Apple, Google, HTC, Huawei, Motorola, Microsoft, Nokia and Samsung have joined AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile US, US Cellular and Verizon Wireless to protect the consumers from phone theft. The technology companies have committed to providing a “baseline anti-theft tool” at no cost to consumers that is preloaded on devices or downloadable. The tools will enable the remote wiping of user data; make devices inoperable by unauthorised users (via password or PIN); prevent the reactivation of devices without user permission; and reverse inoperability and restore data if the smartphone is returned to its owner. The mobile operators are committed to permitting the anti-theft tool to be preloaded or downloaded to devices. Some device makers already offer similar functionality.
One of the most interesting things that happened within government in Sri Lanka with regard to electricity policy was that they started asking a different question. Instead of asking only the question”how much does the proposed electricity generating option cost” they started asking the question “what are the costs to the economy of load shedding.” The end result of this shift in thinking is that Sri Lanka in the only South Asian country (other than Bhutan and possibly the Maldives) that can assure its citizens and industries more or less 24/7 power. Power in Sri Lanka is a lot more expensive than in the region, but our companies and people do not have to invest in generators, inverters and various other back up mechanisms. It seems that the government of Pakistan should also start asking a different question with regard to 3G and 4G frequencies: “what are the costs to Pakistan of not having wireless data networks,” not “what is the one-time revenue boost the government will get from an auction.
Facebook is seeking regulatory nod for mobile money service, initially in Ireland. The license would be valid throughout the European Union. The social media behemoth is working on an international remittance service via mobile devices as part of its strategy to crack emerging markets. The money transfer project, led by Sean Ryan, Facebook’s vice-president of platform partnerships, signals a strategic shift for the company, which makes most of its money from advertising. It also comes as other internet groups – in particular, China’s Tencent and Alibaba – race to turn their sites into mobile payment platforms, according to the Financial Times.
Last week in Vanuatu, a whole bunch of satellite providers and one builder of undersea cables were asked by Dean Bubley of Disruptive Innovations whether they had any thoughts on the potential disruptions posed by the various tech solutions to Internet connectivity being bruited about. They were not worried in one voice. Perhaps the news yesterday that Google had bought a drone company made them rethink their response. Here’s what is on the horizon: First of all, they’re autonomous robots that are nearly the size of a commercial jet that can stay aloft for five years running on solar power. Think about that.
The 2013 Central Bank of Sri Lanka report is being sourced for the claim that one in ten Sri Lankans is on the Internet. But this number comes from adding apples and oranges: most individually used mobile broadband connections and mostly collectively used fixed connections. Now with 4G and 3G dongles around in large numbers, one has difficulty making this distinction with mobile: quite a number of 4G boxes and 3G dongles are directly substituting for fixed connections. So what we should ask is what we know about Internet users, rather than Internet subscribers. Here, there is another problem: we have data from household surveys (2012 Census), but one cannot easily derive individual user numbers from household numbers.
About a year back, we predicted that the new electricity tariff will shock people into changing behavior: “the currently proposed tariff structure will create “bill shock” among consumers, and nudge a certain percentage of consumers to voluntarily reduce demand. But this will be insufficient.” The evidence is in. It has happened. The 2013 Sri Lanka Central Bank Report states: Electricity consumption in the ‘Domestic’ sector decreased by 1.
The Pacific Islands Telecom Association (PITA) and the Pacific ICT Regulatory Resource Center (PiRRC) co-organized several sessions on policy and regulatory issues at the annual PITA convention held in Port Vila, Vanuatu, April 8-11. Here is the slideset I used in proposing that PiRRC and/or the region’s regulators establish an evidence base for their work on consumer protection. I did not have Pacific data, but used LIRNEasia research from South Asia. It was well received, with one multi-sector regulator asking for more information, which is collated together here. There was an interesting question from the floor, where a former developed-country regulator questioned the relevance of our approach, saying that with quality information now being available on the web, the old “buyer beware” principle had to be replaced by “seller beware.
A routing error on April 2 made it briefly appear that Indosat controlled a large part (some 320,000 of 500,000 networks) of the Internet for about two hours, said Renesys. The problem was promptly addressed but still caused trouble for companies such as Akamai and Chevron. It also caused a flood of traffic to hit Indosat’s network, according to Renesys. Once someone makes such an assertion, typically via an honest mistake in their routing policy, the only question remaining is how much of the world ends up believing them and hence, what will be the scale of the damage they inflict? Events of this nature, while relatively rare, are certainly not unheard of and can have geopolitical implications, such as when China was involved in a similar incident in 2010.
Cell C of South Africa argues that revenue, instead of subscribers, should be the yardstick to measure market share. Because, MTN and Vodacom lead with a combined 90% of total revenues while 10% belongs to Cell C. The mobile underdog blames the introduction of MTR and it has challenged the regulatory decree in the court. Cell C argued that revenue market share is a better indicator for sustainability in the mobile industry than subscriber market share ‘because operators require a significant upfront investment and ongoing investment for a network, IT billing systems, customer care, distribution points, sustainable channel partners, brand and customer retention’; these investments would only be recovered by a sustainable scale level, of approximately 20%-25% revenue market share, Cell C said. Full report.
How fast is fast enough? But DSL service, which is delivered over traditional copper phone lines, does not measure up to the speeds of cable Internet service. The most recent F.C.C.
I write this sitting in Vanuatu at the Pacific Islands Telecom Association (PITA) annual convention. These are exciting times for the Pacific (and possibly all small island states) in terms of the opening up of new options re international data connectivity. Tonga They are a few months into the new age of fiber connectivity. This is perhaps the smallest country to invest in a fiber cable (Fiji-Tonga). Population is 103,036.
Following on from the previous post re Bangladesh making do with an obsolete national telecom policy from 1998, I’ve been asked why we need policies, when in my time in government in Sri Lanka first as a regulator and then handling policy, I had not done much about Sri Lanka’s own obsolete policy (a couple of sheets of paper from 1994). A national policy provides a framework for decision making. A national telecommunications policy lays down basic principles to guide decisions of all relevant government agencies (not limited to the Ministry in charge of the subject) and other stakeholders, including service providers, investors, and even consumer organizations, which makes stakeholder input vital for its formulation. Not just the end result, but the process is also important. One needs stakeholder input; one also needs stakeholders to own the policy.
We don’t go as far as Cisco which claims that countries can increase penetration simply by promulgating policies or plans, but there is real value in having updated policies in place so that all the players are reading off a common script. Bangladesh is struggling with getting itself a new policy: Abu Saeed Khan, a senior policy fellow of LIRNEasia which is a Colombo-based ICT policy and regulation think tank, said the current policy describes mobile phone services as ‘value added services’, which indicates how outdated the policy is. The policy was made by the then Awami League government, which is now in power again with the vision of establishing a ‘Digital Bangladesh’, he said. The policy has to reflect how the government would achieve its vision, he added. Khan said the revised telecom policy should provide a roadmap to take broadband penetration to respectable levels.
It appears that ETNO, which tried unsuccessfully to extend the “sending party network pays” (SPNP) principle to data through the International Telecom Regulations, suffered another big defeat in its own house, the European Parliament. But the game is not over and should not be: we too believe the Internet companies must make reasonable contributions to upgrading the networks; unnecessarily restrictive net neutrality rules may not be the most helpful is prodding the different parties toward the right compromise. Any future horse trading, particularly over how telecom giants charge Internet companies for access to their data networks, may lead to changes in the final rules after domestic politicians and regulators provide feedback for the Pan-European proposals. Despite the uncertainty, Internet companies and consumer advocacy groups voiced support on Thursday for the new rules, while telecom companies said the changes would potentially curtail investment in the Continent’s mobile and fixed-line Internet infrastructure. European politicians inserted last-minute amendments intended to provide a strict definition of so-called net neutrality, which means that telecom companies and other Internet service providers cannot discriminate between different services that run on their data networks.
New public policy issues get resolved depending on which analogy wins. In one of the most significant lower-court decisions (this is likely to be appealed up) in recent times, the newspaper analogy won over the town square analogy. If this holds, Google and search engines become the new media. An interesting thought in light of the decline of old media. They move over to the content side, leaving only the telcos on the conduit side.
This is continuation of discussion with Sunil Abraham and Steve Song. It got a little too long for a comment. The problems under discussion are difficult. So it’s good that we have an active discussion. We could have a discussion about all sorts of approaches to privacy.