The National Disaster Warning centre (NDWC) Thailand, has defended its decision not to issue an early tsunami alert after the 8.4-magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island on Wednesday evening. Instead, the NDWC made a broadcast three hours later telling people there was no cause for alarm. Centre chairman Smith Dharmasarojana said yesterday the delay was based on a thorough analysis of the situation. The NDWC decided against a sudden TV broadcast to warn people about a possible tsunami because it predicted the quake, which struck about 6.
It is unlikely that the thin-client vision can be realized in the developing world in the short term unless connectivity and power supplies get a lot better, fast. However, the basic concept may become operationalized through the mobile. For Networks, Thin Is In – New York Times A decade ago, the network computer — also called the thin-client computer — was promoted as a replacement for personal computers and desktop software. Thin clients have no hard drives to store desktop applications, like Microsoft’s Word or Excel, permanently. The leading supporters of the inexpensive, terminal-style machines were Microsoft’s archrivals at Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
BBC News| Technology Swedish company TerraNet has developed the idea using peer-to-peer technology that enables users to speak on its handsets without the need for a mobile phone base station. The technology is designed for remote areas of the countryside or desert where base stations are unfeasible. … The TerraNet technology works using handsets adapted to work as peers that can route data or calls for other phones in the network. The handsets also serve as nodes between other handsets, extending the reach of the entire system. Each handset has an effective range of about one kilometre.
Looks like some people can’t get out of the old habits of trying to regulate everything and anything. The license raj is not quite dead, sadly. Parents are best positioned to make these kinds of decisions, not blowhard Babus. The state should not try to micro-manage people’s lives. Leave the decisions to those best positioned to make them; don’t issue regulations that are impossible to enforce.
Business Telecom Analysts are of the view that even though government has imposed a 10 percent tax on usage over the existing 15 percent value added tax, the mobile companies are unlikely to increase prices. “I don’t think that the four major mobile companies in the country will go for a price hike as there is prospective competition with the arrival of Bharti Airtel by the beginning of the next year. Besides, the industry is growing” said former telecom regulator and industry analyst Professor Rohan Samarajeewa. He further said that this increase in tax might have a negative impact on people’s usage of mobile phones. “If the levy was imposed the way it was planned, the Rs.
The Secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, Mr P. D. Amarasinghe joined LIRNEasia on a visit to Mirissa South, one of the best performing villages in the HazInfo Last-Mile project on 11 September 2007. The visit was organized by the Sarvodaya Community Based Disaster Management Center. The Matara District Sarvodaya Office and the Mirissa Sarvodaya Society hosted us.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) at the Bottom of Pyramid (BOP) level is still not too common. Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala accompanied by a LIRNEasia team made a visit to Mahawilachchiya to have a close look at the first (still emerging) rural BPO there recently. On the same day, The Economic Times of India quoted Prof. Jhunjhunwala saying: ““Like manufacturing grew in China, services and manufacturing should grow in rural India.
BBC News | Technology As part of a UN programme to tackle poverty in rural Africa, 79 villages across 10 African countries will be hooked up to cellular networks. It is hoped that the connections will help improve healthcare and education, as well as boosting the local economy. A 2005 study showed that an increase of 10 mobile phones per 100 people could increase GDP growth by 0.6%. “This is a technology that is remarkably empowering, especially for remote areas where the ability to communicate is vital,” Dr Jeffery Sachs, Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General, told the BBC News website.
On Friday, September 7, 2007, the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights (MDMHR), with the support of LIRNEasia, held a meeting on “The Role of Telecom Operators and Broadcasters in a National Public Warning System” with a six of the eight major telecom operators, as well as several disaster management-related government agencies (NBRO, Irrigation Dept., Meteorology Dept., CCP, etc.), UNDP, and a few technical institutes. Mr.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Tsunami concern for Bay of Bengal Now, Phil Cummins, lead author on the Nature paper and a geologist at Geoscience Australia, believes this is not the case.He said: “I reviewed the geological literature and found the evidence for a lack of tectonic activity along the Myanmar coast was not compelling.” Historical evidence Recent GPS data, he said, suggested that the plate boundary was at sea in this area, hidden below thick layers of sediment.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka has dropped a controversial fixed levy from mobile phones which would have hit the poorest phone users the hardest, but slapped a 7.5 percent tax on calls, telecom minister Rauf Hakeem told parliament Thursday.The government initially proposed a fixed 50 rupee charge which would have hit the poorest or ‘bottom of the pyramid’ users hardest, as well as tripling a usage based charge from 2.5 percent to 7.5 percent.
Just like the late 1990s when 3G was deployed, billions are being spent to deploy systems capable of delivering video to mobile devices. In-Stat, however, reports that “mobile” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as “cellular.” New technologies and business models are now under development that may threaten mobile operators’ ability to profit from video content, the high-tech market research firm says. Read more…
…in the Philippines: The Manila Times REGULATORS are unlikely to support mobile- phone number portability, as the proposal to allow consumers to maintain their existing numbers when shifting from one service provider to another is too costly. “At this time, based on our study the number portability is costly and it’s not financially viable, but technically feasible,” Edgardo Cabarrios, National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) chief for common carriers authorization, told reporters. Under the proposed number portability plan, a subscriber can switch among different service providers while retaining his existing mobile-phone number. This means the subscriber no longer has to buy a new SIM (subscriber identification module) card for every switch. Powered by ScribeFire.
World now has 4b phone lines, says UN | Sep 05, 2007 | telecomasia.net (Associated Press via NewsEdge) Largely because of the mobile phone boom in developing countries, telephone service has quadrupled in the past decade to 4 billion lines worldwide, according to a report from the UN telecommunications agency.
This colloquium was conducted by Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara on a forecasting methodology for mobile penetration for years up to 2012 for Sri Lanka and Pakistan that is being developed. This method employs a simple mathematical process with less computational consumption. The analysis was performed using historical teledensity figures together with T@BOP data and demographic data for each country. A logistic curve was fit for each country’s data after estimating an upper bound for the mobile teledensity. The question was raised as to whether it possible to assume that people at the BOP own more than 1 SIM?
South Asia Broadband Congress and Expo – Panel: Broadband Communication Regulation and Policy in South Asia Powered by ScribeFire. Rohan Samarajiva made a presentation on ‘Performance indicators for effective policy and regulation.’ Presentation slides