Pervez Ifthikar is a passionate commentator on telecom issues in Pakistan. A knowledgeable commentator and as the founding CEO of the universal service fund (one of the best in the world in his time), one who has to be taken seriously. Irrespective of the on-going, completely unnecessary, “controversy” surrounding auction of 3G in Pakistan, allotting 3G frequencies to telecom operators is extremely urgent and essential for Pakistan. We have already been left behind by others who used to be our followers in 2G. Mobile broadband – or 3G – should have been introduced here already four years ago.
How to use a dial-up internet from a hotel room, an interesting question, a young guest in the next room asked me during my trip to North Pacific. Because of my age, I think he considered me the cave-man (pre-broadband generation).
How to use a dial-up internet from a hotel room, an interesting question, a young guest in the next room asked me during my trip to North Pacific. Because of my age, I think he considered me the cave-man (pre-broadband generation).
At the last leg of my trip to North Pacific, I landed in the Land of Stone Money. Federated States of Micronesia has an estimated population of 106,487 (July 2012 est.) and is spread across 2,500 kilometers of the Western Central Pacific Ocean, ju...
At the last leg of my trip to North Pacific, I landed in the Land of Stone Money. Federated States of Micronesia has an estimated population of 106,487 (July 2012 est.) and is spread across 2,500 kilometers of the Western Central Pacific Ocean, ju...
The emphasis is on the word “still.” Nokia remained the world’s No. 1 maker of mobile phones, including traditional cellphones and smartphones, but its share of the phone market is rapidly shrinking. For the full year of 2011, its global market share was 23.8 percent, down from 28.
This NYT story describes a phase transition. Small players are beginning to outsource; the tasks are more complex and creative. This is huge for small countries and small service export firms. The production values may be a little amateurish by MTV standards, but for $2,000 it cost a small fraction of the typical budget for a professional film. And Mr.
Etisalat pioneered the ‘App Store’ in Sri Lanka with AppZone – Sri Lanka’s first SMS based mobile application platform that allows software developers to create, test and monetize applications, while operators use their existing consumer base to promote the use of these value added services and thereby their networks. They now promise to take it a notch up and introduce the eBook / eReader concept to consumers in the Island, with the recent M.D. Gunasena and Microimage partnerships. At the signing that took pace yesterday, Etisalat CEO Dumindra Ratnayaka said, “EBook readers and eBook stores have become a global phenomenon but their benefits have eluded Sri Lankan readers, writers and publishers.
We thought it would only be social science. But all science? The trend of looking for commonalities and overlapping interests is emerging in many parts of both academia and business. At the ultrasmall nanoscale examination of a cell, researchers say, the disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics begin to collapse in on each other. In a broader search for patterns, students of the statistical computing language known as R have used methods of counting algae blooms to prove patterns of genocide against native peoples in Central America.
After Palau, my next stop was Majuro, Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI). Iokwe (pronounced yok-we) — "welcome" — is the first word of Marshallese language you would hear when you land at Majuro International Airport in this island paradise. The Ma...
Our findings from the recently concluded Interactive Voice-enabled alerting and situational reporting pilot revealed that Speech-To-Text and Text-To-Speech were impossible to apply with audio over low quality transmission networks (listen to this audio to get a sense how bad it can be). One could sample at much higher frequencies then that produces an extremely large mega byte file which may take hours to multi-cast; hence, not recommended for critical life-saving communications. Our conclusions drawn were mainly on the situational reporting functions. The U.S.
For the longest time, I could not understand why there were no legal challenges to the regulator in Bangladesh. No one went to court, however arbitrary the decisions were. Looks like that has changed. Grameenphone has won a crucial legal battle with regulators BTRC as High Court has rejected claim for an extra Tk 236 crore in spectrum fees levied in 2008. A two-judge bench also said the BTRC was however right in asking for the spectrum and licence renewal fees without deducting value added tax.
The European Union was the only regional grouping taking concerted action to curb the exploitation of the customers of others by operators. But all this time, their actions had effects only within Europe. Now they’re capping roaming costs overall. This will cause European operators to actually negotiate for lower rates from those from whom they purchase roaming services. According to the waterbed theory (which has no foundation in fact, but is trotted out every time operators see some monopoly niche being attacked), this should result in higher roaming costs for the rest of us, non-Europeans.
The topline findings from the initial stage of the GSMA mWomen Research in India, Egypt, Papua New Guinea and Uganda were presented recently. It explored the Wants and Needs of BOP Women through a qualitative study. Some of the insights of ‘mobile as a tool’ are below. Mobile use by BOP women seem to be driven by practical, utility-oriented needs such as family coordination and emergencies rather than the desire to socialize and ‘chat’. This is also seen when looking at perceived benefits in LIRNEasia’s teluse@BOP4 quantitative study.
There was a small but high profile Government Transformation Forum organized in Kovalam, Kerala, Feb 5-6, 2012. The Kerala Chief Minister and the Minister in charge of IT made appearances and the high-profile MP of the area, Dr Shashi Tharoor, delivered the keynote address and showed deep engagement. I chaired the session on international and Indian best practices and made a presentation based primarily on the experiences of designing e Sri Lanka back in 2002-03 and LIRNEasia research. My key message was that there were no best practices that could be imported to Kerala. What were best were what fit the specific circumstances.