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.

Patra Rina Dewi, director of the Tsunami Alert Community (Kogami), a nongovernmental organisation working on disaster mitigation training for communities, said the knowledge people most need is whether an earthquake has the potential to become a tsunami.

The current standard for this is an earthquake that occurs less than ten kilometres below the seafloor and is recorded as more than seven on the Richter scale.

“But this kind of information should be translated into easy information for the people,” said Patra.

She added that the most effective warning method is sirens, but these are often of limited number and can be heard only at a distance of about one kilometre.

In most countries (few exceptions being North Korea, Burma/Myanmar, Papua New Guinea), mobile penetration is broad enough that cell broadcasting would be superior. Not that you cannot have a few strategically placed towers so the objectives of security theater and commissions from construction can also be satisfied.

And yet the Twittering goes on. As states such as Iran crack down on online speech and organizing, clever netizens find ways around the controls. In Iran as well as in China, Burma and parts of the former Soviet Union, there’s an on-again, off-again process of citizens speaking out and states pushing back.

Of course, governments always have the nuclear option when it comes to the Internet: They can shut it down and keep it down. It’s what Burma did when monks took to the streets in 2007. It’s the policy of North Korea and Cuba, where only very few people can access the Internet, usually for very narrow purposes.

Full story in Washington Post.

Under the terms of the deal reached in January, Orascom Telecom will invest $400 million in network infrastructure and license fees over the first three years to develop the network. Orascom said it was the first foreign telecommunications company to be awarded a North Korean commercial telecommunications license.

It was not clear what restrictions, if any, would be imposed on the network, which provides data capabilities as well as phone services. Ordinary North Koreans are forbidden from having cellular phones, and the government maintains strict controls over Internet access.

Orascom has said it intends to cover the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and most of the major cities during the first year of service. North Korea, one of the world’s poorest countries, is pushing hard to give its capital city a facelift — a makeover coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the communist nation founded in September 1948.

Orascom Telecom spokeswoman Rasha Mohamed confirmed in an e-mail on Sunday that the service will be launched on Monday. Additional details were not immediately available.

Read the full story in Associated Press here.

In one of the two websites it runs, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) gives its mission statement – which is cut and pasted below:

“To create the optimum conditions for the telecommunications industry in Sri Lanka by serving the public interest in terms of quality, choice and value for money; the service providers with equitable access to spectrum and other common resources; and the nation in its drive for socio-economic advancement through a skilled and ethical workforce.”

We are surprised to see pornography not mentioned – considering the latest task TRCSL has been assigned  –  blocking porno. Lankadeepa reports only about blocking pornographic movies and video clips, not images. Assumed strict enforcement, this can lead to the ban of not just YouTube but Gmail and Yahoomail also, because pornography videos can easily be distributed via e-mail.

For the record, except for few countries including Cuba and North Korea, which had restricted Internet access in full (not just porno sites) no country in general blocks porno sites. Most countries that impose Internet censorship aim blocking political content – not porn. At least three Asian countries Thailand, Pakistan and Indonesia blocked YouTube recently for limited periods but have later revised their decisions.   

Orascom says that it intends to invest up to US$400 million in network infrastructure and license fee over the first three years. OTH intends to cover Pyongyang and most of the major cities during the first 12 months of operations. Read more.

Two publications, with chapters by LIRNEasia researcher Chanuka Wattegama, were launched during the GK3, third global Knowledge conferences held in Kuala Lumpur in December, 2007.

The biennial Digital Review of Asia Pacific is a comprehensive guide to the state-of-practice and trends in information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) in Asia Pacific. The third edition (2007/2008) covers 31 countries and economies, including North Korea for the first time. Each country chapter presents key ICT policies, applications and initiatives for national development. In addition, five thematic chapters provide a synthesis of some of the key issues in ICT4D in the region, including mobile and wireless technologies, risk communication, intellectual property regimes and localization.

Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book,  co-published by TVE Asia Pacific and the UNDP, brings together 21 authors – most of them from Asia – who share their experiences and insights on effective communication before, during and after disasters. Coming out in time for the third anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, it takes stock of communication lessons of the mega-disaster. Its core message: adequate planning can help avoid communications disasters when communicating about disasters. Edited by two leading Asian journalists – Nalaka Gunawardene and Frederick Noronha – the book carries a foreword by Sir Arthur C Clarke.

Fixed or Mobile     

March 28, 2007 (LBO) – It seems like a no-brainer: A mobile phone is better than a fixed phone, especially in Sri Lanka. The costs of getting a connection are lower: a new phone and SIM can cost as little as LKR 4,000, while SLTL charges around LKR 20,000 for a fixed connection and its competitors charge around LKR 10,000.
 
Mobile phones are easy to use. They have built in directories and allow texting, though now these features are now available on the fixed CDMA phones as well.

Calling people instead of places that people are associated with seems obviously better, unless you don’t want to be reached. The whole world seems to think so, with mobile outstripping fixed all over the world, except in North Korea, Myammar and a few other bastions of self-sufficiency and juche.

Yet, our people think differently. A recent survey of teleuse at the bottom of the pyramid (teleuse@BOP) by LIRNEasia showed that a significant number of Sri Lankans in SEC D&E groups (and possibly all Sri Lankans) who plan to get connected in the next two years prefer fixed phones:

In fact, even those in higher SEC groups (A, B and C), what could be termed the ‘top and middle’ of the pyramid, prefer fixed phone.

Read full story at LBO.

The Internet Black Hole That Is North Korea – New York Times

“This is an impoverished country where televisions and radios are hard-wired to receive only government-controlled frequencies. Cellphones were banned outright in 2004. In May, the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York ranked North Korea No. 1 — over also-rans like Burma, Syria and Uzbekistan — on its list of the “10 Most Censored Countries.”That would seem to leave the question of Internet access in North Korea moot.

At a time when much of the world takes for granted a fat and growing network of digitized human knowledge, art, history, thought and debate, it is easy to forget just how much is being denied the people who live under the veil of darkness revealed in that satellite photograph.

While other restrictive regimes have sought to find ways to limit the Internet — through filters and blocks and threats — North Korea has chosen to stay wholly off the grid.”