The TRE 2006 results [PDF Download] of the first Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) survey applied across six Asian countries were released in New Delhi yesterday. The TRE Assessment, developed by LIRNEasia and already implemented in a number of countries, is a perceptual index which gauges regulatory performance across six dimensions. The TRE survey carried out in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand as part of a multi-component study, closely reflected regulatory reform actions undertaken in the respective countries along with sector performance.
The Hindustan Times, a leading newspaper in India, covered the findings from the TRE surveys [PDF Download] focusing on the comparison between India and Pakistan’s scores.
Pakistan Bests India in Telecoms Regulation by M. Rajendran, Hindustan Times, Dec 20, 2006.
[..]A survey by research agency LIRNEAsia says Pakistan…
Tags: fixed and mobile services, Hindustan Times, India, Indonesia, LIRNEasia, Mahesh Uppal, New Delhi, Nripendra Misra, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Thailand.
The Study of India’s Universal Service Instruments by LIRNEasia researchers Payal Malik & Harsha De Silva, critiqued the Indian government’s policy that made only fixed line operators eligible for USO funds:
As of today, the government is giving USO fund support to only the fixed line operators offering services in the rural areas. The over defining terms in the law is a bad idea in a rapidly evolving technology environment, though this correction has been suggested it is quite possible that the previous auctions have left huge amounts of rents that have been appropriated by the incumbent. In an industry that manifests the potential for rapid technological change and innovation, such as telecom, an economic analysis of a problem should not focus too narrowly or exclusively on the…
Tags: Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, cellular telephone, Chingraliang, Department of Telecom, Harsha de Silva, Henry Island, India, Indian government, Indian USO Fund, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, mobile services, New Delhi, Orissa, passive infrastructure, phone services, technology environment, Thomas K Thomas, Universal Services Obligation fund, Uttar Pradesh.
(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Cellular phone subscribers rose in India by a record 6.6 million in October, keeping the country’s place as the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone market, according to data released over the weekend.
Subscribers for the GSM network grew by 4.7 million in September, while the number of mobile phone subscribers using CDMA technology increased by 1.9 million.
The Cellular Operators Association of India, which includes mobile phone companies offering services on the GSM network, said the country now has about 96 million GSM-based phone connections.
CDMA phone service providers say they now have about 40 million subscribers.
The total number of mobile phones in the country stands at about 136 million at the end of October.
However, India still lags far behind China, which has more than…
Tags: CDMA, CDMA technology, Cellular Operators Association, Cellular Operators Association of India, cellular telephone, China, GSM, India, mobile phones, New Delhi, T.V. Ramachandran, The Associated Press, Thomson.
Dhaka, Nov 3 (bdnews24.com) - GrameenPhone’s coverage beyond Bangladesh’s boundary has forced the Indian government to deploy cellular mobile network in the neglected northeastern states, reports Kolkota-based The Telegraph Friday.
The Indians along the Bangladesh border in Meghalaya and other north-eastern states “are forced to use prepaid cards of GrameenPhone, the largest cell phone service provider of Bangladesh, paying ISD call rates.”
People without mobile phones cross the border and use Bangladeshi phone booths and they pay hefty amounts of international tariff to call own country, the report alleges.
Villagers have complained to the Telegraph correspondent that the Indian government does not provide them basic telecoms facilities on the pretext of security.
India’s state-owned telecoms major, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), has now decided to launch cell-phone services in…
Tags: Bangladesh, Bangladesh border, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, cell phone services, cellular mobile network, cellular telephone, Garo Hills, GrameenPhone, India, Indian government, Kolkota, Meghalaya, mobile phones, New Delhi.
The Hindu Businessline, Thomas K Thomas, New Delhi , July 13Increasing usage of broadband and Internet-based services has prompted Indian international bandwidth providers to raise their capacity by 95 per cent over a one-year period.
According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, bandwidth owned by various gateway service providers such as VSNL, Reliance Communication and Bharti has gone up to 12.7 Giga bytes in March 2006 compared to 6.5 Giga bytes at the end of the previous financial year.
Explaining the growth, Mr Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom, said: “Bandwidth requirement is largely being driven by the IT industry, particularly the BPO sector, and also rapid Internet adoption at homes. In addition, it is being fuelled by requirements of a growing economy. Everything is moving towards data…
Tags: Bharti, Broadband, broadband services, dial-up Internet users, India, Internet Service Providers Association of India, Internet services, Internet Telephony, Internet-based services, IP telephony, Kiran Karnik, leased line Internet services, Nasscom, New Delhi, rapid Internet adoption, Reliance Communication, sample product, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, telephony, Thomas K Thomas, VSNL.
Hindu Business Line
New Delhi , Sept. 21
The Government is planning a major digital expansion by setting up one lakh rural Common Service Centres (CSCs), which will basically be computer kiosks, at a total cost of Rs 5,742 crore [USD$1.2 billion] , through a public-private partnership (PPP) mechanism.
These centres are expected to bridge the digital divide existing today between the urban and rural areas.
According to a Government spokesperson, a proposal for setting up CSCs was approved by the Union Cabinet on Thursday. These centres are proposed to substantially extend the reach of digital services and economic opportunities into the rural and remote areas of the country.
Of the total outlay of Rs 5,742 crore, the Centre’s share will be Rs 856 crore and the State Governments’ contribution…
Developing countries have tended to focus on disaster relief and rehabilitation at the expense of strategies to prevent or mitigate effects of disasters in the first place. To a politician, the political payout from handing out relief materials to the disaster affected appears greater than investing in a national early warning system that may not yield any political reward during his/her tenure. Political expediency coupled with a mix of fatalism, laziness to undertake the hardwork required to implement mitigation/prevention strategies, low valued assigned to human life in developing countries have all contributed to the callous acceptance of natural disasters as a “fact of life.” Hence, the allusion to a “paradigm shift” referred to by the Indian minister, hopefully marks a policy shift rather than just…
Tags: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, earthquake, India, Indonesia, Kashmir, Maldives, National Institute of Disaster Management, Nepal, New Delhi, Pakistan, Shivraj Patil, Sri Lanka, Thailand, tsunami, UNDP.
Full article available here
New Delhi, July 2 (PTI): Even as the existing National Telecom Policy of 1999 lays down the roadmap of a review in every five years, the Department of Telecom has dropped the ill-fated draft of the proposed policy completely with no immediate plans to revive it. [...]
Permitting number portability, implementing carrier access code (CAC), setting up of ombudsman, and unbundling of last-mile access for broadband services were some of the draft recommendations of the core committee of DoT on NTP.
DoT was never in favour of number portability, a facility which allows subscribers to retain their old number even if they change the service provider, carrier access code where the consumer could choose his/her long distance carrier and of course the unbundling of…
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.
Tags: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, International Telecommunication Union, Maldives, National Regulatory Research Institute, Nepal, New Delhi, online database, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Thailand, United States.
This article shows that government’s instinct to ban cellphones from conflict zones because of the belief that it will be used by militants/terrorists to further their cause, actually neutralizes one of the security agencies most potent weapons to track subversives. I doubt that the Sri Lankan government will allow cellular service to be available any time soon in the North. But at least it gives the security agencies some food for thought. The Indian government was similarly reluctant to have cellular service in Kashmir, but the Indian security agencies are their biggest proponents now.
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Troops in Kashmir master new weapon: cell phones
Reuters
By Sheikh MushtaqSun May 21, 1:53 AM ET
Minutes after a bomb exploded recently in Kashmir and wounded Indian soldiers, a senior member of an Islamist…
Tags: cell phone services, cell phones, cellular services, cellular telephone, Colombo, Daya Master, federal government, food, Gyanendra, India, Indian government, Indian intelligence, Islamist, K. Rajindra Kumar, Kashmir, mobile phone services, mobile phones, Nepal, New Delhi, Pakistan, Reuters, satellite phones, Simon Gardner, Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan government, V.K. Batra.
ICT Policy and Regulation Research from LIRNEasia
LIRNEasia showcased its research from 2005 on 6 March, 2006 at the Park Hotel, New Delhi. Indian operators as well as media were in attendance.
The highlights of LIRNEasia’s first year of Research are available HERE. The presentations are available below:
Introduction to LIRNEasia and its 2005 research program, Rohan Samarajiva. More information on LIRNEasia can be found HERE.
Telecom use on a shoestring: Findings from a survey of Indian & Sri Lankan users on < USD 100 a month, Ayesha Zainudeen. The final report for this study can be downloaded from the project page.
WiFi innovation and backbone deficiencies, Divakar Goswami. More information can be found at the project page.
Universal service funds: How to do it right, Payal Malik. The final report can be found at the project…
LIRNEasia and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), with the assitance of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, co-sponsored the “Workshop on ICT Indicators for Benchmarking Performance in Network and Services Development” in New Delhi from 1-3 March 2006. The workshop highlighted the need for accurate, standardized and comparable indicators for the region and was intended to initate action to develop such indicators.
The workshop brought together representatives of National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs), National Statistical Organizations (NSOs) and operators from Afghanistan, Bangaldesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka along with the foremost authorities on the subject from the ITU, OECD, and the US National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI). With nearly 60 participants from 16 countries, the Workshop was also attended by telecom researchers…
Tags: Afghanistan, Asia, Ayesha Zainudeen, Bhutan, Canada, e-indicators, Gaurav Singh, India, International Development Research Centre, ITU, Lilia Perez-Chavolla, Maldives, Nepal, New Delhi, OECD, Pakistan, Pradip Baijal, Rajendra Singh, Rohan Samarajiva, Sam Paltridge, Sri Lanka, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, Tim Kelly, US National Regulatory Research Institute.
The research that is currently being written up by LIRNEasia researchers on ICT use on a shoestring is expected to shed light on fixed-mobile substitution, given the fact that India has been successful in introducing CPP for its mobiles and mobile and fixed outgoing charges have more or less converged.
The news story that MTNL, the incumbent in Mumbai and New Delhi, has decided to deploy special teams to halt the ending of fixed subscriptions is good evidence that there is fixed-mobile substitution in India. Caution should be exercised in generalizing from this to other countries where the conditions of CPP and price convergence have not been satisfied.
Samarajiva and Zainudeen had an article published in this issue of E-Gov, the full PDF of which is linked to below.
In 2002, the-government of Sri Lanka embarked upon a broad development strategy, with a focus on services. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) were identified as one of the key drivers of national integration and economic growth. The eSri Lanka Initiative (eSL), which was designed in 2002-03, was intended to �take the dividends of ICT to every village, to every citizen, to every business and transform the way Government works � [to] develop Sri Lanka�s economy, alleviate poverty, and improve the quality of life and the opportunities for all of our people� .
R. Samarajiva & A. Zainudeen,
e-Government as part of Sri Lanka�s overall development strategy
e Gov…
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…
Tags: ADC, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, CDMA, Cellular Operators Association of India, cellular services, China, Dayanidhi Maran, fixed line services, Germany, GSM, India, information technology, Japan, mobile telephony, New Delhi, passive infrastructure, Rs, rural telephony, telephony, United States, WIRELESS SERVICES.
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