A little bit of authoritarianism from a government can sometimes be a good thing – especially if it means getting your country’s telecoms industry in working order. That sentiment goes against the grain, but when you contrast the telecoms regulations in the region’s megamarkets of China and India, you can hardly help but conclude that the iron fist is preferable to the velvet glove when it comes to delivering clear-cut regulatory outcomes. India is praised for being the world’s largest democracy, but there is little doubt that its admirable ethos of allowing every man to have a say on every issue – including critical regulatory ones – is holding back its telecoms market in many respects. If there is one industry that needs a fast-moving regulatory process in which decisions are handed down smoothly and with minimum delay, it is the telecoms industry. Few industries can compare to the telecoms industry, where technologies are constantly evolving and competition in a country can be seriously compromised if a regulator does not ensure a timely and orderly deployment of new services, such as 3G or high-speed broadband.
Except for the last of the three items described below, the proposed stimulus package now before the US Congress seeks to apply the intelligence of ICTs to improve other things. This is the way to go. The $825 billion stimulus plan presented this month by House Democrats called for $37 billion in spending in three high-tech areas: $20 billion to computerize medical records, $11 billion to create smarter electrical grids and $6 billion to expand high-speed Internet access in rural and underserved communities. A study published this month, which was prepared for the Obama transition team, concluded that putting $30 billion into those three fields could produce more than 900,000 jobs in the first year. The mix of proposed spending is different in the House plan, but the results would be similar, said Robert D.
The Telecom Authority of the Maldives was functioning under a presidential decree all this time. The Law which had been drafted, is now moving under the new administration: The Civil Aviation Minister Jameel who announced that the bill was being sent for legal review at a press conference said that the country is now at a stage where such legislation is urgently required. The bill covers all aspects of postal services, telecommunications and info communications including licensing, establishing standards and implementation. The Minister also stated that the government will establish a Communications Authority of Maldives for the purposes of regulating and implementing the Communications Act.
Over the coming months, there will be much talk about ICTs and global climate change and e waste. There will be bad and good research and tricks to raise taxes in the name of the environment. Here is a nice balanced report by the Economist: So computing does indeed have a role in fighting climate change, but that role mainly involves using computers in new ways, rather than making the machines themselves more efficient. It is time for the industry to start thinking outside the box, as it were.
Broadband users in Sri Lanka are lucky – in a way. There is a battalion of Sinhala/English bloggers to keep vigil on the quality of service experience. This time the credit goes to Rukshan Kothwala. As the fresh engineering undergraduate from Peradeniya University notes in his blog, Dialog has started advertising its unlimited 3G based mobile broadband package as 1 Mbps, not 7.2 Mbps as was done earlier.
As part of IDRC’s announcement of the extension of the think tank initiative to South Asia, a policy research roundtable was organized in Galle on January 21st, 2009. I was asked to speak about innovations related to the research infrastructure. This is what I came up with. The most interesting stuff, in my view, is on the use of the Internet as a dissemination medium, especially with regard to dissemination in the ‘pull mode,’ where we make sure that the information will be available to stakeholders when they want it, rather than when we choose to give it them (the push mode). These slides are at the end of the presentation.
A recent report of the same title, published by Vodafone and ICRIER, India, reveal that Indian states with high mobile penetration can be expected to grow faster than those states with lower mobile penetration rates, namely, 1.2% points for every 10% increase in the penetration rate. The research also highlights the role of mobile along with complementary skills and other infrastructure, for the full realization of benefits of access to communications in agriculture and among SMEs. Importantly, telecommunications cannot be seen in isolation from other parts of the development process. In urban slums, the research reveals the importance of network effects, i.
In August 2008, LIRNEasia made a big push to eliminate the anomaly of intra-SAARC calls that were more expensive than calls to Singapore, UK, USA and other liberalized markets. This bore fruit in the form of para 6 of the SAARC Summit Declaration: The Heads of State or Government observed that an effective and economical regional tele-communication regime is an essential factor of connectivity, encouraging the growth of people-centric partnerships. They stressed the need for the Member States to endeavour to move towards a uniformly applicable low tariff, for international direct dial calls within the region. While the regulators are cogitating. it appears that the operators are acting.
There are many who think telecom networks should be congestion free, always, like during or just before a disaster. It is practically impossible because no network can be economically designed and run for unusual peak loads. The report that mobile companies in the US are asking their customers to go easy on calls and MMS, is illustrative of the phenomenon. Why would they walk away from an opportunity to make money? The largest cellphone carriers, fearful that a communicative citizenry will overwhelm their networks, have taken the unusual step of asking people to limit their phone calls and to delay sending photos.
The $825 billion proposal from the Obama transition team and House Democrats includes $6 billion to improve the U.S. broadband infrastructure, which is lacking in many rural and mountainous areas, particularly the West. There aren’t a lot of details yet on how that $6 billion would be given out, but it doesn’t seem to encompass the tax breaks phone and cable companies were lobbying for. Even so, the wireless industry was cheering Thursday morning because a summary of the spending released by House Democrats calls for the money to be used on “broadband and wireless grants.
Qatar Telecommunications Co QTEL said on Saturday it would begin tender offers for shares in Indonesian telecoms firm PT Indosat on Tuesday to lift its stake to 65 percent, the maximum allowed. Indonesia limits foreign ownership in the telecommunication sector to a maximum of 65 percent for mobile phone operators and 49 percent for fixed-line operators. Two tender offers would begin concurrently in Indonesia and the United States at 7,388 rupiahs ($0.661) per share and would expire on Feb. 18, Qtel said.
It is good to see that quality of service (QoS) is coming under the Asian regulatory microscopes. The Philippines regulator has called for improved service quality of broadband while India’s TRAI has initiated a public consultation. The region may be exploding with growth but it is also infested with adulterated services. Precisely, the Asian service providers widely deceive the consumers in terms of quality. It is the result of inconsistent policy coupled with the lack of regulatory oversight.
As our regular readers know, LIRNEasia is normally modest about our achievements. We see no reason blowing our own horn when we have others to do so. Still when International Research Development Center (IDRC) profiles Harsha De Silva, we see no reason not reproduce the same – particularly, when it refers to our research. Extract: After his studies, de Silva returned to Sri Lanka to work as the chief economist and treasurer of the country’s largest development bank, declining employment offers in North America. “I belong in my country and that’s how I see it,” says de Silva.
Update: Media coverage – ‘Prudent Trade and Policy Strategies with India will benefit Sri Lanka‘, The Island, 15.01.09 — This work was outside LIRNEasia‘s core research program, but is still relevant because it addresses questions on services trade and investment between two countries LIRNEasia works in. The forum was Sanvada, a policy dialogue run by the Pathfinder Foundation. One of the key claims is that a framework agreement with some disciplinary force would be of greater value to Sri Lanka as a small country in its relations with India, and that this is even more true for services trade.
The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all. A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem. The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series. One attorney general was quick to criticize the group’s report. This was a bunch of Attorneys General, people who face the electorate every few years (or are appointed by the Governors, in a few cases).
According to this research finding, Google is warming the planet by giving us fast websearches. Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research. While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.