Seitkazy Matayev, chairman of Kazakhstan’s journalists’ union, says the authorities have realised they made a mistake five years ago when they started to computerise all the country’s schools and to provide them with internet access. They now worry about a new generation of outspoken internet users. However, Mr Matayev remains defiantly hopeful they cannot be effectively silenced: “The only way to control the internet in Kazakhstan is to turn off the electricity in the whole country.”
Infosys Technologies chairman and chief mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy has declined to be the IT advisor to the Sri Lankan government, the IT bellwether said Wednesday. In a letter to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Murthy said he had decided to withdraw from being the advisor due to personal reasons. “I thank you for the courtesy shown to me during my recent visit to Sri Lanka.
There was a time when I worked a lot on privacy, especially privacy issues surrounding transaction-based information (TGI). The last piece of that line of research received good reviews , the quote below being an example. The next step should have been a book; I chose to come to Sri Lanka to set up the Telecom Regulatory Commission instead. Privacy was a fast moving field at that time. I knew it would be too late to get into it, after the diversion in Sri Lanka.
Narayana Murthy, the ‘IT Guru’ is in Colombo. ‘Entrepreneurship and IT for National Integration: A Challenge for Sri Lanka’ was his topic addressing Sri Lankan software industry representatives, on Saturday. The well attended event was organized by the three month old Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) that has ambitious plans to follow elder brother, NASSCOM. Murthy talked for 40 minutes, and delivered the gems, for anybody to pick. Develop infrastructure; Build HR or import if not enough; Encourage foreign investment; Avoid fat government; Give confidence to private sector; Nurture venture capitalists: Change labour laws; Provide equal opportunities for both genders; Ensure peace, political stability and correct fiscal environment because they are the key to the growth of IT and ITES industries and don’t be scared to innovate.
Mr Narayana Murthy of Infosys has always been a straight-talker and a clear thinker. The Sri Lanka President deserves congratulations on picking him as his advisor. He will give good advice. We hope the President will take the advice. Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday appointed N R Narayana Murthy, chairman of India’s Infosys Technologies, as his international advisor on information technology, the president’s office said.
In the course of her research on India’s telecom policy and regulatory environment, LIRNEasia Senior Research Fellow Payal Malik calculated the HHIs for different circles in India and found them to be very low. Drawing on other TRE research and the literature, she has made a comparative assessment of the level of competition in India and a prognostication on the direction of mobile tariffs in an interview with the Economic Times. Lirneasia’s senior research fellow Payal Malik had published the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) – the index for market concentration – in the telecom markets of South Asian countries, last year. Lower the HHI, higher the competitiveness in a market. India’s turned out to be the lowest at 2000, as compared to Indonesia’s 3400 and Thailand’s 3900.
Satellites were the darlings of the development set back when I was in grad school in the 1980s. When I returned to Sri Lanka and started working at the Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies, one of my assignments was to get Sri Lanka connected to the Internet via satellite. It didn’t, and I left. As a result, I’ve acquired quite a bit of knowledge on satellites along the way.
When I ceased to proffer policy advice to the government of Bangladesh some time back, I predicted that the International Long Distance Telecommunication Services Policy would fail, and that bypass would not be eradicated. Seeing a report that massive bypass was reemerging after a quiet period following arrests and confiscations, I wrote an oped in the Daily Star urging a reworking of the policy. Here is an excerpt: In 2007 when the government-appointed committee formulating the international Long Distance Telecommunication Services (ILTDS) Policy sought my advice, I told them that the larger policy objectives would be best served by liberalising international gateways. Liberalisation would enhance the competitiveness of Bangladesh’s export industries and create conditions for the efflorescence of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, thereby generating white-collar jobs for educated youth. It would eradicate the cancer of black money generated from the bypass business that was corroding the country’s body politic.
Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2013, increasing 66 times between 2008 and 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow from 1 petabyte per month to 1 exabyte per month in half the time it took fixed data traffic to do so. In the 7 years from 2005 to 2012, mobile data traffic will have increased a thousand-fold. The Internet grew from 1 petabyte per month to 1 exabyte per month in 14 years.
Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo said the fires had caused “substantial damage” to exchanges, mobile base stations and cabling. He said Telstra had lost communications to five exchanges and estimated that 18 base stations were down, disabling “thousands of phone lines and broadband internet connections.” Up to 200 Telstra employees are working to repair the damage and restore services in Victoria, as well as flood-ravaged Queensland in northern Australia. Staff were working closely with emergency service crews to ensure they retain connectivity, Telstra said. Rival Optus has restored a number of mobile sites, but 16 Victorian sites were still down, and other sites are affected by power loss.
The story is based on US data, but it is still grist for the mill as we think about how the mobile and Internet will change the mediasphere in emerging Asia. We are so smitten with screens that we often can’t bear to choose one over another: 31 percent of Internet use occurs while we’re in front of a TV set. We are also taking an interest in watching video on our phones: 100 million handsets are video-capable.
Today, Lanka Bell (the cable partner of Reliance through Flag), announced that calls to India would henceforth cost LKR 0.07 a minute, among the lowest IDD rates offered. They have not got around to updating their website, but newspaper ads should count for something. What is causing downward pressure on international call rates to India? Just a short time back, Dialog cut prices to India.
In conventional thinking, complex industries with oligopoly characteristsics such as telecom require regulation by specialized agencies. Interconnection must be ensured; spectrum must be managed, etc. In addition, information asymmetries between operators and customers necessitate a degree of regulation of matters such as quality of service, billing accuracy and truth in advertising. For example, the Telecom Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka has had a consumer relation unit since 1999. However, many regulators do not perform their functions satisfactorily.
Israel’s blockade has perforated the Egypt-Gaza border with countless tunnels. Tel Aviv’s first world military might has failed to stop such diggings. People’s power overpowers firepower. Similarly, the illegal trading of international phone calls is, predictably, flourishing again in Bangladesh, according to a press report. Thanks to the ILDTS policy which has sprouted three IGW and three ICX licenses in 2007 by the military-backed government.
According to analysts who see the world as made up of the US market, yes: Analysts and investors are beginning to ask whether the industry can continue growing. The challenge is both simple and daunting: how to expand when more than half of the six billion people on the planet already have phones. And even in developing countries where there are underserved markets, subscribers spend less on phones and services. Craig Moffett, an industry analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, is one of the skeptics.
Iran has launched its first domestically made satellite into orbit, state media reports. TV commentary said Monday’s night-time launch from a Safir-2 rocket was “another achievement for Iranian scientists under sanctions”. The satellite was designed for research and telecommunications purposes, the television report said. Iran is subject to UN sanctions as some Western powers think it is trying to build a nuclear bomb, which it denies. Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are limited to the production of energy, and has emphasised its satellite project is entirely peaceful.