I may be wrong, not having conducted a systematic study of mobile advertising in Sri Lanka, but the impression I have is that while there is plenty of it, it’s all about calling to maintain relationships if not about price/quality aspects. In the short term this works, because this is where people’s heads are. But unless there is more money in people’s pockets, it’s unlikely that the mobile operators will be able to continue to make money in the long run. Voice is getting commodified and profits are declining. People are not taking up more-than-voice services because they do not have money and see mobile as a consumption good.
In a futile move, the Bangladesh government has blocked YouTube and esnips.com for hosting the recorded consultation between the prime minister and the country’s army officers. Country’s regulatory head has confirmed it to the press. This consultation was held after a brutal mutiny had wiped out the entire hierarchy of the country’s border guard force on February 25. More than 50 army officers, who were seconded to the paramilitary force, were butchered and buried in mass-graves by the mutinous troops.
An AFP story published today talks about the Indian boom in mobile connections, despite all round economic gloom: a record 15m new connections were added in India in January 2009 according to the article. India’s “mobile revolution” is still mainly seen in the cities, but the real prize for phone companies is the vast rural market, where nearly 70 percent of the 1.1-billion-strong population live, analysts say. By the end of January, 34.5 percent of the population owned a telephone, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said.
Detailed findings from LIRNEasia’s Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) study conducted in 2008, have been published in Voice&Data, India’s only magazine on the business of communications, including analyses on the business, technology and regulatory aspects of Indian telecom and networking: Telecom growth is phenomenal in some emerging nations of the Asia Pacific region, but the risk attached to investments in each country varies. Pakistan scores the highest in five parameters, while India tops in one in the Telecom Regulatory Environment survey. Read the full article here. Findings from the TRE study were presented in Delhi, India, last week, at a panel discussion, co-organized by Voice&Data.
In the third round, LIRNEasia has extended the testing to one more location. With that we have tested two packages in New Delhi (MTNL and AirTel), two in Chennai (BSNL and AirTel), five in Colombo (SLT ADSL, Dialog WiMax, Dialog 3G, Dialog 3G Unlimited and Mobitel Zoom 890) and two in Dhaka (SKYbd and Sirius). A strenuous task for five teams, no doubt, who took readings at different times staring from 8 am and went up to 11.00 pm (some had to spend nights at offices) but results are worth the effort. What did we learn?
Just liked everything else in telecom, the signs were visible in Asia first, Indonesia and Sri Lanka in particular. The debate in the blogsphere is all about HSPA and HSDPA, no one cares about tired old ADSL. We do, of course, and will continue to work on fixed, nomadic and mobile broadband price and QOSe. But nice to know the Economist is not too behind the curve. AS HANDSETS turn into computers, laptops are becoming more like mobile phones.
LIRNEasia will present findings from the Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) 2008 study at a panel discussion today, in Delhi, India. Organized in association with Voice and Data, the event entitled, ‘The Challenging Policy and Regulatory Environment’, will be held at Le Meridien Hotel, Delhi from 10 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Contention Ratios varying from 1:50 and 1:20 (Can be relaxed a bit in residential as the links are not shared) is what LIRNEasia and TeNet jointly proposed, but Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) thought it best to adopt 1:50 and 1:30. According to ‘Guidelines for service providers providing Internet/broadband services for ensuring better quality of service’TRAI issued on March 2, 2009, ISPs are expected not only to maintain contention ratios above these values but also be open to subscribers on what they will deliver – instead of promises they cannot make. In addition we received some publicity from Indian online media. Good to know people start taking notes. More on LIRNEasia’s Rapid Response program here.
Given coincidence of the SAARC Minister’s meeting and the release of LIRNEasia’s twice-a-year price benchmarks, I was tempted to see how much progress had been achieved, with regard to the Colombo Declaration’s para 6 which called for low intra-SAARC international voice tariffs. Not much progress to report, unfortunately. On the fixed side, the only countries with intra-SAARC tariffs lower than to non-SAARC countries, are Bhutan and Nepal. Bhutan, because it has a special price for India (other SAARC prices are high) and Nepal because it has not changed its extremely high tariff structure (and the lower-by-comparison intra-SAARC prices). Lanka Bell in Sri Lanka offers low prices to India, but our methodology does not capture that, because we take the prices of the largest operator, SLT.
Preliminary findings from the Teleuse@BOP3 study conducted by LIRNEasia in November 2008, will be presented on the 4th of March (Wednesday) from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. Presentations will be made by Rohan Samarajiva, Harsha de Silva and Ayesha Zainudeen, followed by discussion. Several senior officials of telecom companies, analysts and journalists are expected to attend the event. For more information on how to register, please contact Ms.
Findings from LIRNEasia’s bi-annual price benchmarks study for February 2009 (a part of LIRNEasia’s continuing program on Indicators for 2008-10 ) is available for download below: Mobile Price Benchmarks: South Asia Mobile Price Benchmarks: Southeast Asia Broadband Price Benchmarks: South and Southeast Asia International Voice Benchmarks The findings are from the month of February. The next publication will be in September. Previous publications are available at http://lirneasia.net/projects/2008-2010/indicators-continued/benchmarks/
Helani Galpaya, COO and Indicators Specialist at LIRNEasia has been invited to make a presentation at the 7th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators (WTI) Meeting in Cairo, Egypt from 3 – 5 March, 2009. She will be speaking on demand-side data collection work LIRNEasia does, along with some of the supply-side benchmarking and NSO/NRA capacity-building work. An online version of the agenda can be viewed here. The presentation can be viewed here.
As part of the international telecom services liberalization of 2003, the government started collecting a levy from international calls for universal service. The intention was to reduce the amounts every year and also to give out the money as quickly as possible. What happened was different. The percentage was not reduced and money was not disbursed. Finally, it has started to flow out.
Facebook appears to have yielded data to test some theories on how many people we can communicate with, really. The full story, worth reading, at the Economist. Dr Marlow found that the average number of “friends” in a Facebook network is 120, consistent with Dr Dunbar’s hypothesis, and that women tend to have somewhat more than men. But the range is large, and some people have networks numbering more than 500, so the hypothesis cannot yet be regarded as proven. What also struck Dr Marlow, however, was that the number of people on an individual’s friend list with whom he (or she) frequently interacts is remarkably small and stable.
Several years back, Korea topped the OECD’s broadband rankings and the ITU’s Digital Opportunity Index. That caused a lot of countries to reexamine their broadband policies. It caused others to develop new indices. The NYT carries a report on one: After the United States, the ranking found that Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway rounded out the five most productive users of connectivity. Japan ranked 10, and Korea, 18.
Technology to send broadband over power lines has been around for several years, but it typically hasn’t been able to offer enough capacity at a low enough price to beat service from cable and phone companies. But with government subsidies, the approach is starting to be deployed in areas that don’t have access to other forms of broadband. I.B.M.