Data and 3G may not be a priority in Asia: discuss. No, we’re not referring to Japan, Korea or Hong Kong. Not even China. This time we’re looking at the area’s so-called emerging markets - markets like Indonesia where the market-leading operator Telkomsel and third-ranked player Excelcom launched 3G services in early September. Or the Philippines, where rival operators Globe and Smartcom have been offering 3G for a slightly longer period. The question is: has anyone noticed?
Tag Archive for 'Japan'Page 2 of 3
Call for Papers: Infrastructure Regulation: What works, Why, and How do we know?
Deadline: 05 December 2008.
The e-readiness rankings are relatively well regarded and do not contain absurdities such as Zimbabwe being ahead of India. The latest rankings are out and show India and the Philippines tied for 54th place (a one-place drop for India); Sri Lanka at 61 (dropping two places); and Pakistan at 63 (up four places and likely to catch up with Sri Lanka soon). Indonesia, another country of focus for LIRNEasia, has slipped 5 places to 67.
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.
The Indonesian government imposed unreasonable burdens on the new entrant for international service in a recently issued White Paper 140. LIRNEasia highlighted the unfairness of burdening new entrants with obligations that the two existing incumbents (Telkom & Indosat) were not subjected too in comments it submitted to DGPOSTEL (one of the two regulatory bodies):
4.4 The Indonesian policymakers may have misunderstood the concept of asymmetric regulation. Asymmetric rules place additional burdens on dominant group of providers that other operators are not subjected to. In the current White Paper, many additional burdens are imposed on the new entrant that are not imposed on the two incumbents, PT Telkom & PT Indosat. Requirements for building FO from Indonesia to TIER-1 IP backbone, building domestic FO to Internet Exchange, building…
Free media Movement – Sri Lanka
Press Release
30 January 2007
Internet facilities and 8,000 telephones cut off in Jaffna Peninsula
The Free Media Movement (FMM) is deeply disturbed to learn that basic communications facilities to the Jaffna Peninsula have been blocked from 28th January 2007. Internet facilities and around 8,000 landline telephones of Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) are dysfunctional to date. SLT, jointly owned by the Sri Lankan Government and Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation (NTT) of Japan, is the sole Internet provider in Jaffna Peninsula with a population of around 600,000 according to official statistics.
The FMM was told that there is no official decision by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority to block communications in this manner in the Peninsula.
However, a number of citizens in Jaffna and journalists confirm…
CDMA has been a major force in helping drive down per-line costs of telephony. Has this been possible even with excessive royalties extracted by Qualcomm?
Qualcomm Under Scrutiny by Korean Antitrust Agency - New York Times
The South Korean antitrust agency has formed a task force to investigate the licensing and business practices of the wireless technology company Qualcomm, the latest in a string of legal battles for the company, officials said on Tuesday.
In Japan, Europe and the United States, Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego, faces accusations by rivals that it has abused its market dominance in wireless technology to demand excessive royalties and block fair competition.
Qualcomm is known for developing code-division multiple access, or CDMA, wireless technology, which is a rival standard to…
FLAG Telecom plans to deploy the largest IP-based submarine cable network that will connect 60 countries, including many that currently have poor connectivity by 2009. India, Indonesia, and Philippines are among the countries that FLAG’s NGN network will have a presence in.
Reliance to carry FLAG far and wide:
“We live in a world where there is too much of bandwidth for some, little for others and none for many - there is unequal access to bandwidth in and across countries, continents and communities,” said Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, chairman, Reliance Communications. “FLAG NGN will democratise digital access,” he added.
FLAG NGN will comprise of our systems. FLAG NGN System 1 would cover Asia that includes India, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Honk Kong. FLAG NGN…
The strong quake off Taiwan’s coast on December 26 damaged six separate submarine cables and severely disrupted telecom links in the East, Southeast and South Asia. Internet connectivity in a number of countries are either down or are slowed down thanks to taffic that is being rerouted over networks that have escaped damage. Most of Jakarta (Indonesia) and Pondicherry (Southern India) have been without Internet until this afternoon (Dec 27) at least. In our office in Sri Lanka, SLT’s ADSL connection (though congested) is working. However, Lankacom’s leased line is down since it probably connects to the Internet backbone via Singapore.
These disruptions have major consequences for any business that relies on telecom for delivering their services, including, banking, trading, call centers, remotely managed services etc.…
Indian Ocean tsunami warning system on slow track:
Tsunami Warning Remains Elusive - Council on Foreign Relations
The wave which swept so many away two years ago (BBC) has faded from memory in many parts of the world, even though as many as two million people remain in temporary shelters in parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. But surely the less onerous task of setting up a skeletal tsunami warning network must be well along, right?Not quite. While enormous sums of aid flowed in for relief and reconstruction efforts, the less glamorous work of positioning seismic warning buoys around the rim of the Indian Ocean lags financially and organizationally. As this new Backgrounder explains, several piecemeal systems are up and running, but the goal of…
Several weeks ago we speculated on why the Maldives, with its tiny population, needed two undersea cables. The answer is that the first cable is a collaboration between the new entrant Wataniya and India’s disruptive competitor, Reliance (through its FLAG unit). This created enormous pressure on the complacent incumbent Dhiraagu, the result being the cable to Colombo.
A new fibre optic undersea cable that connects Maldives to Sri Lanka will bring down international call charges from the Indian Ocean coral atoll, officials said Tuesday.Until the cable was commissioned this month, bilateral traffic of 600,000 minutes per month was routed via more expensive satellite links.
The undersea cable is a 20 million US dollar joint venture between Sri Lanka Telecom, owned by Japan’s NTT…
[Tsunami Warning - IOC] WCATWC Message
PRELIMINARY EARTHQUAKE PARAMETERS
MAGNITUDE - 7.7
TIME - 0214 AKST NOV 15 2006
0314 PST NOV 15 2006
1114 UTC NOV 15 2006
LOCATION - 46.7 NORTH 153.5 EAST
- KURIL ISLANDS
DEPTH - 21 MILES
THE PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER IN EWA BEACH HAWAII HAS
ISSUED A TSUNAMI WARNING FOR AREAS OF THE PACIFIC OUTSIDE OF
CALIFORNIA/ OREGON/ WASHINGTON/ BRITISH COLUMBIA AND ALASKA.
As Japan braces: Tech-related tsunami resources
By Paul McNamara on Wed, 11/15/2006 - 8:52am
The information and warning systems didn’t always work flawlessly, Japanese officials acknowledge.
Tsunami warning activated in the middle of the night
By Steve O’Brien, CBS 11 News Reporter
Some Alaskans are talking about the tsunami warning, one that was…
By Laura Smith-Spark
BBC News
Eighteen months after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, hundreds have died after a giant wave struck the Indonesian island of Java.
Their deaths have raised questions about the failure of a promised Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system to sound an adequate alert.
More than 300 people died and about 140 were reported missing after the tsunami struck Java’s southern coast on Monday.
Witnesses have said people had little or no warning to flee the 2m-high wave triggered by an undersea earthquake.
The LBO story states:
Sri Lanka’s two private wireless local loop telecom operators have been called up to pay around Rs. 400 million as duties for importing handsets, industry officials said.
Last month, the island’s Board of Investment (BOI) slapped a 33 percent import duty on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) handsets with immediate effect.
CDMA is a low cost cellular technology that has been effectively used world over to provide cheaper connectivity to rural homes. Though the technology is similar to mobile phones, the handsets are similar to a bulky fixed line unit.
Being BOI companies, Suntel and Lanka Bell, are allowed to import customer premises equipment or handsets without paying import duties.
However, since rolling out CDMA services since last June, Lanka Bell and Suntel have been asked…
In the 1980s and 1990s, a debate raged in the US on the question of industrial policy; the proponents arguing that the government should pick sectors and “winners” and the opponents arguing that government bureaucrats were not in a position to do so and that the market should be allowed to take its course.
One of the most effective methods of policy argumentation in the US is “we are falling behind [fill in the blank].” Those days, the country that was forging ahead of the US was Japan, in most cases (e.g., Fifth Generation Computing, High Definition Television) . The argument was that the strong government bureaucracy in Japan (in particular, MITI–the Ministry of International Trade and Industry) was picking winners, while the potential winners in…
NEW DELHI, APRIL 13: The government is in the process of amending the Indian Telegraph Act to extend the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund support to cellular mobile services (both GSM and CDMA).
As of today, the government is giving USO fund support to only the fixed line operators offering services in the rural areas.
“We are looking at amending the Telegraph Act to accommodate the cellular services and CDMA-based services to reach the rural areas. We are looking at sharing of the passive infrastructure with the cellular service providers,” communications and information technology (C&IT) minister Dayanidhi Maran told reporters.
Besides covering the villages, the minister is of the opinion that the wireless services should also provide connectivity to the Railways and highways especially in rural areas. When…
I was on the closing plenary at the Pacific Telecom Council, with Peter Anderson (Simon Fraser University, Canada), Stuart Weinstein (Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, Honolulu, USA) and Charlie Kagami (Japan).
The topic was “Disaster warning: how can we get it right the next time?”
The talk is What happened in Sri Lanka
Recent Comments