Telephone networks were shut down when Lech Walesa was leading the workers of Gdansk against the Polish government in the early 1980s. King Gyanendra shut down the mobile networks of Nepal a few years back. It is not the first time that telecom networks have been shut down by governments with their backs to the wall. Reflections on the Egyptian shut down should be read in this historical context. The key difference is that Egypt was perhaps at a qualitatively higher level of ICT use when they hit the kill switch.
The NYT reports a possible alliance that appears to be a reaction to the rise of Android. Shares of Nokia, the mobile phone market leader, climbed for a fourth day on Thursday amid speculation that the company may be poised to announce a software alliance with Microsoft designed to revive its struggling U.S. smartphone business. Nokia’s shares have risen more than 4 percent since Monday when an analyst, Adnaan Ahmad of Berenberg Bank in Hamburg, urged the Nokia chief executive — and former Microsoft executive — Stephen Elop, to form an alliance that would put Microsoft’s Phone operating system on Nokia’s advanced smartphones.
Looks like it’s not enough to shut down the Internet. You got to shut down all the mobile networks too. Unedited, raw, anonymous and emotional, Egyptian voices are trickling out through a new service that evades attempts by the authorities to suppress them by cutting Internet services. There is still some cellphone service, so a new social-media link that marries Google, Twitter and SayNow, a voice-based social media platform, gives Egyptians three phone numbers to call and leave a message, which is then posted on the Internet as a recorded Twitter message. The messages are at twitter.
Her Majesty’s Government has enacted the Digital Economy Act last year. It seems to be another episode of Yes (Prime) Minister. Martyn Warwick wrote: The UK’s Digital Economy Act (DEA), passed with unseemly haste, minimal debate and with almost no parliamentary scrutiny in the dying days of a discredited, dispirited and increasingly corrupt Labour government, always was a massive and ill-conceived sledgehammer to crack a very small nut. Sounds quite familiar? Read his full report.
Much of Asia’s Internet traffic transits through Egypt. So far, no collateral damage from Mubarak’s attempt to silence his people. We would also note that there appear to have been no significant disruptions to other countries’ traffic passing through Egypt on fiberoptic cables such as SMW-4 and FLAG FEA. As we’ve noted before, the majority of Internet connectivity between Europe and Asia actually passes through Egypt. The Gulf states, in particular, depend critically on the Egyptian fiberoptic corridor for their connectivity to world markets.
I never expected an economy as advanced as that of Egypt to shut down the Internet. But it did. Not completely, as shown by the Figure in the Wired article that I have taken the excerpt below from. Egypt’s largest ISPs shut off their networks Thursday, making it impossible for traffic to get to websites hosted in Egypt or for Egyptians to use e-mail, Twitter or Facebook. The regime of President Hosni Mubarak also ordered the shut down of mobile phone networks, including one run by the U.
Connecting Asian countries is no longer the carriers’ headache; ensuring seamless connectivity is. In the recent past we have witnessed the emergence of Asia America Gateway and Google’s Unity followed by Southeast Asia Japan cable cables. Series of undersea earthquakes have been damaging the cables and disrupting the intra-Asian as well as inter-Asian voice and data connectivity. Now the Asian carriers have teamed up to roll-out another submarine cable called Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE). It will bypass the earthquake-prone Taiwanese coast.
We had been using the app store, first introduced by Apple, as an easy-to-grasp model that Asia’s telecom operators should emulate. Reduce transaction costs; foster decentralized innovation, we said. We were pleased that Etisalat in Sri Lanka was one of the first to implement the idea. Sadly, it appears that Apple is reintroducing some elements of the discredited walled garden metaphor into the app store. The change may signal a shift for Apple.
As the owner of a G1, I can afford a little smirk about the ascendancy of Android. But really, the bigger story from the perspective of the people at the BOP who are our prime constituency, is the Gartner prediction that this is the cross-over year for those accessing the Internet through mobiles, though of course, one has to interrogate the basis of the prediction. Google’s operating system for cellphones has overtaken Nokia’s Symbian system as the market leader, ending the Finnish company’s long reign, a British research firm said Monday. In the three months through December, manufacturers shipped 33.3 million cellphones running Android, Google’s free, open-source cellphone operating system, up from just 4.
Information networks are the first casualties of anti-tyrant movements. And Egypt is not an exception. Following two articles of telecomtv.com have captured how the aspirants of freedom outsmart the tyrant: As Egypt begins to reinstate mobile services, Mubarak wants his mummy Egypt’s dial-up revolution
LIRNEasia COO, Helani Galpaya, has joined the Editorial Board of the Information Technologies & International Development (ITID) journal. The journal was ranked number one in information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) field, according to a 2010 study by Richard Heeks. We congratulate her and wish her the best in this new position!
In light of what’s going on in North Africa and Western Asia, the liberating potential of social media is very much on the agenda these days. Here is Clayton Shirky on the subject in a debate in Foreign Affairs: It would be impossible to tell the story of Philippine President Joseph Estrada’s 2000 downfall without talking about how texting allowed Filipinos to coordinate at a speed and on a scale not available with other media. Similarly, the supporters of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero used text messaging to coordinate the 2004 ouster of the People’s Party in four days; anticommunist Moldovans used social media in 2009 to turn out 20,000 protesters in just 36 hours; the South Koreans who rallied against beef imports in 2008 took their grievances directly to the public, sharing text, photos, and video online, without needing permission from the state or help from professional media. Chinese anticorruption protesters use the instant-messaging service QQ the same way today. All these actions relied on the power of social media to synchronize the behavior of groups quickly, cheaply, and publicly, in ways that were unavailable as recently as a decade ago.
Sri Lanka celebrates the 63rd anniversary of its Independence from colonial rule on February 4th. The government radio channel SLBC has invited me to participate in a live talk show (Subharati, 0700-0800, Tuesday 1 February 2011) on the achievements that have been made in telecom since Independence and on what course corrections are needed. I plan to talk about the need to stop excessive taxation of the sector (on the part of the government) and understanding and tolerance about wireless towers (on the part of the public). Anything else? Suggestions welcome.
Findings from LIRNEasia‘s multi-country study on the use of ICTs, particularly for more-than-voice, has been cited in the Economist. LIRNEasia‘s CEO, Prof. Rohan Samarajiva, was also cited. The number of users is still small: even among young people in South-East Asia (a tech-friendly lot) only 8% had used “more-than-voice” services, according to a poll by LIRNEasia. But the potential is exciting.
Last research cycle, we did work on payments through near-field communication for busfares. One barrier that was identified was the lack of standard NFC capability in handsets. Looks like the London Olympics may solve that problem, according to BBC. Moving the experience on to the mobile is something consumers want, according to Jason Rees, head of m-payments at Everything Everywhere. “Studies show that people are more likely to forget their wallets than their mobile phones.
President Obama’s state of the union speech yesterday contained a few references to ICTs, but I found the illustration more interesting than the target itself. Within the next five years, we’ll make it possible for businesses to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of all Americans. This isn’t just about — (applause) — this isn’t about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It’s about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world.