Orwellian drama continues – with some mobile operators taking it to a level far beyond the expectations of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka with the two magic words ‘National Security’ wining everyone’s blind approval. Now Mobitel wants a photograph of every subscriber – either to register or re-register. (Wasn’t it irresponsible for Mobitel in the first place to provide a connection to somebody not registered with them? – beats us!) They have shutterbugs ready for tasks at their outlets.
It is evident from Mobile Benchmarks south asia that Sri Lanka has low mobile prices, but not the lowest. Looks like the Sri Lankan operators are working on changing that. The OECD methodology that is the basis for the mobile benchmarking by LIRNEasia treats a minute as a minute, while the proposed pricing scheme differentiates. We will start working on a solution. The approach used by the operator makes sense within the budget telecom network business model that we are beginning to describe.
Two thousand and five hundred years ago, Gautama Buddha correlated tax collectors to bees. A righteous ruler, said he, taking the Liccavis as an example, collects tax without making it a burden on people, in the same was a bee collects honey from a flower (without damaging it). Such wise words were not always heeded. Four new levies, reported Financial Times today, will come into force this month under the Environmental Conservation Levy Act No. 8 of 2008.
Getting the issue of lowering intra-SAARC call charges into the agenda of SAARC was something we were told we could not do. We were too late to go through the technical committees, we were told. We appear to have succeeded not only in getting it into the agenda, but into the SAARC Chairman’s speech! The full text of the SAARC Chairman’s speech and the declaration are now available. Rather unusually, tariff proposal is mentioned as high as in paragraph 6 in a 41 paragraph declaration.
Someone called me to say that the President of Sri Lanka had spoken about lowering telecom tariffs within the SAARC region. So searched the web. Got no reference to that statement, but got this instead. Editorial | Online edition of Daily News – Lakehouse Newspapers Both countries should also contemplate providing cheaper telephone calls for their citizens between the two countries. We are not aware of the exact technical details but the authorities should consider the possibility of laying a dedicated submarine telecom cable along with the proposed power line.
In one of the two websites it runs, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) gives its mission statement – which is cut and pasted below: “To create the optimum conditions for the telecommunications industry in Sri Lanka by serving the public interest in terms of quality, choice and value for money; the service providers with equitable access to spectrum and other common resources; and the nation in its drive for socio-economic advancement through a skilled and ethical workforce.” We are surprised to see pornography not mentioned – considering the latest task TRCSL has been assigned – blocking porno. Lankadeepa reports only about blocking pornographic movies and video clips, not images. Assumed strict enforcement, this can lead to the ban of not just YouTube but Gmail and Yahoomail also, because pornography videos can easily be distributed via e-mail. For the record, except for few countries including Cuba and North Korea, which had restricted Internet access in full (not just porno sites) no country in general blocks porno sites.
The real-time biosurveillance program is a pilot on the broader concepts of mobile health data surveillance for unusual patterns. Mobile Health is best defined by Krishnan Ganapathy’s exclusive published on Mobileactive. A partner meeting will take place at the Indian Institute of Technology Rural Technology and Business Incubator on Monday (04-Aug-2008) to discuss the way forward on the multi partner m-Health project. This initial meeting follows the e-India event on e-Health in Delhi where stakeholders are coming together to discuss lessons on similar action research. The partner planning meet program will bring together the project partners and give everyone the opportunity to hear each other out in relations to their roles and responsibilities.
In one of the most significant legal rulings in the tech industry this year, a Superior Court judge in California has ruled that the practice of charging consumers a fee for ending their cell phone contract early is illegal and violates state law. The preliminary, tentative judgment orders Sprint Nextel to pay customers $18.2 million in reimbursements and, more importantly, orders Sprint to stop trying to collect another $54.7 million from California customers (some 2 million customers total) who have canceled their contracts but refused or failed to pay the termination fee. While an appeal is inevitable, the ruling could have massive fallout throughout the industry.
An alliance between Grameen Foundation, Indonesia’s Bakrie Telecom and Qualcomm has rolled out a Village Phone Programme in rural Indonesia, which allows renting the use of the phone on a per-call basis in rural villages where telecom services did not previously exist. “Microfinance helps to put technology within financial reach of the poor and we are pleased to work with Qualcomm and Bakrie Telecom to help Indonesia’s rural microentrepreneurs build self-sustaining businesses that also enhance the socio-economic development of their wider communities,” said Alex Counts, president and CEO of Grameen Foundation. Read more.
A few days ago, we learned that Major General Shahzada Alam Malik (Retd.) had stepped down from the leadership of the Pakistan Telecom Authority. We believe that his seven-year tenure at the helm of the PTA merits an assessment. It begins thus: Pakistan’s recent telecom developments constitute a South Asian success story. From two million in 2002, the number of active mobile SIMs increased to 79 million by end 2007.
This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.
Globally, 2.1 billion wireless broadband customers will generate US$784 billion in service revenue by 2015, said a latest report of UK’s consulting outfit Analysys Mason. HSPA will support 88% of all wireless broadband consumers at the end of 2008, and its importance will continue. “Despite the increasing availability of LTE and WiMAX, HSPA and HSPA+ will still support 54% of wireless broadband users by the end of 2015,” said the report’s co-author Dr Mark Heath. WiMAX will fail to achieve a significant share of the rapidly developing wireless broadband market, contributing only 2% of global revenue.
Sri Lanka has been enmeshed in conflict for the past 30 years, with just a brief respite during the ceasefire of 2002-05. The LIRNEasia study that is referred to in this post, was conducted in the government controlled areas of the Jaffna district just before the ceasefire ended, de facto. The war still goes on; the phone lines keep being switched off; people are being asked to carry receipts for their SIMs in addition to identity papers. Perhaps this discussion can be taken forward with some good outcomes? ICT infrastructure in conflict zones | L I R N E .
Very US-centric and so pre-knowledge economy, but the main argument is still valid. We need to free up spectrum in a major way. There no need to take cues from the FCC. The reforms can start right here in Asia. Op-Ed Contributor – Why Bandwidth Is the Oil of the Information Economy – Op-Ed – NYTimes.
Risk and the perception of risk are fascinating issues, especially because perception and reality do not always mesh. Here are some links for those who ask about mobile phones causing brain cancer. Findings – 10 Things to Scratch From Your Worry List – NYTimes.com 4. Carcinogenic cellphones.
To an ordinary observer the image on left looks like some monkeys but to Nuwan Waidyanatha that is his complex Early Warning System. Monkeys act as sensors and detectors of hazards (aka a leopard) to deer – who would take immediate action for mass evacuation. Again the image on top right look likes a damper to any engineering student, but to Nuwan that is mass evacuation. The figure below might explain it better with the blue line representing a quick but rough evacuation and the red line a smoother one. What does this figure has to do with Broadband QoS?