I am writing this post sitting in Apia, Samoa, in a room packed with representatives from policymakers and regulators from 13 Pacific Island Countries (PICs), ranging from the Cook Islands to Vanuatu. I have been engaging with ICT policymakers and regulators in the PICs since 2006 and have never seen this level of enthusiasm and engagement. The subjects covered in this two-day training course were decided on by the participants. My first assignment is to discuss ITU and PiRRC indicators. The Pacific is something of a “black hole” in terms of sector indicators.
In our recent intervention on Sri Lanka’s electricity tariffs, we offered to help the regulatory agency and the service suppliers apply the learnings of behavioral economics to the task of reducing the five percent of peak-load demand that was responsible for 17 percent of the total cost. In this oped, an author we quoted in the submission, supports pilot project proposed by the transport authority of Singapore. By providing free train rides, the LTA hopes to harness the power of free to shift demand from peak to off-peak travel. Congestion is a 10 to 20 per cent phenomenon; transport planners do not need to shift a majority of commuters to off-peak hours. As long as 10 to 20 per cent do, that is sufficient to alleviate congestion and improve the commuting experience for all.
Today was the day Myanmar lowered the price of SIMs. Here are the conditions imposed. 350,000 SIM cards will be divided among states and divisions on a monthly basis. In order to prevent the common practice of transferring SIM card ownership, the cards will be disabled if they are not used in the first 15 days after purchase. Certain rules apply to the new SIM cards, which come with 300 kyats (about US$0.
We were serious about the sabotage in SEA-ME-WE4 at Egypt that impaired Internet across Asia, notably in Pakistan, last month. Our ongoing research about the fragility of Eurasian submarine cable connectivity refers to multiple terrestrial initiatives to link Middle East with Europe. EPEG or Europe-Persia Express Gateway is one of them. And Renesys Corporation, which supports our research, has confirmed that EPEG has made history by transporting telecoms traffic of Bahrain, Pakistan and Kenya to and from Europe. James Cowie of Renesys has made no effort to hide his exclamation: If you’d told me five years ago that we would one day see Iranian and Russian terrestrial Internet transit serving the countries of the Indian Ocean, from Pakistan to East Africa, I wouldn’t have believed it.
Last Saturday a 6.6 magnitude earthquake has rocked the Baoxing County in China’s Sichuan province. It immediately reminded everyone the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that killed nearly 90,000 people around Chengdu city in the very Sichuan province during May 2008. Five years is too short to forget the devastation as well as the mistakes.
The Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning of South Korea has decided to ban charging new subscribers a sign-up fee from 2015. The government will initially ask the country’s three mobile operators – SK Telecom, KT Corp and LG Uplus – to reduce their sign-up fees by 40% this year and a further 30% off next year followed by charging nothing by the end of 2015. The ministry expects the abolition of such fees which range from 24,000 won (US$21.43) to 39,600 won (US$35.36) per user, to cut mobile charges by around 500 billion won (US$447 million) annually.
India’s Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) has strongly recommended amending the law and making Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) truly effective. It observes that ‘once TRAI forwards its recommendations, the government is at liberty to accept, reject or keep it pending, without citing any tangible reason.’ The JPC found that many TRAI recommendations were ignored by the government for a long time and in some cases the government’s decision was not even communicated to the regulator. In the opinion of the committee, an independent regulator cannot be effective if its recommendations are to be left entirely at the mercy of the government. Therefore, the committee are of the unequivocal view that government should decisively respond to the recommendations of TRAI within a (time frame) as it is currently mandatory for TRAI to respond to a reference by the government within 60 days.
We’ve had quite a bit of discussion about the failure to supply toilets on our site and elsewhere. Now there’s movement on using mobiles to help get working toilets in schools and elsewhere. “It’s something that can have a little more impact than helping someone find the nearest bar or restaurant,” said Gary Gale, director of global community programs in the location and commerce division of Nokia, which works with the company’s mapping technology. After the event in Washington, the winners of the hackathon are set to travel to Silicon Valley for meetings with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who are interested in the issue. The World Bank does not plan to invest in the projects, but hopes that others might.
Hong Kong doesn’t regulate the mobile-mobile, fixed-mobile and fixed-fixed broadband interconnection charges. They are solely determined through commercial negotiations between the operators. Now the Communications Authority (CA) of Hong Kong has decided to stop regulating the narrowband interconnection between fixed carriers, which is the only remaining type of carrier-to-carrier local interconnection subject to regulatory guidance on charges. The regulatory guidance will cease to be effective starting from 16 October 2014 after an 18-month transitional period. Fixed carriers are encouraged to make their best endeavours to conclude commercial agreements on interconnection.
Vodafone and ICICI Bank have jointly launched the globally acclaimed mobile money service called M-Pesa. It has hit global headlines after Vodafone launched M-Pesa in 2007 in Kenya. The service is now available in eight countries including Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Marten Pieters, Managing Director and CEO of Vodafone India, said: “For millions of people in India, a mobile phone is a bank account, a front door to a micro-business or a lifeline to people in the remotest areas. Research shows that M-Pesa brings real benefits to users in their daily lives, saving three hours a week of their time and around $3 in money transfer costs – a significant amount to people in some areas.
Running out of battery is a common issue we regularly deal with our mobile devices, laptops and cameras. Charging these gadgets is a part of our daily life. Led by Prof. William P. King, a group of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are working to relieve us.
Telegeography is a credible supplier of proprietary and expensive data on international bandwidth trends. What their latest report says is quite interesting: International bandwidth demand growth has been robust on all five of the world’s major submarine cable routes, but has been particularly rapid on key routes to emerging markets in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. While bandwidth demand on the trans-Atlantic route—which has long been the world’s highest-capacity route—increased at a healthy rate of 36 percent annually between 2007 and 2012, demand for bandwidth from the U.S. to Latin America grew 70 percent per year over the same period, and demand for capacity on the Europe-Asia route via Egypt grew a staggering 87 percent per year.
Last week The Hindu, in its editorial, has urged for a secondary market in spectrum trading. Having minimum download speeds of 2 Mbps, as opposed to the current standards of 256 Kbps, is contingent upon operators having access to adequate spectrum. Mobile companies in the US or Japan typically have 30-40 MHz of spectrum, compared with the 5 MHz or so available with Indian operators. With an active secondary market, operators can plan their capital investments through an optimal mix of airwaves between what they may want to ‘own’ and what could be ‘bought’ out. Such assessment can, moreover, be made on a continuous basis, unlike now where capacity creation is a function of official decisions on spectrum auctions.
I spent more time than I had on working to fend off bad proposals to impose the sending party network pays principle on data as part of the revision of the International Telecom Regulations of the ITU. We succeeded, but I did not really think there were any winners in Dubai, really. Now that some time has passed, it is time for considered reflection. I spoke on this subject in Brussels in March, but the lecture that I gave in Bangalore to the Ford Foundation funded training course was perhaps the first time I tried to develop a full analysis. The work is not complete yet, but hopefully, I will get it into good form as a paper within a few months.
Twelve is still a big number, especially when one includes the consortia members. Of the usual suspects, only NTT, Hutch, Etisalat, and Orascom are missing. Of all the cash-rich Gulf and Middle East players, only Qatar is still in the fray. Philippines’ PLDT is out, but that is really not news. Millicom is a bit of a surprise, as is Digicel, a specialist in small markets (which Myanmar is not).
All submarine cables connecting the Far East with Europe and Africa transit at India. It has made 12 submarine cables (six owned by consortiums and six privately-owned) hopping into 10 cable landing stations (CLS) at the Indian seashore. Voice and data traffic of 27 international long distance operators (ILDO) are processed through the 10 CLS. Four (Tata, Airtel, Reliance and BSNL) out of the 27 ILD providers own respective CLS in India. The ILDOs who don’t own CLS told TRAI that Tata Communication and Bharti Airtel together enjoy a 93% market share.