LIRNEasia is ready to start Phase 2 of its Broadband QoSE testing methodology development. In Phase 1 we developed AshokaTissa methodology and tested broadband performance of key players in India, Sri Lanka and (partially) Singapore. We used tools like Bandwidth Monitor, Ping and Tracert. The tests were done manually. Each link was tested for two weekdays and two weekend days.
LIRNEasia today handed over items worth of USD 1,500 to the fund established by the Lekhadikari of the Amarapura Nikaya, Ven. Kotugoda Dhammawasa thero to be distributed among victims of the cyclone Nargis in Burma. Cyclone Nargis was a strong tropical cyclone that caused the deadliest natural disaster in the recorded history of Burma. The cyclone made landfall in the country on May 2, 2008, causing catastrophic destruction and at least 80,000 fatalities with a further 56,000 people still missing. However, Labutta Township alone was reported to have 80,000 dead and some have estimated the death toll may be well over 100,000.
Nalaka Gunawardene calls mobile phone a murder weapon. According to him, what the mobile has already stabbed, and is in the process of effectively finishing off, is the development sector’s over-hyped and under-delivered phenomenon called the ‘telecentre’. So how is the mobile phone slowly killing the telecentres, asks he, into which governments, the United Nations agencies and other development organisations have pumped tens of millions of dollars of development aid money in the past decade? Well, it’s rapidly making telecentres redundant by putting most or all of their services into literally pocket-sized units. If everyone could carry around a miniaturised, personalised gadget that has the added privacy value, why visit a community access point?
Railtel Corporation of India, the communication arm of the Indian Railways, is planning to set-up cyber cafes at over 200 major railway stations across the country by the year-end, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar said on Thursday. “The first cyber cafe will be inaugurated on Friday at New Delhi Railway Station. Based on the feedback of the users, we are intending to extend to over 200 important stations in the country in the first phase by the end of this year,” Kumar told reporters at the commissioning of the “optic fibre communication link on Bangalore-Secunderabad, Secunderabad- Vijayawada-Chennai and Chennai-Ooty-Bangalore” here. The railways would also experiment by providing broadband Internet access on moving train, the first such instance in the world, he said. The service would be launched on a train this year.
Despite being a technical book that addresses complexity out of sheer necessity, the text remains readable, sometimes entertainingly so. Phrases such as ‘governance badlands of South and Southeast Asia’ sum up our grim reality, conjuring images that we are all too familiar with. The editors have also done an excellent job in cross-referencing across chapters, so that the book reads more than a mere amalgamation of chapters. I would have preferred the graphs to be larger and clearer, but then, this comes out from an academic publisher. As the editors say, the book is an introduction, not a conclusion, “to a new way of governing, especially in areas that rest on specialised, yet incomplete, knowledge such as infrastructure.
LIRNEasia might not be as high tech as some of the big IT players but in our own way we have made a successful effort to make ourselves a virtual team. Not a choice – that was the only way we could operate in multiple countries (For example, in this cycle, TRE surveys will be in nine countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand; not to mention CPRSouth 3 in Beijing)without budgets comparable to what INGOs use to run regional networks. We also thought our own experiences will be useful for others. Hence the Virtual Organisation (VO) project. It had two aspects; developing the VO and using it to conduct LIRNEasia’s other research projects.
Africa is the world’s fastest growing market for mobile phones over the last three years with 65 million new subscribers in 2007 alone, according to the head of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Hamadoun Touré, ITU Secretary-General, said the figure is cited in the United Nations agency’s regional report entitled “African Telecommunication/ICT Indicators 2008: At a Crossroads,” which he presented at the opening of the ITU Telecom Africa trade fair here on Monday. A UN press release quoted Toure as saying, “Today, the African ICT industry is an exciting place to be. Market liberalization continues and most countries have established regulatory bodies to ensure a fair, competitive and enabling environment.” The report indicated that there were more than 250 million mobile subscribers on the continent at the start of 2008.
Chief ministerial candidate Rauff Hakeem told ‘Lanka Dissent’ that the Ministry of Defence has ordered service providers to interrupt mobile phone services in the Eastern Province, which goes to polls tomorrow (May 10th). He also said that the government was preparing to stage a massive vote rigging on election day and the move seems to prevent the outside world from getting information on those violations in the East. As a former Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Mr. Hakeem said the Defence Ministry could give such orders only on matters pertaining to national security. The chief ministerial candidate added that he would initiate legal action against any service provider and other responsible officials if such undue interruptions are effected tomorrow.
It would be the biggest thing to pass between India and South Africa since Mahatma Gandhi moved from one country to the other. This week it emerged that Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile-phone operator in India, is holding “exploratory” talks to buy South Africa’s MTN, the biggest operator in Africa. According to the Financial Times, Bharti has indicated it would be willing to pay about $19 billion for 51% of the company. That would make it the heftiest overseas acquisition ever made by an Indian firm, more than Tata Steel paid for Corus, a British steelmaker, and seven times the amount India invested in the whole of Africa over the ten years to 2004. The deal would unite the leading companies in the world’s two most promising mobile markets.
NEARLY a third of Hong Kong’s households watch television via the internet, according to a new report from Telecommunications Management group, a consultancy. Because internet protocol television (IPTV) uses the same technology as that which links computer networks, smaller countries with high broadband penetration tend to have more subscribers. As well as plain old programmes, viewers can also enjoy other services such as on-demand video. So far, Europe accounts for over half of the world’s subscribers. http://www.
Those who are old enough might remember the days where you lived in a house that had no telephone. When you want to take a call you went to post office or a public place where telephone facilities are available. In India, Sam Pitroda’s name went into history for the ubiquitous, yellow-signed Public Call Offices (PCO) that enabled cheap and easy domestic and international public telephones all over the country in 1980s. Nearly two decades later the rapid expansion of mobile phones has finally brought that era to an end. Not surprisingly, public pay phones are rarely used these days.
Sounding rather like the saga surrounding home broadband speeds, a recent survey suggests that mobile broadband users aren’t always getting the maximum speeds advertised. Broadband Expert’s research, based on testing around 1,200 connections, found the average speed of UK mobile broadband is 1.46Mbps. This is around half the speed of the average home broadband speed of 2.95Mbps.
Pakistan’s first global telecommunication congress, TeleCON’2008, opened in Karachi on Tuesday with full-fledged participation from a large number of telecom companies from Pakistan. It was presided by Dr Muhammad Yaseen, member technical, Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) while former founder member PTA, Mian Mohammad Jawed gave keynote address. He appreciated the initiative of the organisers and remarked that there was a need for similar forum to discuss the challenges that lay ahead for the telecommunication sector in Pakistan. Dr Yaseen said the telecom industry in Pakistan had grown tremendously due to the prudent and justifiable policies of the PTA. He said PTA has provided a level-playing field for all players in the sector and due to a robust policy framework, the industry was moving rapidly in the right direction.
Most Americans are still hesitant about banking with their cellphones and PDAs, but young people are increasingly accepting mobile banking, according to a survey. Serving the needs of tech-savvy customers will be crucial for banks to stay competitive as the collective income of baby boomers’ children is expected to surge over the next 10 years and exceed that of their parents. So far, though most major banks offer mobile banking, 89% of consumers don’t use their cellphones to conduct banking transactions, according to the study by IBM’s retail banking consulting practice. The study found that 21% of consumers ages 18-34 use their cellphones for banking transactions, compared with about 10% of the general population. These numbers, particularly for younger consumers, are expected to grow significantly.
Some regular readers of LIRNEasia blog would just love this news. Internet service providers (ISPs) in UK have just a few weeks to sign up to a voluntary code on the promotion of broadband speeds or the industry will face mandatory regulation, the communications watchdog has warned. Attempts to set up a voluntary system providing consumers with accurate information were failing, Ofcom’s chief executive Ed Richards told a parliamentary select committee. “This is a near-term issue that needs to be dealt with now and we would like to be able to get the industry to sign up within the next few weeks,” he said. BT, the UK’s largest broadband provider, said it backed the plan.
While Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka awaits public comments on its ‘National Backbone Network’ proposed to be installed mostly as a fully government owned infrastructure to provide islandwide broadband links, New Zealand Government says it would be a huge waste of taxpayer money to put $1.5 billion into ultra-fast broadband access. New Zealand’s National Party leader John Key announced the ambitious plan to put broadband into every home and business through fibre cables over the next six years if his party wins the next election. Mr Key said that with the fibre network he wanted, people would be able to use the internet at lightning speed – essential if the country was to increase productivity and remain internationally competitive. But Communications Minister David Cunliffe saw nothing but problems and trouble.