That conventional voice traffic would decline on international routes was known (except to the people who came with elaborate schemes to control it). How fast was where the guessing was. Telegeography has some numbers: New data from TeleGeography show that growth in international call traffic has slumped while international traffic routed via Skype continues to accelerate. International phone traffic grew an estimated 4 percent in 2010, to 413 billion minutes, down from 5 percent growth in 2009, and a far cry from the 15 percent average growth rate achieved during the previous two decades. Where did the growth go?
Good data is hard to come by in Afghanistan. In addition to some data (this below from an Asia Foundation demand-side survey), the report emphasizes the need to encourage mobile money remittances and the availability of agri-market prices. Nine years ago, Afghanistan had between 10,000 and 20,000 fixed lines, and mobile telecommunications were virtually nonexistent. Since then the country has seen explosive growth in mobile subscribers, network providers, and physical infrastructure. The total number of subscriptions is approximately 13 million for a total population of roughly 29 million people, and the annual growth rate of subscription is estimated at 53 percent (2009–10).
In the early 1990s, I wrote a conference paper that included a discussion of whether or not prisoners should be allowed to use phones; whether that use should be supervised; and how it should be charged. A revised version of the paper read at Columbia was published: Samarajiva, R. (1996). Consumer protection in the decentralized network, in Private networks, public objectives, eds. E.
We talk of the cloud, but do we talk about the same thing? The Economist has a good piece on definitions and measurements. The “cloud of clouds” has three distinct layers. The outer one, called “software as a service” (SaaS, pronounced sarse), includes web-based applications such as Gmail, Google’s e-mail service, and Salesforce.com, which helps firms keep track of their customers.
LIRNEasia has always been about more than ICTs; it has been about hope in the heart and money in the pocket. Our current focus on the role of knowledge in agriculture value chains will further remove the ICT veil. In this light, I was pleased to read an affirmation of our thinking and approach by the world’s premier repository of knowledge on development, the World Bank: We see a similar trend in the global development landscape, with developing countries assuming important roles alongside traditional development partners. These new partners are contributing not only aid, but more importantly are becoming major trading partners and sources of investment and knowledge. Their experiences matter.
While he was teaching at Cornell, Alfred Kahn noticed that airfares were lower and frequencies better in the San Francisco-Los Angeles route than in other route pairs in the US. The difference was that SF-LA were both in California and were thus outside the authority of the federal aviation regulatory agency. When President Carter appointed him to head the regulatory agency, he proceeded to abolish it. This was one of the main contributory factors to the spread of liberalization of network industries, including telecom, throughout the world. Kahn was former chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, and he presided over the deregulation of the airline industry — the dismantling of a system that regulated where airlines could fly and how much they could charge.
Actually, we can safely say, 310,000 mobile customers in North Korea, because it is highly unlikely that anyone other than the King or the heir apparent hold more than one SIM in the hermit kingdom. The NYT does not report whether the subscribers were just talking or doing more than voice. The license to Orascom was, after all, for 3G. Signs of that relative good fortune were evident on Pyongyang’s streets. Some pedestrians chatted on cellphones, something unknown just two years ago.
Writing a piece on the technological challenges that had to be overcome to increase connectivity in the 49 least developed countries (LDCs) recently, I was struck by how many words I devoted to electricity, both on the need for keeping down the costs of network equipment and for powering handsets. In the old days, we assumed that the footprint of the electricity network was larger than that of the telecom network; now it is the other way around. What is interesting is that the trigger for getting the USD 80 solar generator in the story below was the phone: For Sara Ruto, the desperate yearning for electricity began last year with the purchase of her first cellphone, a lifeline for receiving small money transfers, contacting relatives in the city or checking chicken prices at the nearest market. Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far from Kenya’s electric grid. Every week, Ms.
The FCC has issued the long-awaited net neutrality rules. As evidence of the sad state of policy debate in the US, some people have claimed that the decision has even the lukewarm support of operators suggests it is bad. What is wrong with these people? The only good decision is one that sends the companies screaming to the courts? The fact that the rules received support — even the lukewarm kind — from big businesses should worry consumers, some public interest groups said Tuesday.
It was impossible not to notice the dramatic changes in the mobile handset market in the past few years, with new brands coming up and putting pressure on the old warhorses. Who was responsible? Vijay Govindarajan gives the credit to MediaTek in his guest blog at Harvard Business Review. Both Vijay and MediaTek are worth keeping an eye on. MediaTek’s strategists and engineers figured out a way to design a much less expensive phone system.
When Bill Melody was appearing as an expert witness in the AT&T case back in the 1980s, he used to be assailed about economies of scale that AT&T supposedly enjoyed, which made them per se more efficient than any of the challengers. His answer was not that they did not exist, but that they were overridden by diseconomies of coordination. His conclusion is being supported by two scientists from Santa Fe Institute. The discussion of corporations comes at the end of a fascinating article on the laws governing cities in the NYT. This raises the obvious question: Why are corporations so fleeting?
Bangladesh is considering the issuance of 3G frequencies (they should get the license renewal mess sorted; but that is another story). The question of establishing a single 3G network that multiple operators would jointly own and use has been floated by an important stakeholder, the CEO of Banglalink. This is a theoretically good, but practically bad, idea. So LIRNEasia explained why in Bangladesh’s premier English language daily, the Daily Star: The operation of multiple 3G networks, owned and operated by different limited-liability companies, may be sub-optimal if seen solely from resource optimisation or planning perspective. But it is actually the most efficacious for the ground conditions in Bangladesh.
LIRNEasia is an ideas shop. We live and die by the value of good ideas well communicated. We try to help the organizations that constitute our audience (governments, regulatory agencies, service suppliers and manufacturers in the ICT space) to think new thoughts and implement them in ways that will benefit our people, those at the BOP in emerging Asia. We continually think about how we can do our job better, how we can reinvent ourselves. In this light the long article in the NY Times Magazine seems very relevant.
For a long time, we were the voice in the wilderness. But now the regulator is on the job. If the promised results materialize, we can move on to something else: “Three months ago, most operators were provided services 70% less than the speed rate advertised in the package”, TRC Director General Anusha Palpita said. The speed-up move came after the TRC carried out an evaluation of the quality of service including speeds of fixed broadband services – ADSL and WiMAX. Mr.
In a response given to the respected Hindu newspaper in connection with a story on LIRNEasia’s broadband QoSE regulation results, TRAI has indicated some changes in the broadband quality regulatory regime, starting as early as next month: S.K. Gupta, Advisor (CN & IT), TRAI, has said the definition of broadband will be modified to include only those services that offer access speeds of 512 kbps from January 1, 2011. “This will be further upgraded to 2 Mbps network speeds from January 1, 2015. A comprehensive regulation on Quality of Service is also in the pipeline.
Tim Wu, the originator of the net neutrality concept has written a book about the big picture of information industries. An excerpt from the review by the New York Times Economics Editor: AT&T is the star of Wu’s book, an intellectually ambitious history of modern communications. The organizing principle — only rarely overdrawn — is what Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, calls “the cycle.” “History shows a typical progression of information technologies,” he writes, “from somebody’s hobby to somebody’s industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel — from open to closed system.” Eventually, entrepreneurs or regulators smash apart the closed system, and the cycle begins anew.