Tag Archives: International Telecommunication Union
Applications now open for LIRNEasia Young Scholar Tutorials, hosted by NUS, Singapore. Click here for info on how to apply.
India: Internet, broadband fail to catch up with mobile growth
The debate over Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum auctions and internet telephony comes at a time when international organizations and analysts are painting a starkly contrasting picture of the Indian telecom and IT sectors.
Recent International Telecommunication Union (ITU) data reveals that the success of India’s telecom revolution is restricted to mobile voice with very little to showcase in fixed line and internet access, or high-speed broadband. For a country that is the global IT and ITeS capital or the world’s back office, its own internet penetration remains one of the lowest in the world. Forecasts are equally uninspiring, projecting high-speed internet access to remain abysmal till 2012.
Internet broadband penetration will limp along to eventually reach a measly 3.9 connections for every 100 citizens by 2012. Even though internet users may be multiple times higher, actual broadband penetration will not exceed 18.1 million at the beginning of the next decade. In contrast, mobile telephony will add as many as 350 million subscribers during this five-year period to end at roughly 615 million by mid 2012.
These forecasts fall short of the government’s conservative target of 20 million high-speed internet subscribers by 2010-end. India’s broadband penetration is roughly 4.5 million subscribers. Even with ..read more
Africa: Fastest Growing Market For Mobile Phones??
Africa is the world’s fastest growing market for mobile phones over the last three years with 65 million new subscribers in 2007 alone, according to the head of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Hamadoun Touré, ITU Secretary-General, said the figure is cited in the United Nations agency’s regional report entitled “African Telecommunication/ICT Indicators 2008: At a Crossroads,” which he presented at the opening of the ITU Telecom Africa trade fair here on Monday.
A UN press release quoted Toure as saying, “Today, the African ICT industry is an exciting place to be. Market liberalization continues and most countries have established regulatory bodies to ensure a fair, competitive and enabling environment.”
The report indicated that there were more than 250 million mobile subscribers on the continent at the start of 2008.
Time for regulators in emerging Asia to start planning spectrum for wireless broadband
With global agreement reached on clearing the 700 MHz band of analog broadcasting so it can be used for wireless broadband, the equipment will start coming to market soon. Unless the regional spectrum regulators clear the band in time, it will not be possible to reap the benefits.
After Global Agreement, Companies May Bid Higher at Wireless Auction in U.S. – New York Times Because the conference elicited a global consensus, that confidence should extend worldwide. The conference said that countries could use the 700-megahertz slice for wireless broadband services like cellphones, mobile TV and WiMax, although at each country’s time of choosing.
The conclusions of the conference, which operates under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, carry the weight of an international treaty.
“Most people in the industry believe this will be very important going forward in terms of supplying new services and new technologies to consumers around the world,” said Richard Russell, who led the 150-member United States delegation, which included government and industry representatives.
Powered by ScribeFire.
ITU approves WiMax
U.N. Agency Gives Boost to WiMax – New York Times The United Nations telecommunications agency in Geneva gave the upstart technology called WiMax a vote of approval, providing a sizable victory for Intel and something of a defeat for competing technologies from Qualcomm and Ericsson.
The International Telecommunication Union’s radio assembly agreed late Thursday to include WiMax, a wireless technology that allows Internet and other data connections across much broader areas than Wi-Fi, as part of what is called the third-generation family of mobile standards.
That endorsement opens the way for many of the union’s member countries to devote a part of the public radio spectrum to WiMax, and receivers for it could be built into laptop computers, phones, music players and other portable devices.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Choices: Calls or gold?
By Rohan Samarajiva LBO >> Choices : Priceless Link 08 March 2007 08:26:29
http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?newsID=2020236857&no_view=1&SEARCH_TERM=24 March 08 (LBO) – Indonesia, like Sri Lanka, sends its women to foreign lands to work as housemaids. The numbers may be larger, though the proportion is smaller. Telecom networks are expanding fast in both countries, Indonesia faster. The telecom sector is attracting massive investments in both countries as operators scramble to meet the burgeoning demand.
Generally, politicians and officials responsible for a sector are happy when it grows. Therefore, I was surprised to hear several senior telecom officials in Indonesia express concern about lowered gold sales supposedly caused by excessive use of calling cards by expatriate housemaids.
Internet or internet?
The significance of capitalizing the Internet (which LIRNEasia religiously does) and latest effort to decapitalize it and bring it under the thrall of international bureaucracy:
What’s in an ‘i’? Internet governance – Technology & Media – International Herald Tribune When David Gross heard last month that the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, wanted to lower-case the word Internet as a matter of official policy, he did not know whether to be alarmed or amused.
“We immediately thought, ‘Gee, what’s up with that?’” Gross, the coordinator for international communications and information policy at the U.S. State Department, said by telephone from Washington last week. “Who made the decision and on what basis? We didn’t have a clue if this was something insignificant or significant.”
But some others among the 2,100 participants at the union’s highest-level strategy meeting, which convened for three weeks in November in Antalya, Turkey, were more certain. They saw the move as the latest in a long-running effort by the organization to control the Internet, this time through a subtle yet symbolic imprint on the most powerful communications and commercial tool of the 21st century.
LIRNEasia at International Telecommunication Union Telecom World 2006
Rohan Samarajiva and Divakar Goswami, chaired sessions at the first Telecom World event , ITU Telecom World 2006, to be held in Asia, in Hong Kong SAR, 3-8 December 2006. This event, held once in four years, is normally held in Geneva. It was moved to Hong Kong to recognize the leading role of the Asia Pacific in the ICT sector today (see Figure 1).Samarajiva and Goswami were the only persons from Sri Lanka featured in the program of the Forum at Telecom World.
Goswami, lead researcher on LIRNEasia’s Indonesia ICT sector and regulatory performance study, chaired a session that included keynote presentations by Dr Sofyan Djalil, the Indonesian Minister of ICTs. Samarajiva’s session on universal access included keynotes by the Vice President of China Unicom, Dr Zhengmao Li, and Tom Philllips, the Head of Regulatory Affairs at the GSM Association.
LIRNEasia has an ongoing research program that covers India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand, in addition to capacity building work across the entire Asia Pacific. The invitations to chair the said sessions demonstrated the high recognition that LIRNEasia has achieved in the two years of its existence. Samarajiva and Goswami ..read more
Training Course in Telecom Reform: Strategies to achieve connectivity and convergence
An executive course on telecom regulation, including World Dialogue on Regulation Expert Forum on Sector and Regulatory Performance Indicators Offered by LIRNEasia and CONNECTasia Forum Pte. Ltd. February 25th – March 3rd, 2007. Changi Village Hotel, Singapore
The 2007 course is designed to enhance the strategic thinking of a select group of senior decision makers in the telecom and related sectors in the Asia Pacific and elsewhere. The focus will be on the most current strategic issues.
Report on Workshop on ICT Indicators, New Delhi
A report on the Indicators Workshop held in New Delhi by LIRNEasia in collaboration with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is available here [PDF]. The report provides a review of international initiatives and best practices, examines some of the difficulties regarding standardising indicators across the region, the challenges of measurement and collection of indicator data and the process of developing an indicators manual for the South Asian region.
Recent Comments