In September 2012, for the first time we explained to ESCAP the fragility of Internet in Asia. In response, the UN outfit had engaged Terabit Consulting to study the state of connectivity across Southeast Asia. The study found that Vietnam’s international connectivity is “Somewhat weak” at regional standard. It said more specifically: “Viet Nam’s submarine cable connectivity is significantly less than other Asian nations.” Last Friday (December 20) Vietnam’s Internet connectivity was shaken when its branching unit to the Asia America Gateway (AAG) was severed by the anchor of a ship.
Both the horses are to be similar in size and strength while pulling a carriage. That was missing between India’s Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) and Reliance. As a result, Reliance has walked out of its rural mobile coverage project under the scheme of USOF. The issue dates back to 2007 when a scheme was launched under the USOF to provide subsidy support for setting up and managing 7,871 infrastructure sites, or telecom towers, in rural and remote areas in 500 districts of 12 states. RCOM and RTL had entered into an agreement with the USOF in June that year, under which they took responsibility for setting up nearly half of these towers.
Singer is synonymous with sewing machines. Like Xerox for photo copiers. And now Singer is selling more phones than sewing machines. And more smartphones than feature phones? Not quite yet.
Prof Hal Abelson of MIT recently shared his thoughts on privacy in the digital realm, at a online alumni webcast. Amongst the noise that one hears on this topic these days, his thoughtful comments resonated. Partly for sharing and partly for my own memory, I felt it justified a blog post and I capture his main points below: People don’t really know what they want when they think of privacy. They describe their privacy needs through use-case scenarios for e.g.
I am a fan of Mitchell Lazarus. This engineer-cum-lawyer, who is also a PhD in psychology, has brilliantly narrated the evolution of PSTN. He believes that regulating IP telephony is as challenging as “updating the rules of the road from horse-and-carriage traffic to modern automobiles.” It’s all about regulating the interconnected and non-interconnected VoIP services. There used to be a marked difference between the two: where interconnected VoIP needed no special skills, the typical non-interconnected VoIP customer was a highly computer-literate person with a headset plugged into a laptop.
I recently participated in a panel on “Big data in the telecommunications industry” at the 11th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Symposium (WTIS) held in Mexico from 4-6 December 2013. Going by the feedback from the Q&A session, two aspects rose to the front: Firstly the issue of “privacy” is on everybody’s mind going by the number of questions that came from the audience. Everybody seems to have his or her own viewpoint. UN Global Pulse, whilst acknowledging there are valid concerns that must be addressed (and they have a set of privacy guidelines for their own work) clearly doesn’t want the concerns to derail the efforts to utilize telecom network big data for social good. Telefonica, as an operator, was quick to point his or her own set of privacy guidelines that inform their big data work.
LIRNEasia was invited to participate in the symposium on Food System Innovation in South and Southeast Asia. The event was organised by the Michigan State University (MSU) and The Energy Resource Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, India. The symposium largely featured research on climate change, population growth, irrigation, land use and agriculture innovations. These were drawn from the research done at the Global Center for Food Systems Innovations (GCFSI) at MSU and TERI. Experts from South and Southeast Asia were brought to shed light on the regional conditions.
The Alliance for Affordable Internet (AA4I) launched their Affordability Report to showcase their newly developed Affordability Index. LIRNEasia’s CEO Helani Galpaya was invited by AA4I to participate in a panel at the launch of the report at the ICTD conference that took place in Cape Town, South Africa in December 2013. Composite indices that compare and rank countries have value because they get the attention of policy makers and regulators – those at the bottom of the table are indignant (and are hopefully moved to improve matters on the ground so they do better next year) and those at the top use it for publicity. In both cases, it is a good way for research organizations or others to start a meaningful dialog with a government or a regulatory agency, to start identifying what actions are needed for the country to perform better (and rise up in the ranking) in the future. The value of these indices increases when they cover a large number of countries.
Connected to the earlier post on taxes, is this one about Vodafone India getting served a USD 600 million retroactive tax bill. While Vodafone maintains no tax is due on the 2007 acquisition, it has told the government it is willing to explore the possibility of a “mutually acceptable solution”. Vodafone further points it has become one of India’s largest investors, spending more than £12.8 billion in building its business in the country since 2007. The operator is also one of India’s largest taxpayers.
So I was asked why Airtel was quitting Sri Lanka, the first foreign market they entered. Here is the summary of what I said. Perhaps because it was its first foreign excursion, Airtel was very slow to roll out. In May 2007 they signed an investment agreement. I commented then that the amount committed was too small for a rapid rollout.
Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and I have been debating privacy since the early 1990s. We both had chapters in Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape, which remains a seminal book on technology and privacy, published in 1997. Just last month, we continued our conversation at IGF in Bali. He was not so forthright in Bali, but now he is putting into words what we have been kicking around in our internal discussions. At the just-concluded IAPP Data Protection Congress in Brussels, the audience heard a bold proposal from closing keynoter Viktor Mayer-Schönberger: “The naked truth is that informational self-determination has turned into a formality devoid of meaning and import.
I did not realize this was a big deal until I heard several people including references to writing entries for the International Encyclopedia in the short 2-3 minutes they were allowed for self-introductions at the recent IDRC Information and Networks Partners’ meeting in Cape Town. It’s been some time since I had opened an encyclopedia. I thought that Diderot’s and d’Alembert’s insane (but typically French) idea of codifying settled knowledge had for sure been permanently buried by the Internet and Google. But no, apparently the scholarly industry and the inherent conservatism of the university will keep it going, at least for a few more years. Anyway, it was not difficult or painful.
We all know the importance of investment in dynamic ICT markets. No investment: no new services, poor quality of service . . . As LTE is being rolled out and the conversation on 5G is gathering momentum,one would think the relationship between investment and taxes would be different from what is being reported as being paid by Vodafone: During the 2013 financial year, in which the group reported pre-tax profits of £3.
This was a central claim in the highly significant ruling made by Federal District Court in Washington DC: In a 68-page ruling, Judge Leon said the N.S.A. program that systematically gathers records of Americans’ phone calls was most likely unconstitutional, rejecting the Obama administration’s argument that a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, was a controlling precedent.
Fierce competition has prompted the operators in Israel to jointly build 4G networks, according to Reuters: Under the deal, the three operators will cooperate in obtaining frequencies for the 4G network, which will be built and operated by a newly created entity equally owned by Cellcom and Pelephone. Each operator will be required to purchase and operate its own core network and costs will be divided equally among the three operators, subject to certain conditions and limitations set in the agreement, which is for 15 years. Subsequently Reuters has also reported that Reliance and Airtel have agreed to do the same in India. In fact, they have widened the scope of sharing way beyond the mobile networks. The two companies will share inter and intra-city optic fibre network, submarine cable networks, towers and internet broadband services.
Last week LIRNEasia, its staff, members and members of its scientific advisory council banded together to collect USD 1250 towards the relief efforts in the Philippines. The money was channeled towards a charity that provides medical aid to the victims of the super typhoon Haiyan. Haiyan is estimated have taken the lives of over 5000 people in the Philippines, and impact the lives of millions more.