Strange will be the telecom world in emerging markets.
Free incoming calls are the norm in many counties. Ever thought it can get even better? Operator paying the mobile users for incoming? Where on earth such crazy things happen?
Answer: In India.
Virgin Mobile pays 10 paise (about 0.25 US cents) for every incoming call minute a user gets. (In other words, boss calling to lecture you for ten minutes, will make you richer by one Rupee)
Where is the catch? Has Virgin Mobile CEO gone insane? Or does he mint coins?
Department of Telecommunication (DoT) India thinks Virgin Mobile can do that because its actual call termination costs are less than what it receives as termination charges– 30 paise per minute. Simple maths. If the costs are less than…
Nicholas Negroponte said, in the context of the United States, that all that was carried on wireguides would shift to wireless (e.g., telephony) and all that was carried by wireless (e.g., television) would shift to wireguides. Wireless was better at connecting people who were inherently mobile; while wireguides made better sense for hauling large amounts of data needed to give people high-quality entertainment experiences. George Gilder called this the Negroponte Switch.
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…
The New York Times documents a recent study conducted by Nielsen Mobile among 30, 000 wireless customers, that estimates over 3.6% of all mobile phone users in the United States have used their phones to pay for goods and services. This figure is expected to grow in the future, with nearly half of all users of text messages and mobile internet, stating that they hope to make a mobile phone purchase in the future.
However, security concerns remain. 41 percent of the consumers who transmit data said security was the reason they didn’t buy things via their mobile phone. And 21 percent said they did not trust that the transaction would be completed.
LIRNEasia’s study on Mobile2.0@BOP intends to address such issues relating to M-payments, particularly exploring in detail the case of…
Researc h to practice is the central preoccupation of LIRNEasia. We differ from conventional researchers in our fixation on how to convey our research to policymakers, regulators, senior managers of operators and to the symbolic universe they live in. We choose our research questions and methods with this end in mind and we conduct our research on schedules determined by the need for effective communication to these key stakeholders. We measure success by whether the research that we communicate catalyzes changes in laws, policies, practices and worldviews .
In this light, the SSRC organized pre-conference seemed an ideal academic event to attend after many years. I had attended many discussions on researc h in practice while in academia. There was a difference this time.
In 1993, for example, there was a memorable impromptu debate between Eli…
Tags: Asia, Columbia, Eli Noam, Joe Karaganis, Media coverage, New York Public Service Commission, Ohio, research, Sri Lanka, Tom Streeter, United States.
An inevitable outcome of mobile phone penetration among BOP is longer average life time of a unit. At that level replacing cost is significant. The only alternative is to repair and use the same for a longer period. This explains the mushrooming of mobile repair centers in many developing countries.
Internet has loads of technical information about repairing, but in English. That is why guides like the above, published by Wijeya Newspapers, Sri Lanka and priced at Rs. 75 (US cents 70) are useful. Written in the local language with ample colour illustrations it provides step by step guidelines to repair mobile phones. We hope the technicians at ground level get the best use of it.
The world’s largest mobile phone company makes roughly two out of every five mobiles sold globally. It said it expected the number of phones sold to increase by 10%, from the 1.14bn phones sold last year. But the Finnish group explained that the overall value of the market would be lower than in 2007 thanks to the weak dollar, the economic slowdown in the US, and “some economic slowdown in Europe”. Shares in the company dropped 10%.
Nokia also expects the average price of mobile phones to decrease this year because of intense competition in mature markets. Nokia’s downbeat trading outlook came as its announced first-quarter results, which missed analysts’ forecasts. Profits for the three months to March were up 25% on last year to €1.2bn…
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…
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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Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out - New York Times
Part of the problem was in the business model established in Philadelphia and mimicked in so many other cities, Mr. Settles said.
In Philadelphia, the agreement was that the city would provide free access to city utility poles for the mounting of routers; in return the Internet service provider would agree to build the infrastructure for 23 free hotspots and to provide inexpensive citywide residential service, including 25,000 special accounts that were even cheaper for lower-income households.
But soon it became clear that dependable reception required more routers than initially predicted, which drastically raised the cost of building the networks. Marketing was also slow to begin, so paid subscribers did not sign up in…
Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In - New York Times
the next step is electronic boarding passes, which essentially turn the hand-held devices and mobile phones of travelers into their boarding passes.
At least half a dozen airlines in the United States currently allow customers to check in using their mobile devices, including American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest and Alaska.
But so far, Continental is the only carrier in the United States to begin testing the electronic passes, allowing those travelers to pass through security and board the plane without handling a piece of paper. Their boarding pass is an image of an encrypted bar code displayed on the phone’s screen, which can be scanned by gate agents and security personnel.
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The cost of international capacity between the US and Asia has dropped dramatically in the past ten years. In 1996, US$10,000 would buy a 64kbps IPLC between Asia and the
US. The same money buys a STM-1 (155Mbps) circuit in 2006.
Dramatic drops in the price of international capacity as a result of market deregulation in the Asia Pacific is resulting in a shift in the dynamics of Internet traffic, according to a presentation at the APRICOT conference in Taipei this week. Read more.
TelecomTV - TelecomTV One - News
Google will combine with SingTel, Bharti, Globe Transit and Pacnet to build the mooted Unity cable, connecting Japan to the United States.The $US300 million system was revealed by SingTel and Pacnet this morning. The 7.68 terabit cable is expected to be ready for service in 1Q 2010.
NEC and Tyco will build the cable while Pacnet will be the largest investor with two of the five fiber pairs. Pacnet appears to have effectively rolled its EAC Pacific plan into the project.
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In many countries, customers are unhappy about what they get in Internet connectivity. In most cases it’s about being unable download or upload a file more than a few MB in size. In the US, the unhappiness is about file sharing. But key issue is the same: do you get what you pay for?
F.C.C. Weighing Limits on Slowing Web Traffic - New York Times
Consumer groups have said that such discrimination against some content providers has been aimed at Comcast’s rivals and is both unnecessary and threatens to undermine the freewheeling nature of the Internet. In his comments, Kevin J. Martin, the agency’s chairman, tended to agree.
“They must be conducted in an open and transparent way,” Mr. Martin said at a hearing Monday on network…
Tags: Broadband, Comcast, F.C.C., file sharing, Internet connectivity, Internet traffic management, Kevin J. Martin, Manitoba, Michael J. Copps, Slowing Web Traffic - New York Times, United States.
Broadband Access Data Mischief — SSRC
There is clear consensus that our nation’s ability to compete in the high speed broadband world is essential to our economic future. Unfortunately, the Administration and the Federal Communications Commission continue to rely upon inadequate, highly-flawed data to assess the marketplace for high-speed Internet access. The Administration’s “mission Accomplished” rhetoric does not match reality:
* According to a September 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project phone survey, roughly half of all Americans don’t have broadband at home. Half is far from universal.
* Fewer than 25% of New Yorkers in rural areas have access to broadband service and nearly two-thirds of people living in New York City lack access to affordable, high-speed broadband. Some New York City neighborhoods — like Sunset…
Tags: America, Broadband, broadband access, broadband technology, Bush, Chicago, China, DSL, Federal Communications Commission, HIGH-speed Internet access, New York City, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Sunset Park, United States, US Department of Commerce.
Rohan Samarajiva participated in the Third Annual ‘Joint Roundtable on Communications Policy - The Future of Indian Mobile’ in Kovalam, India from 7-9 February. The Round table was organized by the Aspen Institute India in collaboration with the Aspen Institute, USA.
The objective of the conference was to convene Indian and American business leaders, government policy-makers, leading academics, and other experts to discuss government and business approaches to mobile commerce, mobile banking and m-governance that will have a positive effect on India’s economic and social development.
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