Kenya’s Safaricom has lost US$6.2 million revenues due to the violence following the recent election. The company has also faced increased costs, especially after it had to hire helicopters to ship prepay airtime vouchers to rural areas where road transport is unsafe. Many independent airtime resellers have also closed their stores during the unrest, further hampering sales. Read more.
In his first major speech since taking control of Yahoo last June, Mr. Yang announced the launch of a new upgraded mobile home page for cellphones, an updated version of its mobile portal Yahoo Go as well as new software tools to help outside developers design applications and widgets to work in conjunction with Yahoo’s mobile offerings. Yahoo also announced new partnerships with News Corp.’s MySpace, eBay Inc. and Viacom’s MTV network, which will see those companies use Yahoo’s development tools to create mobile applications users can access through Yahoo.
On December 31, 2007, DataQuest India published an article entitled “Disaster Alert” that featured LIRNEasia‘s “Evaluating Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) project.
Boston-Power says that it is coming up with a new notebook battery named Sonata. The company claims it is safer, lasts longer and can be charged faster. Although the Sonata will not offer greater energy capacity per use–with a four-hour run time, its performance will be average for the market–the company hopes that the battery’s three-year life span, innovative safeguards, and ability to recharge quickly will help it gain a foothold in the battery market. As opposed to existing notebook batteries, which can take an hour to recharge to 80 percent capacity, the Sonata can reach that same level in just 30 minutes, according to Boston-Power. And whereas current batteries degrade very quickly, permanently losing up to 50 percent of their capacity within months, the Sonata retains up to 80 percent of its capacity over three years.
Greeting people by text message (SMS) has become a general behavior. Cellular mobile networks are tolerant to processing such messages on birthdays, weddings and other personal events of their customers. But the networks get chocked when gigantic wave of messages hit the airwaves. New Year is one such event when the mobile phone networks continue processing billions of messages for quite a while. But all networks are not necessarily capable of handing the traffic of text even in the developed economies.
When Chief Technology Officer of one laptop per child (OLPC) anounced quitting on the New Year’s Eve – future of this project faced question. Four days later OLPC’s one of the major technology partner, Intel, also walked out of this charity. And now the crisis deepens furthermore.
Consumers across Asia are the most prolific users of mobile messaging and are forecast to further drive message volume in 2008, a research firm said on Thursday. Nearly 1.5 trillion mobile messages were sent in the Asia-Pacific region over the past 12 months, accounting for 78.9 per cent of all SMS traffic globally last year, said a Gartner’s report. Nearly 2.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday (Jan 3) recommended open bidding process for granting licences for mobile television service in the country. Allocation of spectrum to mobile TV licensees should be automatic for successful bidders and should not require any further selection process. The FDI limit for mobile television service providers should be 74 per cent, it said.Releasing its recommendations on issues relating of mobile TV service here, TRAI said there were two routes for providing the services — one by using the telecom network with spectrum already allotted, and the other using the broadcasting method — and both can be used for launching the service. Telecom operators, having the Unified Access Services License (UASL) or the Cellular Mobile Telephony Service (CMTS) License, will not require any further licence or permission for offering mobile TV services on their own network using spectrum already allotted to them.
CORDIS : News Funded by the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), the DEWS project will aim to strengthen early warning capacities in the region by building an open and interoperable tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean. The system to detect tsunamis will be based on an open sensor platform and integrated sensor systems for earthquake (seismic), sea level (tide gauge, buoys) and ground displacement (GPS land stations) monitoring. These sensor systems will be one of the most important innovations in the project as they will be responsible for sending reliable data from the seafloor to the warning centre. Powered by ScribeFire.
YANGON (Reuters) – Without warning, Myanmar’s military government has ordered a massive 166-fold rise in the annual satellite television levy in an apparent attempt to stop people watching dissident and international news broadcasts. With no word in state media of any license fee increases, the first satellite dish owners knew of the hike was when they went to pay the 6,000 kyat levy, only to be told it was now 1 million kyat ($780), three times the average citizen’s yearly income. An official at Myanmar Post and Telecom confirmed the increase on Wednesday, but was at a loss to explain it. “It’s not our decision,” the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. “We were just ordered by the higher authorities.
According to feedback from the recent broadband survey 13% of subscribers indicated that their broadband service is better than expected. 46% of respondents said that the service performs exactly as expected while 38% of users said that their service performed worse than expected. 35% of subscribers indicated that they are actively looking for a new broadband service, driving home the fact that there is a large portion of the broadband community who are looking elsewhere for something better. Read the full story here
Responding to complaints from harassed consumers who are offered “broadband” at speeds much slower than those stipulated by the government, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has taken a tough call. It has written to operators saying they can no longer advertise broadband services that say they offer “up to” 256 kbps speeds, thereby circumventing the rules by offering services at far lower speeds Instead, Trai has directed all operators to clearly mention the minimum guaranteed download speeds in various packages. The regulator said operators have promised to abide by the new direction. Meanwhile, the regulator has also mooted a discussion paper, which was released today, on whether the present level of 256 kbps defined as the minimum speed for a broadband connection should be raised to bring it on a par with international standards. The paper said in countries like France and Singapore, broadband is defined as a minimum speed of 512 kbps.
Click on the links to see the full articles covering LIRNEasia’s book, ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia: Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks. ‘BSNL’s monopoly over infrastructure a hindrance to growth’ – Financial Express (India) Rural connectivity is now the focus of every telecommunication player in the country. Almost all stakeholders, from handset manufacturers to service providers, believe that the next wave of growth is in the rural areas.”However, India’s roll out (of telecom services) in rural areas has been slow. BSNL has the backbone infrastructure but is not yet ready to share it with private players,” he added.
Sri Lanka News | Sundayobserver.lk Three years after the tsunami, a natural disaster satellite alert system is now ready to help warn last-mile rural villages on natural disaster emergencies. The Addressable Radio for Emergency Alert (AREA) is a digital satellite device that uses simple radio technology, delivering messages to save lives. LIRNEasia (Learning Initiatives on Reforms for Network Economics) is a research-based organization that has collaborated with World-Space USA. They have field-tested the AREA device in Brahamawatte – Balapitiya (Galle District) and villages, like Panama in Ampara.
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Swami is an employee of My Mobile store in Noida can tell how the mobile business at his store has been dwindling in one of the most popular markets in New Delhi region for mobile phones and its accessories. Before January, My Mobile would sell goods worth about Rs 2.5 lakh on any given Sunday but sales started dipping about four to five months ago and the Sunday before Christmas, which should have been a busy period, with sales being down in the range of Rs1 lakh. “Our future is in danger,” Swami says pointing to a Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications’ service centre that doubles as mobile phone retail store located bang opposite My Mobile outlet. The Sony store opened a year ago.