India has been portrayed as a beehive of innovation, where engineers at Indian subsidiaries of global technology companies design sophisticated new products for global markets. The reality is quite different, as most companies do mainly product maintenance and testing, and development of small components of products in India, according to Sudin Apte, an analyst at Forrester Research, and Vinay Deshpande, a developer of the Simputer, a handheld computer designed in India. Their sentiments are shared by a range of others in IT in India. “The situation is a lot better than it was some years ago, but most Indian operations of multinational companies are still far away from defining and architecting products,” Deshpande said. Read more.
In many Third World and developing countries, the distance between people in need of healthcare and the facilities capable of providing it constitutes a major obstacle to improving health. One solution involves creating medical diagnostic applications small enough to fit into objects already in common use, such as cell phones — in effect, bringing the hospital to the patient. UCLA researchers have advanced a novel lens-free, high-throughput imaging technique for potential use in such medical diagnostics, which promise to improve global disease monitoring, especially in resource-limited settings such as in Africa. The research, which will be published in the quarterly journal Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) and is currently available online, outlines improvements to a technique known as LUCAS, or Lensless Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging. Read more.
The era of the American Internet is ending. Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States. Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.
Google has thrown its weight behind ambitious plans to bring internet access to three billion people in Africa and other emerging markets by launching at least 16 satellites to bring its services to the unconnected half of the globe. The search engine has joined forces with John Malone, the cable television magnate, and HSBC to set up O3b Networks, named after the “other 3bn” people for whom fast fibre internet access networks are not likely to be commercially viable. They are ordering 16 low-earth orbit satellites from Thales Alenia Space, the French aerospace group, as the first stage in a $750m project to connect mobile masts in a swath of countries within 45 degrees of the equator to fast broadband networks. Larry Alder, product manager in Google’s alternative access group, said the project could bring the cost of bandwidth in such markets down by 95 per cent. “This really fits into Google’s mission [to extend internet use] around the developing world,” he said.
A leading US adviser to the Iraqi telecommunications network reconstruction effort is circulating an extensive critique of progress there, charging that Iraq badly lags on development of core fibre infrastructure, faces a massive ICT training shortfall and has erred in rewarding politically-influential US vendors with supply contracts. Bob Fonow, who completed a 18-month stint as senior consultant, telecoms and IT at the US State Department in Baghdad earlier this year, also charges that the recent military surge has seen the US Department of Defense command excessive influence in telecom reconstruction, often in areas where it has insufficient expertise. For example, Fonow talks of a “very pleasant buck sergeant” assigned to advise the Ministry of Communications regional director in Tikrit who’s job back home in Arkansas was to stack Wal-Mart shelves, while a reservist Navy captain software executive from California was assigned the task of booking meetings for a visiting Defense official. Fonow also charges that the so-called “fusion cell” or consensus approach exercised by the US military may be counter-productive in telecoms, retarding decision making and discouraging the civilian sector from standing on its own feet. Read more.
Iran is expected to announce a tender for a third GSM license in the country within the next few days, but may be required to offer generous terms to encourage investors into the country. The political interference in the tender for the second mobile license is still causing legal problems at the International Court for Arbitration. Turkey’s Turkcell started international arbitration procedures over difficulties it experienced in launching a new network in Iran. Turkcell, though its 51% owned subsidiary – Irancell, originally signed an operator license with the Iranian government in 2004, but it fell foul of a clamp down on foreign investments by the conservative Parliament. The Parliament accused the company of having links with Israel – and after a year of battles, the license was reissued – this time to South Africa’s MTN Group.
Now you are “allowed” to exchange SMS with your friends in Burma. But you are to be registered with the Burmese authorities first. “GSM phones in foreign countries can now send test messages to Burma,” an E-Trade Myanmar Company employee told The Irrawaddy. The number of mobile phones in Burma reached around 266,000 at the end of 2007. A 3G network was recently launched in Burma based on the WCDMA standard.
Afghanistan is rising like a phoenix. The country is still vulnerable to a lethal conflict. Yet its people have captured the power of technology in their hearts and they have been defying all the odds to build a better life. Mobile phone has now truly become the socio-economic lifeline of Kabul. Hopefully the entire nation will enjoy this bounty of modernity very soon.
LiMo Foundation says that while the world’s population is increasing by a net three persons every second, giving us a population expansion of 180 every minute, 10,800 each hour and 259,200 every day. You think that’s astonishing. Well, mobile phones can better that. Every second there are 38 mobile phones sold and that’s 2,280 every minute, 136,800 each hour and 3,283,200 every day. Who says they don’t rule our lives?
As part of its work to fight the spread of HIV, the BBC World Service Trust has launched a novel ringtone in India designed to break down the social taboo of using condoms. The new advertising campaign, which features a ‘condom a cappella’ ringtone is also funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The strategy is to show social support for condoms, as this has a positive effect on use, and positions condoms as a product that men use to show they are responsible and care about themselves and their families. Read more and watch the advert.
Government’s monopoly over the international telephony is finally breathing its last in Bangladesh. Bangla Trac, Mir Telecom and Novotel are commencing their international gateway services today. The government had asked the telecoms regulator way back in 2003 to liberalize the international gateway. But the illegal call bypassing outfits had succeeded to block that initiative. The bypassing ventures kept on sprouting nationwide until the military-backed government’s crackdown began in 2007.
The Nigerian telecoms sector, one of the greatest success stories not just in Africa but also the whole of the rest of the world, just keeps on going from strength-to-strength. New figures just released by the Nigerian regulator show that, since May of this year, Nigeria’s telephony subscriber base has expanded by a further 3.7 million and now stands at 53.33 million. Teledensity is also improving, standing now at 38.
It’s been a long and glorious history. The German company Siemens was one of the very first companies ever to lay telephone cables and make telephony switches, but today it is exiting the industry after more than a century and a half. The company was founded by Werner von Siemens on October 1, 1847, (the year that Sam Colt sold an early version of his epoch-making revolver to the US government, Denmark began its first railway service and Alexander Graham Bell was born) and the infant company’s first product was a form of telegraph needle that, when activated, pointed out a sequence of letters transmitted from elsewhere. Martyn Warwick passionately writes.
Grameenphone has agreed to pay an administrative fine of BDT 2500 million (US$37.3 million) to the telecoms regulator, the BTRC, for providing E1 connectivity to third parties, enabling the use of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology which is unlawful and illegal. “We deeply regret that such unlawful practices were carried out and not disclosed earlier by Grameenphone,” said the company’s CEO in a statement. “We have cooperated with BTRC in the investigations and the Grameenphone Board also mandated an investigation by an external auditor to look into all aspects of our operations to ensure that we fully comply with all laws and regulations.” Read more.
TRAI’s recent letter to DoT, highlighting shortcomings in the government 3G policy, has kicked up differences between the telecom regulator and DoT. TRAI, in its letter, has highlighted six shortcomings in the 3G auction guidelines that were announced recently. The most significant one that can impact exchequer revenue relates to the need for an “amended’ ’ unified access service licence (UASL), which needs to be acquired by every successful new entrant in the 3G space. TRAI, in its letter to DoT, concludes that a reading of the 3G guidelines “implies that in case a non-licencee becomes successful bidder, he will be given a new (modified) UASL without the provision of 2G spectrum (spectrum in the 800, 900 & 1800mhz) at an entry fee equal to the entry fee of UAS licence’’ . Read more.
Want to buy a SIM while travelling to India? Passport and other identification papers may not be good enough. You will need two guarantors to get a new mobile connection, said The Economic Times.