LIRNEasia’s sister organization, The Center for Communication, Media and Information Technologies (CMI), of the Copenhagen Institute of Technology (CIT), Aalborg University, Denmark, will host its First International Conference on Converging Mobile Media on 28 November 2008. Previous conferences have been held by the Center for Information and Communication Technologies (CICT), and the 2008 conference marks the start of a new research center at CIT of Aalborg University with an increased focus on the convergence of communication, media and information technologies and on new media opportunities. Mobile Media includes all kinds of new media on mobile devices, e.g. mobile internet and mobile television.
According to TelecomTV, TeliaSonera is acquiring controlling interests in Spice Telecom, the second mobile operator in Nepal and Applifone, the fourth largest operator in Cambodia. This is an intriguing development from a company many thought was withdrawing from the South Asian region. A few years ago there were well publicized negotiations to sell its stake in Sri Lanka’s Suntel, which is believed to have failed for the lack of a high-enough bid. TeliaSonera and its predecessor entities have not shown the nimbleness of its Nordic competitor, Telenor which has strong positions in South and South East Asian countries. One hopes it will.
Grameenphone has sealed a deal with the postal department to boost its revenue by going deeper in rural areas through the postmen working in about 8,300 post offices in Bangladesh. Initially, the rural postmen will sell 24,000 prepaid mobile connections to the very remote places. The mailmen in such places are often the only gateway to the world beyond the horizon. They will also top up the customers’ accounts with small denominations. In return the low-paid rural mailmen as well as the ailing postal department of Bangladesh will make money out of every transaction.
The regulatory history has four phases, the first which was from 1964 to the 1989. PTT was established in 1964, this was a forerunner of DGPT. In 1985 DGPT gave operating licenses and were removed from the government budget. The second phase was from 1989 to 1999. The new Act of Telecom was established in 1989 that established DGPT as the policy maker and regulator.
Deploying 3G services using UMTS900 may create 70 per cent CAPEX and OPEX savings for mobile operators, says a recent case study on the exprience of Elisa Corporation of Finland, released by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association. Widely used by GSM systems throughout Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the use of the 900 MHz band lowers the number of cell sites needed to cover rural and suburban areas. Another report of GSA says on May 6, 2008 AIS launched UMTS 900 in Chiangmai, Thailand in 900 MHz spectrum. Expansion to Bangkok and other major cities is planned for Q1 2009. Regulator NTC is reported to have authorized DTAC to deploy UMTS in 850 MHz spectrum, also planned in Q1 2009.
Results for Indonesia in LIRNEasia’s Telecom Regulatory Environment survey show an interesting trend. Unlike their counterparts in other countries (Bangladesh, India, Maldives Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand) Indonesia telecom experts have given marks so low for different aspects of their regulatory environment that none of the categories, in any three sectors, meet the average of 3. (The options were from 1 to 5, 1=extremely unsatisfied, 5=excellent service) The one comes nearest is the score for Market Entry in the mobile sector (there are nine players in the market – eight national, one regional) but that too miss the average by 0.05 points. The results do not show a change from the previous (2006) scores.
Proposals to slash the cost of using mobile phones abroad, for text, data and voice calls, could become law next July following a vote in Brussels. The European Parliament is to vote on whether roaming costs for text messages should be capped. The cost of sending a message is expected to eventually fall by 60% from an average of 23 pence to 9 pence. Voice calls would fall from 36 to 27 pence a minute and customers would be able to set limits on data downloads. A reluctant mobile phone industry first had limits on its roaming charges imposed by the EU in September 2007.
Conducted by Miraj Khaled. Bangladesh has had a monopoly since 1989. The sector was opened in 1996. The Telecom Act was enacted in 2001. The regulator was established under this Act.
In its 2005-06 budget (Khaleda Zia) the Bangladesh government imposed a regressive Taka 900 tax on each SIM that was issued. We describe the tax as regressive because, if it was passed on to customers, it would hurt the low-user segment (generally the poorer segment) of the market more, because it’s a fixed tax that does not vary with use. The mobile operators did not quite understand what the government wanted to do and decided to absorb the tax. They made various pleas and protests and got the tax reduced to Taka 800. Finally, in 2008, they decided they had enough and decided to pass on most of the tax to customers.
This might not be good news for the proponents of Net Neutrality. Barack Obama has recently edited his website with significant revisions to the technology plans. Guess what goes out. A large paragraph on Net Neutrality! (which is reproduced below): [quote] Users must be free to access content, to use applications, and to attach personal devices.
Considering five fundamental rights applications yesterday (Sept 22), the Supreme Court issued an interim order against the implementation of the Environment Tax, reported Lanka Dissent. The petitioners were Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera, Ven. Kiniyawala Palitha Thera, Telshan Network and Swarnavahini. The SC ordered the immediate suspension of the gazette notification announcing the new tax, and fixed December 01st as the next day of hearing.
Business Standard | Priyanka Joshi / Mumbai September 21, 2008, 0:31 IST Internet search giant Google hopes to hook the millions of cellular phone subscribers in India who do not use data or SMS-based services with its voice-based search. It is conducting pilot projects in Hyderabad and Delhi, and is expected to roll out more in Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata shortly. The company is expected to add audio playback for search queries on local news and entertainment.
Rohan Samarajiva has been invited to speak at the 2008 Telecoms World South Asia Conference, to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh from 7 – 9 October. This event, designed for South Asia’s top telecommunication players interested in building and managing a business-focused telecommunciations organization, is intended to provide an important platform for information exchange through dialogue between serious players in the region. The event will feature keynotes, thought-leadership presentations, interactive discussion panels and real-world case studies on ‘hot topics’ pertinent to the South Asian industry. Rohan will make a presentation entitled, ‘Introducing broadband: investment conditions, regulatory challenges and addressing QoS’ at a session entitled, ‘Exploiting technologies for future growth and development’. Rohan will also be among panelists at a discussion on ‘Leveraging on next generation technologies to extend the service offering’.
LIRNEasia is, among other things, a research organization. Good research is what goes through peer review. But peer review requires a lot of genuflection to the prior literature (not that easy to do, sitting in Sri Lanka/India/etc, and lacking access to all the relevant journals (despite the wonders made possible by Google). It takes a horrendously long time. So it is with some pleasure that we see that peer review is being melded with blogging in the hope of accelerating the process: “Although Web 2.
When I started teaching, a weekly visit to the library was a necessary ritual. Physically leafing through the indexes and abstracts, writing down the classification numbers (I still fondly recall the HE 7700s), and then walking into the stacks to pick up the books, scan for others that may be of interest that didn’t come up from the indexes, sitting in some corner trying to decide which ones to haul back to the office . . . these were familiar and pleasurable activities.
This is an old idea in a new photograph. Taken from the Saturday on-line edition of Daily Mirror.lk. One hand typing is fun. Not to mention modem-free Internet.