The telecoms minister gave audience to all the mobile CEOs and assured them of an “industry-friendly law” yesterday, according to the Daily Star. This meeting was held after the industry had expressed the possibility of legally challenging the proposed amendments of the telecoms law as their last resort, according to Daily Star’s previous report. “We are hopeful that as a guardian of the industry, the telecom minister will look into these issues,” said Zakiul Islam, president of Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh. It’s a positive development and that’s how the government and the industry address major issues in a democratic society. The amendments were initiated by an undemocratic regime.
The mobile operators will take the government to the court if proposed amendments of the telecoms law are not rationalized. All the six operators’ CEOs have unanimously announced their “last resort” in a historic press conference on Tuesday (June 22, 2010). Even the state-owned TeleTalk’s CEO, who is a civil servant, has joined the camp of his private sector rivals. This is the first time the usually docile mobile phone industry has threatened legal action against Bangladesh government. Because, the proposed amendments will reshape the regulatory landscape with the quicksand of penalties and landmines of arrest without warrant.
Given the interest rate spread that is generally high, it did not take much effort to make money from banks in Sri Lanka. But state banks are state banks. You’d expect them and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority to be highest revenue earners for the government. But nothing can keep up with what the TRC gives the Treasury: It would take 2.3 billion rupees coming from Bank of Ceylon, 1.
The UNP in Parliament on June 11, called for the expansion of mobile phone facilities in the rural areas where by the rural people can make use of their mobile phones for their banking requirements. UNP MP Dr. Harsha de Silva who was speaking during the private member’s motion moved by UNP MP Ravi Karunanayake to extend banking hours from 9 am to 4pm said expanded banking services should be made available to the rural people. “These people have banking too in their pockets in the form of the mobile phones and this should be made use of,” he said. Read the full article here.
I was recently invited by the United Nations System Influenza Coordination (UNSIC), regional office in Bangkok, to present our findings from the Real-Time Biosurveillance (RTBP) Pilot. UNSIC has appointed Dr. David Nabarro, the founder of Flu-Tracker to develop and implement a comprehensive unified strategy for UN system on pandemic influenza prevention, preparedness and response and increase the effort to control avian influenza. Given the nature of LIRNEasia researchers to speak the evidence as it is and not be superficial as in marketing products, the public and private stakeholders in Bangkok were intrigued to learn of the real intricacies of implementing a systems such the RTBP in India and Sri Lanka. We will continue to collaborate with UNSIC in feeding our extremely rich experiences and implications with possible contributions to their regional good practices documentation due in June 2011.
The Private Bus Operators Association of Sri Lanka has proposed to introduce a service for sale and purchase of bus tickets via mobile phones and/or customized electronic cards. These e-reload passes are readable by the existing GPRS-enabled ticket machines. The current plan is that passes will be in the form of physical re-load cards or mobile phone enabled mechanisms. If mobile phone -enabled, then a whole new window of opportunity emerges for transactions; this could become the most widely used, full mobile 2.0 (transaction-capable) application.
Gone are days that postal services were an integral part of Sri Lankan culture. According to a recent Postal Department survey, only 11% uses snail mail now, reports Divaina. The drop from over 90% in pre-1978 days is attributed to the widespread use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), including mobile phones, faxes and e-mail. ICTs supplementing age-old postal services too is common. ‘Fax Money Orders’ have replaced the traditional ones.
The Colloquim was conducted by Arusha Cooray from Australia. Joint study by Arusha Cooray, Nirmali Sivapragasam and Harsha de Silva Remittance inflows into the developing economies have increased tenfold from US $31,058 million to US$ 327,591 over the 1990 to 2008 period Initiatives taken by policymakers of developing economies to promote the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in particular mobile phones specifically targeting individuals outside the reach of traditional banking services. Benefits of ICT are well documented by the literature. Jensen (2007) – the use of mobile phones by fisherman contributed to a fall in price dispersion and reduction in waste, leading to increases in consumer and producer welfare in Kerela de Silva (2005) – mobile phone based ICTs can reduce information asymmetries in the agricultural market, enabling farmers to reduce transaction costs and search costs associated with locating sales outlets. Sivapragasam, Aguero and de Silva (2010) – the use and awareness of the mobile phone as a mode of remitting money.
Ranmalee took this photograph of Supun Sudaraka, testing mobile broadband connections on the move, using Mobile AT-Tester, the family of test tools developed by LIRNEasia. Broadband quality testing isn’t a desk job anymore. We simulate real conditions. Unlike in case of fixed connections, mobile broadband usage is always, er, mobile. This was one of the many odd locations we conducted testing.
They love to talk but reluctant to pay. This is how the telecoms minister has characterized almost every organ, including the offices of the President and the Prime Minister, of Bangladesh government. Even the country’s anticorruption department has gracefully joined these disgraced defaulters. The minister has disclosed a long itemized list of unpaid bills amounting almost US$10 million in the parliament. Interestingly, the telecoms ministry is also one of the shameless phone bill defaulters.
LIRNEasia’s advertisements last week, while highlighting the limited usage of Mobile 2.0 services by ‘low income’ users, suggested steps to be taken by regulators/policy makers and operators to make Mobile 2.0 galore. . We think this is the right time for Emerging Asian mobile operators to adopt what we call an Mobile Application Store or ‘App-Store’ model.
Who’s got the phone? Gender and the use of the telephone at the bottom of the pyramid Ayesha Zainudeen, Tahani Iqbal and Rohan Samarajiva Many studies conclude that a significant gender divide in access to the telephone exists, particularly in developing countries. Furthermore, women are also said to use telephones in a different manner from men — making and receiving more calls, spending more time on calls and using telephones primarily for ‘relationship maintenance’ purposes. Much of this research is based on small-sample studies in affluent developed countries. This article shows that a significant gender divide in access to telephones exists in Pakistan and India, to a lesser extent in Sri Lanka, but is absent in the Philippines and Thailand.
Spectrum allocation and pricing in Pakistan and India have differed considerably, one following market-based price discovery mechanisms through auctions, and the other, arbitrary pricing. Two articles, one by Mr. Muhammad Aslam Hayat, a regulatory consultant at Grameenphone, Bangladesh, and the other, by Payal Malik, LIRNEasia Senior Research Fellow, examines the past and present spectrum policy in Pakistan and India, respectively. Hayat writes: Pakistan introduced mobile cellular telephony early, in 1990. Although there was no clear spectrum management policy or roadmap available prior to 2004, the issuance of four mobile cellular licenses and the assignment of spectrum to those licensees were remarkably well thought out.
Myanmar’s telecommunication authorities are planning to expand GSM coverage to the border areas next to its Southeast neighbours, aimed at providing better GSM phone line services to link the region, Cellular News reported quoting the local Myanmar Newsweek. The pilot project to link Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore as well as China is underway. Meanwhile, the authorities has also planned to add 33 more GSM radio stations in the biggest city of Yangon to expand GSM coverage which will be launched by local private companies on competitive tender system, an earlier report said.
Two years back Frost & Sullivan predicted the abysmal future of WiMax. And it has been absolutely right all the way. China has never granted visa to WiMax while the Chinese vendors have been happily exporting the hardware. Deng Xiaoping’s disciples have also pioneered TD-LTE, a civilized alternative of WiMax. It has been consistently writing the epitaph of WiMax in the USA, Japan and Russia.
Was Sri Lanka’s reaction to tsunami alert today early morning effective enough? Did we observe the dos and don’ts? We do not jump to conclusions. The information is inadequate and contradictory at times. We will try reconstructing from what we heard, from mass media and other sources.