Interesting route chosen by Australia: taxpayers will fund most of the costs of building the broadband network and the operators, including the formerly government-owned Telstra, will have to buy capacity on it to provide services. Unlikely to be effective in most countries, but Australia along with the Scandinavian countries was among the most advanced in providing services to most citizens during the period of government ownership. Assuming that the backbone is relatively static technology, this might work as well as having a private entity operate the backbone under regulation. Given it will be an essential facility, there had to be regulation anyway. One does have to ask why none of private bidders met the requirements.
One of the things LIRNEasia tries to do is to evolve low-transaction-costs of making participatory and high-quality decisions. The Internet’s Requests for Comments (RFCs) are gold standard. This is a fascinating account of how they came about. The early R.F.
Prof. Rohan Samarajiva discuss about Reducing roaming rates in South Asian regional in his article Regional Roaming for the Choices column in Lanka Business Online. In 2006, Zain Africa took a step that led to the abolition of roaming charges and made a significant contribution to economic integration of the East African region. They did more for making the East African Community real than several meetings of government leaders and officials combined The Article can be found here
Bangladesh leased line prices have dropped 74%, according to LIRNEasia’s February 2009 benchmarking study. But this reduction has not been passed onto consumers, who are still paying roughly the same price as they did in October 2008. The consumer also receiving less for what he’s paying – our February 2009 broadband quality of service tests showed that speeds experienced by consumers were even worse than 6 months ago. One can only hope that the lowered wholesale prices are passed down to consumers soon. If this doesn’t happen, that at least operators buy enough bandwidth so that speeds experienced by consumers increase.
Sustainability is not an issue for this telecenter. It provides all its service, be it Internet surfing, computer training, library facilities or even typesetting and printing services free of charge, treating them as community services. Thondaman Foundation, a non-profit organization, with a ministerial backing, that intends “to make available to the plantation community the wide advantages of the internet and intranet communication technologies” has set up this centre in the middle of the picturesque Glenore estate at Haputale, to serve a population of 5,000 from the surrounding villages. This is one of the 45 such centres in different estates in the Central, Uva and Sabaragamuva provinces. The white dish, gives a sense of remoteness, but it need not be.
Nokia, the world’s largest mobile terminal maker as well as the WiMax Forum Board member, has put the last nail to the coffin of WiMax. “I don’t see that WiMax is taking hold anywhere in a big way,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s head of sales and manufacturing, at a Nokia launch event yesterday in San Francisco, the Financial Times reports. “I don’t think the future is very promising [for WiMax]. This is a classic example of industry standards clashing, and somebody comes out as the winner and somebody has to lose. Betamax was there for a long time, but VHS dominated the market.
The remarkable uptake of mobile telephony in India is one of the great success stories of recent years and, despite the global economic downturn, the Indian cellphone sector continues to power ahead like there’s no tomorrow. However, according to the upper house of the Indian Parliament, all the mobile chattering is making Indians so impatient and rude that it is considering bringing in legislation that could lead to jail sentences for the most persistent offenders, writes Martyn Warwick.
Multiple dishes is a common sight at many Nenasalas – the ‘telecentres’ set up under the e-Sri Lanka program, funded by the World Bank. Some of them are huge – with diameters little less than 2m. Having not done a design recently, I cannot tell the prices offhand, but I do know they are expensive – one such dish (with equipment) costs few times more than the aggregate cost of the PCs and peripherals in the centre. Why a telecenter is equipped with multiple dishes? The reason is, sadly, poor planning.
Not many are familiar with ‘line rooms’ in Sri Lanka’s estates. Fewer have ever visited one. These are the dwellings of the labourers – descendants of the migrants brought here by British planters from in nearby Madras state in India staring from 1827 to work in estates for meager salaries under austere conditions. Human development conditions have significantly improved since then, but some of them still call a 4 m x 4 m room with a smaller kitchen ‘home’. Meet Parameshvari.
LIRNEasia plans to conduct its next round of Mobile Broadband Quality testing (in Colombo) on April 6-8, 2009. As a rule such tests are conducted unannounced, for obvious reasons, but this time we decided to make an exception by making the process open. We invite anybody who is interested to participate. If you can bring your own laptops/handsets you are free to test using any tool you wish and check the results differ from the outcome of AT-Tester. Four widely used packages – two from Dialog GSM and two from Mobitel will be tested.
Thalakumbura is 17 km off Hali-Ela, in Badulla District, Uva province – one of the least connected in Sri Lanka. Strictly speaking, the village, just 10 km from the famous ‘Bogoda Bridge’, is connected – not to one but three mobile networks. However, the signal strength is not adequate to carry out a continuous conversation except when at the second floor of the three storey temple building. (See photo) So the villagers’ frequent visits to temple may not be with strictly spiritual objectives. Despite this, more than 50% houses now have at least one mobile, confirms the chief incumbent priest.
Denmark boasts the world’s most networked economy, putting it and its Nordic neighbors in a good position to rebound from the current global downturn, the World Economic Forum said on Thursday. Sweden ranked second in the annual WEF Networked Readiness Index. The United States placed third, Singapore fourth and Switzerland fifth among the 134 economies listed in the index. Poor states including Bangladesh, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Timor-Leste and Chad rated worst. Following are some highlights from the index: TOP 10 – Denmark, Sweden, United States, Singapore, Switzerland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Netherlands, Canada BOTTOM 10 – Nicaragua, Cambodia, Nepal, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Timor-Leste, Chad EMERGING ASIA – China ranks 46th; India 54th LATIN AMERICA/CARIBBEAN – Barbados 36th; Chile 39th; Puerto Rico 42nd; Jamaica 53rd; Costa Rica 56th; Brazil 59th SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA – Mauritius 51st; South Africa 52nd NORTHERN AFRICA – Tunisia 38th; Egypt 76th; Morocco 86th; Algeria 109th MIDDLE EAST – Israel 25th; United Arab Emirates 27th; Qatar 29th; Bahrain 37th; Saudi Arabia 40th; Jordan 44th; Oman 50th; Kuwait 57th.
As those who have followed the discussion on universal service fees on this blog know, universal service fees are usually charged from a company (actually the company collects the money from customers and gives it to the government). The payments go to dedicated fund, from which it is disbursed (or not, for the most part) to connect more people to the network. India has one of the highest universal service fees in the world–5% of total revenues. We were hopeful, after years of presenting evidence to the government, that this would be reduced (though our preference is for its complete phasing out). The reduction of the rate from 5% to 3% was almost done, but suddenly it has been halted due to Finance Ministry objections.
In less than five years since its launch Skype has grown to become the world’s largest carrier of international voice telephone traffic with Skype-to Skype minutes alone accounting for eight percent of the total. According to figures from TeleGeography, which tracks international telecommunications traffic statistics, Skype-to-Skype calling totalled an estimated 33 billion minutes in 2008, up from 22 billion in 2007. This figure does not include Skype-Out or Skype-In minutes between Skype and other networks. This traffic is included in VoIP which TeleGeography estimates amounted to 96 billion minutes, some 23 percent of the total. Traditional circuit switched phone calls accounted for the remaining 69 percent.
Much of LIRNEasia’s work is premised on the mobile serving as the pathway to the Internet us by those at the bottom of the pyramid. Our African colleague takes a slightly different position. We will restate our position with supporting evidence from the Teleuse @ BOP research in Cape Town in April. I am sure the differences in opinion will help us improve our analyses. But is this optimism justified?
And now, for something completely different! LIRNEasia research found that mobile phones are increasingly being used for entertainment. But we never thought of this! Wang held his iPhone as if he were holding a sandwich, then blew into the microphone at the bottom of the device. He controlled the vibrato by tilting the phone as he played “the Zelda tune” from a popular fantasy-action video game called The Legend of Zelda.