LIRNEasia » Times of India

T@BOP3 missed call findings in the media

Nirmali Sivapragasam — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:56 +0000

An interesting article in the Times of India, documents the varied use of missed calls among mobile phone users in India, based on LIRNEasia’s T@BOP3 findings for 2008. Although the title of the article is slightly misleading (missed call use was, in fact, prevalent in all the countries studied; see here for more information), it nevertheless brings home the point that missed calls are being regularly used to communicate messages of various kinds in different contexts.

Why not ‘Times of India’ suggest a better broadband QoSE testing methodology to its readers?

Chanuka Wattegama — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:14:33 +0000

Broadband QoSE testing is generating interest. A news report on ‘Times of India’ yesterday (April 7) suggested the site www.speedtest.net to determine connection speed. This site, like many such others available on web, lets a user to ping to a selected server to check the throughput. (See above – A Sri Lankan user pings to a server in Hong Kong, one of the few available options)

This is fine as long as only the bigger picture will do, but as found in early stages of our research, it gives no clue about the point of bottleneck. Neither has it measured other metrics than the throughput which can be important depending upon the application.

The difference in AshokaTissa methodology proposed by LIRNEasia and IIT Madras is that it covers not only more metrics than an ordinary speed test, but also create a more detailed picture. We think that would be something more interest to ‘Times of India’ readers.

Broadbasing Broadband: Times of India -Editorial

Chanuka Wattegama — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 11:55:56 +0000

Technology is full of paradoxes. While Moore’s Law ensures that our computers get cheaper and faster every few months, there is no corresponding law that ensures that the same happens with our internet connections. TRAI data shows that some 60 million people in India have access to the internet. This may seem like a substantive figure, but is only 6 per cent of the population. More shocking is that while India has over 46 million wireless internet subscribers, broadband subscribers number a mere 2.47 million. It is ironic that in a country famed for its IT services, internet connectivity in general and broadband connectivity in particular is so poor.

India has, in fact, one of the lowest broadband subscriber penetration rates in Asia. So what accounts for the slow growth? One reason could be the price of a broadband connection. Broadband is defined by TRAI as an always-on data connection that can support internet access and a minimum download speed of 256 kbps. Prices for such connections have remained static the past few years. A simple comparison between the cost of broadband in India and, say, the United States, reveals that on a one-year contract, while the cost per month of a connection in both countries is roughly the same, the data transfer speed in the US is at least double than that in India.

Read the full article here.

Telecom spectrum war in India hots up

Chanuka Wattegama — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:27:11 +0000

The simmering tension over spectrum allocation among Indian telecom companies has erupted into a public spat with warring mobile phone operators leaving no stone unturned in their battle to acquire more air waves.

The fight is so intense that Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin too jumped in, dashing off letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and communications minister A Raja, complaining against the stiffer spectrum allocation norms proposed by the Telecommunication Engineering Centre, an arm of the department of telecommunications.

Reliance Communications chief Anil Ambani, whose company uses CDMA technology, too wrote to the Prime Minister. He accused some “large GSM players”, a reference to Vodafone and Sunil Mittal’s Bharti Telecom, of spreading “misleading and false propaganda” to block fresh competition in telecom, hoard spectrum and indulge in “anti-consumer practices like cartelisation”.

Read the full story in ‘The Times of India’