obtained telephone services through wireless in the first instance, there weren’t much wireguides around to carry entertainment. And shortsighted incumbents neglected wireline maintenance when they saw the cost and other benefits of wireless connections.

Now it looks like at least one incumbent has seen the legacy copper network as an asset that needs to be developed and exploited a. This will not benefit those at the bottom of the pyramid, of course. And there is no guarantee that what worked in densely populated Hong Kong will necessarily work as well in the less dense urban areas of Sri Lanka.

In South Asia Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) scored highest (80%) but Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of India (TRAI) was not too behind (75%). PTA site which scored highest marks in the previous survey in 2005 this time lost marks due to the lack of some features like the non availability of local language version. 

More information in paper format and Presentation Slides

NEARLY a third of Hong Kong’s households watch television via the internet, according to a new report from Telecommunications Management group, a consultancy. Because internet protocol television (IPTV) uses the same technology as that which links computer networks, smaller countries with high broadband penetration tend to have more subscribers. As well as plain old programmes, viewers can also enjoy other services such as on-demand video. So far, Europe accounts for over half of the world’s subscribers.

http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11318291

Broadband QoSE testing is generating interest. A news report on ‘Times of India’ yesterday  (April  7) suggested the site www.speedtest.net to determine connection speed. This site, like many such others available on web, lets a user to ping to a selected server to check the throughput. (See above – A Sri Lankan user pings to a server in Hong Kong, one of the few available options)

This is fine as long as only the bigger picture will do, but as found in early stages of our research, it gives no clue about the point of bottleneck. Neither has it measured other metrics than the throughput which can be important depending upon the application.

The difference in AshokaTissa methodology proposed by LIRNEasia and IIT Madras is that it covers not only more metrics than an ordinary speed test, but also create a more detailed picture. We think that would be something more interest to ‘Times of India’ readers.

Sri Lanka Hutch subscribers double in 2007 – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE

Subscribers of the Sri Lanka mobile unit of Hutchison Telecom doubled to more than a million in 2007, while revenue growth topped 50 percent, the group said in a statement.

Total subscribers had increased by 104 percent to 1,141,000 in 2007 while revenue measured in Hong Kong dollars grew 52.4 percent 189 million dollars (2.6 billion Sri Lanka rupees).

“Our Sri Lankan operations performed well in 2007 fuelled by our continued network expansion during the year and a series of efforts to enhance our sales and distribution network in the country,” the company said.

The company said earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization was 52.5 percent higher at 93 million dollars compared with 61 million dollars a year earlier.

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It’s worth remembering developing countries have never been happy hunting grounds for Apple’s high-end devices. The iPhone is a low-volume, high-margin device demanding a fat airtime commission. In other words, not for developing Asia. So far Apple has shown no interest in developing Singapore or Hong Kong.  Until it does, the iPhone’s sole Asian channels will be eBay or the grey market.

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 and operators with smaller market share were of the view that it would create fair play in the industry, but larger operators with significant market power were, unsurprisingly, against the implementation of MNP.

High implementation costs were the main reasons against number portability. Mr. John Horrocks, an MNP consultant who spoke at the Workshop, demonstrated that a basic costs-benefit analysis of the portability process showed that implementing this service in smaller countries with populations of less than 10 million was not a feasible option, as the costs outweighed the benefits significantly. Instead, he suggested a few alternatives for these countries that would make number changes easier for subscribers (e.g.: operators send free SMS to all contacts on SIM, low cost for maintaining old number in parallel, etc), and ensure quality of service and competition among operators.

Figure 1: MNP implementations by country

Source: Presentation slides, MNP Workshop, August 2007

Mr. Horrocks also talked about the results of MNP implementations and lessons learnt in the countries listed in Figure 1. The success of MNP implementation is measured by the percentage of ported numbers, and it is evident that in countries with higher mobile phone penetration, competition and awareness, porting rates are high (e.g. Hong Kong and Australia). It was interesting to note though, that in some cases where MNP was implemented successfully, it proved to be an economic failure (e.g. Ireland, Finland, Malta, etc), while the implementations in UK and Netherlands were failures in all respects.

These varied results can be attributed to a number of reasons. Hong Kong’s MNP implementation, built on an already implemented solution set in place for fixed-line services, was driven heavily by the regulator; in addition, a highly competitive market structure in a technologically-aware community, and the fact that the introduction coincided with the entry of four new operators into the market, ensured portability a success there. The Australian regulator persistently promoted number portability to the public, while maintaining porting times of less than 3 hours on average, which eventually led to the successful implementation of MNP.

On the other hand, in the Irish case where MNP implementation was a success, the lack of competition (two incumbents and one weak new entrant) proved porting to be an economic failure. The same happened in Finland, where implementation was a success, but due to the absence of minimum contract periods and the provision of high incentives to port (from one operator to another), operators started losing heavily. This resulted in the introduction of minimum contract periods which, in turn, reduced the porting rate from 40% to 10% leading to economic failure. In the UK, Oftel (regulator at the time) pushed for MNP hoping it would increase competition, but did not play a hands-on role in the implementation phase. Additionally, only one operator in the UK was in favor of portability, and these factors collectively played a large role in the resulting failure.

A number of lessons can be learnt from these situations. Mr. Horrocks explained that it was essential for both regulators and operators to be in favor of and have heavy involvement throughout the porting process. The success of MNP depended greatly on competition and awareness and therefore it was the duty of both regulator and operator to keep subscribers informed of all things related to porting. He also said that it was important for regulators to understand that MNP did not create competition, but only improved it. Furthermore, for number porting to be successful it was necessary for a clear goal to be established, with a good set of rules (technical and legal) laid down from the start of the MNP process. He also stressed that porting time (i.e. time taken to port a number from operator A to operator B) had to be minimal, ideally one day at most, to ensure a successful MNP implementation.

The Workshop also covered the technicalities involved in number porting. Various features such as the number portability database configurations (centralized, distributed and hybrid), the call/SMS routing schemes (direct and indirect), and payment mechanisms were presented over the course of three days. The use of ENUM and NGN systems to make the porting process simpler were also discussed.

In light of these technical developments, call forwarding as a low-cost solution to number portability was not seen as the most efficient way to deploy MNP, although it was implemented in Singapore. Over 10 years ago, when the Telecommunication Authority of Singapore (TAS) discussed MNP as a means to lower number switching costs for subscribers and increase competition among operators, they explored three alternatives: 1. call forwarding, 2. originating re-route, and 3. Intelligent Network (IN) solutions. While Option 2 deviated from the GSM standard and affected services such as international roaming, Option 3 was not technologically mature yet, and therefore they settled for Option 1. They did not, however, rule out the possibility of implementing Option 3 at a later date. (Read more about MNP in Singapore)

The technical specifications employed in the number portability process in Pakistan were also described in detail. Similarly, the regulatory framework (including operator rights and obligations, charging schemes, best practices, and policy implications) required for the successful implementation of MNP was communicated by members of the PTA who were engaged in the Pakistani MNP process.

The key lesson learnt from the Workshop was that there was no standard MNP solution for a country. Every solution was unique with success riding on a number of factors.

SAN MIGUEL, Philippines–It’s Thursday, so 18-year-old Dennis Tiangco is off to a bank to collect his weekly allowance, zapped by his mother–who’s working in Hong Kong–to his electronic wallet: his cell phone.

Sauntering into a branch of GM Bank in the town of San Miguel, Dennis fills out a form, sends a text message via his phone to a bank line dedicated to the service.

In a matter of seconds, the transaction is approved and the teller gives him P2,500 (US$54), minus a 1-percent fee. He doesn’t need a bank account to retrieve the money.

More than 5.5 million Filipinos now use their cell phones as virtual wallets, making the Philippines a leader among developing nations in providing financial transactions over mobile networks.

Mobile banking services, which are also catching on in Kenya and South Africa, enable people who don’t have bank accounts to transfer money easily, quickly and safely. It’s spreading in the developing world because mobile phones are much more common than bank accounts.

The system is particularly useful for the 8 million Filipinos–10 percent of the country’s citizens–who work overseas and send money home, like Dennis’ mother, Anna Tiangco. Previously, she sent money via a bank wire transfer, which costs HK$20 (US$2.50, â‚1.83) and takes two days to clear. The cell phone method costs only HK$1 (13 U.S. cents, 9 euro cents) and is nearly instantaneous.

“The good thing here is, wherever my children are, they can text me and I can send money immediately,” she said by telephone from Hong Kong.

Consumers also can store limited amounts of money on their cell phones to buy things at stores that participate in the network–although this practice isn’t yet widespread in the Philippines.

Many more Filipinos use their phones to send airtime values called “loads” to prepaid subscribers. A parent, for example, can send a 60-peso load to replenish a child’s cell phone, charged to the parent’s account.

While Japanese and South Korean consumers have been using cell phones as virtual wallets for several years, those systems use a computer chip implanted in handset that allows people to buy things by waving the phone in front of a sensor. The Philippine system relies on simple text messages, which cost just 1 peso (2 US cents) to send.

The 41 million cell phone users in the Philippines are avid texters. The electronic connections have fostered a culture of quick greetings and forwarded jokes. Text messages also played a key role in mobilizing crowds that fueled the 2001 “people power” revolt that ousted President Joseph Estrada.

The Philippines’ two biggest mobile service providers, Globe Telecom and Smart Communications, have harnessed this penchant for text messaging to enable consumers to enter the world of e-commerce.

Tapping into the cash flow from overseas Filipinos–who sent home US$12.7 billion last year–Globe and Smart forged partnerships with foreign mobile providers and banks, as well as with local banks and merchants, to create a network that allows users to send and receive cash internationally.

When Anna Tiangco wants to send cash home, for example, she goes to a branch of her local provider, Hong Kong CSL Ltd., where a clerk credits her cell phone with the amount she has brought with her. She then transfers the money to family members via text messages–in essence instructing her providers to deduct money from her balance to the recipients she indicates.

If a cell phone loaded with cash values is lost or stolen, the money can’t be tapped as long as the personal identification number isn’t revealed. Control over the funds can be restored with a replacement SIM card from either mobile provider.

The system was “built for remote payments and for the unbanked markets,” said Rizza Maniego Eala, president of G-Xchange, Globe’s subsidiary in charge of its G-Cash money transfer service.

Eala said her company’s 500,000 G-Cash users transfer about US$100 million monthly (â‚73 million), but she declined to say how many transactions involve remittances from overseas.

Smart offers a slightly different money transfer system, used by about 5 million Filipinos, that links cash or a debit card to a cell phone.

Users load up their phones with money via text messages. The card–which costs P200 but does not require a bank account–can then be used to purchase goods in establishments that accept MasterCard, or to withdraw cash from an ATM machine.

Smart Communications spokesman Ramon Isberto said each time the recipient spends the money, the sender receives a transaction message. That allows the sender to see how the funds are used.”The added value there now is that Filipinos overseas have greater control over their funds. Believe me, that is important to them,” he said.

Smart and UAE’s leading telecommunications operator, Etisalat, have agreed to provide money transfer service to hundreds of thousands of Filipinos in the Middle East. Smart also will soon launch a remittance system in Bahrain in partnership with MTC-Vodafone and Ahli United Bank there, and Banco de Oro in the Philippines, Isberto said.

“The bank products remain clearly bank products. We positioned ourselves as an enabler for banks and other financial institutions to provide products and services to their customers in ways they would otherwise not have been able to,” he said.

Aside from transferring cash and making purchases, both Globe and Smart also allow their users to pay bills with their phones. Anna Tiangco said she pays her family’s electric bills in San Miguel from Hong Kong via text messages, just like she sends money.

“Even if we are far apart, it’s like we are still together,” she said. “This is like my wallet now.”

Such bizarre underwater international telecoms infrastructure robbery occurred on March 25 and since then Vietnam’s Internet users have been struggling with far slower speed.

The broken cable system, named TVH, was built in 1993-1995, connecting Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong with a capacity of 560 megabits per second.

The Vietnam Telecom International (VTI) got puzzled when the cable went down. It occurred soon after the Asia Pacific region recovered from prolonged bandwidth crisis as earthquake snapped bunch of submarine cables in the Taiwanese coast

VTI called a submarine cable fixing ship from Singapore. But its crew went bonkers after detecting 11-kilometres of the cable was missing from the floor of Ca Mau Sea. The maintenance vessel went back as it never carries that many cables in the first place.

Baffled VTI already lost four million dollars revenue and it will incur further 2.6 millions dollars to fix the underwater missing link. Vietnam’s Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Public Security, the Naval Command and military commands joined hands to catch the fishy fishermen.

Authorities have not discovered who initially cut the cable. But last Wednesday, police in the southern coastal town of Vung Tau said they captured a boat carrying 60 tons of undersea optical fibre cable, reported cellular-news.com quoting German news agency dpa.

Earlier the police also captured three boats and recovered 40 tons of similar cables. Same man, a Vung Tau resident, allegedly owns all the four boats.

But VTI’s deputy director Lan Quoc Cuong said the cable seized by police in Vung Tau does not match the cable his company owns, and they must have come from a different severed line.

He said finding the cable would have been difficult for the thieves. “The cable is located in different locations and at different depths,” he said. “Maybe, while using an anchor, they found the cable by accident and started cutting it.”

Meanwhile the Vietnamese media has made a disturbing revelation. The country’s defence ministry contracted few companies last August to salvage the decommissioned undersea copper cables. The US-backed former South Vietnamese government deployed them before the country became independent in 1975.

Reports said some of these companies apparently went for legitimate undersea treasures hunt but they may have struck the operational undersea fibre optic cables instead.

Whatever the case may be, robbing the submarine cable is getting rampant in Vietnam, said VietNamNet Bridge. So far this year, five undersea optical cable theft cases have been detected.

The latest case was on May 3 when border guards of the southern province of Kien Giang detected two fishing boats carrying 80 tonnes of cable. A boat owner said that while catching fish offshore, his boat caught the cable and they cut the cable and brought it to the mainland to sell.

Earlier on April 15, three fishing boats loaded with 80 tonnes of cable were caught in the southern province of Soc Trang. Fishermen on those boats said that they found the cable offshore and stopped catching fish to cut the cable to sell as waste.

Authorities of Kien Giang, Bac Lieu, Soc Trang provinces have seized hundreds of tonnes of telecom cable from fishing boats. Police say they have broken up five rings selling some 500 tons of illegally salvaged cable since the beginning of this year, cellular-news.com said.

In what it described as its “third consultation” on broadband wireless access, OFTA says it wants to allocate 85MHz of spectrum between 2.305 and 2.390GHz for broadband wireless, with a small guard band separating it from electronic news gathering/outside broadcast services at 2.20-2.29Ghz and the unlicensed 2.4-2.4835GHz band. Read more.

Zimbabwe, the country that leads all of South Asia according to the ITU, is not in the top- 70 that is provided. Nigeria, on the other hand, is just behind Sri Lanka, at 62. Unless some action is taken, next year, both Nigeria and Pakistan will be ahead of Sri Lanka.

PRESS RELEASE Asian Countries Advance in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2007 E-Readiness Rankings, as the Goalposts of Digital Leadership Shift

E-readiness continues to improve around the world in 2007, but achieving it is becoming more complex. To reflect this, the Economist Intelligence Unit has “raised the bar” of e-readiness by modifying its ranking methodology. This change in methodology, along with underlying improvements in individual countries, has led to changes in the league table. Several countries, particularly in Asia, have seen their positions improve, while others have experienced (mostly slight) declines. At the same time, the fundamental tenets of e-readiness remain unchanged, and the leaders in 2006 are still leaders today — nine of last year’s top ten countries remain in that bracket.Denmark and the US retain their number one and two spots in the rankings (with Sweden also tied for 2nd), but Hong Kong (4th), Singapore (6th), South Korea (16th), Taiwan (17th) and Japan (18th) have experienced a boost in 2007 in both scores and ranks. This is due in no small part to their governments’ vision and commitment in pushing digital development, and to continued progress in adoption of broadband and other advanced infrastructure.

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