We have always emphasised the role the operators can play in removing so called ‘mobile-waste’ (only a tiny faction of e-waste) without additional burden to the users. Good to know the Ministry of environment accepts this role officially. According to the Daily Mirror report dated July 23, ‘even though electronic and mobile waste have been categorized as ‘hazardous waste’ they can be diverted to profitable ventures, as they consist of a large variety of recoverable heavy and precious metals.’ If so, why tax mobile users? Under the ‘polluter pays’ principle, why not tax the users of other electronic equipment like televisions, audio and video players, sound systems or even PCs – who obviously contribute more to e-waste?
Maldives, a country of 1,192 islands and 290,000 citizens, is highly dependent on its natural resources. Along with tourism, which provides more than 30 percent of the country’s income, fisheries and agriculture are essential to livelihoods on the country’s 199 inhabited islands. The December 2004 tsunami affected many of its islands and wrought considerable devastation to its infrastructure, particularly telecom. Not only did it destroy shelters, but it affected five major nodes, disrupted service to 13 atolls (163 islands), destroyed power systems and batteries, and damaged radio equipment. Can early warning help save lives?
We would have shown no interest if a Colombo school did this, but when Navodhya School, Pitakumbura, Bibile (300 km off from Colombo, in the border of a post conflict area) launches a mobile web portal we take note. (Kottu.org readers might remember some blogs from this far off place.) www.m.
One point the experts at LIRNEasia’s Mobile Broadband QoSE workshop agreed: Mobile broadband test results will be device specific. Unlike PCs, mobile handsets, with their software and hardware limitations, have an impact on results. That is why iNetwork Test, one of the few test sites we could find on the net insists the users to take a choice between iPhone or Android. The approach is parallel to what LIRNEasia plans.
Barack Obama was perhaps the first USA Presidential candidate to have such a comprehensive broadband policy. What do we see hundred days after the ‘on-line American’ assuming office? Here are some views. The Obama Internet and tech agenda came roaring out of the transition and Inauguration under a full head of steam. Now, more or less creeping along, bogged down and becalmed largely by circumstances beyond its control.
Unsatisfied broadband users added flavor to both our Public Seminar and Mobile Broadband QoSE workshop. That included university students prevented access during the residential peak to Wi-Max subscribers experiencing 20% of the promised speed – even with perfect LoS (Line of Sight). Such complaints are common and not limited to Sri Lanka. From Indonesia to India and from Bangladesh to Philippines we find broadband users rant not receiving the promised. We empathise with them, but this hardly an Asian or a developing world issue.
If you believe something, no evidence is necessary, they say, while if you don’t know evidence is adequate. So we are not surprised if users do not agree, but that is what evidence shows. Test results from Feb 2008 and Feb 2009 round shows a clear improvement, when accessing international servers. The broken lines are for 2008, the unbroken for 2009. SLT ADSL and Dialog WiMax were tested both times.
This photograph taken few weeks back at Talawakele, on the way to Nuwara Eliya, 180 km from Colombo, tells a long story. What you see are the lined residences of the estate workers, colloquially known as ‘lines’ or ‘layim’ in local language. Estate workers are among the least privileged and poorest communities in Sri Lanka. Note the five TV dishes. That means they are still connected to electronic networks, though it is largely one-way.
Sustainability is not an issue for this telecenter. It provides all its service, be it Internet surfing, computer training, library facilities or even typesetting and printing services free of charge, treating them as community services. Thondaman Foundation, a non-profit organization, with a ministerial backing, that intends “to make available to the plantation community the wide advantages of the internet and intranet communication technologies” has set up this centre in the middle of the picturesque Glenore estate at Haputale, to serve a population of 5,000 from the surrounding villages. This is one of the 45 such centres in different estates in the Central, Uva and Sabaragamuva provinces. The white dish, gives a sense of remoteness, but it need not be.
Multiple dishes is a common sight at many Nenasalas – the ‘telecentres’ set up under the e-Sri Lanka program, funded by the World Bank. Some of them are huge – with diameters little less than 2m. Having not done a design recently, I cannot tell the prices offhand, but I do know they are expensive – one such dish (with equipment) costs few times more than the aggregate cost of the PCs and peripherals in the centre. Why a telecenter is equipped with multiple dishes? The reason is, sadly, poor planning.
Not many are familiar with ‘line rooms’ in Sri Lanka’s estates. Fewer have ever visited one. These are the dwellings of the labourers – descendants of the migrants brought here by British planters from in nearby Madras state in India staring from 1827 to work in estates for meager salaries under austere conditions. Human development conditions have significantly improved since then, but some of them still call a 4 m x 4 m room with a smaller kitchen ‘home’. Meet Parameshvari.
LIRNEasia plans to conduct its next round of Mobile Broadband Quality testing (in Colombo) on April 6-8, 2009. As a rule such tests are conducted unannounced, for obvious reasons, but this time we decided to make an exception by making the process open. We invite anybody who is interested to participate. If you can bring your own laptops/handsets you are free to test using any tool you wish and check the results differ from the outcome of AT-Tester. Four widely used packages – two from Dialog GSM and two from Mobitel will be tested.
Thalakumbura is 17 km off Hali-Ela, in Badulla District, Uva province – one of the least connected in Sri Lanka. Strictly speaking, the village, just 10 km from the famous ‘Bogoda Bridge’, is connected – not to one but three mobile networks. However, the signal strength is not adequate to carry out a continuous conversation except when at the second floor of the three storey temple building. (See photo) So the villagers’ frequent visits to temple may not be with strictly spiritual objectives. Despite this, more than 50% houses now have at least one mobile, confirms the chief incumbent priest.
Old habits die hard. When you have been a member of a tiny Trotskyite left political party for the longer period of your life and seen the World Bank as your arch enemy, you may forget that you are on the same side now. This seems to be what happens to Sri Lanka’s Minister of Science and Technology, Prof. Tissa Vitharana, once in a while. His latest holler, as reported by ‘The Catalyst’ – the newsletter of the Information and Communication Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), the apex body of ICTs that spearhead the e-Sri Lanka program, funded by the World Bank, goes as follows: “At a time when the ‘world funding bodies’ proposed the setting of Internet cafes in cities of Sri Lanka in a manner that would only cater only to the rich elite, President Mahinda Rajapaksa decided that Nenasalas or wisdom outlets should be setup instead island-wide to cater to the poor rural folk.
In the third round, LIRNEasia has extended the testing to one more location. With that we have tested two packages in New Delhi (MTNL and AirTel), two in Chennai (BSNL and AirTel), five in Colombo (SLT ADSL, Dialog WiMax, Dialog 3G, Dialog 3G Unlimited and Mobitel Zoom 890) and two in Dhaka (SKYbd and Sirius). A strenuous task for five teams, no doubt, who took readings at different times staring from 8 am and went up to 11.00 pm (some had to spend nights at offices) but results are worth the effort. What did we learn?
Contention Ratios varying from 1:50 and 1:20 (Can be relaxed a bit in residential as the links are not shared) is what LIRNEasia and TeNet jointly proposed, but Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) thought it best to adopt 1:50 and 1:30. According to ‘Guidelines for service providers providing Internet/broadband services for ensuring better quality of service’TRAI issued on March 2, 2009, ISPs are expected not only to maintain contention ratios above these values but also be open to subscribers on what they will deliver – instead of promises they cannot make. In addition we received some publicity from Indian online media. Good to know people start taking notes. More on LIRNEasia’s Rapid Response program here.