Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has detected four PSTN operators bypassing international traffic. Therefore, it has shutdown the networks of Ranks Telecom (300,782 customers), Dhaka Telephone (77,765), Peoples Telecom (161,630) and World Tel (14,261) for alleged bypass. Bypassing is illegal and a punishable offense, ideed. But the telecoms law doesn’t permit such extra-judicial execution that has muted more than 554,000 or 33% innocent PSTN users’ dial-tone. Bypass is a disease the government has been nurturing through its infamous international long distance or ILDTS policy.
More people visited Facebook than Google in the USA. Research firm Hitwise said that the two sites accounted for 14 per cent of all US internet visits last week. Facebook’s home page recorded 7.07 per cent of traffic and Google’s 7.03 per cent.
Bharti AirTel has acquired 70% of Warid Telecom in Bangladesh. It immediately prompted the leading operators sharing each other’s infrastructure to keep the costs under control. Grameenphone’s CEO said his company “is the only operator in Bangladesh that is profitable so far. If tariffs fall further, it will have a big impact on the profitability of other operators.” Within less than a month the very Grameenphone has dropped its tariff to as low as Tk 0.
IBM and two Indo-Japanese academic outfits have planned to develop a mobile phone for the illiterate, blind, deaf and elderly people. The device will use open source software and other materials developed will be made publicly available to allow the governments and businesses around the world to take advantage of the technology. A consortium has been set up to explore an open, common user interface platform for mobile devices, to make them easier to use for disadvantaged populations around the world. The group is made up of IBM, the National Institute of Design (NID) of India and Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo (RCAST). Full report.
China Mobile has decided to buy 20% of Shanghai Pudong Development (SPD) Bank for $5.83 billion cash. Under the deal, Guangdong Mobile – China Mobile’s biggest subsidiary – will become the bank’s second largest shareholder. Guangdong Mobile has signed an MoU with SPD Bank “to closely cooperate in the joint development of mobile finance and mobile e-commerce businesses.” This Mobile-Bank partnership promises wireless finance services including mobile bank cards and payment services.
The earthquake has revealed Haiti’s lack of robust civil infrastructure, as well as the importance of international connectivity. The catastrophe also highlights the failure of Haiti’s cellular phone infrastructure. IEEE Spectrum magazine has interviewed via e-mail a Haitian engineer, Charles-Edouard Denis, who helped build Haiti’s first cellphone company, Haitel, and who describes the impact of Haiti’s cellular infrastructure before and after the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince. Read full story.
The USF is collected at 6% in Malaysia and the government is now sitting on MYR 5 billion ($1.5 billion) cash. The government has planned to boost internet penetration to 50% by the end of 2010 from the current rate of 31.4% out of the USF. Journalist B.
It was neither a devastating earthquake nor a synchronized terrorist attack. Yet the mobile phone network in the city of Noida, a prosperous neighborhood of 700,000 inhabitants nearby New Delhi, was collapsed last Saturday. Thanks to the “dutiful” local authorities shutting down around 25% of the base stations, which were claimed to be breaking planning permits. “Electricity supply to the towers has been cut and the back-up generators have also been sealed. Only 125 cellular service providers had submitted applications requesting an extension a few months ago.
Twitter is developing technology it hopes will prevent the authoritarian governments being able to censor its users. Evan Williams, the chief executive and co-founder of Twitter, which has been credited with helping anti-government protesters in Iran to organise resistance, said software developers were working on “interesting hacks” to stop any blocking by foreign governments. “We are partially blocked in China and other places and we were in Iran as well,” he said. “The most productive way to fight that is not by trying to engage China and other governments whose very being is against what we are about. I am hopeful there are technological ways around these barriers.
Bangladesh exported 50 percent less manpower in 2009. Thousands of jobless workers also returned home as their employers went broke after the Wall Street collapsed. Yet inward remittance grew by 20 percent ($10.72 billion) in 2009. How could fewer workers send the highest-ever remittance?
President Barak Obama has invited dozens of the nation’s top executives to the White House seeking tips on how the federal bureaucracy can become leaner and meaner. Why? Try these examples: The U.S. Census Bureau spent $600 million on a project to make its 2010 count electronic, but the effort failed and the census will be conducted by paper this year.
Foreign Policy magazine calls it “The Unluckiest Country” and Haiti has hardly anything to defend. History of the Western Hemisphere’s second-oldest republic has been dominated by coups, dictators, and foreign interventions. Disastrous natural calamities were never in short supply either. And now it’s the earthquake. The world has answered.
BTRC has planned to launch a geosynchronous orbit (GSO) satellite. Its latest mission and vision is to fly a couple of hundreds million dollars kite at 35,000-kilometers up above. The regulator is now in search of a consultant “To find interested financers, launching company, manufacturer of satellite and potential subscribers of transponders, make correspondence visit and liaison with them.” The US government’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) have made gloomy forecasts of global demand for commercial space launch services for the period 2009 to 2018. Kevin Reyes, Director of Business Development in Boeing Launch Services, is also pessimistic about the prospects of satellite industry.
Perhaps taking a cue from the austerity wave initiated by various government agencies and more so to benefit out of the tariff drop in telecom services, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is now looking for options and may replace the present service provider, Airtel. “Keeping in view the recent drastic change in the telecom tariff, it has been decided to explore the option of best available Plan in offer, specific to the requirements of the PMO and keeping in view the best services being offered by various companies in this sector,” says a letter from the PMO addressed to some of the service providers. The requirements of PMO include 50 GSM connections with ISD facility, 25 Blackberry connections, the numbers to be in special series, roaming including international on some of the numbers and internal building solution system. The PMO has asked service providers to provide details about their offerings by January 15, 2010. The move may also be seen as a tactic to negotiate further with the current service.
Fitch Ratings, a global rating agency, said the South Asian and South East Asian countries are divergent in terms of regulatory risk. It says Sri Lanka has the highest risky regulatory environment while the risk is lowest in Malaysia. Buddhika Piyasena, Director in Fitch’s TMT team, said, Sri Lanka’s high regulatory risk score reflects insufficient transparency in the regulatory process combined with the regulator’s strong connection with the political framework. The total regulatory risk score for each market is derived based on three major sub-categories: Political & Social Policy Risk. Industrial Policy Risk.
India’s Reliance Communications is planning to sell its Fibre Link Around the Globe (FLAG) submarine optical fibre network, which it bought in 2003 for US$207 million. It is the world’s largest private undersea cable system, spanning 65,000 kilometers. It is integrated with Reliance’s 190,000 kilometers of domestic optic fiber and provides a delivery platform connecting 37 business markets in India, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the U.S. Latest figures show that Reliance Globalcom – that administers the Flag network – contributes 31 per cent of the company’s revenues and provides 26 per cent of operating profit.