Tag Archives: New Delhi
Applications now open for LIRNEasia Young Scholar Tutorials, hosted by NUS, Singapore. Click here for info on how to apply.
LIRNEasia CEO delivers lead talk at int’l ICTD workshop, New Delhi
Rohan Samarajiva, will deliver one of two invited lead talks at ICTs and Development: An International Workshop for Theory, Practice and Policy, to be held in New Delhi, India, 11 – 12 March 2010. Titled, “How the developing world may participate in the global “Internet Economy”, his presentation examines the potential mobile telephony has in enabling low-income earners first-time access to the Internet. He argues that a teleco business model similar to the Budget Telecom Network Model arguably responsible for dramatic reductions in mobile tariffs, could be similarly applied to the case of mobile internet. View the full presentation here.
Other notable speakers at the event include Dr. Jonathon Donner of Microsoft Research, India, and Prof. Tim Unwin of the University of London.
LIRNEasia’s research presented at India Disaster Management Congress 2009
The Second India Disaster Management Congress (IDMC 2009) took place from 4-6 November at the Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. It was organized by the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) to assemble, synthesize and further disseminate knowledge on disaster management in diverse sectors.
Natasha Udu-gama, former HazInfo Dissemination Manager and Researcher, presented “Implementing Inclusive ICTs: Mobile Cell Broadcasting for Public Warning and Commercial Use” based on the LIRNEasia study in the Maldives” completed in May 2009. Her presentation was made during the Early Warning and Disaster Communications session on Friday, 6 November. The session was chaired by Mr. Rohit Magotra, COO, Ekgaon Technologies and Mr. RC Bhatia, Former ADG, India Meteorological Department (IMD).
Doenload the presentation and the paper.
Payal Malik speaks at Connecting Rural Communities Forum, New Delhi
Payal Malik, Senior Research Fellow, will speak on universal service policies based on LIRNEasia research to the participants of the 3rd Annual Connecting Rural Communities Asia Forum to be held from 23-25 June 2009 in New Delhi, India. The event is expected to attract stakeholders, policy makers and executives from across the ICT sector with the shared goal of shaping future of rural connectivity.
The organizers hope to be discuss:
How can governments best support the creation of self-sustaining rural connectivity initiatives that benefit local people? Step-by-step practical guidance on overcoming the most pressing technical challenges Developing a world-class telecentre rural development programme Progress on delivering the promise of the United Services Obligation Fund Realising the benefits of greater rural connectivity though the delivery of E-services Mapping the future need for connectivity: Identifying choke points in the delivery network Training and empowering rural populations to make full use of the potential inherent in greater connectivityMore information is available on the official website: http://www.events.cto.int/default.aspx?event=CRCIndia09
TRE results presented at Voice & Data event in New Delhi
The results of the 2008 TRE research were presented at a well attended event in New Delhi on 6 March 2009. The picture above shows Mr R.N. Prabhakar, Member of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India responding to points raised in the discussion. In the background are members of the panel, including LIRNEasia Chair and CEO Rohan Samarajiva.
Senior Research Fellow Payal Malik presented the TRE results for India:
The details of the findings may be seen at V&D.
LIRNEasia’s Broadband Quality of Service Experience (QoSE) Testing – Feb 2009 results out!
In the third round, LIRNEasia has extended the testing to one more location. With that we have tested two packages in New Delhi (MTNL and AirTel), two in Chennai (BSNL and AirTel), five in Colombo (SLT ADSL, Dialog WiMax, Dialog 3G, Dialog 3G Unlimited and Mobitel Zoom 890) and two in Dhaka (SKYbd and Sirius). A strenuous task for five teams, no doubt, who took readings at different times staring from 8 am and went up to 11.00 pm (some had to spend nights at offices) but results are worth the effort.
What did we learn?
Broadband users in Colombo should not complain. They do have excellent choices. In terms of actual speed they are better off than counterparts in Dhaka, Chennai and New Delhi. Hold on, there is a hitch. They rarely get what is being promised; operators seem to over promise and under deliver. Indian operators, as seen from test results from Chennai and New Delhi, while not promising sun and moon, deliver what they do and sometimes even more. That is what we call ‘Ethical Advertising’. Indian Telecom Regulator’s intervention can hardly be overlooked. In January 2008 Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) directed the operators to specify the minimum ..read moreSri Lanka: Whither onshore BPOs @BOP?
Recessions are not bad for everybody. Proverbial silver line in the cloud, they bring hope to some. Success of the India BPO industry can partially be attributed to the post 9/11 recession. Tighter the economy, cheaper the solutions business looks for.
How far onshore rural BPOs cater to the needs of their clients? It might not exactly be toy manufacturing outsourced to rural China, but close. The connectivity issues still exist, and capacity building too remains a challenge. The good news is in spite of all that things do happen.
Isura Seneviratne, 22, runs OnTime Technologies at Mahavilachchiya – the first rural BPO in Sri Lanka, born as a joint effort of Horizon Lanka Academy and FARO (Foundation for Advancing Rural Opportunities). Isuru and its first manager Nirosh did the business plan. Trained in Laos and India for BPO work, Isuru knows the nuts and bolts of the game. The operation is still lean, only 8 seats against 25 – the expect target within the first year of operation. Cannot blame because the business had to face the hard challenge of not only building capacity but also pulling legs by different parties. Fortunately the internal politics is now over with the bold ..read more
Bharti Airtel to launch Sri Lanka operations in December 2008
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
India begins process to auction 3G airwaves
New Delhi: The Indian government is set to begin here Monday the process to e-auction radio frequencies for telecom operators to start third-generation (3G) mobile services across the country and fetch the exchequer over Rs 40000 crore ($10 billion).
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will hold a pre-bid conference here with all the potential consultants – one of whom would oversee the process to e-auction spectrum for next generation mobile applications, officials said.
Read the full story in ’sify.com’ here.
Congestion among mobile networks reduces:TRAI
NEW DELHI: The level of congestion among the networks of different cellular operators has come down considerably in the July-September period, according to telecom regulator TRAI.
The performance of the Cellular Mobile Service Providers with respect to the congestion of Point of Interconnections has improved in September, 2007 with the number of POIs with congestion coming down significantly to 348 against 457 in June 2007, TRAI said in a statement.
According to the benchmark notified by TRAI in the Quality of Service regulation, the POI should be less than 0.5 per cent of the the calls made from one network to another.
Read the full story in ‘The Economic Times’ here.
Unorganised mobile retailers feel the heat in India
Swami is an employee of My Mobile store in Noida can tell how the mobile business at his store has been dwindling in one of the most popular markets in New Delhi region for mobile phones and its accessories. Before January, My Mobile would sell goods worth about Rs 2.5 lakh on any given Sunday but sales started dipping about four to five months ago and the Sunday before Christmas, which should have been a busy period, with sales being down in the range of Rs1 lakh. “Our future is in danger,” Swami says pointing to a Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications’ service centre that doubles as mobile phone retail store located bang opposite My Mobile outlet. The Sony store opened a year ago.
Several of the large Indian companies are lining up thousands of crores of rupees investment plans to open chains of stores selling mobile phones and accessories to capitalise on two of the country’s fastest growing sectors — modern retailing and mobile telephony.
The unorganised groups which currently dominate the mobile retail business now say that their businesses are under threat, thanks to cheaper prices at companies who already have opened mobile phone stores nationwide and have aggressive plans in ..read more
Reality check by LIRNEasia at India Telecom 2007,
A major telecom event in one of the most exciting markets in the world, India, is underway in New Delhi, Dec 12-14, 2007.
LIRNEasia presented its teleuse@BPO research at the first session: rs_indiatelecom07_final.ppt/ The central message was that India had to take the road less traveled by, focusing on developing the mobile as an interface to the Internet and its communication, information retrieval, publishing, transacting, etc. functionalities, if it is not to leave behind the people at the Bottom of the Pyramid. A most fascinating presentation by Steve Rondel of Conversay showed that voice interface with the mobile was not as distant as some think it might be.
Contrary to the idea of developing the mobile as the next Internet device preferably using voice and other alternatives to data input and command, several speakers from Nokia Siemens proposed an interesting solution for low cost voice telephony for villages, where intra-village communications would stay inside the village and only the small percentage of calls intended for the outside would actually go to the backbone and beyond.
Second HazInfo Dissemination Workshop held in India
On Monday, November 19th, Rohan Samarajiva, Nuwan Waidyanatha, and Natasha Udu-gama of LIRNEasia, along with Menake Wijesinghe of Sarvodaya’s Community Disaster Management Centre went to New Delhi, India for the second in a series of workshops on the “Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) entitled “Sharing Knowledge on Disaster Warning: Community-Based Last-Mile Warning Systems” at the India Habitat Centre in conjunction with the All India Disaster Management Centre (AIDMI).
The workshop included a variety of stakeholders from Indian government, civil society, international organizations, private sector, and NGOs. Mr. Mihir Bhatt, Honorary Director of AIDMI, along with Mr. Mehul Pandya, Risk Reduction Transfer Initiative Coordinator and Ms. Vandana Chauhan, Urban Risk Reduction Coordinator were in attendance from AIDMI’s Ahmedabad, Gujarat headquarters.
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