Regulator proposes and market disposes. MNP has backfired in India since its introduction three months back. Hindustan Times said, Reliance and BSNL lose. Vodafone, Idea and Airtel win. CDMA is out, GSM is in.
The people of Philippines stunned the world when they mobilized demonstration through text messaging and toppled the government in 2001. Communication technology got embedded among the protesters worldwide thereafter. Rohan’s recent visit in Iran has evidently prompted him to revisit the increasingly inseparable bond between technology and freedom movements. Demonstrators throw stones, possibly, because the power the enforcers protect lives in the stone-age in terms of values. That’s why the latter’s desperation for communication blackout has been futile.
Ofcom has warned that the UK’s landline ISPs are still delivering less than half of the peak-download speeds they advertise. The regulator’s research shows that the average broadband speed increased from 5.2 Mbps (May 2010) to 6.2 Mbps (November/December 2010) but was less than half (45 per cent) of the average advertised broadband speed of 13.8 Mbps.
The Colonel and his “LSE-educated” son have gone beyond any proportion long ago. Shooting and bombing the citizens of Libya (by the mercenaries) have not been working. Now the father and son are getting mad as their days are getting numbered. Following the footsteps of deposed Egyptian neighbor, the Colonel first snapped his country’s Internet. It hasn’t worked.
America is the crucible of subsidy in telecoms. This menace has now spread into many markets and opened the doors of financial malpractice. This finest form of crime has been, by far, limited to networks. Now the idea of subsiding the handsets is being promoted. Heaven knows that GSMA coined the Ultra Low Cost Handset (ULCH) initiative five years ago.
OECD has primarily estimated that the five-day shut-down of internet access in Egypt has caused minimum loss of US$90 million. It refers to lost revenues due to blocked telecommunications and Internet services, which account for around US$18 million per day, or, on a yearly scale, for roughly 3-4% of GDP, according to Cellular News. But Pyramid Research has estimated that the ban on Internet services could have cost $5 million per day while the clamp down on mobile services may have carried a price tag of $14 million per day. It means the country has lost around $110 million altogether, said Telecomasia. One day we may know the exact figure.
Her Majesty’s Government has enacted the Digital Economy Act last year. It seems to be another episode of Yes (Prime) Minister. Martyn Warwick wrote: The UK’s Digital Economy Act (DEA), passed with unseemly haste, minimal debate and with almost no parliamentary scrutiny in the dying days of a discredited, dispirited and increasingly corrupt Labour government, always was a massive and ill-conceived sledgehammer to crack a very small nut. Sounds quite familiar? Read his full report.
Connecting Asian countries is no longer the carriers’ headache; ensuring seamless connectivity is. In the recent past we have witnessed the emergence of Asia America Gateway and Google’s Unity followed by Southeast Asia Japan cable cables. Series of undersea earthquakes have been damaging the cables and disrupting the intra-Asian as well as inter-Asian voice and data connectivity. Now the Asian carriers have teamed up to roll-out another submarine cable called Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE). It will bypass the earthquake-prone Taiwanese coast.
Information networks are the first casualties of anti-tyrant movements. And Egypt is not an exception. Following two articles of telecomtv.com have captured how the aspirants of freedom outsmart the tyrant: As Egypt begins to reinstate mobile services, Mubarak wants his mummy Egypt’s dial-up revolution
Regulation doesn’t exist in Somalia. Yet its air wave is overcrowded with 11 mobile networks. And there is no interconnection. Now the Somali government has planned regulate its ultra-free mobile phone market. Moreover, it is ambitious of taxing the operators “to boost growth and investment,” Information, Posts and Telecommunications Minister Abdulkareem Jama told Bloomberg News.
The military junta that runs (and ruins) the poverty-striken African country of Niger has hatched the brilliant idea of raising some special telecoms taxes. Niger, says Cellular News, is one of the world’s poorest countries and currently has a phone penetration of just 23 per cent. So a few extra taxes on the providers would presumably be just the thing to speed up more personal infrastructure development like palatial houses, SUVs even personal jets! You never know. Just remember – rulers know the best.
Mitchell Lazarus practices law in Washington D.C. He also holds two degrees in electrical engineering and a doctorate in experimental psychology. His article – Radio’s Regulatory Roadblocks – is an outstanding piece. He also wrote The Great Radio Spectrum Famine thereafter.
Bharti Airtel and China Telecom have lit a 40-Gbps underground fiber network linking respective country. It runs across the Nathula border between Siliguri (India) and Yadong (China). It promises customers transiting India or China to reach global destinations the shortest route between the two countries. The link also provides Bharti’s Indian customers with a third option for international connectivity and an alternative to its existing submarine cable connections in Chennai and Mumbai. Bharti said its Sino-Indian network is “built on highly resilient ring infrastructure will offer unparalleled diversity and reach to the region Terrestrial network to offer alternate and shortest route between India and China alongside existing Subsea routes.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose; By any other name would smell as sweet.” Juliet didn’t work in the ITU. The global telecoms standard body has bowed to the inevitable with as much grace as it could muster, and has ‘recognised’ not only LTE and the current WiMAX as 4G technologies, but has slipped HSPA+ into the definition as well. Ian Scales of telecomtv reports.
My first trip to Pakistan was during the pre-suicide bombing era – May 2000. I checked-in the Islamabad Club. I was in a pair of sneakers, jeans and a T-shirt. Visibly disappointed receptionist of the Club gave me a condensed course on dress-code. He concluded, “You have to wear a tie in the bar.
Whoever owns the last mile, calls the shot in telecoms. The operators were caught off-guard once the tsunami of applications (apps) hit their fortresses. The telecoms world was shaken by the tectonic shift caused by Apple and Google. United States of America happens to be the epicenter. Now the European mobile behemoths are asking for payments from the “culprits” of the other side of the Atlantic.