CB [cell broadcasting] is an intrinsic feature of GSM, UMTS and IS 95 CDMA networks, and is thus available in the two Maldivian networks. But it must be activated. Most handsets are capable of receiving CB messages but the feature must be turned on. However, in the early stages, getting customers to turn on the feature could be an effective way of educating them of mobile-based public warning. Following stakeholder meetings that included sharing of information on the ongoing CB channel-standardization work of Study Group 2 of the Telecommunication Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) and experience in attempting to use CB for public warning in Sri Lanka, the recommendations to TAM are being finalized.
Twitter postpones scheduled maintenance to keep service available for Iranian users. Journalists request video on twitter and get deluged with responses. The BBC’s Persian-language television channel said that for a time on Tuesday, it was receiving about five videos a minute from amateurs, even though the channel is largely blocked within Iran. One showed pro-government militia members firing weapons at a rally. “We’ve been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony,” said Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor.
Today (16th June 2009) if you were to google “great mobile debate” you will only see references to one held as part of the Forum Oxford Future Technologies Conference 2008. But if the people who ran and attended the IDRC PANall conference in Penang last week are as netsavvy as I think they are, you are likely to see Great Mobile Debate of Penang supplanting the Oxford debate in google searches. The proposition won. I was the proponent, so not entirely unbiased, but it did, as evidenced by the cheering and the congratulations that followed. Given this was a topic that fully resonated with LIRNEasia’s 2008-10 research program, it was understandable that we won.
Since Rheingold wrote of Smart Mobs, activists have been atwitter about the potential of mobile phones and texting to effect democratic change. The ongoing struggle against the theocratic dictatorship in Iran has given many examples. But it also shows the limits. When the government shuts down the SMS system, or indeed the whole network, what happens to mobile based organizing? What are the conditions for the government not shutting down networks?
US universal policy is one of the worst in the world. Highly inefficient. Favoring fixed phones. And so on. It now appears that one of its many flaws is being remedied.
Our primary funder IDRC is having a big gathering of all its Asian fundees in Penang. As one of the main plenary events, they conducted a “talk show” with representatives of three of their leading projects in the region. Helani Galpaya participated in this talk show from LIRNEasia. At the conclusion, she was asked the following question: “we do not just fund good research, we ask what it will yield for development; we ask so what?” She answered, saying that the good use made of resources entrusted to LIRNEasia could be illustrated through three examples: 1.
In Thailand, the mean price of a new mobile phone purchased by a bottom of the pyramid user is USD 96 and a used phone costs USD 38. In this context the whole idea that a laptop designed to connect with the Internet will cost USD 49-99, is mind boggling. This will make our thesis of a mobile-centric path to the Internet that much more realistic. And wireless phone carriers might well start calling them something else entirely as they race to begin selling laptops with bundled data plans directly to consumers. “We have been flying the carriers around the world,” said Michael Rayfield, the general manager of mobile products for Nvidia, one of many chip companies producing parts for these new laptops.
We have, for some time, been talking about the budget telecom network business model being a disruptive innovation. Looks like the word disruptive is very popular. Here is Ratan Tata describing mobile technology per se being disruptive, and modeling the Nano on that. About 100 delegates — from academia, industry and the financial and entrepreneurial worlds — participated in the event, which concluded Wednesday evening with a lively roundtable discussion that included Mr. Gore and Mr.
Some time back LIRNEasia conducted an interesting piece of research on traceability, the concept of being able to trace a food item down to its source in a particular farm. That project involved the use of mobiles to give feedback to farmers, based on numbers assigned to crates of gherkins. We talked about what could be done with barcodes on crates and perhaps barcodes on the fruits themselves, but did not implement. But now it seems that a new barcode that can be read by mobiles is being deployed, with much potential for traceability as well. The new symbols, called GS1 DataBars, can store more data than traditional bar codes, promising new ways for stores to monitor inventory and for customers to save money.
LIRNEasia.net started in September 2004, long, long ago in Internet time. We still do close to one blog a day on average and we are still fortunate to have readers who spend an average of 2 minutes per visit (that means a significant number who spend much longer with us), and occasionally leave a comment or two. So we’re happy to be in the 5 per cent left standing, according to Technorati and the New York Times: According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days.
Friday, 29th May 2009, the Federation of Sri Lanka Local Government Authorities launched its platform for young Councillors, at a meeting organized at the Maharagama Youth Services Centre auditorium. I was invited to give the keynote. It was entitled “public service” and drew on examples from some of our exploratory work on e gov, specifically the successful innovations at the passport office. The pictures have been removed from the presentation: youngcouncillors__lesspics2.
One of the bad things about projections, especially long-term projections, is the lack of accountability. Or that like astrological forecasts, we only talk about the ones that were right. But anyway there is an interesting discussion of the Indian outsourcing industry, including a discussion on projections. A decade ago, McKinsey and India’s powerful information technology and outsourcing trade group, Nasscom, predicted that revenue from outsourcing by foreign companies would reach $50 billion in India in 2010. The global economic slowdown has delayed that by three or four quarters — revenue is predicted to reach $47 billion this year.
The New York Times has a good piece on the use of Facebook by the elderly and isolated. LIRNEasia qualitative and quantitative research shows that plain old voice telephony and SMS keep people at the BOP connected and keeps them going on. But Ms. Rice, 73, is far from lonely. Housebound after suffering a heart attack two years ago, she began visiting the social networking sites Eons.
LIRNEasia is a regional think tank based in Sri Lanka. It works in 11 countries. In terms of its research, India occupies its energies more than its home base. However, LIRNEasia cannot be blind to what is going on around it. Several months ago, as the people held as human shields by the LTTE began to filter out, current and former LIRNEasians collected funds that were used by its partner Sarvodaya to purchase nebulizers for children in the camps.
The OECD countries are racing toward a broadband solution based fixed access, ADSL, Cable or FTTH. THE number of people subscribing to broadband in OECD countries increased by 13% last year to 267m. More than a fifth of the combined population of the 30 mostly rich nations in the OECD now have high-speed access to the internet. The broadband penetration rate is above a third in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. Adoption is lowest in poorer countries such as Mexico, where just over 7% are broadband subscribers.
One of the more exciting things we have been talking about in the last little while is the budget telecom network business model being implemented in South Asia. We have seen it spread to Nepal, but the big question was when and how it would get to Africa. If Bharti and MTN merge, we can be sure the model will spread. An update.