Better late than never. Why it took multiple decades after the establishment of the Universal Service Fund to spend the money to connect the unconnected in India’s North East is the question. It’s not that there was a shortage of money. Bharti Airtel Ltd will set up 2,000 mobile towers across villages and national highways in the North East with the help of government funding, the company said in a press statement on Sunday. The telecom operator has signed an agreement with the department of telecommunications and the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) to provide mobile services in 2,100 villages across Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh over the next 18 months.
While in Manila for an APCICT-UNESCAP expert group meeting (6-7 Dec 2017) to provide input into a course module on data driven smart government, I had the pleasure of also delivering a public lecture on big data for development. The lecture was held on 8 Dec 2017 and was sponsored by the Center for Local and Regional Governance (CLRG) of the University of Philippines’ National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG). The two events and in particular the public lecture was a useful opportunity to interact with diverse stakeholders such as civil servants, government officials from DICT (Philippines’ apex ICT government body and regulator), and university faculty regarding the enhanced use of data in policy making. My slides from the event are HERE.
Following Beniger, I have pointed to the need for control in soft sense as the driver for much of what is going in ICTs these days. But is China understanding control in a hard sense? China Telecom showed off its ability to measure the amount of trash in several garbage cans and detect malfunctioning fire hydrants. Investors and analysts say China’s unabashed fervor for collecting such data, combined with its huge population, could eventually give its artificial intelligence companies an edge over American ones. If Silicon Valley is marked by a libertarian streak, China’s vision offers something of an antithesis, one where tech is meant to reinforce and be guided by the steady hand of the state.
Following Beniger, I have pointed to the need for control in soft sense as the driver for much of what is going in ICTs these days. But is China understanding control in a hard sense? China Telecom showed off its ability to measure the amount of trash in several garbage cans and detect malfunctioning fire hydrants. Investors and analysts say China’s unabashed fervor for collecting such data, combined with its huge population, could eventually give its artificial intelligence companies an edge over American ones. If Silicon Valley is marked by a libertarian streak, China’s vision offers something of an antithesis, one where tech is meant to reinforce and be guided by the steady hand of the state.
Governments want to be seen as doing things. A government that does things is not necessarily better than one that does little or nothing. It is important that the government takes actions that are well considered both in terms of causing the intended results and in terms of not causing unintended harm. The benefits must also be balanced against the costs of the policy action. I examine the proposal to impose a 0.
Governments want to be seen as doing things. A government that does things is not necessarily better than one that does little or nothing. It is important that the government takes actions that are well considered both in terms of causing the intended results and in terms of not causing unintended harm. The benefits must also be balanced against the costs of the policy action. I examine the proposal to impose a 0.
I will be participating in a panel on using technology for governance at the Global Technology Summit on 7-8 December 2017 in Bengaluru. This is an annual event organized by Carnegie India. Problems associated with policy implementation can be potentially solved through partnerships with the private sector and the use of technology. But to gain maximally from such efforts, both policy makers and executors have to realign their vision and understand the technology space for what it is: a vibrant zone of activity, willing to test, experiment, fail, and learn. This fundamental shift in approach from existing governance models presents both huge opportunities and challenges, as this panel probes.
We have been talking about the absence of clear market-exit rules in the countries we work in. The examples keep piling up. Indian operator Aircel may have no other option but to shutter its operations following the collapse of its merger with Reliance Communications (RCom). The operator has debts of around US$3.7B and continues to make losses.
Google’s core competence is search. But the millions now joining the Internet in India and similar countries do not appear to value search as much as the early adopters, according to company research. So Google is offering other products specifically designed for the Indian market, according to NYT: Many of the new Indian users have basic phones, which make it difficult for them to run certain apps or to store big files like videos. Data plans are limited, and despite a telecom price war that has cut the price of a megabyte of data by as much as 97 percent, some customers are unable to afford more data when they run out. Google’s Android software and apps like the Chrome browser, Maps and YouTube are often included with smartphones.
Mytel, the fourth entrant in the Myanmar market, aims to be first. According to them, the question is not whether, but when. The fourth telecom operator, Myanmar National Tele and Communications Co Ltd (Mytel), said its investment has reached to about US$1 billion (1.36 trillion kyat) including the license fee in Myanmar. The telecommunication sector has the highest level of foreign investment.
Celebrations of the birth centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke will take place across the world, including Colombo where he lived and died, this month. Sriganesh Lokanathan will be speaking on Future Data at the Colombo event. Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, our resident SF writer, is also playing a role. I thought of contributing to the celebrations with this eulogy I wrote for the now-defunct Montage back in 2008: Sir Arthur C.
Nothing really new in my opinion, as the kind referral surmised. Asia is now Facebook’s biggest user base. That has given the company unprecedented political sway across the continent, where it inadvertently shapes the media consumption of hundreds of millions of people. The impacts are amplified in the region because vast swathes of relatively new internet users turn to Facebook first as their primary gateway to the rest of the web. Meanwhile, it’s become clear that the attitudes and policies the Menlo Park-based company adopted when it was primarily a U.
I have this unfortunate tendency to recognize my own writing. This is what was in an article about the tower levy in the Sunday Times, 26th of November 2017: This was another reason for the government’s action to reduce the number of towers, he said. The tower levy is unlikely to result in the quick consolidation of antennae to fewer towers because tower sharing is already happening and in most cases, mounting additional antennae on existing towers is not practically possible because of the weight they (or the underlying structures) have been designed to carry. The likely outcome is the shutting down of marginal towers, harming the quality of service in the cities and loss of service in some rural areas. This what I had written under my name in the FT this past Monday, 20th of November 2017.
The Myanmar Constitution is a highly centralizing document. For example, tourism, a subject that is given over to sub-national units to administer in many countries, is assigned solely to the union or central government. But it goes beyond that, assigning authority over hotels and lodging houses solely to the union government. Therefore, there should be no surprise that telecommunications is a union subject according to the Myanmar Constitution. In all countries, with the limited exception of the United States, telecommunications is the responsibility of the highest level of government.