The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) today announced that it has denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers’ (CAIP) application to end Bell Canada’s practice of “throttling” its wholesale internet services.
In a decision that defies all logic, the federal agency told the coalition of 55 ISP’s that Bell Canada’s decision to discriminate against particular applications and types of content was “not discriminatory” because Bell throttled both wholesale and retail customers in an equal fashion.
“Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory. Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers,” said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C., Chairman of the CRTC.
CAIP and advocates…
Tags: Canadian Association of Internet Providers, federal agency, internet congestion, Internet Service Providers, ISP, Konrad von Finckenstein, particular applications, Q.C., retail customers, Telecommunications Commission, wholesale and retail customers, wholesale internet services.
Vint Cerf, who can fairly be described as one of the godfathers of Internet has endorsed Barack Obama in the US presidential race, saying that his decision is swayed by Obama’s stance on net neutrality - the question of whether content providers should be charged more for different content by the “pipe” providers.
Extracts:
We believe that the Internet should remain an open environment. It’s vital to innovation. Companies like Google, and Yahoo, and eBay, and Amazon, and Skype and so on, got their start without having to get permission from any ISP or any broadband provider to offer services. They simply acquired access to the internet, put their services up and then made them available to the general public.
We think that’s the best way for the…
Tags: Amazon, Barack Obama, Broadband, eBay, Google, ISP, net neutrality, Skype, United States, Vint Cerf, Yahoo!.
At the end of a long day at Telecoms World South Asia in Dhaka, I presented some of the preliminary results of the Broadband QoSE work being done with IIT Madras. I talked about the finding that the bottleneck in Chennai and Colombo appeared to be the international segment and that the first results from the testing done in Dhaka suggested the same applied to Bangladesh, with the ISPs using satellite (versus undersea cable) were suffering very high latencies.
The CEO of a Pakistan ISP, Mr Wahaj us Siraj, said that the situation in Pakistan was very different, with plenty of capacity available on the undersea cables and low contention ratios (1:4) being used. Prices of international capacity had come down radically in recent times,…
One of the key debates on broadband is between those who believe in “all you can eat” service packages and pricing and those who do not. Our research so far indicates that broadband can only be provided to the Bottom of the Pyramid using the same kind of business plans that were effective in providing mobile service to the BOP, that is, not all-you-can eat.
Comcast, a leading US ISP, has just announced caps on downloads. If this is the future for rich country users, can there be any doubt about what the future for BOP users in poor countries?
Bangladesh and India are set to compete for the same set of telecom investors with Bangladesh announcing auctions for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum close on the heels of India unveiling its BWA policy.
However, while Bangladesh’s policy is designed to attract fresh competition by keeping its existing operators and their shareholders (foreign and Bangladeshi) out of the spectrum bids, India has opted for a different route.
India has restricted BWA bidding to only those who either hold an ISP or a unified access service (UAS) licence, thereby either forcing companies to acquire ISP/UAS licenses before the bidding or keeping away new entrants who are unable to acquire such licences due to price or time constraints.
“Other contrasts are equally striking and show up uncomfortable flaws with India’s…
Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out - New York Times
Part of the problem was in the business model established in Philadelphia and mimicked in so many other cities, Mr. Settles said.
In Philadelphia, the agreement was that the city would provide free access to city utility poles for the mounting of routers; in return the Internet service provider would agree to build the infrastructure for 23 free hotspots and to provide inexpensive citywide residential service, including 25,000 special accounts that were even cheaper for lower-income households.
But soon it became clear that dependable reception required more routers than initially predicted, which drastically raised the cost of building the networks. Marketing was also slow to begin, so paid subscribers did not sign up in…
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) will auction licenses to operate two interconnection exchanges (ICX) and three International Gateway (IGW) facilities on November 22.
Outbound PSTN and mobile calls will first terminate in the ICX. Then the calls will be processed in the IGW followed by getting routed to overseas via BTTB’s submarine cable station. Similar path will be followed for the inbound overseas calls.
Foreign investments and joint ventures are strictly prohibited. Even the non-resident Bangladeshis are not eligible to invest.
Incumbent private operators (PSTN, mobile and ISP) are not allowed to apply for the IGW and ICX licenses. But the state-owned BTTB gets both the licenses. The newly enacted international lonng distance telecoms policy mandates these conditions.
Prof. William Melody, Arno Wirzenius and Anatul Fateh have detected numerous inconsistencies in this initiative.…
As part of a special review of ICT policy in Indonesia, e-Indonesia, the Indonesian ICT monthly magazine, interviewed a number of key stakeholders including the Minister Sofyan Djalil, Commissioners from BRTI, the regulatory body, civil society group, industry reps and ICT experts.
LIRNEasia researcher, Divakar Goswami, was also interviewed. The interview is featured in the online edition here. The interview is in bahasa. The English text of the interview is below:
1. How’s the growth of ICT in Indonesia for along 2006 (as we see from regulations, infrastructure development (hardware and software), human being, ICT industry etc)?
Information and Communication Technology sector (ICT) in Indonesia is one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy contributing most to GDP growth rate (around 16%) than any other sector. The ICT…
Tags: 3G, ADSL, Bakrie Telecom, Bangladesh, basic telephone service, Broadband, CDMA, CDMA technology, Communication Technology Council, Divakar Goswami, enough telecom infrastructure, fixed and mobile services, fixed line infrastructure, fixed wireless access, India, Indonesia, Indonesian government, Indonesia\'s government, Information and Technology Council, Information Communication Department, Internet connectivity, internet connectivity costs, Internet prices, Internet service, Internet service provision, Internet subscribers, Internet users, ISP, Lampung, low Internet use, lower Internet retail prices, mobile phones, mobile retail prices, mobile services, mobility services, National Information and Communication Technology Counc, online edition, particular technology, Qualcomm, Sofyan Djalil, stagnant Internet, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, technology neutral, telephone connectivity, Telkom, Telkom Flexi, USD, wireless access, wireless broadband, wireless broadband providers, wonder Internet access, www.lirneasia.net/projects.
As part of the Six Country Indicators Project, Divakar presents the interim findings from the Indonesia country study. The study assesses Indonesia’s telecom sector and regulatory performance. It employs the common methodology and list of indicators adopted for the Six Country study.
Tags: 2G services, 3G, ADSL, Bakrie Group, Fixed wireless operators, fixed wireless subscriber, GSM, Harsha de Silva, India, Indonesia, Internet access, Internet penetration, ISP, Java, Lorraine Carlos Salazar, mobile Internet, New government, Philippines, PT Indosat, PT Telekom, Satelindo, Singapore, Thailand, VOIP, wireless access.
Leased Line Tariffs to be Regulated
Bisnis Indonesia, September 27, 2006
JAKARTA: The Indonesian Telecommunication Regulatory Body (BRTI) will regulate the tariffs for leased lines through a ministerial decree, which is expected to be signed end of this year. The regulator most likely will force network operators to lower leased line tariffs by more than 50 percent to push internet penetration in Indonesia.
BRTI said this in a public meeting with Mastel, internet service providers, and network operators yesterday. Heru Sutadi, a member of BRTI, expected a decline of more than 50% in the tariffs will increase ICT usage, internet interconnection, telephone penetration and increase the number of internet users in Indonesia.
“The regulator expects the decline in leased line tariffs will be followed by the acceleration of local…
Tags: Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers, BRTI, fixed telephone tariffs, IDR, India, Indonesia, Indosat and Excelcomindo, internet costs, internet interconnection, Internet penetration, Internet service, Internet service operators, Internet Service Providers, Internet tariffs, Internet users, ISP, Jakarta, local internet content, optic fiber network, retail customers, retail tariffs, Sarwoto Atmosumarno, telecommunication services, telephone penetration, Telkom.
Internet Providers Criticize Leased Line Tariffs
Bisnis Indonesia, Sept. 26, 2006, T2
JAKARTA: The Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers urge network operators to lower leased line tariffs to allow a healthy competition in providing Internet services for retail customers. Chairman of the Association Sylvia W. Sumarlin said that network operators, which also provide direct internet services to customers, have disturbed ISP
businesses.
“Every day, a lot of ISP customers switch to network operators because they provide cheaper tariffs to access Internet,” she said to Bisnis yesterday. Internet tariffs from network operators are cheaper than ISP’s because those operators apply very high leased lines, forcing ISPs to charge higher retail prices, she said. Leased line is the network that connects ISP with the customers. This network is hired by…
Tags: Access.Net, Asia, Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers, Cable TV, cellular network, direct internet services, Europe, higher retail prices, IDR, India, Indonesia, Indonesian Infocom Society, Internet Association Draws, Internet Providers Criticize Leased Line Tariffs, Internet services, Internet tariffs, Internet users, ISP, ISP association, Jakarta, local telecommunication network, multimedia services, network operator, network operators, retail customers, satellite network, similar products, Teddy A. Purwadi, USD, wireless fidelity.
Inadequate backbone infrastructure in Indonesia has been widely regarded as crippling its telecom sector. Uneven development of the backbone has meant that much of the East of the country has no fiber-optic based backbone network and those islands have to rely on more expensive satellite links. Poor long-haul domestic infrastructure has meant that many parts of the country do not have access to basic communication and those that are connected have some of the world’s highest leased line and Internet prices as my earlier study shows.
The Indonesian government’s ambitious Palapa Ring project to create a fiber ring connecting the major islands had been shelved post the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Recently, however, efforts have been made to revive a modified version of the earlier vision. In…
Tags: backbone infrastructure, Cable TV, fiber-optic based backbone network, high-speed Internet, high-speed Internet connection using cable television l, high-speed Internet connections, India, Indonesia, Indonesian government, Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association, information
technology, information
technology costs, information technology, Internet prices, Internet service, Internet users, ISP, Jakarta, Nepal, Poor long-haul domestic infrastructure, satellite links, Sofyan Djalil, SouthEast Asia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, USD.
Dr. William Melody:
Think of any of the new technologies and in most countries it’s illegal. The laws are written to preserve things that are inherited, inherited regulation. The barriers to advancement are inherited regulation.
Dr. Melody stressed the importance of demand and its neglect at the hand of supply-side interests. Now, who has interest in developing information infrastructure?
New network operators, first. Also, Multisector infrastructure, like electricity, water, etc. Frequently these sectors lay down bandwidth for their own use, but are kept from sharing this largely be regulatory barriers. The tradition interest comes from regional and local governments, and there is room for co-ops, public/private partnerships, and ISPs.
As for the last item, the biggest ISP is often owned by the big monopoly. We don’t have a market…
Provisional Mission Statement: Improving the lives the people of Asia - by making it easier to use the information and communication technologies they need; by changing the laws, policies and regulations to enable those uses; by building Asia-based human capacity through research, training, consulting and advocacy.
Why LIRNEasia?
Enormous amounts of money are invested annually in ICTs. The potential of information and communication technologies, or ICTs for economic and social progress is substantial. ICTs aren’t necessarily the answer to higher incomes and development in itself; but together with other factors, they provide a means to improve people’s capabilities and knowledge so that they may better their lives. ‘Asia’ is the collective name for the countries roughly encircled by Russia, Turkey, Egypt and the Indian and Pacific Oceans.…
Tags: Afghanistan, Asia, Bangladesh, Bay of Bengal, Bhutan, Broadband, Business Center for Internet, Cambodia, Canada, China, Colombo, communication technologies, Denmark, DHAKA, Distance Learning Center Limited, Egypt, Hong Kong, Indian oceans, infoDev, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Development Research Center, Internet users, ISP, IT-based teaching facility, Korea, LIRNE.NET, LIRNEasia, LIRNEasia\'s mission, mobile phones, Mount Lavinia Hotel, Myanmar, Pacific oceans, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, United States government, video conferencing, virtual organization, Wi-Fi.
Recent Comments