I chaired the session on international and Indian best practices and made a presentation based primarily on the experiences of designing e Sri Lanka back in 2002-03 and LIRNEasia research.

My key message was that there were no best practices that could be imported to Kerala. What were best were what fit the specific circumstances. These included a majority of the population owning feature phones and most people not having credit/debit cards.

So my suggestions for the Government of Kerala included making government data public in computer-readable form with minimal restrictions so that app developers could make them into usable applications for Kerala citizens, and working on setting in place the institutional arrangements for location-based services by focusing first on cell broadcasting.

The last time I was in Kovalam (in the very same hotel, Vivanta by Taj, then Taj Green Cove), it was for a similar small high-powered session on Indian telecom policy pulled together by Aspen in early 2008. Its recommendations gained significant traction.

I have a feeling that something good will come of this meeting too.

“We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven,” the company said in its review of the risks it faces.

In a world that is rapidly moving toward an era of mobile computing, this is a troubling issue for Silicon Valley’s brightest star — particularly since much of Facebook’s growth right now is in countries like Chile, Turkey, Venezuela and Brazil, where people largely have access to the Internet using cellphones.

Facebook is not the only company struggling to translate the success of its Web site to mobile devices, where screen space is at a premium and people have little patience for clutter or slow loading times. It is a problem that plagues companies as diverse as news publishers and the streaming radio service Pandora, and it is likely to loom larger. There were more global shipments of smartphones than of personal computers in 2011, according to a recent report from Canalys, a research firm.

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Analysts are expecting Nokia to rapidly reassert its relevance in the smartphone market, which it had largely to itself before the 2007 introduction of Apple’s first iPhone. Over the next 12 months, Nokia will expand its smartphone market share more than sixfold, to 12.2 percent, overtaking Research in Motion, the makers of the BlackBerry, according to I.D.C.

By 2015, Windows and Nokia will be the world’s second-largest smartphone operating system, I.D.C. estimates, with 21 percent, trailing Google’s Android, with 47 percent, but ahead of Apple, with 19 percent.

“What people are underestimating is how much operators in Europe and elsewhere are beginning to support and push Windows phones,” Mr. Jeronimo said in an interview.

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In 2009, Dr. Hossain was assigned to two districts where immunization rates were 67 and 60 percent, respectively. In 2010, they were 85 and 79 percent. These rapid improvements were the result of Dr. Hossain’s innovative approach to running an immunization program. He instituted a process of registering pregnant women with their expected date of delivery, location, and phone number, so vaccinators knew when children were born, where they were, and an easy way to contact their mothers. He provided annual schedules for vaccine sessions to make vaccinators more accountable to the community and had the vaccinators put their phone numbers on the children’s immunization cards, so parents with young children could get in touch with a health worker. These may seem like small innovations, but they show how looking at old problems in new ways can make a profound difference. Improvements like these are spreading to other locations because of the commitment and creativity of Dr. Hossain and many others like him. Delivering lifesaving vaccines takes the dedication of many well-known players like GAVI, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF; government officials; and perhaps most importantly hundreds of thousands of heroes on the frontline like Dr. Hossain.

What I love about this story is the simplicity, almost banality, of the innovation. It’s just better record keeping and follow up. Nothing that a Patent Office would recognize as an innovation. But it is considered worthy of a Gates Foundation Prize. And it involves, centrally the mobile. Not a telecenter, not a subsidized device, but the standard mobile connection that today one can assume among the poor.

TAX BADS RATHER THAN GOODS A good rule of thumb is that when you tax something, you get less of it. That means that taxes on hard work, saving and entrepreneurial risk-taking impede these fundamental drivers of economic growth. The alternative is to tax those things we would like to get less of.

Consider the tax on gasoline. Driving your car is associated with various adverse side effects, which economists call externalities. These include traffic congestion, accidents, local pollution and global climate change. If the tax on gasoline were higher, people would alter their behavior to drive less. They would be more likely to take public transportation, use car pools or live closer to work. The incentives they face when deciding how much to drive would more closely match the true social costs and benefits.

Economists who have added up all the externalities associated with driving conclude that a tax exceeding $2 a gallon makes sense. That would provide substantial revenue that could be used to reduce other taxes. By taxing bad things more, we could tax good things less.

I can agree with him on gasoline. The decision makers in most South Asian countries appear to agree as well. They tax the hell out of gasoline.

My gripe is re mobile telephone user charges. Why are they being taxed excessively? Therefore, they are being consumed less. Why? Do the governments think the use of mobile phones is a bad? No need to say it is good; just be neutral. Treat it like anything else.

The survey found that Thai users spent more than any other nationality on mobile phones, $93 on average compared to $50 or less elsewhere.

Most of the phones they bought had radio connections, while 14 per cent had a Web browser and 5 per cent had touch-screens.

Ninety-one per cent of the Thais said they’d used a mobile phone in the previous three months, up from 77 per cent in 2008.

More than 90 per cent of the urban users made regular calls, compared to 80 per cent in the rural areas. Interestingly, 90 per cent of Thai females had a mobile phone but only 80 per cent of the males, a proportion reversed in the other countries.

In acquiring a license from the government that allowed Free to become the fourth main mobile operator in France, Mr. Niel had to overcome vigorous lobbying from France Télécom and the other operators, who were worried about his reputation for cutting prices.

Mr. Niel signaled Tuesday that he would not depart from the brash, aggressive, price-based marketing formula — an exception in France — that has attracted nearly five million customers to Free’s broadband offering in little more than a decade.

“You now have the chance to teach your operator a lesson,” he said during a news conference in Paris. “You have two choices: You can sign up with Free, or you can call your operator and ask them to match our rates.”

At least one operator, Orange, was sending text messages to subscribers on Tuesday, reassuring them that it was checking to make sure they had the appropriate calling plan for their usage.

HTC was the first company to make a big bet on Android. It released the G1, the first smartphone running Google’s operating system, in 2007. In the ensuing years, HTC continued to ride Google’s momentum, pumping out some of the most popular Android smartphones, like the Nexus One. The bet paid off: By 2009, HTC became the world’s fourth-largest maker of smartphones, after Nokia, Research in Motion and Apple.

Samsung waited until 2010 to make an aggressive play with Android, when it released its Galaxy S smartphone, which sold 10 million units in 10 months. Samsung rolled out more products under the Galaxy portfolio, including the Galaxy S II phone and the Galaxy Tab tablet. It threw as much as it could against the wall until some things stuck. And if some products were flops, Samsung could afford losses, given its size. For HTC, a smaller manufacturer, failures would be less forgiving.

The announcement comes as wireless companies are facing a spectrum crunch crisis that has already begun to reshape the industry.

As smartphones and tablet sales have soared over the past several years, consumers’ demand for data has grown exponentially. All that data is taking up a growing amount of spectrum, or light waves, and carriers are simply running out of airwaves to cram data into. The FCC has said that a current spectrum surplus of 225 MHz will become a deficit of 275 MHz by 2014 (see chart above).

That’s why the FCC is committing to freeing up 500 Megahertz of spectrum over the next decade. But there’s a catch: That process includes voluntary auctions by a patchwork of television stations across the country that currently hold but aren’t using their spectrum. Many aren’t willing to give it up.

France Télécom, led by Stéphane Richard, is shedding assets in Europe, where phone companies are vying for a shrinking pool of new customers amid tightening regulation, to embrace faster-growing markets in Africa and the Middle East.

“It makes sense to exit the difficult Swiss market and may give them more flexibility on the cash-flow side,” said Giovanni Montalti, an analyst in London at Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux. The deal will leave France Télécom with European operations in countries including Spain, Poland and Britain, along with its home market, while its emerging-market footprint includes Kenya, Cameroon and Tunisia.

Findings of the research carried out in South Asian countries by regional ICT policy and regulation think tank LIRNEasia maintain cheaper on-net call is the main reason for multiple-SIM ownership. The research was conducted among bottom of the pyramid (BOP) in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Unveiling the findings of the report in Bangkok, CEO of LIRNEasia Rohan Samarajiva said that the research showed that the network coverage of mobile operators in this region was getting better and most subscribers said cheaper on-net calls are the major reason. The previous research conducted in 2008 had shown a better network coverage as the major reason for multiple-SIM ownership.

Paul Atchley, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, conducted research this year and last to determine whether young adults had enough self-control to postpone responding to a text message if they were offered a reward to do so. The idea was to determine whether the lure of the device was so compelling that it would override a larger reward.

The research found that young adults would postpone the text. Dr. Atchley concluded that the phone, while not classically addictive, nevertheless has a powerful draw, in part because it delivers information that often becomes less valuable with each passing minute.

“What looks like an addiction, in my opinion, based on this data, is a reflection of the fact that information loses value over time very rapidly,” he said. “If people can make choices, it’s not addiction.”

Fixed broadband connectivity alone cannot provide the Internet needs of Sri Lanka. Mobile broadband must step up and provide for the country’s needs, according to Dumindra Ratnayaka, the Chief Executive of the local mobile unit of UAE-based telco Etisalat, in an exclusive interview with the Business Times. He also added there were only 250,000 fixed broadband subscribers to date, despite almost a decade of availability. However, in terms of mobile, there were already 12 million individual subscribers which was already a significant base of users to convert to mobile broadband. Also, 3G was best “beyond voice” as this technology’s adoption in the data industry has been very different than in voice. As such, he asserted that Etisalat would be “strongly moving on mobile broadband.”

Mr. Ratnayaka also noted that the biggest challenge for the Sri Lankan market was not investment, but devices (smartphones, tablet PCs, etc) being available, at the right price. He also revealed that it was only when mobile phones were offered at the right price that the local market exploded. Further suggesting that “in five years, smartphones will be everywhere,” he noted that a goal for Etisalat was making this happen much sooner, which was why another focus area for the mobile operator was bringing down the cost of devices.

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Nokia Siemens Networks, the equipment joint venture of Nokia and Siemens, said Wednesday that it planned to cut almost a quarter of its work force as it sought to bolster profit in a stagnating market for network gear.

The company said it planned to eliminate 17,000 jobs by the end of 2013 in a wide-ranging austerity program to enable Nokia Siemens to refocus on mobile broadband equipment, the fastest-growing segment of the market. The reductions will slash the company’s work force by 23 percent from its current level of 74,000.

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As the report says, there are technology advantages to being a late mover. We can add to that. Pretty much all the policy mistakes have been done by Myanmar’s neighbors. They can be avoided too.

Secretive North Korea is expected to register the 1 millionth cellphone user on its new 3G network by the end of the year, barely four years after people were thrown into prison camps, or possibly even executed, for owning one.

Most of the users are in the capital of Pyongyang, home to the impoverished country’s elite and powerful who have the cash to splash out for a device and the calling fees.

“There has been an astronomical increase since even two years ago,” said Michael Hay, a lawyer and business consultant based in the capital for the past seven years.

Two years ago, there were fewer than 70,000 users.