Martin Cooper, a researcher in Motorola, invented the handheld cellular mobile phone. He also made the first call using a handheld cell phone prototype on April 3, 1973, in front of reporters and passers-by on a New York City street. It landed Motorola’s mobile unit on the July 1973 cover of Popular Science magazine, which called it a ”new type of computerized, walkie-talkie-size portable.” Well, cordless phones didn’t even exist on those days although non-cellular car phones had been used since the late 1950’s. Nevertheless, we know pretty well rest of the story, as mobile is now the DNA of our daily life.
Nuwan Waidyanatha’s RTBP project at LIRNEasia examines how mobiles can be used to communicate epidemiological information from the field for analysis through data mining. Here, the mobile can be used to directly gather data from patients. MICROSCOPES are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive. Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.
Does Facebook make you less social? Not necessarily. Not if you’re American, according to a NYT report. Hundreds of daily updates come from friends on Facebook and Twitter, but do people actually feel closer to each other? It turns out the size of the average American’s social circle is smaller today than 20 years ago, as measured by the number of self-reported confidants in a person’s life.
Findings from LIRNEasia’s latest round of broadband quality of service experience (QoSE) testing has been published in Chennai’s Financial Chronicle and The Indian Express, two leading print newspapers in India. Read the two of the articles here and here. There is disparity in the advertised broadband speed and the actual speed, according to the findings of a research project jointly carried out by Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies Asia (LIRNEasia), TeNeT Group of the IIT Madras. Excerpt below: “There is disparity in the advertised broadband speed and the actual speed, according to the findings of a research project jointly carried out by Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies Asia (LIRNEasia), TeNeT Group of the IIT Madras.There is disparity in the advertised broadband speed and the actual speed, according to the findings of a research project jointly carried out by Learning Initiative on Reforms for Network Economies Asia (LIRNEasia), TeNeT Group of the IIT Madras.
Think twice before you make fun out of them. Mr. Karzai may have flunked in the exam of a “credible” election. But he has passed with distinction while shaping the future of his country’s connectivity. Afghanistan is leasing out 500 MHz of duplex Ku-band satellite frequency for 15 years.
Nobody has asked them to do it. Yet they have voluntarily disclosed respective assets and wealth. Moreover, all the disclosures have been posted in the web. I am talking about the judges of India’s Supreme Court. It’s a remarkable step to promote transparency and boost confidence in the country’s judicial system.
Tectonic shift rocks India’s mobile market as Tata has introduced the country’s first per-second pulse followed by launching a pay-per-call pricing model. The market had to follow although ARPU margins eroded. Welcome to the new world order of BOP. Ovum said: The Indian mobile market continues to experience high subscriber growth. With urban markets already approaching saturation, most of the new subscribers are coming from highly price-sensitive rural and low-income urban segments.
Some of our best friends are at in the Association for Progressive Communication (APC), but still warms our hearts when they quote our writing, especially when we go out of our way to wave the red flag before those who still believe in the benevolent state. In a submission to the UN Group on the Information Society, they frankly debate the wisdom of continuing with universal service funds, among other things, quoting us: Rohan Samarajiva of LIRNEasia suggests in a recent paper that explores the success of the ‘budget telecom network model’ in South Asia that ‘the idea of making universal service transparent by creating universal service funds …was a good idea in its time ..but experience suggests that it is an idea that has run its course’. He identifies two problems: Billions of dollars of universal levies lie unspent in government accounts.
According to a Pakistan telecom website, one man found that while he had only 2 SIMs from Mobilink the database showed 57! There is more. With the successful on going SIM Information System 668 campaign, official sources at PTA have revealed that the cellular phone companies have blocked 12.9 million SIMs in two weeks of launch, reported Daily News. Data of around 0.
All over the world, postal services are hemorrhaging red ink. They are being done in by the phone and the Internet. Yet their salvation is also the phone and the Internet. As commerce becomes e commerce, there is a high demand for reliable delivery services. In countries ranging from Korea to Sri Lanka the postal service is NOT reliable.
Incumbents and regulators – from USA to Bangladesh – wanted to block it. They have failed miserably as VoIP has sequentially demolished the old guards’ fortresses. Once untouchable is now the undisputed ruler of the telecoms world. What’s its size? The VoIP services market generated a whopping US$20.
The Malaysian regulator has fined in excess of US$ 1.6 million to three WiMax operators for defaulting on rollout obligation. MCMC has forfeited respective Bank Guarantee of YTL e-Solutions ($557,185), AsiaSpace ($498,534) and REDtone International ($586,510) for their failure to meet the 25% population coverage by the end of March. And that ends the rhetoric of leapfrogging with rapid broadband deployment using WiMax in Malaysia. The government has issued four WiMax licenses in early 2007 among the non-telecoms entities.
You can find directions on mobile phones, but I guess this makes it smoother. For it to work in countries like ours we need more better mapping. . . .
The Negroponte Switch sees all that was wireless becoming wired. That means no spectrum for broadcasters. Next best is less spectrum. The digital dividend. The 700 MHz Band.
Findings from LIRNEasia’s study on the telecom regulatory environment in emerging Asia has been published in the Bangkok Post, one of Thailand’s leading print media. The article gives a detailed account of proceedings from a recently concluded seminar, held in Bangkok, to disseminate the findings. Thailand’s telecommunications sector needs greater regulatory fairness as well as clarity in policy from the government on the future of former state enterprises CAT and ToT if Thailand is to secure the huge investment needed for 3G and data services moving into the future. LIRNEasia…conducted a study of the perceptions towards the regulators in eight emerging Asian economies in the second half of 2008 and representatives from the regulator NTC, ToT, the GSM Association and think-tank TDRI were invited to the report’s presentation. The event was co-hosted by LIRNE Asia, and was hosted by Chulalongkorn University’s Dr Pirongrong Ramasoota, an activist who set the tone of the event by noting that today Thailand is in competition with India to be the last of the eight Asian countries to attain 3G.
Sarojini Mahajan, a 15 year-old schoolgirl in New Delhi, has come up with the idea of using the non-stop power of the beating of the human heart and turning it into an electric current powerful enough to re-charge a mobile phone. Now scientists at Stanford University in the US are developing a prototype. Sarojini got the idea from the “self-winding” and so-called “kinetic” wrist watches that are widely advertised in India and other parts of the world. She thought, If we can have watches that run on the power generated by the human pulse, then why not have a mobile phone charger working on the same principles? The teenager discussed this idea with her science teacher and he forwarded it to India’s National Innovation Foundation (NIF).