Both panel sessions at the Government Programme of the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, November 13, 2007 were moderated by LIRNEasia: the session on public and private objectives by Executive Director Rohan Samarajiva and the session on mobile broadband by Senior Policy Fellow Abu Saeed Khan. The slides used by Rohan Samarajiva are here: gsm-asiafinal.ppt
What is with Bangladesh? Haven’t they heard of rings, which is the normal configuration of fiber? LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Bangladesh on Tuesday launched an investigation after the country’s Internet link was sabotaged, disrupting communications nationwide for most of the day. Officials said cables were also severed twice last week causing massive disruption to businesses in the impoverished country. “We are investigating the cable cutting incident which took place today (Tuesday) with high priority,” said Ziaur Rashid Sofder, general manager of security at the Bangladesh Telephone and Telegraph Board.
Does not compute | Economist.com “PROLIXITY is not alien to us in India,” admits Amartya Sen in his essay “The Argumentative Indian”. “We do like to speak.” He supports his contention with quotations from India’s classical texts, but it is also borne out by India’s phone habits. The average owner of a mobile handset spends 471 minutes (almost eight hours) on the phone each month, and sends 39 text messages.
Was the title of a talk I gave to the Colombo West Rotary Club today. Was reinvited after 9 years. Then we had less than 300,000 phones in the country. Now close to 9 million. Doing better; but can do much better.
Strange is the day I come out in support of taxes; and today is very strange. But please read this in context: we wish the 10% tax had not been imposed on mobiles; but there was absolutely no reason to tax mobile while exempting fixed; that is why I support the extension of the tax to fixed CDMA. But for some reason the government seems to have difficulty in doing anything right the first time. Why, for God’s sake protect fixed wireline? These are most privileged people in the country.
In the great tradition of banning everything that moves, Minister Sumedha Jayasena has stated that the government is considering banning the use of mobile phones by children. Isn’t this an unjustified intrusion by government into a decision best left to parents? And doesn’t Mrs Jayasena have more important things to do, like enforce existing (and ignored) prohibitions on child labor? In a country where law and order is deteriorating, the government has no business trying to take away the right of parents to be in touch with their children. Ethalaya බාලවයස්කරුවන්ට සෙලියුලර් තහනම් වේද ?
Given that Asian countries are taking the lead in mobile software applications (in Sri Lanka, already using open source), this is a very exciting development. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO A Google-led international alliance announced Monday it is releasing open-source software that will free developers to bring the full power of desktop computing to mobile devices. The Open Handset Alliance bills “Android” as the first comprehensive mobile operating platform that software developers are free to adapt in any ways they wish for video, audio, social networking and other features. “We are developing a very open system and will distribute all the codes to allow people to innovate on mobile devices,” Google co-founder Serge Brin said in a conference call with the press and other alliance members. “I’m really excited about this and I can’t wait to see what the next generation of innovators is able to do with these tools.
Asian evidence says the best explanation for the take up of texting is the ratio of price of a voice call to cost of a text. Is this also the explanation for the UK? BBC NEWS | Technology | Britons sending 1bn texts weekly Britons are now sending more than one billion text messages per week according to the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association (MDA). The figure is 25% higher than a year ago and is set to shatter forecasts for how many text messages have been sent to and from handsets this year. That weekly total is the same as the number sent during the whole of 1999.
The Sri Lanka telecom regulator has taken a welcome step to consult stakeholders on a regulatory agenda. Interesting list has been generated (my top item, transparent licensing within a defined framework, is missing, but I won’t complain just yet). The test of this exercise is twofold: What will be the highest priority items and how quickly and effectively will those items be acted upon? LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka’s teleco operators are pushing the industry regulator to remove technology limits and allow networks to share resources as part of a broad plan to liberalise the market further, officials said. The wish list — prepared during an industry pow-wow with the telecom watchdog last week — also includes prickly issues like allowing free incoming calls for seven million mobile phone users, re-aligning spectrum and allowing users to keep their own number when switching to rival operators.
Google Phone – New York Times Mr. Rubin is one of the primary architects behind another product that also smacks of potential über-coolness — the Google Phone. As Google’s “director of mobile platforms,” Mr. Rubin oversees dozens of engineers who are developing the software at the company’s sprawling campus here. The software embodies the promise of extending Google’s reach at a time when cellphones allow consumers to increasingly untether themselves from their desktop computers, as well as the threat that greater digital mobility poses to Google’s domination of Internet search.
Excerpt from an article contributed to Montage, Sri Lanka’s only English language news magazine. LIRNEasia is starting a small research initiative on establishing benchmarks for broadband quality. Real broadband « Montage So what do we want the operators to do? When you sell us a 512 Kbps residential connection or a 2 Mbps business connection, try to give us something approaching what you promised. Most of the time.
There was a big story about SMS use declining in India. The response to a question whether Sri Lanka SMS use is declining like in India was answered in the negative by Supun Weerasinghe, the new CEO of Dialog Mobile (Hans Wijayasuriya is now the Group CEO). The question was triggered by the decline of SMS and VAS revenues from LKR 1,468 m in 2006 3Q (8% of total revenues) to LKR 1,223 m in 2007 3Q (5% of total revenues).
i4d : The first monthly magazine on ICT4D Our vision is to build a new outsourcing model to provide employment in rural India with the following objectives: New sources of skill enhancement – currently the opportunities available in rural areas are either related to agriculture or skills like masonry. Such opportunities will introduce the rural workforce to a new set of skills. Increasing the purchasing power – new sources of income from the rural BPOs will ensure greater purchasing capability and help improve the quality of life in rural areas. Increasing the income earning capacity of rural Internet kiosks – Additional revenue from DesiCrew would also make the existing Internet based businesses more viable. Reducing the gender divide – Educated young girls and housewives who cannot traverse distances can be brought into the workforce, hence enabling the enhancement in existing household income levels.
Does Sri Lanka have a comparative advantage in tuition? Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math – New York Times A leading candidate to watch, according to analysts, is TutorVista, a tutoring service founded two years ago by Krishnan Ganesh, a 45-year-old Indian entrepreneur and a pioneer of offshore call centers. Concerns about the quality of K-12 education in America and the increased emphasis on standardized tests is driving the tutoring business in general. Traditional classroom tutoring services like Kaplan and Sylvan are doing well and offer online features.
If I.T. Merged With E.T. – New York Times To appreciate that potential, look at how much is being done with just car batteries, backup diesel generators and India’s creaky rural electricity grid.
The Lakbima newspaper (30 October 2007) reports that Central Environmental Authority Chairman and Jatika Hela Urumaya politician Udaya Gammanpila is advocating a “green tax” on mobile phones, tyres, electronic equipment and asbestos. It appears that the JHU has a vendetta against the 6 million plus mobile users in Sri Lanka. They originated the idea of taxing mobiles to pay for government expenses (an amended law to this effect was enacted in September 2007); and now they want to impose another tax, this time in the name of the environment. Why not on fixed phones? On computers?