Voice is becoming a commodity. Mobile operators have to think of new services that people will pay for. Here is one. It’s not porn. It’s intervention from a government agency to prevent teen pregnancies.

THE special cellphone, set on vibrate, begins to whir. Throughout North Carolina, anonymous teenagers are texting questions to it about sex.

“If you take a shower before you have sex, are you less likely to get pregnant?” asks one.

Another: “Does a normal penis have wrinkles?”

A young girl types: “If my BF doesn’t like me to be loud during sex but I can’t help it, what am I supposed to do?”

Within 24 hours, each will receive a cautious, nonjudgmental reply, texted directly to their cellphones, from a nameless, faceless adult at the Adolescent…

Several years back, Korea topped the OECD’s broadband rankings and the ITU’s Digital Opportunity Index. That caused a lot of countries to reexamine their broadband policies. It caused others to develop new indices. The NYT carries a report on one:

After the United States, the ranking found that Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway rounded out the five most productive users of connectivity. Japan ranked 10, and Korea, 18.

And while wired and wireless broadband networks used by consumers lagged other countries, the United States ranked No. 1 in the world for technology use and skills by consumers. (This was measured by comparing countries on five measures: The penetration of Internet use, penetration of Internet banking, wired and wireless voice minutes per capita, SMS messages per capita, and…

In the course of her research on India’s telecom policy and regulatory environment, LIRNEasia Senior Research Fellow Payal Malik calculated the HHIs for different circles in India and found them to be very low.  Drawing on other TRE research and the literature, she has made a comparative assessment of the level of competition in India and a prognostication on the direction of mobile tariffs in an interview with the Economic Times.

Lirneasia’s senior research fellow Payal Malik had published the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) – the index for market concentration – in the telecom markets of South Asian countries, last year. Lower the HHI, higher the competitiveness in a market.

India’s turned out to be the lowest at 2000, as compared to Indonesia’s 3400 and Thailand’s 3900. Among the…

The story is based on US data, but it is still grist for the mill as we think about how the mobile and Internet will change the mediasphere in emerging Asia.

We are so smitten with screens that we often can’t bear to choose one over another: 31 percent of Internet use occurs while we’re in front of a TV set. We are also taking an interest in watching video on our phones: 100 million handsets are video-capable.

According to analysts who see the world as made up of the US market, yes:

Analysts and investors are beginning to ask whether the industry can continue growing. The challenge is both simple and daunting: how to expand when more than half of the six billion people on the planet already have phones. And even in developing countries where there are underserved markets, subscribers spend less on phones and services.

Craig Moffett, an industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, is one of the skeptics. “I don’t think anyone would argue that the salad days of the wireless industry aren’t over,” he said. He added that in terms of subscriber growth in North America, “we’re awfully close to saturation.”

But our data shows the massive markets of India,…

Barack Obama used his first weekly address as U.S. president to provide more details of his proposed US$825 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that, among other things, will upgrade classrooms, invest in renewable energy and expand broadband Internet access.

Obama stated his intention to invest in these areas during the presidential debates in September and came back to the issue in a December address that he issued as president-elect, but over the weekend he added concrete goals to the plan.

But on one aspect of the recovery plan — expanding broadband access — he offered no concrete goals and a supporting document issued by the White House doesn’t mention the word “broadband” once..

The broadband expansion is part of the infrastructure portion of the plan that will…

There are many who think telecom networks should be congestion free, always, like during or just before a disaster.   It is practically impossible because no network can be economically designed and run for unusual peak loads.  The report that mobile companies in the US are asking their customers to go easy on calls and MMS, is illustrative of the phenomenon.  Why would they walk away from an opportunity to make money?

The largest cellphone carriers, fearful that a communicative citizenry will overwhelm their networks, have taken the unusual step of asking people to limit their phone calls and to delay sending photos. The carriers are also spending millions of dollars to temporarily and substantially upgrade their networks in Washington.

The $825 billion proposal from the Obama transition team and House Democrats includes $6 billion to improve the U.S. broadband infrastructure, which is lacking in many rural and mountainous areas, particularly the West.

There aren’t a lot of details yet on how that $6 billion would be given out, but it doesn’t seem to encompass the tax breaks phone and cable companies were lobbying for. Even so, the wireless industry was cheering Thursday morning because a summary of the spending released by House Democrats calls for the money to be used on “broadband and wireless grants.”

Wireless companies were concerned that the money would be earmarked for cable and phone companies providing fiber to the home.

On Wednesday, an Obama adviser who’s been in charge of the broadband…

Qatar Telecommunications Co QTEL said on Saturday it would begin tender offers for shares in Indonesian telecoms firm PT Indosat on Tuesday to lift its stake to 65 percent, the maximum allowed.

Indonesia limits foreign ownership in the telecommunication sector to a maximum of 65 percent for mobile phone operators and 49 percent for fixed-line operators.

Two tender offers would begin concurrently in Indonesia and the United States at 7,388 rupiahs ($0.661) per share and would expire on Feb. 18, Qtel said.

“The Indonesian government has determined that Qtel’s total ownership will be limited to 65 percent of Indosat,” Qtel said in a statement.

“Guided by this ruling, Qtel is thus offering to acquire an additional stake of up to approximately 24.19 percent of Indosat, after taking into account…

China’s telecommunications supervisor on Wednesday issued long-awaited third-generation (3G) mobile phone licenses to three mobile operators, a move that is expected to lead to billions of dollars being invested in building new networks.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said China’s biggest mobile operator, China Mobile, was awarded a license for TD-SCDMA, the domestically-developed 3G standard.

The other two main carriers, China Telecom and China Unicom, received licenses for the US-developed CDMA2000 and Europe’s WCDMA, respectively.

The 3G high-speed networks can handle faster data downloads, allowing handset users to make video calls and watch TV programs.

Read the full story in China Daily here.

Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) today published a list of short codes to be used in case of emergencies and to access other e-gov services. They will work on any phone, mobile or fixed from any operator. Emergency calls are free. To access a service, normal call charges apply.

Public are advised to use these codes as per the specific nature of emergency. (note the word ‘Optimum’) For example, if you see the next door TV station is set fire by terrorists, call 118. It connects you to Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law and Order. If the same attack is done by some other party, better call 119, and contact Police. If they take time to come you may also want to call…

Unlike in Asia, the price of an individual SMS has increased by 100% to USD 0.20 in the US.  This has happened at the same time as the mobile market consolidated from six suppliers to four.  Naturally, there has been public-policy concern.  In defense of the telecos, it must be noted that most people in the US do not pay on a per-message basis, but get a “bucket” of services including a large number of SMS for a fixed price, so the per-message price is really not relevant to most people.

A text message initially travels wirelessly from a handset to the closest base-station tower and is then transferred through wired links to the digital pipes of the telephone network, and then, near its destination, converted…

Preconference workshop at the 2009 conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) | 20-21 May 2009, Chicago, Illinois, USA

The draft program for this one-and-a-half day preconference is now available. Twenty five papers were selected through a peer-reviewed process; papers based on research in 15 countries in five continents in on various aspects of mobile usage will be presented. Registration can be completed through the ICA conference website.

As our world rapidly evolves, it’s no surprise that the work landscape is evolving as well. You can prepare for and keep up with the changes by updating your training and credentials.

One of the six high-flying jobs Yahoo! Hotjobs featured in its latest article is about designing content for mobile platform. Here is the full description. (with an eulogized version of the job title) In US it guarantees a six figure salary, apparently. Cannot be as high as that in the developing world, but something worth keeping an eye on.

Mobile Experience Architect

The cool streaming videos and eye-popping CD covers that get delivered to the screens of millions of cell phones and PDAs each hour are designed to make you spend money. Information architects create the…

There was a time when Mira Lira wasn’t able to run her online business effectively out of this former mining town 60 miles east of Phoenix. Not on a dial-up connection.

“I use the Internet daily for e-mail and marketing,” Lira said.

But today Lira is enjoying broadband Internet access as she provides virtual administrative help for offices around the country through Miracle Executive Services.

The relief came in the form of small white boxes with tiny antennas atop homes, the school, even a light pole at the baseball field. Lira happily shows these to a visitor to illustrate what a wireless Internet network means to this community.

“Having high-speed in rural communities is like having a sewer system; it’s needed for a healthy community,” Lira said. Since 2007,…