The decline in landline use, which has been under way for several years, has picked up speed in recent months. In the first half of 2005 only 7.3% of households were mobile-only, according to America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which collects such data because it uses landlines for health surveys. By the end of last year the proportion had reached 20.2%—increasing by 2.7 percentage points in the second half of last year alone, the biggest-ever increase

This is happening in India and Pakistan, the most recent report being of Sri Lanka joining the trend.

Read more in the Economist.

The US market, of course, was heavily wired to start with: twisted-pair copper from the phone company and co-ax from the cable company coming to most homes and offices. In this context, the Negroponte Switch made eminent sense. The refarming, for mobile uses, of 700 MHz frequencies that were inefficiently used for television, earlier in 2008 was a manifestation of the Negroponte Switch.

The difference in developing countries was that the incumbents had failed to roll out copper to most homes to start with. They were content with serving the government and business elites and themselves with the perks that come with monopoly. So when the entry barriers were removed, people obtained telephone services through wireless in the first instance, there weren’t much wireguides around to carry entertainment. And shortsighted incumbents neglected wireline maintenance when they saw the cost and other benefits of wireless connections.

Now it looks like at least one incumbent has seen the legacy copper network as an asset that needs to be developed and exploited a. This will not benefit those at the bottom of the pyramid, of course. And there is no guarantee that what worked in densely populated Hong Kong will necessarily work as well in the less dense urban areas of Sri Lanka.

‘BSNL’s monopoly over infrastructure a hindrance to growth’ – Financial Express (India)

Rural connectivity is now the focus of every telecommunication player in the country. Almost all stakeholders, from handset manufacturers to service providers, believe that the next wave of growth is in the rural areas.”However, India’s roll out (of telecom services) in rural areas has been slow. BSNL has the backbone infrastructure but is not yet ready to share it with private players,” he added.

BSNL should be made to share its fibre and access networks, Samarajiva said. With shared infrastructure and innovation in marketing, costs can be brought down further, he said. Moreover, telecom companies should also shift their focus from calculating average revenue per user (Arpu) to average margin per user (Ampu), he added.

Also at:  http://asia.tmcnet.com/news/2007/12/26/3184529.htm
http://in.news.yahoo.com/071226/203/6ovtq.html
http://in.biz.yahoo.com/071226/203/6ovva.html

Book also discussed at Yahoo Tech Group forum.

‘Fact or fiction: Telecommunications in Asia By Liffy Thomas’ – Ergo (the Hindu, India)

At a time when GSM operators, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) are at an imbroglio over spectrum allocation, Prof Rohan Samarajiva’s book, “ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia: Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks”, makes for a timely read. In Chennai for the launch of the book, Samarajiva, Executive Director of LIRNEasia and former Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka, spoke to Liffy Thomas.

BOOK EXTRACT: ‘Subsidising The Smart Way’ – Business World Magazine (India)The Latin American experience holds lessons for the development of rural telephony in Asia, says Harsha De Silva

The supply of telephony has traditionally been skewed towards the urban affluent as opposed to the rural poor. The literature describes this bias as having been caused by a ‘market efficiency gap’ and an ‘access gap’. The market efficiency gap is the difference between what markets achieve under existing conditions and what they can achieve if barriers are removed. This gap can be bridged through effective competition, private provision of services, and market-oriented policies and regulations that create a level playing field for new entrants. The access gap refers to people and places that remain beyond limits of the market due to inadequate income levels or its skewed distribution. Bridging this gap needs subsidies to encourage service providers to enter these areas.

‘Policies for ICT’ – New India Express (Chennai, India) 

WHILE the common perception remains that India has the lowest mobile phone tariffs, other countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have lower tariffs than India, Rohan Samarajiva, executive director, Lirne Asia, said on Tuesday.

Talking about his new book ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia – Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks, he said, when compared to all these countries, India’s cost is much higher.

The Deccan Chronicle, Chennai, 16.12.07:

 Policies and regulations are the main bottlenecks blocking the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure in India, according to Prof Ashok Jhujhunwala, Telecom and Networks (TeNet) Group, IIT, Madras.

Releasing the book ‘ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia: Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks’, a collection of articles edited by Rohan Samarajiva and Ayesha Zainudeen, ICT experts, here on Sunday, Prof Jhunjhunwala said any technological problems associated with ICT could be sorted out by scientists within two to three years. “But the policy-makers and regulators fail to move ahead with the times. We are living in an era when things which were socially desirable once have become commercial to the core,” the professor said. He pointed out that ICT has the potential of helping developing countries tackle a wide range of health, social, and economic problems.

“While urban India is marching rapidly ahead, rural India is being left behind. We have to use ICT to accelerate the growth of rural India,” said Dr Jhunjhunwala. Elaborating on the pace of growth of ICT, Dr Jhunjhunwala said the next two years will see payments through mobile phones catching up all over the country.

“Instead of going to ATM centres or Banks, you can have cash transactions through your mobile phones,” he said. Dr Samarajiva said the book was a step forward in identifying the reasons for under-connectivity in emerging Asia. “The book itself is an introduction, not a conclusion. It reports the findings of a cutting edge demand-side survey of telecom use at the ‘bottom of a pyramid’ in India and Sri Lanka,” said Dr Samarajiva, a former director general of Sri lanka Telecommunications.

He said there is enough scope to bring down telecom charges. “It is the outdated policies of the governments in the region which are playing havoc with the communication revolution. This is aggravating the digital divide which will lead to major catastrophe,” he said.

The publication of the book was co-funded by the IDRC and Social Science Research Council (SSRC).

More information on the book can be found on the book page.

In rural Cambodia, a new 3G/UMTS mobile network is being deployed for delivery of high-bandwidth wireless services, including live streaming of mobile TV channels.  

In rural India, farmers can monitor crop prices and place orders for goods electronically by visiting broadband “community centers” that are taking root around the country. 

All are examples of a “rural revolution” enveloping less-developed countries in
Asia and around the world, made possible by advanced telecommunications technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and 3G.  

This revolution is bringing high-speed Internet access and next-generation telephony to millions of users who previously had little or no access to even the most basic telecoms services. Read more.

:: bdnews24.com ::

Dhaka, Aug 23 (bdnews24.com) – International telephony, internet and private international data circuits went down when the submarine cable link was “sabotaged” at 00:05am Thursday, a senior BTTB official confirmed.

It cut off Bangladesh from the rest of the world and intensified panic and confusion at home and abroad amid widespread violence across much of the country for days.

Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) has been trying to restore the country’s only terrestrial overseas communication lifeline.

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He said, “In March 2007, Google confirmed that since its inception it had stored every search query every user ever made and every search result ever clicked on. Like the Soviet state, Google does not forget. Google remembers forever.”

He adds, “If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved…our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context…the lack of forgetting may prompt us speak less freely and openly. Regardless of other concerns we may have, it is hard to see how such an unforgetting world could offer us the open society that we are used to today.” Read his study.

Qualcomm Under Scrutiny by Korean Antitrust Agency – New York Times

The South Korean antitrust agency has formed a task force to investigate the licensing and business practices of the wireless technology company Qualcomm, the latest in a string of legal battles for the company, officials said on Tuesday.

In Japan, Europe and the United States, Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego, faces accusations by rivals that it has abused its market dominance in wireless technology to demand excessive royalties and block fair competition.

Qualcomm is known for developing code-division multiple access, or CDMA, wireless technology, which is a rival standard to the global system for mobile communications, or GSM, technology. It makes money by selling chips that power cellphones, as well as collecting royalties or licensing its technology to other chip makers and cellphone manufacturers.

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 and companies that are not IT organisations but are purely into exports, also need to rely on electronic invoices rather than physical invoices, when trading with overseas firms. Moreover, exporters now have the option to send pictures of the sample product (item to be exported) to their overseas clients. Today’s bandwidth needs also revolve around International Trade. The cost of laying fibre has come down due to technology. There is a strong demand story from India.”

Broadband

The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) pointed out that the dial-up Internet users have grown by 24 per cent to touch 6.9 million users, however, the growth in broadband services is the real driver for the increase in international bandwidth.

“Broadband needs more capacity than a dial-up service. Broadband services have grown by over 600 per cent with 1.5 million subscribers compared to a few thousand in 2005. That apart usage of Internet services such as leased lines and Net telephony has also increased considerably,” the ISPAI said.

Internet Telephony has crossed a billion minutes during the fourth quarter of 2005-06 compared to 58 million minutes in the previous quarter.

All of the voice calls on the Internet are international calls. Adding to the bandwidth consumption is the leased line Internet services such as Virtual Private Services.

The number of leased line connections has increased to nearly 15,500 compared to 12,200 last year.

http://www.blonnet.com/2006/07/14/stories/2006071402630400.htm

Extended Family      
05 June 2006 14:23:29
Sri Lanka opens the door for fifth mobile phone operator
 
June 5, 2006 (LBO) – Sri Lanka plans to expand its mobile phone market to five players, in a bid to bring down costs of telephony, the telecom regulator said Monday.
 
Sri Lanka’s mobile market had grown 53.5 percent to 3.34 million customers as at end 2005, according to TRC figures. 

The island’s cellular penetration is expected to increase to 20.0 percent in 2006, from 17.3 percent last year, according to industry analysts. 

“Mobile phones are one of the fastest growing segments in the economy now, and it is showing potential to grow further,” notes Ratwatte. 

Dialog Telekom, currently dominates the market with over 2-million subscribers. 

A unit of Teleokom Malaysia, Dialog competes with Mobitel – a unit of Sri Lanka Telecom; Celltel Lanka Ltd and Hong Kong’s Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd. 

Newcomers will have to pay 4-million dollars for the license fee, says Ratwatte adding that the closing date for applications has been fixed for June 30. 

In May, Sri Lanka invited mobile operators to set up a next generation or third generation mobile phone network, with the aim of offering high speed wireless services. 

TRC has fixed the license fee at 5-million dollars. 

Third generation or 3G licenses will be available on the 2GHz (gigahertz band) and the initial spectrum allocation will be limited to existing mobile operators.
 
Dialog is currently offering 3G test runs and hopes to offer high speed internet access on mobile phones later this year. Mobitel is also expected to start test runs for 3G shortly.

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“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 asked about the time frame for amending the Act, Mr Maran said, “We have just started the process.”

Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) welcomed the Wednesday’s announcement. COAI director general TV Ramachandaran said, “This will make the expansion into the rural and semi-urban areas by cellular operators economically viable. We need more cash surplus to fund capital expenditure in rural areas.”

So far, the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has received the lion’s share of the USO fund as it has covered around 80% of the villages in the country by offering fixed line services. The private operators share in offering rural connectivity has been low in the past.

But if the Telegraph Act is amended then the private sector could play a major role in offering wireless services in rural areas. This is largely because the private players have a stronger presence in wireless services than in fixed services. Also while the urban areas getting saturated in terms of telecom coverage, the rural areas present a largely untapped market. Around Rs 1,814 crore have been made available to the operators for rural telephony of which Rs 1,314.50 crore have been provided during 2004-05. For the year 2005-06, a provision of Rs 1,200 crore has been made available for the USO support.

The minister on Wednesday announced that India has crossed 100 million phones. “The US, Japan and Germany have almost 100% tele-density, while China has a tele-density of 55%. India, with a tele-density of about 9%, is bound to surpass the growth in these countries by a wide margin over the next 4-5 years,” he said.
The minister said the country was likely to have 250 million phones by 2007 with a tele-density of 22%.
“Of the additional 150 million that would be added by 2007, almost 80 million will be done by BSNl and MTNL alone,” he said. On the present access deficit charges (ADC) regime, Mr Maran said the ADC regime will continue for at least another two years. “There is no rush to abolish the ADC. ADC will be reduced with the passing of time and the benefit would be passed on the users,” the minister said.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fearchive_frame.php