What will it take? 2004 December 26th 2005 March 28th 2006 July 17th Three tsunamis within less than two years; and the clueless Indonesian government can’t still get its act together. And faraway India is supposed to have issued a warning when there was no chance of a tsunami hitting India. CYA bureaucrat, I guess. A different error.
By Laura Smith-Spark BBC News Eighteen months after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, hundreds have died after a giant wave struck the Indonesian island of Java. Their deaths have raised questions about the failure of a promised Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system to sound an adequate alert. More than 300 people died and about 140 were reported missing after the tsunami struck Java’s southern coast on Monday. Witnesses have said people had little or no warning to flee the 2m-high wave triggered by an undersea earthquake.
Rohan Samarajiva and Gordon Gow developed a set of standard operational procedures for the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System. The manual titled “Guidelines for HIH“, provides the steps and actions need be taken by the actors and entities of the Sarvodaya’s Last-Mile Hazard Warning System. A 1-day workshop was held today at the Sarvodaya Community Disaster Management Center, “Samana Teta”, to train and introduce the literature in the guidelines to the HIH staff members. Another workshop will be held on July 21, 2006 to introduce the standard operational procedures to the Community First-Responders. The program is a 1 day event to be held at the Sarvodaya Damsak Mandiraya in Moratuwa.
Thursday Evening, 5:00PM Sri Lanka Foundation Institute 100 Independence Square, Colombo This lecture is free and open to the public. The lecture will address all-hazards warning and the use of the Common Alerting Protocol in disaster mitigation. Gordon Gow is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Extensions at the University of Alberta, Canada. Co-author of the book: “Mobile and Wireless Communication: An Introduction” and most current book: “Policymaking for Critical Infrastructure”. Moreover, he is the communication systems consultant for “Evaluating a last-mile Hazard Dissemination: A Research Project” in Sri Lanka.
The recent bomb atacks in Bombay have taken away hundreds of invaluable lives and brought miseray to thousands of families followed by shattering the millions. Nothing can measure or relpace the losses. India is recovering and it will overcome. The terrorists have also failed to inhibit the FDI as BusinessWeek reports. Article available here.
Dilshani Samaraweera & Harsha de Silva The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) and LIRNEasia have partnered to conduct an in-depth baseline sector analysis of the BPO sector in Sri Lanka, to assess its direct, as well as indirect impacts on the country, and to identify opportunities and constraints for its growth. The preliminary findings of the analysis will be presented at the colloquium. The finalized country report will be available publicly and it is envisaged that it would constitute an essential input in the formulation of effective policies that would catalyze sector growth.
Taipei to replace cellular with wifi? 10 July 2006 Source: www.telecoms.com/itmgcontent/tcoms/news/articles/20017362396.html Taipei’s City Government has launched a voice over wifi trial it believes could lead to 200,000 using the technology by year end.
Since the last thread was getting unwieldy in size it has been shut. Please continue the discussion here.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO The above column presents evidence to the effect that: “Given enough time and competition, reformed infrastructure does reduce disparities among regions. The reforms that started to have effect in the mid 1990s, with the licensing of the fourth mobile operator and the two fixed entrants in 1995-96, the partial privatization and managerial reform of Sri Lanka Telecom in 1997, and improvements in regulation starting from 1998, did result in allowing the rural people of this country greater access to telecom services. Of course, it must be noted that the dazzling growth in the Northern Province (Jaffna and Vavuniya districts) was only made possible by the cease fire agreement of 2002, the lifting of the nonsensical ban on mobile telephony in conflict areas, and the courageous decision by Dialog Telekom to provide service in that region within three weeks of the signing of the CFA.”
The World Information Society Report 2006 showcasing the results from the Digital Opportunity Index applied to 180 countries was released this week by the ITU. The DOI evaluates the opportunity, infrastructure and utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) worldwide. The report can be downloaded here. Amongst the countries that LIRNEasia works in, the biggest gainers in the DOI ranking are India and Indonesia. In India, digital opportunity nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005.
This is the text of a talk that I am giving on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka in Belihuloya on the 7th of July 2006. A excerpt is given below: The world economy is becoming more knowledge intensive and communication dependent. Leaving aside the question of cause and effect, clearly the Internet and the old things that can be done better through it and the new things that can be done for the first time through it are integrally connected to the effective functioning in the world economy. It is not that we need the Internet to mine the gems this province is famous for; but that it is likely that those gems will fetch a better price if we use the Internet to market them worldwide. So this is the essence of the age of the Internet: the lowering of time and space barriers to those who have access to its full potential; the further marginalization of those without that access.
June 21 (Bloomberg) — Vonage Holdings Corp. and other providers of Internet-based telephone service must help subsidize services in rural and low-income areas, U.S. regulators said. A rule adopted today by the Federal Communications Commission requires providers of Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, service to contribute 10.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka’s biggest mobile-phone operator Dialog Telekom Thursday slashed outgoing call charges by as much as 50 percent as the firm stepped up its expansion drive in the country. Call charges within the network from 11.00 pm to 6.00 am will go down by 50 percent to 2.00 rupees, while rates for outgoing peak calls have been cut by an average 30 percent, officials said.
BBC News | Taipei to embrace net telephones The city of Taipei, in Taiwan, could have 200,000 people making phone calls using wi-fi by the end of 2006. Ten companies are pushing a “Taipei Easy Call” initiative which involves mobiles which can switch between calls using wi-fi and the phone network. “If this is successful, then the model could be copied in cities elsewhere in the world,” said Daniel Wongg, of the Taipei Computer Association. The wi-fi mobiles provide a cheaper alternative to mobile phone calls.
BBC NEWS | Business | EU plans crackdown on mobile fees “A plan to regulate mobile phone charges for calls made abroad will shortly be published by the European Commission, despite intense opposition. The industry is concerned that the proposals go too far, and even within the commission itself there are doubts. At present, most users pay far more to make mobile calls when they are abroad than they do in their home country. This is because service providers have to pay large fees for access to one another’s networks.” Not the highest priority for regulators in emerging Asia.
By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News In the aftermath of the 7 July bombings, people were understandably keen to talk on their mobile phones. Londoners wanted to assure friends, relatives and colleagues that they were OK; keep up to date with the latest news or find out whether anyone they knew had been caught up in any of the four explosions. Yet, while speaking on a mobile phone is a routine part of modern life, for a crucial eight hours on 7 July it became difficult, and for many, impossible. In some areas of London, the sheer number of people wanting to make phone calls was enough to bring the mobile networks to their knees.