It’s nice to know we’re in the post-PC world. It’s just two years since we were being asked to participate in debates about mobile vs PCs. And just one year since Steve Jobs called the PC a truck. Now the debate has shifted. We know what world we live in.
It seems that all governments under threat fear communication media. Instead of the kill switch, Cameron of the UK seems to be proposing a narrower ban: social media use by miscreants. How does this work? Does the government know who is planning mayhem and who is not? Does it shut down base stations in affected areas, or does it target specific people?
For those who think spectrum is a headache unique to Bangladesh, here’s relief from Greece: The auction has been discussed and planned for more than a year and predates the country’s financial crisis, said the official, a senior administrator at the Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission, the regulator holding the auction. He did not want to be identified, citing his agency’s policy. The auction’s goal, the official said, was to level the playing field in Greece among the three operators going forward as they introduce faster third- and fourth-generation mobile services. Vodafone and Wind already hold licenses for 900-megahertz spectrum, and Cosmote uses the 1.8-gigahertz band.
When I wrote the op ed that was published in Daily Star yesterday, I did not know the anti-competitive “Market Competition Factor” had been decided. Today’s Daily Star gives the numbers. Looks unusually good for Citycell that not only pays 1/5th the price per MHz that Grameenphone pays but can also make do with less frequencies because it is a CDMA operator. According to the definition of the MCF prescribed by the telecom ministry, if an operator has more than 20 percent market share, it will have to pay additionally, while an operator with less than 20 percent share will pay at a reduced rate. The MCF for Grameenphone now stands at 1.
We have been talking about the need to prepare for qualitatively higher volumes of data in Asia as more people start using 3G networks. Our proposals have focused on adding to international backhaul capacity in order to reduce prices of this key input that is now 3-6 times more expensive than capacity in Europe and North America. The New York Times discusses how the data flood is playing out in the US. The projections are that the networks will have to carry the total traffic they carried in all of 2010, in just two months in 2015 in the US. Cellphone plans that let people gobble up data as if they were at an all-you-can eat buffet are disappearing, just as a new crop of data-gobbling Internet services from Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Apple and the like are hitting the market or catching on with wide audiences.
Building on the previous blog post, I wrote up an op-ed on the latest developments of the Bangladesh license renewal drama that has been published in the Sunday Daily Star. What mistakes are made when incentives are not properly analyzed. More proof that the Bangladesh Ministry of Post and Telecom has a serious problem of capacity. The “market competition factor,” as presented, penalises operators with more customers. It creates a disincentive to add low-revenue customers and, indeed, an incentive to shed marginal customers.
Sometimes we can get ideas for services for the BOP from what the rich do with their smartphones and computers: The same day, my brother sent along a link for a new app (leafsnap) that allows users to identify trees by submitting photos of leaves. What a smart way to juice that nature walk, I thought. The next day I saw a Twitter message from Pierre Omidyar (@pierre), the eBay founder, in which he attached a photo and asked, “What is the name of this purple and white flower bush?” Seconds later he had his answer: lilac. Then my sister wrote to ask how she could identify the bird building a nest on her deck.
The long dragged-out drama of license renewal in Bangladesh has taken one step toward closure, according to the Daily Star. The government yesterday finalised the process of how it will charge four mobile operators — Grameen-phone, Banglalink, Robi and Citycell — for renewing their licences for the next 15 years. A high-profile meeting presided over by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina decided that the operators will pay at the rate of Tk 150 crore for per megahertz of airwave, which will be multiplied by the total allocated spectrum and a ‘market competition factor’. The meeting held at the Prime Minister’s Office also decided to give 3G (third generation) technology licences through auction. The per-MHz amount has been set arbitrarily.
Why voice for Sarvodaya’s emergency communication? The experience from the 2011 Foods in Batticaloa and Ampara districts was that Sarvodaya was able to secure aid from various sources by providing the actual ground situation through their web portal. It had images and information of rescue operations, victims, camps, and the devastation. The images and stories came from Sarvodaya head office staff who were deployed to the area. They used cameras, phones, and the internet to relay the ground situation to the Hazard Information Hub (HIH).
CPRsouth, LIRNEasia’s primary vehicle for capacity building, places great weight on the practice of “standing on the shoulders of giants,” also known as conducting literature reviews, and referring to previous work through citations. Is this an importation of an alien Western practice? Is there an alternative? Our objectives and those of Wikipedia are not the same. Still, it may be interesting to see if there is anything to be learned from the Wikimania debate.
The whole point of a public lecture is to catalyze thought and action. It’s been three months and the first evidence I saw of anything being catalyzed was the phone call I got from Bandula Mahanama, the speaker we invited from Polonnaruwa. He had some plans about reducing risks from the Minneriya reservoir and wanted me to come. He and his colleagues from six farmer organizations wanted a Colombo partner. I went with Lakshaman Bandaranayake the CEO of Vanguard Management who has been our steadfast partner on all dam-safety related projects.
The release of Thai TRE results by the principal researcher from TDRI, Dr Deunden Nikomborirak, and myself last week has resulted in significant media coverage, including this piece in the Nation (though I would have preferred a milder headline). A survey of Thailand’s telecom regulatory and policy environment (TRE) has given the country a score of only 2.7 out of five points, with implementation of interconnection singled out with a low ranking of 2.59 points. In the wake of the survey, criticism has been levelled at the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
Interesting piece in the Guardian on mobile more than voice. What I found most interesting was the emphasis placed by the Community Knowledge Worker on things other than communication, such as the reliable weather information and the cooperatization. To register, a farmer must provide exhaustive details about his farm, household and income, as well as the things he needs most to improve his livelihood. Many in the area still wonder why Grameen isn’t providing them with physical aid, but Simon tells me he is working to change that mindset. “Let someone give you knowledge, then you are rich.
Because of some work done on India-Sri Lanka services trade, I keep getting invited to speak on related topics, including physical connectivity between India and Sri Lanka. Not sure what good comes of these talks, but . . . Physical connectivity in the southern SAARC region.
Data centers are what cloud computing will run on. They are what we hope will be located on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, making use of the cheap hydro that is plentifully available, political circumstances permitting. But of course, less electricity use is better. Fueled by an insatiable demand for new Internet services and a shift to so-called cloud computing services that are largely hosted in commercial data centers and in the large data farms operated by companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, there has been an increasing discussion about the growing percentage of the nation’s electricity that will be consumed by vast data centers being constructed at a record pace. But the new report indicates that electricity used by global data centers in 2010 remained relatively modest.