It appears from news reports that the Myanmar government has commenced work on a domestic fiber backhaul network. This was among the recommendations of the oped that I published in a Myanmar newspaper last year. But as experience has shown in country after country that it is easier to build backhaul than to ensure that it is efficiently used (see downloadable book, chapter 7). For this, an open-access regime based on cost-oriented pricing and non-discriminatory access is essential. The farmlands were dug twice, while burying cables along the roads in Thapyay San village, Magway township, one of the locals said.
Ron Diebert is a friend and colleague. He gets his hands dirty looking at what actually happens on the Internet. And he thinks all governments have to rethink the way they approach Internet security. “I think Canada, like many liberal, democratic countries, is caught in a bit of a contradiction,” said Diebert, director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the University of Toronto. “We can’t accuse other countries of violating people’s human rights when there is no protection in our own country when it comes to law enforcement accessing data through Internet service providers.
LIRNEasia’s current cycle of research focuses on how mobile platforms can help improve customer relationship management in utilities. I have been contributing to the current debate on rationalizing the electricity tariffs in Sri Lanka based on the work Partha Mukhopadhyay and I did in relation to the recently concluded SAFIR core course and laying the foundation for disseminating the results of the research project when completed. Many of my interventions have been over electronic media, but here is a summary piece in LBO that is also being published in Sinhala in Ravaya next week. Tariff design must contribute to bring down peak demand by around five percent. This is a policy objective pursued in many countries, especially in light of climate-change concerns.
We at LIRNEasia are seeking to apply nudge principles to how utilities (and governments) communicate with their customers (citizens). Therefore, it was not surprising that this caught my eye when reading about Google’s employee perks: So the candy (M&Ms, plain and peanut; TCHO brand luxury chocolate bars, chewing gum, Life Savers) is in opaque ceramic jars that sport prominent nutritional labels. Healthier snacks (almonds, peanuts, dried kiwi and dried banana chips) are in transparent glass jars. In coolers, sodas are concealed behind translucent glass. A variety of waters and juices are immediately visible.
Alex Pentland of MIT has been working on mobile big data (as are we at LIRNEasia). Here is a snippet of an interview in the NYT: The phone tracks our movements, as well as our calls and texts, so it can reveal a lot about our daily lives. What did you learn about yourself by studying your own cellphone data? That I’m very predictable. We tend to pay attention only to the new things in our lives.
The deputy governor of Uganda’s central bank said that mobile financial services (MFS) have outnumbered the traditional bank account holders in 2012. The MFS transactions have totalled UGX11.7 trillion (USD4.374 billion) in 2012, up from UGX3.75 trillion in 2011.
It is perhaps a sign of their efficacy that think tanks in India have come under the gun, on the ground that they are funded by foreign sources and are therefore “subversive.” Rohini Nilekani, a significant philanthropist in her own right, has made a powerful argument on the contributions made to Indian public policy by think tanks and the questioning of some of these organizations obtaining some of their resources from outside India. The piece in Open on ‘Foreign Funding of NGOs’ with the subtitle ‘Should FDI in India’s thinktank sector worry us?’, has served its purpose by triggering a long-overdue reasoned debate. The author lays out various questions that might warrant their own conference or white paper.
As part of the “Inclusion in the Information Society” project commenced September last year we have been studying how electricity utilities can use the almost universal mobile devices to improve the services provided to consumers. The research is ongoing, but we have not let that stop us from making use of the policy windows that open up. Early this week, the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka announced that it would be accepting comments on a proposed tariff increase from the public. Based on our research, we plan to make submissions. Even before that, when a leading economic analysis program aired by Sirasa TV, asked us to speak on the subject, we gave a taste of what would be coming.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has asked US carriers not to pay more than US$0.02 per minute to their Pakistani counterparts. This decree has been slapped after Pakistan has raised its international termination rate to $0.88 per minute, which the FCC calls anti-competitive. Pakistan’s 14 Long Distance and International (LDI) operators have formed a single international gateway called International Clearing House (ICH) and raised international termination prices in October 2012.
The ITU’s Secretary General appointed the biggest single barrier to broadband in Latin America, the wily Carlos Slim Helu, as the co-chair of the Broadband Commission. He specializes in tying up efforts to regulate his enterprises. Now that the political elites in Mexico have agreed to curb the hegemony of Telmex, his hands will be full and there may be a vacancy in the Broadband Commission. Slim, the world’s richest man, dominates Mexico’s telecommunications market, controlling 70 percent of the country’s mobile market and 80 percent of its fixed phone lines. Televisa, controlled by tycoon Emilio Azcarraga, has about 60 percent of the broadcast market.
Just before WCIT, Hosuk Lee and I did a rush job that looked at the possibility that the ETNO-inspired efforts to extract rents from OTT players such as Facebook may violate GATS commitments. Now the issue has bubbled up on another front: When China and other nations block the websites of U.S. companies but the United States doesn’t respond in kind there’s a strong argument that creates an unfair trade barrier, said Andrew McLaughlin, former White House deputy chief technology officer. He cited the example of Facebook, which is blocked in China, and Renren, a Chinese social networking service colloquially known as the “Facebook of China.
This is so different from the stories coming out about companies bidding low for 4G. In an unusual move, CTU, the Czech telecoms regulator, suspended the country’s spectrum auction because bids were escalating too far beyond the reserve price. CTU set a minimum price of CZK7.4 billion ($377m) for the three frequency bands under the hammer – 800MHz, 1800MHz and 2.6GHz – but overall bidding climbed to CZK20 billion before the regulator decided to pull the plug.
Total Telecom gives details of the licenses that will be issued in Myanmar upon the completion of a three-stage process. Technology neutral is good. How much spectrum per license is not stated. If it is 5 MHz, as the rumor mill says, it is unlikely that the government’s objective of 80 SIMS per 100 people can be achieved. After the 4 April deadline, the Committee said it will reveal the applicants that have qualified for the next phase of the licensing process, stage three, which will decide which two companies will be awarded the licences.
The liberalization process in Myanmar is chugging along, with an arrest or two, bad advice from the ITU Regional Office and so on. Hope things will get better. In a poor country like Myanmar, it is hard for grassroots people to get a cell phone. The price has dropped to 150,000 kyat but there are just 1.24 million mobile phones in a country with a population of over 60 million.
Smith v Maryland was a 1979 US case that permitted relatively easy access to phone records. Fixed phone records, because that’s all there was, back then. Mobile phone records yield a lot more information. But US law enforcement has been using the old rules to get the call records. But that may be about to change, at least in Texas.