Today was the first public airing of our big data for development research results. It was a small amount of time, so we focused on a limited set of issues. So we showed that anonymized data sets can easily substitute for costly traffic studies. Slides.
In its recent public consultation, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) aim to set minimum download speeds for the different type of wireless technologies offered. This was based on the download speeds achieved and reported by the service providers over the last three quarters. The methods used while carrying out the diagnostics is not known. Further, it is perhaps more important to understand the consumers needs when access the Internet over the phone – is it for downloading or for browsing. There is no doubt that download speed matters, but latency also should be given some thought as that is what really affects the QoS for web browsing.
The New York Times reported some exciting new changes that are in the works in New York, whereby the entire electricity model is being rethought. New York State is proposing to turn its electric utilities into a new kind of entity that would buy electricity from hundreds or thousands of small generators and set prices for that electricity and for the costs of running the power grid. The proposal anticipates a radically different electric system, dominated by decentralized production, much of it of renewable, intermittent energy sources like solar or wind power. The Public Service Commission is considering how the utilities would have to change. Instead of distributing electricity themselves, the utilities would effectively direct traffic, coordinating distribution of electricity produced by a multitude of smaller entities, according to an outline published last month by the commission, which regulates utilities.
A media conference was held on the 25th April 2014 at Holiday Inn Resort, Goa to launch the resource repository on broadband policy and regulation and to disseminate the research conducted under the Ford Foundation funded project on ‘Broadband Policy and Regulation Conducive to Access by the Poor’. It was attended by journalists from PTI, Indian Express, India Forbes, Telecom Lead and Cyber Media stationed in multiple locations in India. The conference commenced with an introduction to the project and the media launch of the web-based Broadband Policy Resource Centre (http://broadbandasia.info/ ). The topics covered included what India can learn from the National Broadband Network initiatives of Malaysia, Australia and Indonesia, an analysis about the current status of the National Optical Fiber Network of India and why the Indian app market has not been as successful as expected and how it can be improved.
The attention economy requires that major investments be made to acquire the attention base and then to monetize it. Although the attention economy has been around at least since 1830, people are still not used to the model. They may be right about the business model – in which case Twitter becomes a perfect case study in the economics of information goods. The key to success in cyberspace is to harness the power of Metcalfe’s Law, which says that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users. In layman’s terms this means that the faster you can acquire users the quicker you reach the point of becoming the winner who takes all.
Myanmar’s international connectivity has been choked due to her exclusive reliance on nearly dysfunctional SEA-ME-WE3 cable. Link with a decent submarine cable became imperative when this South East Asia’s last greenfield telecom market allured foreign telecom starlets. Finally, Myanmar has joined the SEA-ME-WE5 consortium in March. Interestingly, Myanmar was also named as one of the partners in Asia Africa Europe 1 (AAE1) submarine cable systems long before it formally joined the SEA-ME-WE5 consortium. Now the Myanmar Post and Telecommunications (MPT) is contemplating to join the AAE1 consortium.
I was a little surprised by the report in the Hindu Business Line that the Department of Telecom is planning to set up a testing and payment infrastructure for mobile apps, along with a subsidy/investment scheme funded from the Universal Service Fund. I was surprised about the DoT taking the lead when apps seem to be more within DEITY’s subject area. I was also surprised that funds from the USF were being used, when one would think that converting the universal service fund into an investment vehicle is an unusual choice. I was also surprised that many of the topics had been discussed in great detail by Rajat Kathuria and Sughanda Srivastva at the Expert Forum we conducted in Delhi on March 12th, 2014. DoT senior officials were present, but it seems that a month and half is little too short a time for policy recommendations to be transformed into actual policy in India.
Join us at the CAP Code-fest REGISTER NOW IT Industry teaming with Emergency Management Experts to experimentaly develop exciting warning/alerting software solutions. ANYONE CAN JOIN the CAP Code-fest and it is Free to Attend. Experiment with interchanging warning/alerting information with disparate software solutions and then build new interfaces between them. Play with various domain specific software designs, XML-based interoperable data structure, information interchanging Application Programming Interfaces (OData APIs), Databases, or simply be a Lurker and give a helping hand with researching concepts. A fun activity with outcomes expected to contribute towards IT tools in SAVING LIVES.
We were pleased to receive front-page coverage for our dissemination event in the business section of the leading English language newspaper in Bangladesh. The Chairman of the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission, Mr A.R. Khan, was the chief guest and participated in the entirety of the event, which stretched over four hours. In the concluding discussion, we were very happy to see energetic debate among the participating senior officials from the electricity distribution companies and the mobile operators.
National Telecom Policy of 1998 still governs Bangladesh. It has prompted the Telecom Reporters’ Network Bangladesh (TRNB) to organize a round table discussion titled “Revision of Telecom Policy” yesterday. Rohan Samarajiva was the keynote speaker in this event. Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Minister Abdul Latif Siddique and BTRC chairman Sunil Kanti Bose along with the telecom sector’s key officials were present. Rohan has urged to improve the indicators of Bangladesh by setting milestones in the revised telecom policy.
Nine mobile operators have agreed to accelerate the implementation of interoperable mobile money services across MEA regions. Bharti Airtel, Etisalat, Millicom, MTN, Ooredoo, Orange, STC, Vodafone and Zain will implement the GSMA’s Mobile Money Interoperability (MMI) program. These operators represent 582 million mobile connections across 48 countries in the Middle East and Africa regions. As of December 2013, mobile money in this region showed following growth: The regions accounted for 58% of the world’s 218 mobile money deployments; Sixty-six percent of all registered accounts and 73% of active accounts are located in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa; Mobile money users in these regions accounted for 77% of global transaction value in June 2013, performing 341 million transactions totaling US$5.7 billion.
We rely on Kingdon’s concept of policy windows a lot. To effectively take research to policy, the necessary condition is a policy window: some kind of opening created in the “minds” of the relevant decision makers. It does not require much knowledge to postulate that current Indian election that will yield a new Prime Minister and Cabinet, whatever be the outcome, is such a window. But there is more. All the parties are promising improved governance and delivery of government services using ICTs, as the attached slideset shows.
In mid 2012 the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued a public consultation on standards for quality of service (QoS) related to mobile data services. LIRNEasia responded. Nearly two years since, the issues that prompted the public consultation persist. Consumers are being wooed by telecom companies in advertisements regarding high speed wireless data services and product packs in which they are promised speeds of up to 7.2 megabit a second or 21 megabit a second.
LIRNEasia‘s timeline of significant milestones and achievements between 2004 and 2014 is documented here. You can view the interactive timeline, or view the PDF below
Issue of discrimination coming up in big data policy review. The value of big data is in understanding the consumer. But with understanding comes the ability to discriminate. Not all discrimination is bad. But some may be.
A recent case gave hope to those who wanted the n=all collection of telephone transaction-generated data to cease. But only court that can overrule Smith v Maryland is the Supreme Court. Now a FISA court has explicitly declined to follow Judge Leon. So n=all continues. A telephone company asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in January to stop requiring it to give records of its customers’ calls to the National Security Agency, in light of a ruling by a Federal District Court judge that the N.