South Asian and Middle Eastern telecoms sector has shown resilience not only in the revenue generated by operators but also in their spending capacity. According to a recent study of Frost & Sullivan, the sector will see investments in developing markets like India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh as well as in mature markets like the U.A.E and Saudi Arabia. India, with its sheer size, will continue to dominate the spending in South Asia.
In April 2009, we reported that even though leased line prices in Bangladesh had declined by 74% in 6 months, the retail price paid by consumers had not changed. This was based on the broadband benchmarking data LIRNEasia publishes every 6 months. We are thankful that the Bangladesh regulator (BTRC) has taken note of our post and the complaints of many broadband consumers in Bangladesh. A recent article in the Daily Star reports that the BTRC has decided to check if the retail prices are dropping in line with whole-sale (leased line) costs. But what about broadband quality?
The obvious has been confirmed by science. It is not possible to text and drive at the same time (or text, drive and not kill other people and/or yourself at the same time) The first study of drivers texting inside their vehicles shows that the risk sharply exceeds previous estimates based on laboratory research — and far surpasses the dangers of other driving distractions. The new study, which entailed outfitting the cabs of long-haul trucks with video cameras over 18 months, found that when the drivers texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting.
British broadband customers subscribe high-speed connections but they get low-speed service instead. The media and telecoms watchdog, Ofcom, examined the most popular broadband product advertised as offering speeds of “up to” 8 megabits per second and used by 57% of homes. Its report says, on average, users are getting speeds of just 3.9Mb. That means a DVD-quality film would take more than two hours to download – longer than it takes to watch it – compared to just over an hour at the faster speed.
Priyantha Kariyapperuma, Director General of Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka, is in ‘banning’ mode these days. Having ‘banned’ twelve sex sites on the initiation of IGP, now he plans to ban the mobile phones at private schools. For government schools, Susil Premajayantha, Education Minister has taken a similar move. Minister Premajayantha said that he has taken this decision to avoid the harmful situations that had led to a ‘number of unfortunate incidents’ in schools recently. The incident that triggered this move was the suicide of a fourteen year old girl of a leading school in Colombo, whose mobile phone, with personal information, has been confiscated by the prefects.
Rohan Samarajiva made a presentation entitled, “Improving transport and transportation policy: lessons from telecom” at the recently concluded Seminar on the Draft National Transport Policy of the Ministry of Transport. Held on 23rd of July, the seminar was organized by the Pathfinder Foundation in collaboration with The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. Drawing on the similarities between the telecom and transport sector, including opportunities for private sector participation and availability of new technologies for market structure transformation in both sectors, he stated that while telecom sector has flourished under market reforms, the transport sector may, in fact, have worsened. As cited in The Island and Lanka Business Online, Rohan argued that “the draft policy appeared to perpetuate existing inefficiencies, poor service and waste of public funds”, as well as that “the national transport policy does not allow for adequate private participation, and where there was, such as in bus services, regulation was lacking”. Click here to download slides.
A JICA study on investment climate has come up with some interesting findings, according to a news report. It reflects what LIRNEasia found through its benchmarking work. Bangladesh did demonstrate herself as competitive in eight components, including lowest rates among all the countries surveyed with regards to monthly telephone charge and monthly gas charge. However, it remained less competitive in most areas related to foreign investment, including container transportation, land price of industrial estate, internet connection fee, monthly internet fee, telephone installation fee, mobile phone subscription fee, and corporate income tax among others. The report, however, highlighted high internet fees among these.
Google’s entry into the browser space raised the question of the future of Mozilla. Mozilla is so far doing very well. But the question is really who will occupy the mobile set-top. That will decide the winner, at least in the short term. The rise of Firefox unleashed a new wave of innovation and competition among browser makers.
LIRNEasia’s lead economist Dr Harsha de Silva has been selected for the prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship. Our warm congratulations to Harsha on this high recognition of his potential as a decisive actor in public policy. The focus on potential for future contributions is evidenced by the fact that all Eisenhower fellows have to submit a proposal of what they will do upon their return. Mr Lalith Weeratunga who was an Eisenhower Fellow from Sri Lanka some years back is now Secretary to the President. I guess the Eisenhower process works.
We have always emphasised the role the operators can play in removing so called ‘mobile-waste’ (only a tiny faction of e-waste) without additional burden to the users. Good to know the Ministry of environment accepts this role officially. According to the Daily Mirror report dated July 23, ‘even though electronic and mobile waste have been categorized as ‘hazardous waste’ they can be diverted to profitable ventures, as they consist of a large variety of recoverable heavy and precious metals.’ If so, why tax mobile users? Under the ‘polluter pays’ principle, why not tax the users of other electronic equipment like televisions, audio and video players, sound systems or even PCs – who obviously contribute more to e-waste?
The presentation was made Hina Sarfaraz. The colloquium started with the looking at Governance of ICT with the definitions: Defined as Freedom of Expression(FoE): information which might annoy, disturb, terrorise or disgust, or, would engage, educate, inform and uplift. Role of Government in ensuring FoE and basic right to know is taken as a role of democracies. According to the Voice and Accountability Index Pakistan stands at 0.33 on an index of 1 Mobile 2.
A big debate seems to be brewing about using mobiles to talk and text while driving at the high speeds possible on American highways. Of course, most of the BOP does not have cars, and in any case it’s only possible to do about 30 kmph on the roads that they use, so this debate has limited relevance to us. In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel. They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways. But such an ambitious study never happened.
The teleuse@BOP finding that mobiles have overtaken radios at the bottom of the pyramid in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh continues to resonate. In coverage of this story the leading Indian magazine in the IT space Voice and Data reveals that even AM reception is being offered in some Indian phones, in addition to the standard FM capability. Industry experts say it is an obvious phenomenon, with handsets turning in to a swiss-knife kind of solutions. Rural mobile penetration is now the focus of the service providers in these countries where the mobile markets are heading towards maturity. In India circles like Chennai are touching near 100% mobile penetration in that case the operator has to go to new markets.
What does mobile handset design and Darwin’s theory of evolution have in common. Read the full article for an answer. At first glance, Japanese cellphones are a gadget lover’s dream: ready for Internet and e-mail, they double as credit cards, boarding passes and even body-fat calculators. Competition is fierce in the relatively small Japanese cellphone market, with eight manufacturers. Takeshi Natsuno developed a wireless Internet service that caught on in Japan.
There was some debate on cloud computing on this site some time back. Now here is a reflective piece, arguing again, that cloud computing is inferior to the present model of keeping most data and programs on personal computers: This freedom is at risk in the cloud, where the vendor of a platform has much more control over whether and how to let others write new software. Facebook allows outsiders to add functionality to the site but reserves the right to change that policy at any time, to charge a fee for applications, or to de-emphasize or eliminate apps that court controversy or that they simply don’t like. The iPhone’s outside apps act much more as if they’re in the cloud than on your phone: Apple can decide who gets to write code for your phone and which of those offerings will be allowed to run. The company has used this power in ways that Bill Gates never dreamed of when he was the king of Windows: Apple is reported to have censored e-book apps that contain controversial content, eliminated games with political overtones, and blocked uses for the phone that compete with the company’s products.
An interesting article in the Times of India, documents the varied use of missed calls among mobile phone users in India, based on LIRNEasia’s T@BOP3 findings for 2008. Although the title of the article is slightly misleading (missed call use was, in fact, prevalent in all the countries studied; see here for more information), it nevertheless brings home the point that missed calls are being regularly used to communicate messages of various kinds in different contexts.