In 1998, the principal journalist organizations of Sri Lanka agreed on the Colombo Declaration on Media Freedom and Social Responsibility. That served as a roadmap for some interesting and innovative reforms including the creation of a self-regulatory mechanism for print media in 2003. Of course, the reforms were not completed. In the hope of revising the text and energizing the reform effort, the Sri Lanka Press Institute organized a workshop, at which I was asked to speak. In light of the 15 minutes I was assigned, I decided to focus on SMS and cell broadcasting within the larger context of mobiles, a subject we are deeply interested in, rather try to cover the waterfront.
Broadband prices could rise by up to one-third if regulators in Europe insist on strict “net neutrality” rules that would block carriers from charging content providers premium prices to prioritise certain web traffic, a leading think-tank is set to warn. Net neutrality has become a big issue in the US as internet congestion has increased. In Europe, regulators and industry players have claimed that the situation is different because users have more choice of network providers, and the debate has been more muted. However, there have been growing concern among big telecoms companies that changes introduced in the European Parliament into the so-called telecoms package – the sweeping legislation which is designed to overhaul European Union telecoms laws – could open doors to net neutrality regulation in the future. Read the full story in ‘Financial Times’ here.
Thanks Steve for pointing it. We stand corrected. LIRNEasia does NOT use ‘Cloud Computing’, but is only a user of ‘Cloud Services’. Though both appears to be synonymous to a layman – and Wikipedia is yet to recognize the differentiation (type ‘Cloud Services’ and you will be directed to former) – we are told there still is a difference. Cloud Computing = you put your applications to ‘cloud’.
Besides sitting on Apple’s board of directors, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been an informal adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. In fact, he lurves Obama so much that’s he not just going to endorse him (shock, right?) he’s going to actually campaign for him next week. And not just ’cause Obama might be good for business! No, he says he’s “doing this personally.
When the economy goes rock bottom, it makes little sense asking what it would mean to one component. But what exactly the impact of the present financial crisis on telecoms? This is what Spencer E. Ante thinks: The $1 trillion telecommunications industry has long been one of the most resilient parts of the economy. But as the financial crisis has intensified, it has recently become clear that telecom can’t escape the fallout of the credit crunch.
Interesting point Kelly Glynn makes in apache.sys-con.com: It isn’t easy to look on the bright side of an economic crisis. The unstable stock market is provoking widespread talk of “belt-tightening,” and already thousands of people have lost their jobs. However, there is a silver lining for cloud-based services: companies looking to cut IT spending are starting to take notice of Google Apps and other online productivity suites.
This was the title for a presentation I was asked to do for a seminar organized by the SAARC Chamber of Commerce, the FCCISL and the Naumann Foundation. The presentation examined the broadening of consumer rights in the Sri Lanka industry as a result of the increased economic freedom in the telecom industry enabled by the multi-faceted liberalization undertaken by multiple governments since the 1990s. It then went on to draw lessons for other infrastructure industries and countries. The principle of “competition wherever possible; regulation where necessary” was the anchor of this part of the presentation. It was emphasized that the possible and necessary varied depending on country and time and that there were no one-size-fits-all solutions.
Last month at the GSM Asia Pacific conference in Colombo, LIRNEasia’s Helani Galpaya presented some evidence on the way roaming charges have evolved in the region. She showed that overall South Asia’s roaming charges were higher than those in South East Asia and that South Asian operators also seemed to discriminate among visitors from different countries more. This research has, finally, been picked up and publicized, along with a statement from Rohan Samarajiva that bringing down intra-SAARC international voice telephone charges is a higher priority. This same statement was made at a SAARC Chamber of Commerce seminar, where LIRNEasia offered to provide the data to the national Chambers of Commerce so that they could increase the transparency of the roaming market, one of the most opaque. Knowing full well the weaknesses of regulation and the higher-priority tasks before the region’s regulatory agencies, LIRNEasia takes the position that the region’s operators should work together to come up with a reasonable regime for international roaming that allows customers to know what they are getting into when they make or receive a call/SMS while away from their countries.
Senior citizen and former left wing politician Vasudeva Nanayakkara, who drew attention as a public activist as the successful petitioner in the Lanka Marine Services Ltd., (LMSL), is now threatening to take up another public interest issue in court – failure of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission’s (TRC) to comply with a Supreme Court (SC) order of May 7, 2007 to draw up a new tariff structure. In a letter dated October 10, 2008 to TRC Director General Priyantha Kariyapperuma – copied to The Sunday Times – Mr. Nanayakkara states that ‘OPA’s experts in their presentation to the TRC, around March 2008, explained and established that the TRC’s tariff proposal recommended to the SC is flawed mathematically and technically and that it is in violation of the provisions in the Sri Lanka. In particular, Mr.
From 13-15 October, 2008, The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with support from the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction – Platform for the Promotion of Early Warning (UNISDR-PPEW) and the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) organized the Second United Nations International UN-SPIDER Workshop on “Disaster Management and Space Technology – Bridging the Gap” in Bonn, Germany. LIRNEasia researcher, Natasha Udu-gama was one of 134 participants representing 49 countries. The 3-day UN-SPIDER workshop was notable in that it featured a number of German and international presentations on the themes of Session 1: “Space technology in support of risk and disaster management”, Session 2: “Vulnerability and Risk Assessment”, Session 3: “Contributions of space-based technologies to existing and proposed early warning systems”, and Session 4: “Disaster Medicine, Telemedicine and Integrated Vector Management (IVM)”. Natasha Udu-gama presented on “Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” during Session 3 highlighting the usage of WorldSpace Addressable Radios for Emergency Alerts (AREA) systems as appropriate for last-mile hazard information dissemination in the LIRNEasia pilot project “Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination”. The presentation also presented sustainability models for WorldSpace in Bangladesh and Indonesia, while demonstrating […]
One and a half years after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the government of Sri Lanka stated that it had obtained funds for three warning towers and was on track to build 25 more by the second anniversary: The Ministry has already received funds from UNESCAP to build three tsunami warning towers in the Eastern, Northern and Southern Provinces and hopes to build another 25 towers by December 26 [2006] to mark the second anniversary of the disaster, according to the Times. We were skeptical and we were right. By September 12th, 2007, the day of the last false warning and erroneous government evacuation order, one tower was up. The one tower did not work. So now, one and a half years after that false announcement about 25 towers (and almost four years after the tsunami), we have a Cabinet decision: Cabinet approved a memorandum submitted by the Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, Mahinda Samarasinghe and the Minister of Local Government and Provincial Councils, Janaka Bandara Tennekoon, to accept the revised proposal to expand the Emergency Response Systems (ERS) currently in place by upgrading and establishing 14 fire and rescue stations, in addition to the 18 stations developed […]
An intriguing move from a consortium that includes Google that seeks to provide cheap and plentiful broadband to areas around the Equator: O3b, by contrast, intends to offer bandwidth on a wholesale basis to internet-service providers, and transmission services to telecom operators, to link remote base stations to their core networks. Furthermore, O3b’s service will be available only in a ribbon around the equator, covering most developing countries. It can start offering this service with just five satellites (it will eventually have 16) circling 8,000km above the equator. These should be in orbit by late 2010. More on this here.
We don’t write enough about handsets, a crucial element in extending connectivity to those at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Here is an Economist piece on a rapidly rising handset maker. “Although ZTE supplies phones to big names such as Vodafone and Telefónica, most of its customers are in the developing world, where overall handset sales are growing by 16% a year. ZTE’s steady but stealthy rise reflects how much of the growth in telecoms is at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”
Vint Cerf, who can fairly be described as one of the godfathers of Internet has endorsed Barack Obama in the US presidential race, saying that his decision is swayed by Obama’s stance on net neutrality – the question of whether content providers should be charged more for different content by the “pipe” providers. Extracts: We believe that the Internet should remain an open environment. It’s vital to innovation. Companies like Google, and Yahoo, and eBay, and Amazon, and Skype and so on, got their start without having to get permission from any ISP or any broadband provider to offer services. They simply acquired access to the internet, put their services up and then made them available to the general public.
The Sarvodaya Suwadana Center Volunteers (Community Healthcare Workers) assembled at the Medical Officer of Health office in Kuliyapitya (Kurunegala District, Sri Lanka). This was a workshop organized by Sarvodaya and LIRNEasia as part of the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP), launched in July this year – evidence based healthcare research aiming to evaluate the use of mobile phones for collecting health data and applying statistical data mining software programs for detecting emerging diseases outbreaks. This initiative is to complement the existing national disease surveillance and notification system.
It appears that we were all fooled by the PTA’s data collecting and reporting practices. It now appears that the overcount of mobile SIMs may be over 10 million! Mea culpa for having believed PTA numbers. When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.