The European Court of Auditors’ latest report reveals that billions of euros funding into research networks have been wasted. It says the EU’s flagship research programme spent €17 billion, almost half its budget, on two types of pan-European project without setting clear objectives. Some people in Brussels must have been smoking wrong stuff. That’s Europe’s problem. But the EU often lectures us on good governance and wise spending.
New Zealand’s Commerce Commission has won a high court battle against Telecom NZ, with the court agreeing that the operator abused its market power to deter competition. The Auckland High Court held that Telecom charged disproportionately high rates for wholesale access to its data transmission access lines during the period between 2001 and 2004. This action – which was a breach of New Zealand’s Commerce Act – prevented ISPs from offering competitive retail prices for high-speed data services. Telecom’s wholesale charges were often higher than its retail prices during this period, the court found. The court found that Telecom aimed to deny competitors access at prices that would allow them to develop their own data transmission networks.
The Vietnamese government has been uncomfortable with the exaggerated number of subscribers the industry claims. Growth rate and market share are the fundamental motivation of such misleading statistics. Last year the government said, “Enough is enough.” Lately the country’s Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) has revealed around half of the SIM cards recorded as customers by the operators are actually in use, according to Cellular News. There is nothing wrong about it as the usage of multiple SIM is part of life across the developing world.
Clearwire enjoys every bit of its WiMax extravaganza at the investors’ expense. Lately Intel and Google have written off more than $1.3 billion. Clearwire hasn’t blinked. It used to pitch WiMax as a mobile substitute of DSL.
We could not view this webpage, receive emails or use mobile phone unless Charles Kuen Kao invented the optical fiber 40 years ago. This British-American citizen of Chinese ancestry shares this year’s half of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Prof Kao, 75, was born in Shanghai in 1933 and moved to Hong Kong with his family in 1948. He went on to England to study engineering and work at STL – then the UK research centre of ITT, the US telecoms company – where he made his ground-breaking discovery in 1966. By 1971 scientists at the Corning Glass Works in the USA, a glass manufacturer with over 100 years experience, produced a 1 kilometer long optical fiber using chemical processes.
South Korea leads the world in providing broadband services, according to a study released last week. The United States did not make the top 10. The study, sponsored by Cisco, examined 66 countries and 240 cities. Broadband leadership was measured by various factors, including the number of wired households, where South Korea scored 97%. Hong Kong, which was rated number three in overall broadband leadership, had an even higher penetration, at 99%.
Developed countries are generally perceived to be the gardens of best practices. Most of these countries’ lawmakers and lawbreakers (Including the diplomats and consultants) frequently lecture us on how to do the right thing. But we hardly know about their dirty laundry. Mitchell Lazarus unfolds the regulatory dark side in the USA. The technical rules that deal with mature products are relatively general.
Hoarding is bad and spectrum is a limited resource. Therefore, the Swedish regulator will gradually implement a new model for spectrum charges that will penalise the operators who have not maximised the use of their radio spectrum. The new model for charges is technology-neutral and will be implemented gradually over the course of several years for various types of licence. Read more.
Mobile base station electricity costs could rise by nearly 55% over the next five years unless operators address network inefficiencies and reduce reliance on non-renewable energy resources, according to a new report from Juniper Research. Its author, Dr Windsor Holden, said: “Operators in Africa and Asia who continue to rely on diesel for off-grid generators will find margins increasingly squeezed as their networks expand and diesel prices rise. We believe that unless a transition to generators powered by renewable energy is effected, then many such networks may no longer be financially viable within a few years.” Other findings from the green base stations research include: Base stations are responsible for more than 70% of CO2 emissions in the mobile use phase Operators should increasingly seek to utilise feederless sites and distributed site architecture as means of reducing inefficiency Adopting measures suggested under the transformational model will enable operators to reduce base station CO2 emissions by up to 30% Cellular News reports.
Few months back I posted On Her Majesty’s (Fraudband) Service suggesting how the British ISPs deceive in terms of advertised and delivered speed. New research by broadband comparison site Broadband-Expert has revealed that, on average, UK mobile broadband providers are delivering just 24% of advertised download speeds to consumers who sign up for their mobile broadband services. BBC reports.
Foreign investors, including non-resident Bangladeshi citizens, have been again declared persona non grata in Bangladesh’s crumbling international telecoms business.The regulator has invited public consultation and clause 6.01 of the proposed IGW, ICX and IIG licensing guidelines explicitly forbids any form of offshore investment. The nine-month old political government is keen to build “Digital Bangladesh.” But its regulator is following the immediate past military regime’s roadmap to improve the illegal bypass accounts’ digits.
India’s security agencies have recommended a ban on international Internet telephony until a system to trace the calls is in place, officials said, the latest move to plug security loopholes after the Mumbai attacks. India fears that militant groups operating from overseas could use Internet telephony to bypass security systems during the planning and execution of attacks, officials said. “Since it is impossible to trace Internet telephone calls from foreign countries, we have asked the Department of Telecommunications to block such calls until a system is in place,” said a senior Intelligence Bureau official, who could not be identified. More in Reuters.
Mobile is the most logical vehicle to deliver affordable broadband. Ovum warns the success or failure of mobile broadband in an emerging market may still be outside an operator’s control. Besides competition, the costs of fuel supplies to remote base stations or international connectivity must be taken seriously in the business plan. “Governments have a major role to play in providing an environment conducive to success; spectrum policy is the clearest example of this, either through its release to operators or through global harmonisation to benefit from economies of scale”, says Daniel Subramaniam, analyst at Ovum and co-author of this report. Governments also hold the keys to unlock several other stimuli for deployment and uptake.
This is the telecoms profile of Bahrain. The tiny Gulf state’s regulator has penalized the incumbent for refusing competitors accessing its international gateway, according to Reuters. Bahrain Telecommunications Company – like any other incumbent – is claiming innocence. The fact remains that if Batelco doesn’t pay within 30 days, the multimillion dollars penalty jumps upward. The clock is ticking for Batelco as the sword is hanging over its head!
It has already happened in the UK and New Zealand. Now Telstra has been asked to voluntarily separate its wholesale and retail arms. Otherwise, the Australian government will do the amputation – with or without anesthesia. The incumbent is, predictably, grumbling about it. Ovum has urged the government to play it right.
Bird-band has outpaced Broadband when a South African technology outfit named Unlimited IT has proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country’s leading internet service provider, BBC reports. The 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km (50 miles) from Unlimited IT’s offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg. Whereas, including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds — the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using Telkom’s ADSL. Unlimited IT performed the stunt after becoming frustrated with slow internet transmission times. The company has 11 call-centers around the country and regularly sends data to its other branches.