Are there benefits of connecting buses to a mobile network? That’s a question that the city government of Curitiba in Brazil posed before deciding to make it the first city in the world to implement a brand new public transportation solution Ericsson has developed with Dataprom, the Brazilian supplier of public-transport solutions. The solution, which is already in use in Curitiba, connects public buses to 3G mobile broadband networks, and is equipped with Ericsson mobile broadband modules for high speed access. By supplying the Electronic Ticketing and Fleet Management Systems, Dataprom and Ericsson will enable controllers to access a wide range of information about their fleet and monitor the route, stop time, speed, distance travelled, date of departure and arrival. The largest city in southern Brazil, Curitiba has a unique public bus service which has raised much interest and received worldwide recognition.
Amid rapid technological development, the competition to supply telecom services in war-torn Somalia proves that some complex businesses can thrive even in one of Africa’s dangerous markets. One of the largest telecom companies in Somalia, Hormuud Telecom, has annual sales of as much as US$40 million. Even “Mobile 2.0” is making inroads here. But the success of Somalia’s telecom sector shouldn’t come as such a surprise, according to experts.
Websites are not signboards. Information in the web must be updated immediately. But Daily Star said the Bangladesh government’s various websites are nothing but digital signboards. They are full of outdated and irrelevant contents. Citizens need information to interact with the state.
Wi-Fi marks 25 years this month since the FCC decision of 1985 that allowed using spread-spectrum technologies in unlicensed spectrum and sparked a huge dose of innovation in the process. Today if you offer even million dollars for a laptop without Wi-Fi, you will not get it. It has become embedded in the DNA of all portable computers. As a result we can bypass phone networks and make free calls using Skype, Googletalk etc. Only dumb authorities don’t provide Wi-Fi in the airports.
Apple is facing a potential antitrust probe into whether the software underpinning its groundbreaking iPhone unfairly locks out competitors. The US Federal Trade Commission became curious when a dispute that broke out between Apple and Adobe over the latest version of the iPhone software, which was unveiled last month. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has explained why the company’s devices don’t support Adobe’s Flash, a widely used video streaming technology. “Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true,” he wrote. Adobe’s Flash has become a de facto standard for the industry to create web games and present video, with about 75% of video served on web sites using Flash.
Two years ago the New York Times reported that global internet traffic has been increasingly avoiding the United States. It means the US intelligence establishments were increasingly losing control over the other countries’ cyber data. That was the twilight of George Bush 2.0 era. Now the US and 39 or more countries are secretly negotiating a new global agreement called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
MoneyGram International has announced the expansion of its mobile money transfer service to approximately 40,000 agent locations in the United States. The expansion follows its pilot program offered from select California and Hong Kong agent locations to 40 million Philippines SMART phone users. It has recently expanded its network in Vietnam 30 Percent as two major banks began mobile remittance services at nearly 400 locations. MoneyGram joined forces with SMART Communications in December and began the pilot phase of its MoneyGram mobile money transfer services to deliver funds from a MoneyGram agent location direct to any SMART Money account. Mozido, a mobile technology provider, supplies the transaction services to link MoneyGram’s services to SMART mobile phones.
Afghanistan’s five telecoms networks have jointly set up a trade association, the Afghanistan Telecommunication Operators’ Social Association (ATOSA). Since 2001, the telecoms industry of Afghanistan has played a significant role in developing the country, creating over 100,000 indirect jobs and investing over $US1.2 billion in building a national telephone network for the first time in Afghanistan’s history. The industry is the largest tax paying sector in Afghanistan with an estimated $US $500 million paid in taxes, duties and fees to the Government since 2003, representing over 10% of all domestically generated Government revenues in the same period. Cellular News reports.
The SEA-ME-WE4 undersea cable has been down since April 14. It has been affecting Internet across the Middle East. Seawater has reportedly penetrated in the cable, according to press reports. But the SEA-ME-WE4 consortium’s website says absolutely nothing about it. As if nothing has happened at all.
Intelligence Squared U.S. (IQ2US), the Oxford-style debate series, an initiative of The Rosenkranz Foundation, announced that it will conduct a debate on “The Cyber War Threat Has Been Grossly Exaggerated.” Four leading cyber experts will face off on June 8, 2010 to debate the subject of America’s cyber security. Debating for the motion will be Marc Rotenberg, Exec Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Adjunct Professor of Information Privacy Law at Georgetown University Law Center and Bruce Schneier, internationally renowned security technologist and author; publisher of monthly newsletter Crypto-Gram, Chief Security Technology Officer of BT.
On July 14, 2009, the FCC announced that the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University would conduct an independent expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world and that this project would help inform the FCC’s efforts in developing the National Broadband Plan. The Berkman Center’s Final Report was submitted to the FCC on February 16, 2010.
Sending money home has become easier and faster as two banks and a mobile operator yesterday launched a cellphone-based remittance transfer system. The joint move by Eastern Bank, Dhaka Bank and mobile operator Banglalink will allow the remittance receivers to cash in a day instead of three days to one month through different existing channels. The new service styled ‘Mobile Wallet’, which will also serve the unbanked population at no cost, got a shape after Bangladesh Bank (The central bank) gave a go-ahead to the move a few months ago. Presently more than 90 percent of the population in Bangladesh does not have access to regular banking facilities. Read more.
The cabinet has decided to seize the regulatory functions from BTRC and give it back to the telecoms ministry in Bangladesh. Therefore, the politicians and civil servants will again assign licenses and spectrum. Even worse – they will approve the tariff and services. Welcome to the Stone Age. BTRC was born with a reasonable degree of independence on January 31, 2002.
The UK regulator, Ofcom, has proposed cuts in interconnection fees (also known as mobile termination rates), the wholesale charges that operators make to connect calls to each others’ networks. It has unveiled plans to cut the rate in stages from 4.3 pence ($0.065) per minute to 0.005 pence per minute by 2015.
The EU’s Internet penetration rate, at 28% per 100 inhabitants, is almost half that of Asia. The European Commission wants 50% of the EU to have speeds of 30 Mbps by 2013 and 100 Mbps by 2020. The EU and the US are both feeling the heat coming from Asia’s dominant connectivity to the Internet, and are investing heavily to catch up with their eastern competitors. But the EU’s strategy for connecting more people to the Internet is “a little detached from reality,” argues Aarti Holla from the European Satellite Operators Association. In an interview with EurActiv, the ESOA secretary-general said countries will lose money by focusing on Internet speeds.
India’s DoT has set US$385 million floor price of its broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum auction for 2.3 GHz band. The WiMax camp thinks this spectrum is their family jewel. But Qualcomm threw a spanner in the wheel and said it will bid. Indian WiMax aspirants have, predictably, cried wolf and sought divine intervention from Intel.