Nine out of ten American adults believe that sending text messages or emails while driving is distracting, dangerous, and should be outlawed, according to a new survey commissioned by mobile messaging service Pinger and conducted by Harris Interactive. Similar numbers (91%) of adults thought that drivers distracted by sending text messages or mobile email were as dangerous as drivers who had a couple of drinks. Read more.
The total electronic equipment production in India will reach US$32 billion in 2011, compared to $14 billion in 2006, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 percent, according to Gartner. Semiconductor consumption in India will more than double from $2.8 billion in 2006 to $7.2 billion in 2011. The growth in electronic equipment production is being bolstered by the rapidly growing demand for electronics equipments in India.
The New York Consumer Protection Board (NYCPB) is acting on a barrage of complaints being made by many owners of the most hyped mobile handset in history – iPhone. The powerful regulator is taking Apple to task over the sealed battery the company insists in placing in the iPhone. The chairperson of the NYCPB, Mindy Bockstein, has written to Apple CEO Steve Jobs requiring him ensure that the design of the iPhone is changed to allow owners of the device to gain easy access to its battery so that they can change it for themselves. Read more.
NowPublic, the participatory citizen-journalist website that began life in a garage in Vancouver, Canada, has announced it has secured US$10.6 million in venture capital funding. The website allows anyone – from amateurs to professionals – to post news stories and upload images, videos, and audio files. The company, that claims to be the world’s fastest-growing news organisation, says 120,000 people from over 140 countries have contributed to the site since its launch in 2005. The website relies for its content on “crowdsourcing” – that it describes as being similar to outsourcing, but with unpaid or low-paid amateurs.
Pyramid Research has released a list of the Top Ten Trends that will influence the telecoms sector in the region (and elsewhere) throughout the coming year. It claims that subscriber growth will be the number one ‘critical development’ in the Asia Pacific region through 2008. The new research shows that subscriber growth is expected to be highest in Indonesia, which will see a 45 per cent increase in its broadband market ever year for the next five years. By 2012, 80 per cent of Asia’s mobile subscribers will be from China, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan, with regional subscriptions totaling 2.2 billion.
America’s 3rd largest cellphone provider, Sprint, is sending out letters to 1,100 of its subscribers informing them that their service will be summarily terminated by the end of this month. Because they make too many calls to Sprint’s customer service centres and helplines! The letters read, “Our records indicate that over the past year, we have received frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information. While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs. Therefore after careful consideration, the decision has been made to terminate your wireless service agreement effective July 30, 2007.
Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) has opened consultations on a proposed interconnect and numbering regime for voice services provided over the city-state’s wireless broadband networks. Three operators—Singtel, iCell and Qalanet—offer wireless services in the 2.5GHz band as part of Singapore’s Wireless@SG initiative and the IDA says it is now time to formalise an industry regime to support voice services carried over those networks. The IDA adds that the move is needed as part of the global shift from discrete PSTN and wireless networks to a converged next generation network. However, the Agency stops short of harmonising the standard numbering range with IP addresses.
New research has found that even though the Asia Pacific region accounts for one third of the world’s online population, PC-based Internet usage there is lower than in the rest of the world The study covers 10 Asia Pacific countries and says that in May there were nearly 284 million people aged 15 or older accessing the Internet from a home or work computer, representing 10 per cent of the region’s population above the age of 15. Read more.
A new report from the North American research house, Instat, reveals that the US is way behind its European cousins in consumer Voice over IP (VoIP) adoption – and this despite the fact that 2006 was a particularly good year for the technology globally with the wordwide total of VoIP subscribers increasing by 34 million. The leading European VoIP adopters over the course of 2006 were France, Germany, and the Netherlands. According to Instat analyst, Keith Nissen, “The EU market increased by over 14 million subscribers last year largely due to local loop unbundling, the introduction of cable telephony and triple-play service bundles as well as operator consolidation.” By contrast the US added a mere four million new VoIP subscribers over the same period. Keith Nissen says US carriers “don’t seem interested in selling anything other than plain-old-telephone-service.
The Delhi High Court has upheld the powers of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to regulate the country’s broadcasting sector. The court also said that it was in the regulator’s powers to fix the terms and conditions of the interconnection agreement between broadcasters and service providers. Read more.
Deploying W-CDMA 850 to cannibalise the CDMA mobile as well as to launch 3G without having the so called “3G license” is on the move. Telstra (Australia) and Vivo (Brazil) have done it quite well. Now the French telecoms regulator has approved plans to allow the incumbent GSM network operators to reuse their 900Mhz bands for 3G services. ART has also announced that any 3G new entrant authorised following the application procedure for the fourth UMTS licence would also have access to the 900 MHz spectrum once it has been returned by the existing 2G operators. Read more.
Is mobile SMS or mobile email more appropriate for consumers in emerging markets? SMS would seem to be the obvious answer. It’s easy to use, established and still growing in such regions. Thus Comverse vice president Dror Bin is unlikely to be alone in seeing huge demand for messaging platforms in emerging markets. He says: “In some emerging markets PC and internet penetration is so low that the only way for end users to have any kind of data services – even to check the price of goods – is to do it by SMS.
Global telecoms heavyweights say microcredit may provide loan without collaterals but it does not meet the rural people’s total financial needs in the developing countries. Vodafone along with Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks have urged for telecoms and banking regulatory reforms to encourage fund transfer by mobile phones instead. They believe it will transform access to financial services in countries lacking banking networks. Read more.
Bangladesh has been elevated to ninth position among the top 10 mobile phone markets in the Asia-Pacific region during first quarter of 2007. A recent study of UK’s The Mobile World revealed it. Three months ago, in the fourth quarter of 2006, Bangladesh was in the 10th position. But it overtook Taiwan after adding nearly three million subscribers during the first three months of 2007. Read more.
Lebanon’s mobile phone provider MTC has launched a benchmark report titled, “Mobility: A Nation Under Siege”. It analyses the vital role played by mobile telecommunications in assisting disaster recovery within Lebanon during the Israeli-Lebanese conflict in July 2006. The report contains unique insights in to the reliability of telecoms infrastructure throughout the conflict and examines the reasons why mobile communications played a pivotal role in ensuring that families stayed in touch, the population received food and medical supplies to the correct locations and emergency services could effectively plan their disaster response procedures. The study is at the very bottom of this link.
Despite having no license and enjoying 50% subsidized airtime, Grameen Telecom’s Village Phone project is no longer viable in Bangladesh due to fierce competition. Senegal’s telecenters are disappearing for the same reason. In the backdrop this trend, Qualcomm has worked with local authorities to launch a wireless connectivity for rural medical and educational services in southern Thailand. Qualcomm will donate telemedicine equipment for two public health stations on the two islands of Koh Panyee and Ban Pakkoh. Desktop computers and wireless connectivity equipment also will be provided to the nearest main hospital in Phang Nga, connecting the public health stations with the hospital, enabling them to transmit data to the hospital and benefit from real-time access to doctors.