GSMA, the global trade body representing the mobile industry, called on Bangladesh to issue 3G licences soon to make broadband services more widely available.
Licensing the 2100 MHz spectrum band for 3G services would enable Bangladeshi operators to launch mobile broadband services, which their customers can use to gain fast and easy access to the Internet and online services, it said on Wednesday.
Bangladesh’s mobile sector has grown rapidly, with user numbers reaching more than 45 million at end-September from 200,000 in 2001, while the country has only 1.32 million fixed-line phones.
“Laying new fixed-line connections is expensive and inefficient, so high-speed mobile networks are Bangladesh’s best bet to realise the many social and economic benefits that arise from widespread access to broadband services,” said Ricardo Tavares, senior…
Tags: 3G, 3G services, Bangladesh, Broadband, broadband services, high-speed mobile networks, Kenya, Malaysia, mobile broadband services, Reuters, Reuters Group PLC, Ricardo Tavares, South Africa, Sri Lanka.
A wave of economic gloom is expected to hit mobile phone buyers next year, and more and more analysts predict the once-buoyant market will shrink for the first time since the 2001 crash, a Reuters poll shows.
On average, analysts expect global growth to be 3 percent in both the fourth quarter and in 2009, compared with well above 10 percent in recent years. Eight out of 22 analysts said they expected the market to contract next year.
In a similar poll just a month ago, only one analyst out of 23 expected 2009 market sales volumes to fall, and then only slightly.
For the fourth quarter, analysts expect the market to grow 11.6 percent from the third quarter, less than the 13.5 percent estimated by Nokia, the…
Indian mobile telecoms firms added 9.2 million users in July, taking subscribers in the world’s fastest growing wireless market to nearly 300 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said on Monday.
Leading mobile firm Bharti Airtel signed up 2.7 million customers, enough for it to overtake state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd as India’s largest telecom firm by total subscribers, including fixed-line subscribers.
Second-ranked mobile firm Reliance Communications added 1.75 million customers, and No. 3 Vodafone Essar, controlled by Britain’s Vodafone Plc, added 1.76 million.
India is the world’s fastest-growing market for wireless services and the second-largest market for such services after China, with growth fuelled by cheap handsets and call rates as low as 1 U.S. cent a minute.
See the full story in Reuters here.
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Tags: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Bharti Airtel, Britain, China, India, Reliance Communications, Reuters, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, United States, Vodafone Plc, wireless market, WIRELESS SERVICES.
India on Tuesday allowed telecoms operators to share transmission systems, radio access networks and antennae and simplified the approval process for building mobile towers.But radio spectrum, or air waves used for wireless networks, cannot be shared.
Telecoms operators in India were earlier permitted to share only passive infrastructure such as mobile towers, buildings and power backup facilities.
Sharing infrastructure reduces the operating costs and capital expenditure of wireless telecoms operators, allowing them to maintain margins in a competitive market that has call rates as low as 1 U.S. cent a minute.
“The guidelines are aimed to reducing the input costs on telecom access providers… (and to aid) reduced tariff and increased tele-density in rural areas,” the telecoms ministry said in a statement.
Read the full stroy in Reuters here.
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China on Tuesday started a public hearing to discuss lowering domestic mobile roaming charges, state media said, to address complaints from users.
Hosted by the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner, the hearing discussed two proposed plans for roaming charges, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Both proposals involve cancelling the existing roaming service fee of 0.2 yuan per minute, which users have criticized as being too high, according to local media reports.
China’s mobile operators, China Mobile and China Unicom collect domestic roaming fees if the subscriber leaves the local service area. Analysts have mixed views on whether a cut in roaming charges would affect earnings growth for the two operators.
Read the full story in Reuters here.
YANGON (Reuters) - Without warning, Myanmar’s military government has ordered a massive 166-fold rise in the annual satellite television levy in an apparent attempt to stop people watching dissident and international news broadcasts.
With no word in state media of any license fee increases, the first satellite dish owners knew of the hike was when they went to pay the 6,000 kyat levy, only to be told it was now 1 million kyat ($780), three times the average citizen’s yearly income.
An official at Myanmar Post and Telecom confirmed the increase on Wednesday, but was at a loss to explain it.
“It’s not our decision,” the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. “We were just ordered by the higher authorities. Even I was shocked when I…
Tags: annual satellite television levy, Burma, dissident network, MMK, Myanmar, Norway, Reuters, satellite dish owners, satellite television, satellite TV, state media, USD, Yangon.
Will authorities be able to use this satellite system to ensure that hazard information gets to the vulnerable in a timely and accurate manner? Detection technology is available but it is up to governments to not only use it but find the means to convey the message to vulnerable communities.
“A global satellite system should come on line next decade, potentially saving billions of dollars and thousands of lives by boosting preparedness for natural disasters, a top scientist said on Wednesday.
Monitoring changes in climate, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) should also help health officials prevent epidemics and guard against man-made environmental damage, said Jose Achache, head of the group behind the project. “I’m an optimistic guy. So, I think in ten years from…
The victims of cyclone in Bangladesh are poorest among the poor. Their views about effective warning system “lacks credibility” to the concerned bodies.But it is a real bad news when the merchant mariners have slammed Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) for suddenly raising the cyclone’s severity within an hour. It clearly demonstrates the BMD’s professional incompetence. Reuters provides the chilling details.
I was in Macau attending Mobile Asia 2007 when cyclone SIDR was brewing in the Bay of Bengal. BBC and CNN were updating its movement since November 12. To put a perspective to it, their weather commentators said SIDR’s intensity was similar to Katrina.
Both the international TV channels consistently mentioned Bangladesh being the very possible victim. Unlike in New Orleans, the international TV news crew did…
Indonesia has learnt lessons from dealing with a string of earthquakes, but still can do more to reduce the impact of such disasters by quake proofing buildings and deploying more tsunami buoys, officials said on Wednesday.
An official at Indonesia’s National Coordinating Agency for Disaster Management said there had been progress in educating people since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that followed a huge quake off Aceh province and killed nearly 170,000 Indonesians.
Read more Reuters Alertnet | Indonesia disaster preparedness a work in progress
India’s finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said Monday in Washington, “Regulation must stay one step ahead of innovation”.
He said the developed countries’ financial authorities are not keeping up with the new and complex financial market instruments that lay behind recent credit market turmoil.
“Thanks to the present crisis which originated in the advanced economies … I think developed economies will listen more to the developing economies’ point of view,” Chidambaram remarked.
“In the name of innovation, regulators or governments in the advanced economies have fallen behind the curve.”
The time has come for the developed world to attend to its own problems, and stop lecturing emerging economies about what is right and what is wrong, he said.
“For too long the advanced economies have told the developing economies that this…
Myanmar restores Internet, but arrests continue | Reuters
“The Internet connection was restored on Saturday afternoon, but we still haven’t decided whether or not to reopen our internet cafe yet,” a Yangon Internet cafe owner said.
There had been intermittent access to the Internet over the past week, mostly during a curfew first imposed as the junta sent the army in to end protests led by thousands of Buddhist monks.
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Missed calling (also referred to as beeping, flashing and many other names) has been most talked about in Africa; Johnathan Donner has been talking and writing about it for some time now; his research provides interesting insights into what he calls the ‘rules’ of beeping. A recent Reuters article looks at the growing phenomenon in not only Africa but other regions too. LIRNEasia’s Teleuse@BOP survey findings also show that the phenomenon is considerably common among bottom of the pyramid (defined here as Socioeconomic Classification groups D & E) phone users in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. But what’s more interesting, is that the phenomenon was seen as being used more or less to the same extent in the ‘middle and top of…
Tags: Africa, Andrew Heavens, Cairo, Cape Town, cellular network, cellular telephone, cheaper technology, Devine Kofiloto, Ethiopia, Faisal Ijaz Khan, India, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Irene Mbarika, Johnathan Donner, Jonathan Donner, KHARTOUM, Microsoft, mobile telephone markets, mobile-phone operator, much cheaper technology, Pakistan, Philippines, Reuters, Rwanda, social protocol, SouthEast Asia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, technology association, Thailand, the Philippines, U.N.\'s International Telecommunication Union, USD, Victor W.A. Mbarika, Zain (formerly MTC).
In the South Asian region, Pakistan has taken the lead in introducing mobile number portability. Who will be second? As the story below states, this takes some time and planning. LIRNEasia will shortly post a report on the MNP workshop conducted in Islamabad by the PTA last week.
:: bdnews24.com ::
The Nigerian telecoms regulator is working on plans to allow mobile phone subscribers to keep the same number when they change networks in a bid to force providers to improve services, its top executive said Monday.
As things stand, Nigerians have to give up their numbers if they want to move to a new network, which discourages many subscribers from trying a different provider even when they face constant problems making or receiving calls.
“We are planning…
The government of Pakistan seems set to issue three 3G licences by the end of this year, according to recent Reuters reports. Pakistan is one of a number of populous Asian nations whose hunger for more widely available communications services are proving to be a major growth engine for telecoms groups with global ambitions. However, it does remain to be seen if there exists a solid business case for investment in third generation networks in a region where the most basic prepaid voice and SMS services are stimulating economic activity by providing consumers and businesses with connectivity.
This has not deterred the state-owned GSM operator in Nepal, one of the world’s poorest countries, from launching 3G services. The 3G SIM card reportedly costs about US$64.50 with…
Tags: 3G, 3G services, communications services, generation networks, GSM, Kathmandu, Nepal, Nepal Telecom, Pakistan, Reuters, Ring Road, SMS, USD.
LIRNEasia, Sarvodaya and the partners of the HazInfo project have been saying this and more importantly implementing this.
Hope the message will be heard.
Reuters AlertNet - News - Prevention spending must be doubled
Governments, aid agencies and humanitarian actors must spend twice as much on disaster preparedness activities that could save millions of lives, the British Red Cross has urged.Almost two years on from the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, risk reduction remains low on the international agenda despite encouraging progress in tsunami-affected regions themselves.
“The tsunami highlights the importance of proactively preparing for disasters and this lesson must be learnt and risk reduction must become a high priority in all disaster-prone areas,” said David Peppiatt, British Red Cross head of policy.According to the International Federation of Red Cross…
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