The public lecture entitled, ‘From euphoria to pragmatism: The experience and the potentials of eHealth in Asia’ was held at The Sri Lanka Medical Association on 14 September 2010. The lecture was on eHealth, which is being adapted widely, from primary to tertiary healthcare in many countries.. Especially, using more appropriate and relevant technologies, such as mobile technologies in tele-health and health informatics. Dr.
Less than 1% broadband penetration is embarrassing for one of the BRICs, which is also a nuclear power and the world’s largest democracy too. India plugs only 200,000 new broadband connections every month while its monthly mobile intake is 15~18 million. Such contrast is self-defeating. That’s why TRAI has decided to revisit its outdated broadband policy. Ovum comments on the outcome of this consultation.
An organization called RIS (Research and Information System for Developing Countries) invited me to speak at a workshop celebrating 25 years of SAARC. I see nothing to celebrate, but came nevertheless because there is value in cross-fertilization and because it was time to apply some more pressure on changing the absurd international calling prices and roaming charges in the region. It was like being the new kid in the class. These people had been meeting each other for the past 25 years or more and knew each other well. Many warm and fuzzy things were said about what a wonderful thing regional cooperation was.
The shoe is yet to drop in terms of South-Asia-like retail prices, but Bharti is beginning to move out its famed outsourcing model to Africa. The story emphasizes IBM, but one has to be understanding of the US-centric NYT. I.B.M.
APAC is home to both some of the fastest and slowest average broadband speeds in the world, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots threatens to widen. TelecomAsia reports.
Researchers at Northwestern University have found that broadband prices in America have remained nearly stagnant since 2004. Duopoly in most urban markets is blamed for the lack of incentive to lower prices. It has also generated an argument: Why Isn’t the Price of Broadband Obeying Moore’s Law?
On the eve of Nuwan Waidyanatha’s big dissemination event in Colombo, it was nice to see very high profile coverage for his work in one of India’s leading newspapers, the Hindu: The detection of spread of respiratory tract infection in conjunction with a viral fever in Sri Lanka that caught the attention of the health departments and escalating diarrhoea cases in Tamil Nadu were detected in a matter of a day after the onset of the outbreaks. Through alert systems in the pilot project, such situations were communicated to the local community and health departments, who then publicised preventive measures and treatment. Potentially, the RTBP reduces the time to identify a potential disease outbreak to just a day.
Fiber put in place for smart grid applications is making possible Gigabyte speed broadband, according to NYT. The high-speed Internet service is piggybacked on top of the utility’s smart-grid network, which was the reason for stringing the fiber optic cable to homes in the first place. Smart grids are advanced electrical networks that can improve energy efficiency, enable variable pricing based on the time of day, and reduce disruptions. They require digital networks for two-way communications, and computerized meters in homes. EPB had already begun a smart-grid program before the Obama administration included billions for grants for smart-grid projects in the economic stimulus program in 2009.
Rohan refers to Ryanair while discussing budget telecoms. CEO of this Irish aviation maverick wants to gain more altitude at lesser cost. Read more.
For the perpetually connected, the experience of being unconnected is salutary; but not pleasant. The Sinharaja Forest Reserve is a world heritage site about three hours driving distance from Colombo. I spent two days there and unexpectedly found myself unconnected, except for a single location in the hotel that allowed the sending and receiving of texts if the phone was held high! It is not that the place is completely disconnected from electronic networks. I paid for the hotel using a credit card, which was processed through a fixed line.
A significant contribution to the m-money debate has been made by Chanuka Wattegama, until last month LIRNEasia’s Senior Research Manager and the person responsible for managing the Mobile 2.0 research module. The tightly argued piece contains many references to LIRNEasia work and is a perfect example of the success of LIRNEasia’s catalytic role. Worth reading in full by anyone interested in the subject. Ours is an anxious society that expects the protection of every electronic money transfer by the financial regulator.
The Indian farmers are exploiting mobile services and becoming more efficient. Weather forecasts and other information – critical to their livelihood – are being delivered through 2G networks. Thanks to the Indian operators’ innovative endeavor to tap the potentials at BOP. Daily Star reports quoting AFP. Extremely cheap connection (US$0.
Research ICT Africa (RIA) has recently published a policy paper entitled, ‘Gender Assessment of ICT Access and Usage in Africa‘, based on findings from a nationally-representative household and individual-level survey of ICT use in 17 African countries. The full paper can be downloaded here. LIRNEasia Senior Research Manager, Ayesha Zainudeen, was selected to review the paper; her written assessment is available here. An excerpt of the executive summary of the paper follows: What is clear from the Research ICT Africa (RIA) Household and Individual Access and Usage Survey is that the diffusion of ICT is highly uneven concentrating in urban areas and leaving some rural areas almost untouched. Access to these technologies is constrained by income as is usage, and as they become more complex, they are increasingly constrained by literacy and education.
Something that has been going on South Asia (efficiently or not) is now going to happen in China too, according to the NYT. The Chinese government on Wednesday began to require cellphone users to furnish identification when buying SIM cards, a move officials cast as an effort to rein in burgeoning cellphone spam, pornography and fraud schemes. The requirement, which has been in the works for years, is not unlike rules in many developed nations that ask users to present credit card data or other proof of identification to buy cellphone numbers. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that about 40 percent of China’s 800 million cellphone users were currently unidentified. Those users will be ordered to furnish identification by 2013 or lose their service, according to The Global Times, a state-run newspaper.
In 2006, when I expressed skepticism about government claims that Jaffna was getting a fiber optic network in the middle of the war, I was assailed. Unless SLT has built a second cable in 2009, in addition to the one they built in 2006, I was right. This would be the right time for Mr N.P. Perera, or whoever he was, to apologize.
A month or so back, I wrote the following Voice calls will be “free” in the future. The quotation marks signify that nothing is really free. In the natural evolution of the industry, there will come a time when customers will pay for connectivity in various forms, either by data volumes or time. Voice will simply be one among many applications they can use as part of this connectivity bundle. I didn’t think the future would come so soon.