The Minister directed Chairman PTA to revisit the whole system and ensure that all those illegal SIMS which are being used on stolen identity shall be blocked.
The meeting decided that in view of the grave complaints, Mobile Number Portability (MNP) by the service providers is banned in future and anybody found violating should be booked under Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 as it is against the national security.
Anybody misusing, sending threatening emails or tampering with email address, mobile phone via SMS, MMS etc shall be dealt with under ATA and other relevant sections of law.

News report.

The IDI is a composite of three sub-indexes. South Asia has done well in access, with rankings increasing in all countries, except for the Maldives. India jumps seven places. The only countries that do well in the use sub-index are Sri Lanka (advance of 10 places) and Nepal (nine places). Pakistan and the Maldives fall back 13 places. Only Bhutan and the Maldives advance three and two places respectively in the skills sub-index. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh fall back one place, while all others hold their places.

What the above illustrates is that one cannot move ahead in the overall rankings simply by improving one dimension or one sub-index. For example, Bhutan advanced by four places in access, by three in use, and by three in skills. This translated into an overall advance of four places for Bhutan. Sri Lanka advanced by 10 places in use, but this appeared to be negated by a one-place retreat in the skills component and a lower-than-most advance of two places in access.

The Maldives increased by the most (0.51), yet dropped a rank position, indicating that the countries in the range where the Maldives is located is highly competitive. The least increase shown by Bangladesh (0.21) resulted in a slippage of one position in the rankings.

ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES I face is to convince some of those who matter that it is possible to deal in Billions WITHOUT ANY CORRUPTION. I don’t blame them. Corruption has become so pervasive that if and when it is absent, one tends to disbelieve!

So what does one do? It is said that transparency helps. Ostensibly, transparency ensures that the rationale of everything that you do becomes visible to everyone so that they are able to see that the decisions were arrived at on the basis of laid down rules and parameters – and not on any personal whims or favors. On top of that, making one’s work transparent by itself forces one to act clean. The mere thought that others are able to see, acts as a deterrent.

Vietnam, a high performer on all composite ICT rankings, has leaped forward from 91st place to 81st place, in a rare 10-place advance.

In South Asia, Bhutan advanced four places to 119th; Nepal by three places to 134th; and India and Sri Lanka advance by one place to 116th and 105th respectively. Pakistan and Bangladesh drop two places each to 123rd and 137th, respectively. Maldives, the leader among the South Asian countries, drops one place to settle at 67th place.

Thailand drops nine places to 89th, something that should cause concern. Philippines advances by 3 places to 92nd rank and Indonesia by one place to 101st.

The overall winner remains Korea (no change from 2008). Hong Kong SAR is at 6th place (same as in 2008). The gap with Singapore has widened, with Singapore falling back to 19th place from 15th in 2008.

The general lesson is that one must run fast even to maintain one’s rank. Singapore’s score improved from 6.71 to 7.08, but it still fell back four places.

The “market competition factor,” as presented, penalises operators with more customers. It creates a disincentive to add low-revenue customers and, indeed, an incentive to shed marginal customers. This is harmful to the poor, those currently connected as well as those wishing to be connected.

Market shares change over time, especially in intensely competitive markets. The above analysis indicated that the announced formula will cause big operators to drop marginal customers and reduce market share (not revenue share). In addition, the cost advantages now offered to small operators should cause them to increase their shares. Will the “market competition factor” be recalculated periodically in light of the enhanced fluidity of market shares?

These problems can be solved and a tragic denouement avoided. Eliminate the “market competition factor.” Market competition, and thereby the consumer, are best served by ending this drama now, freeing the players to commence a new and more productive drama: Digital Bangladesh.

A man in Mumbai’s suburb Thane region was found with 80,000 Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards. The SIM cards were found at the residence of Anwar Ansari, in Bhiwandi area of Thane.

According to reports, Mr Ansari used to run a racket that facilitated international calls. Mr Ansari has been arrested and the police say they are investigating the case further.

The guy was not single-handedly trying to drive up Indian numbers. Appears the grey market in international termination is alive and well in Thane.

Since 2004, India has been behind Pakistan on a key indicator: mobile SIMs/100. Few in India wanted to talk about this. But we did. Now finally, India has pulled ahead, as it should. I discuss the reasons in a recent piece done for Pioneer.

The loss of momentum for Pakistan started in 2008, and by 2010 India was again ahead. The tortoise overtook the hare. Not because it took a nap, but because it lacked persistence.

India’s policy framework was inferior to that of Pakistan: It was a patched together series of compromises among various interest groups, especially those entrenched within BSNL/MTNL. Pakistan conducted a transparent auction. India has vacillated and sown the bitter harvest. Pakistan handled the licence renewal cleanly, eliminating uncertainty for the operators and realising enormous revenues for the exchequer. India is just beginning to address the first licence renewals without a clearly stated principle in place. India’s Department of Telecommunications collects too much money in universal service levies, gave most of the money, especially in the early years, to BSNL, and is now unable to get rid of billions. Pakistan’s USF (Universal Service Fund) company has succeeded in disbursing around 90 per cent of the fund without favouring any operator, and supporting green technology as a bonus.

Yet, India is pulling ahead. It is pulling ahead because it is fundamentally a consultative, democratic polity. Democracy cannot produce the clockwork efficiency that a well-functioning dictatorship can; but neither will it produce quasi-democratic dysfunction that follows the rare, brief interludes of efficient authoritarianism.

India’s regulatory regime has been found to be the best for mobile phone tariffs but the 2G spectrum allocation controversy has pulled it down in a recent perception survey of seven nations conducted by telecom regulation and policy study firm Lirneasia.

“In India, the regulator does not regulate most of the prices where as in other countries, we surveyed, there are regulatory interventions,” Payal Malik, senior research fellow of Lirneasia told PTI.

India scored 3.9 for mobile phone tariffs on scale of 1 to 5. This was followed by Pakistan with score of 3.3 on the same scale.

Understandably, the Pakistan Daily Times highlighted Pakistan’s good performance.

The big winner, among the countries LIRNEasia works in and the WEF covers, is Indonesia, advancing from 67th place in 2009-10 to 53rd place in 2010-11, a massive jump of 14 places. Sri Lanka has advanced six places from 72nd to 66th. Bangladesh advances three places to 115th, from 118th.

Thailand, sadly, drops 12 places to 47th (still ahead of India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka). Nepal drops seven places down to 131th in rank. India drops five places to 48th rank (but is still ranked high among the lower middle income countries). Both Philippines and Pakistan drop one place each to 86th and 88th ranks respectively.

There is much work to be done in emerging Asia, it seems.

The full report can be downloaded here.

While not unfamiliar to North America and Europe, Pakistan and India were the only South Asian countries to implement MNP. Pakistan maintains a central database with all its mobile user data. The investment as well as the maintenance of this comes from all operators and it is not small. This is in addition to the upgrades to be done by the operators. Each major mobile operator has spent approximately USD 3-4 mil (roughly LKR 350 – 450 mil) worth of software and hardware upgrades in their switches. While the initial cost of setting up the database was USD 2.3 mil (LKR 250 mil), each operator spends USD 50,000 (LKR 6 mil) towards its annual maintenance. As of January 2011, Pakistan, a country of 187 mil population and 796,000 sq km area had 104 mil SIMs issued by five mobile operators; Mobilink (32 mil SIMs), Ufone (20 mil), Zong (9 mil); Telenor (25 mil) and Warid (18 mil). This looks massive against Sri Lanka’s 20 mil SIMs, but as any systems designer can immediately work out, the costs will not be drastically slashed. A safe bet would be 40-50% of above costs are for MNP in Sri Lanka. It couldn’t be less.

Pakistan has been ranked top among the regional countries in 2010 with the highest number of cellular phone subscribers having more than one connection of different operators, Lirneasia study reported recently.

As per the estimates, the subscribers possessing multiple SIMs are estimated to mark 23 percent share in the overall stated base of the country. The finding reflected the number of mobile phone users carrying multiple SIMs cards have been estimated to increase more than 24 million in the overall base of 105 million by Feb 2010.

The study showed the rapid progress of the so-called Asian Tigers, whose governments have invested heavily in technology. Besides Singapore, Taiwan was ranked 6th, South Korea 10th and Hong Kong 12th. Japan was 19th.

China ranked 36th and India 48th, falling five places from 2009. Rounding out the large developing BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — Brazil was 56th and Russia 77th.

The country making the most progress in 2010 was Indonesia, which jumped 14 places to 53rd — in part because of high educational standards and in part because of the importance the government has placed on information and communications technology.

That was the New York Times summary

In 2009 we summarized the S Asian standings.

India is now 48th v 54th in 2009
Sri Lanka is 66th now v 72nd then
Pakistan is 88th v 95th then
Bangladesh is 115th v 130th then
Nepal is 131st v 121st then.

These comparisons must be looked at carefully because we comparing 2009 to 2011 (missing 2010 in the middle) and the total number being assessed may not be the same in the different years. Big picture is an advance in the large South Asian countries, other than Nepal.

Why not the telecom operator whose phone the criminal used? Why not the manufacturer of the car/bus/auto/tricycle used in the crime? Why not the company that supplied the electricity that powered the mobile that helped the criminal? Why not the vendor of the fuel that powered the getaway car? Following deep discussion of these and other questions, the State Minister for Home Affairs spoke thus:

Mobile phone operators will be held responsible for usage of their SIM cards in crimes, said state minister for home yesterday.

The operators in such cases will have to provide identity and location of the offender to law enforcers, State Minister for Home Shamsul Haque Tuku told The Daily Star after a meeting with representatives of the country’s six mobile phone companies at the ministry.

The mobile operators, however, said the country’s laws do not indict them for the misuse of their services.

Well, it was not that bad, really. All they’d have to do is supply the identity and location of the offender. Otherwise the whole responsibility thing would kick in, I suppose.

Now I have always taken the position that there should not be SIMs unrelated actual human beings, in the same way that there shouldn’t be motor vehicles not registered to known humans. But as Pakistan found when actually checked, it’s not that simple. Various vendors (agents of agents of telecom operators) had used other people’s ID information to give SIMs to all and sundry. That is why I recommended to the government of Sri Lanka that they should also start such a service, where people could check on the SIMs associated with them and decommission those not used by them.

But this focuses on the relation between the SIM and the owner. The State Minister is fixated on the relation between the SIM and the operator. Luckily, the Minister in charge of the subject had no Cabinet solidarity.

He also refused to endorse State Minister for Home Shamsul Haque Tuku’s plan to hold mobile phone operators responsible for use of SIM cards in crimes.

That story.

Finding champions and strategies were the heart of the discussions in Islamabad, Pakistan during the two day (29-30 September 2010) “sharing of knowledge workshop“. The media coined the workshop as “experts call for innovative“. Researchers from LIRNEasia shared the RTBP experience with public and private sector stakeholders in Pakistan, which comprised Ministry of Health directors, other Government officials, Researchers, and Practitioners who also shared their eHealth experience. Everyone in the room realized the need for eHealth capacity, specifically the need for eHealth stratergies, policies, and legal frameworks to be in place before the eHealth interventions can take full effect. The workshop was a collaboration between eHealth Association of Pakistan, Aga Khan University, and LIRNEasia.

Click to read workshop report

Findings have also made to the Pakistani  media. Read the full article appearing in the The News, here.