As usual, media is blamed for their role in Mumbai. Unconfirmed reports claimed the terrorists trapped in Taj Mahal Palace constantly watched TV for news and they might have got a feeling of excitement if not ideas from the live coverage. Stupid guys. They never knew what they missed. The best ball-by-ball coverage was hardly on TV but on Twitter, anybody could have accessed thru a mobile. (Twitter added hashtags to terms like ‘Mumbai’ and ‘Attack’) Indian government at one stage requested ‘Twitters’ not to tweet anything about police activity, but it was more because the mainstream media too started depending on them rather than their own paid correspondents.
However, unlike in case of 9/11 no mobile based interactions with the victims were heard – which was…
Helani Galpaya will represent LIRNEasia at the third Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting to be held in Hydrabad, India, from 3-6 December, 2008 at the Hydrabad International Conference Center (HICC).
Helani will be among panelists a workshop entitled, ‘Digital convergence beyond technology: socio-economic benefits, SMEs & public policy’; this workshop aims to discuss the evolving definition of digital convergence as well as the benefits and opportunities to key stakeholders - with a special focus on SMEs. Digital convergence refers to the evolution of previously distinguishable digitalized information formats, services, applications, networks, and business models in ways that reduce or blend the distinctions.
This workshop will focus on what kind of information and skills various stakeholders must have to address digital convergence issues and the implications for the policy environment, users and…
In 1997, NTT bought 35 per cent of a badly managed government phone company called SLT along with the right to manage it for five years for USD 225 million. The decision was bracketed by the Central Bank attack (on a per capita basis more devastating than the World Trade Center hit of 11 September 2001) and the bombing of an empty [Sri Lankan] World Trade Center. Many wondered what the logic was. One explanation was that NTT saw Sri Lanka as a stepping stone to India. But no step was taken.
Others saw it as the only sensible foreign investment made by NTT, a high-cost operator that was completely unaccustomed to the challenger role, but was the quintessential incumbent. Their culture meshed perfectly with the…
President-elect Barack Obama has named two telecom industry and policy veterans and a leader of Google’s philanthropy arm to craft the new administration’s high-tech policy priorities.
The policy working group on Technology, Innovation and Government Reform will “develop proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration,” according to the president-elect’s transition web site www.change.gov.
The authors of what could be sweeping changes in broadband rules, privacy and government transparency include:
–Blair Levin, a telecom investment analyst at Stifel Nicolaus and former chief of staff to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt. Levin is also seen among a short list of candidates to head the FCC in the new administration.
–Julius Genachowski, former chief counsel to Hundt at the FCC and a member of Obama’s…
Tags: Barack Obama, Blair Levin, Broadband, Department of Treasury, Federal Communications Commission, former law school classmate, Goldman, Google, Google Inc., high-tech policy priorities, IAC/InterActiveCorp, India, Indicorps, Julius Genachowski, Obama-Biden Administration, Obama-Biden Transition Project Advisory Board, policy working group, Reed Hundt, Rock Creek Vetnrues, Sachs and Co., Sonal Shah, Stifel Financial Corp., Stifel Nicolaus, telecommunications leaders, The Washington Post Company, transition web site www.change.gov, Washington Post.
One of the main reasons for collecting and disseminating indicators data at the regional level is currency. By the time the ITU puts out its reports, two years have gone by, and the data are of historical value in these fast-changing times. Despite knowing all this, even we got tripped up this time. In attempting to release mobile and broadband benchmarks at the same time, we delayed the release of the mobile data collected and analyzed in early October and were overtaken by events. In the future, the data will be released without delay.
In early October, the relative positions of the four lowest-price countries (Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka) had changed only slightly, with India becoming slightly cheaper than Pakistan and Sri Lanka falling…
A study by Professor Rajat Kathuria, ICRIER and International Management Institute New Delhi, is now available. In the paper, Professor Kathuria seeks to
assess the impact of decline of leased line prices in Indonesia. It tries to capture this impact through qualitative as well as quantitative impacts. Since the decline in prices occurred recently (2008 April), the period post the decline is not large enough to do a meaningful time series analysis. However, qualitative assessment is made and the impact is compared with India, where decline in leased line prices led to substantial benefits to user industries. Of particular significance is the trigger to the price decline in Indonesia. The process was set in motion by a presentation of research results by LIRNEasia in Jakarta in…
Existing telecom operators may have to pay more than the new players eyeing the 3G space, in the form of annual charge for the 3G spectrum. A committee chaired by Department of Telecommunications (DoT) Joint Secretary J S Deepak has recommended that an operator having 2G spectrum and 5 MHz of 3G spectrum should pay an incremental 1 per cent more than the applicable slab rate for 2G spectrum.
The committee, which was set up to suggest annual spectrum charges for 3G, has recommended that due to the efficiency in capital expenditure and synergy in operations, operators having 2G spectrum and acquiring 5 Mhz of 3G spectrum should be charged at a higher rate.
GSM 2G operators get 4.4 MHz and CDMA players get 2.5 MHz of…
The roll-out plans of new mobile players could be dampened with some of the existing pan-Indian operators demanding higher rates for providing interconnection.
This includes higher termination rates (levied for ending calls from a new operator’s subscriber to an incumbent player’s network) and port charges (for accepting traffic from a new player to an existing network).
Incumbent operators such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone are at an advantageous position because they have a large subscriber base and, therefore, it is necessary for the new players to interconnect. If the new operators do not interconnect with them then their subscribers will not be able to call users on the incumbent player’s network.
“The interconnection charges being imposed by the existing players are based on the telecom regulator’s order issued…
Leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel will launch operations in Sri Lanka in December, a top official announced on Monday.
“We will roll out the services next month as all formalities are done and issues relating to inter-connectivity have been sorted out,” Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman and managing director Rajan Mittal told reporters in New Delhi.
The telecom giant had been facing problems of inter-connection, with local carriers not willing to give inter-connections to the company.
Source: Hindustan Times, Nov 04
Tags: Bharti Airtel, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Bharti Enterprises, Bharti Enterprises Ltd, Delhi, Hindustan Times, India, New Delhi, Rajan Mittal, Sri Lanka, telecom operator.
Few weeks back I heard Senior Director of COAI, Mr T.R. Dua, state that rural teledensity (or access paths/100) now exceeded 10. Having heard numbers as low as 2/100 population just a few years back, I decided to investigate further. The Indian telecom minister, Mr Raja, confirmed that there were now 11 access paths per 100 rural persons. This suggests that the urban-rural gap is being closed by market forces, questioning the need for extensive government intervention using the universal services taxes.
“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…
Tags: Associated Press, Bihar, Chanuka Wattegama, Congress, Disaster Management, disaster warning systems, HazInfo, India, Lanka Software, Pakistan, Sahana, Sonia Gandhi, Washington DC, World Bank, Yousaf Raza Gillani.
An article entitled, ‘Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Beyond Universal Access’, co-authored by Harsha de Silva and Ayesha Zainudeen, has been published in Telektronikk, a leading telecommunications journal, published by Telenor, Norway.
Appearing in the journal’s second issue for 2008, aptly titled, ‘Emerging Markets in Telecommunications’, the article explores the extent to which “universal access” to telecommunications has been achieved in Asia, based on findings from LIRNEasia’s five-country study of the use of telecommunication services at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’, namely in India, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Very high levels of access, but low levels of ownership are found. The paper then looks at the potential benefits that these non-owner users are missing out on, and then goes on to look at the key barriers to ownership…
Tags: Ayesha Zainudeen, BOP, Bottom Of The Pyramid, Harsha de Silva, India, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Telektronikk, Thailand, universal access.
Results for Indonesia in LIRNEasia’s Telecom Regulatory Environment survey show an interesting trend. Unlike their counterparts in other countries (Bangladesh, India, Maldives Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand) Indonesia telecom experts have given marks so low for different aspects of their regulatory environment that none of the categories, in any three sectors, meet the average of 3. (The options were from 1 to 5, 1=extremely unsatisfied, 5=excellent service) The one comes nearest is the score for Market Entry in the mobile sector (there are nine players in the market – eight national, one regional) but that too miss the average by 0.05 points.
The results do not show a change from the previous (2006) scores. The score for the fixed sector remains same as it was in 2006,…
Tags: 2008, Bangladesh, Broadband, Colloquium, fixed, India, Indonesia, LIRNEasia, Maldives, Mobile, Sri Lanka, Telecom, Telecom Regulatory Environment survey, Thailand, TRE survey.
![](http://lirneasia.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/rtbp-on-the-hindu-231x300.jpg "Rural Technology and Business Incubator on \\"The Hindu\\"")
This past week, our friends from the Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) of the Indian Institute of Technology showcased the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) at the Connect 2008 exhibition hosted in Chennai, India from September 11-13. The theme of this year’s event, which is the 8th episode, is - Global Competitiveness and Equitable Growth-Driven by Innovation”. The action research: Evaluating a real-time Biosurveillance program, being pilot tested in the state of Tamil Nadu, India and the District of Kurunegala, Sri Lanka over the next 2 years to come is an innovation emphasizing m-Health. The two ladies: Geetha G (left) and Suma Prashanth (right) in the news articel are managing the RTBP project in India, which includes developing the technology and piloting the ICT system with Village Health…
The Aspen Institute has published a report entitled, ‘m-Powering India: Mobile Communications for Inclusive Growth’ co-authored by Mahesh Uppal and Richard P. Adler, which documents the discussions from the Aspen Institute India/ C & S Joint Roundtable on Communication Policy held in Kovalam, India in February, 2008. LIRNEasia’s Executive Director, Rohan Samarajiva, participated at the event, which brought together senior representatives from the telecommunications industry, government and academia.
The objective of the meeting was to develop policy proposals that would contribute to the development of low-cost and high-quality telecom infrastructure needed to facilitate seamless transactions of mobile commerce.
A summary of the main recommendation (as documented in the report) is given below. An online version of the report is also available HERE.
Key recommendations
Infrastructure
•All carriers should be granted easy access to essential infrastructure at a…
Tags: Aspen Institute, Aspen Institute India, Department of Telecommunications, e-government services, India, Kovalam, Mahesh Uppal, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Richard P. Adler, Rohan Samarajiva, telecom infrastructure, telecommunications industry, wireless broadband.
![](http://lirneasia.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/rtbp-on-the-hindu.jpg "Rural Technology and Business Incubator on \\"The Hindu\\"")
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