June 2012 — Page 4 of 4 — LIRNEasia


The New York Times has an interesting feature about 32 innovations that can change our lives. Here is the problem that requires fixing according to David Pogue, the NYT’s resident tech guru: That we’re heading for a bandwidth crunch. We’re saddling the Internet with amazing new features — movies on demand, streaming TV, Siri voice recognition, whole-house backup — but they’re starting to overwhelm the existing Internet’s capacity, especially on cellular networks. The Internet and phone companies respond by imposing monthly limits, and the F.C.
The Financial Express has carried a story, based on the public-domain comments we submitted to the Ministry of Post and Telecom. Other than calling and sending text messages, the mobile phone operators offer series of services like downloading of music, ringtone, wallpaper and many others. These are generally known as VAS and being offered as optional services. Now the government has proposed to categorise VAS as a separate suite of service and bring it under a licensingregime in Bangladesh. If implemented, the mobile operators will have to outsource all value added services and discontinue offering any in-house product.
Yesterday, the Indian Cabinet approved the National Telecom Policy, with five changes. I really would like to comment on it (and see if any of our suggested changes were incorporated) but at this point the Department of Telecom site says nothing. So all we have are news reports.