Sri Lankan fixed access provider Lanka Bell said it would pay subscribers for incoming overseas calls at the rate of 50 cents for every minute, regardless of duration, country of origin or the number of calls received. The company, in a statement, described the offer as passing on of the benefits of its three billion rupee investment to connect Sri Lanka to the FLAG undersea fibre optic cable network owned by India’s Reliance group. Full story here. This should make it easier for the Sri Lanka regulator to bring down termination charges for calls from within the SAARC, and implement the SAARC Colombo Declaration.
LIRNEasia’s Executive Director, Rohan Samarajiva (Ph.D.) has been elected as a Board Member at Large in the International Communication Association (ICA) on a three year term, effective from the close of the 2009 conference of the ICA, due to take place on May 21-25 2009in Chicago (Announcement). ICA is an academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching, and application of all aspects of human and mediated communication. The ICA is over 50 years old, begining as a small association of U.
“I came more to learn from you; than to teach” was the message I passed before my two presentations with Sujata. Thanks Fusion/Telecentre.org for the opportunity. The three days spent with 200+ telecenter operators from eight provinces in Sri Lanka was a worthy investment. One does not interact with so many ground level ICT4D practitioners every day.
In the end, Microsoft’s best intentions may not satisfy what locals want. The company surveyed 8,000 people in emerging markets and found their most pressing needs for technology often revolved around entertainment and surfing the Internet. “It reinforced for us that the emerging middle classes are sort of like the middle classes here except they don’t have as much money,” Mr. Toyama said. “It’s sometimes easy for us to get caught up in things and forget we are serving the needs of real people.
Alexander Graham Bell and/or Elisha Gray invented conventional telephony, most people know. Marconi is generally recognized as the father of radio, but many know that people like Tesla did most of the heavy lifting. Bell and Marconi are more or less household names, possibly because the prominence achieved by the companies named for these men. Who invented the mobile? Here is the obituary of Amos E.
Few weeks back I heard Senior Director of COAI, Mr T.R. Dua, state that rural teledensity (or access paths/100) now exceeded 10. Having heard numbers as low as 2/100 population just a few years back, I decided to investigate further. The Indian telecom minister, Mr Raja, confirmed that there were now 11 access paths per 100 rural persons.
IBM has released new survey results which claims that over 50 percent of consumers would substitute their Internet usage on a PC for a mobile device. With the world’s population of mobile-phone users expected to increase from the current 50 percent to 80 percent in 2013, which translates to a staggering 5.8 billion people, the availability of IP wireless broadband and more affordable devices will change the way companies around the world operate and relate to their customers, employees and partners. Download full report.
In 1998, the principal journalist organizations of Sri Lanka agreed on the Colombo Declaration on Media Freedom and Social Responsibility. That served as a roadmap for some interesting and innovative reforms including the creation of a self-regulatory mechanism for print media in 2003. Of course, the reforms were not completed. In the hope of revising the text and energizing the reform effort, the Sri Lanka Press Institute organized a workshop, at which I was asked to speak. In light of the 15 minutes I was assigned, I decided to focus on SMS and cell broadcasting within the larger context of mobiles, a subject we are deeply interested in, rather try to cover the waterfront.
Broadband prices could rise by up to one-third if regulators in Europe insist on strict “net neutrality” rules that would block carriers from charging content providers premium prices to prioritise certain web traffic, a leading think-tank is set to warn. Net neutrality has become a big issue in the US as internet congestion has increased. In Europe, regulators and industry players have claimed that the situation is different because users have more choice of network providers, and the debate has been more muted. However, there have been growing concern among big telecoms companies that changes introduced in the European Parliament into the so-called telecoms package – the sweeping legislation which is designed to overhaul European Union telecoms laws – could open doors to net neutrality regulation in the future. Read the full story in ‘Financial Times’ here.
Thanks Steve for pointing it. We stand corrected. LIRNEasia does NOT use ‘Cloud Computing’, but is only a user of ‘Cloud Services’. Though both appears to be synonymous to a layman – and Wikipedia is yet to recognize the differentiation (type ‘Cloud Services’ and you will be directed to former) – we are told there still is a difference. Cloud Computing = you put your applications to ‘cloud’.
Besides sitting on Apple’s board of directors, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been an informal adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. In fact, he lurves Obama so much that’s he not just going to endorse him (shock, right?) he’s going to actually campaign for him next week. And not just ’cause Obama might be good for business! No, he says he’s “doing this personally.
When the economy goes rock bottom, it makes little sense asking what it would mean to one component. But what exactly the impact of the present financial crisis on telecoms? This is what Spencer E. Ante thinks: The $1 trillion telecommunications industry has long been one of the most resilient parts of the economy. But as the financial crisis has intensified, it has recently become clear that telecom can’t escape the fallout of the credit crunch.
Interesting point Kelly Glynn makes in apache.sys-con.com: It isn’t easy to look on the bright side of an economic crisis. The unstable stock market is provoking widespread talk of “belt-tightening,” and already thousands of people have lost their jobs. However, there is a silver lining for cloud-based services: companies looking to cut IT spending are starting to take notice of Google Apps and other online productivity suites.
This was the title for a presentation I was asked to do for a seminar organized by the SAARC Chamber of Commerce, the FCCISL and the Naumann Foundation. The presentation examined the broadening of consumer rights in the Sri Lanka industry as a result of the increased economic freedom in the telecom industry enabled by the multi-faceted liberalization undertaken by multiple governments since the 1990s. It then went on to draw lessons for other infrastructure industries and countries. The principle of “competition wherever possible; regulation where necessary” was the anchor of this part of the presentation. It was emphasized that the possible and necessary varied depending on country and time and that there were no one-size-fits-all solutions.
Last month at the GSM Asia Pacific conference in Colombo, LIRNEasia’s Helani Galpaya presented some evidence on the way roaming charges have evolved in the region. She showed that overall South Asia’s roaming charges were higher than those in South East Asia and that South Asian operators also seemed to discriminate among visitors from different countries more. This research has, finally, been picked up and publicized, along with a statement from Rohan Samarajiva that bringing down intra-SAARC international voice telephone charges is a higher priority. This same statement was made at a SAARC Chamber of Commerce seminar, where LIRNEasia offered to provide the data to the national Chambers of Commerce so that they could increase the transparency of the roaming market, one of the most opaque. Knowing full well the weaknesses of regulation and the higher-priority tasks before the region’s regulatory agencies, LIRNEasia takes the position that the region’s operators should work together to come up with a reasonable regime for international roaming that allows customers to know what they are getting into when they make or receive a call/SMS while away from their countries.
Senior citizen and former left wing politician Vasudeva Nanayakkara, who drew attention as a public activist as the successful petitioner in the Lanka Marine Services Ltd., (LMSL), is now threatening to take up another public interest issue in court – failure of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission’s (TRC) to comply with a Supreme Court (SC) order of May 7, 2007 to draw up a new tariff structure. In a letter dated October 10, 2008 to TRC Director General Priyantha Kariyapperuma – copied to The Sunday Times – Mr. Nanayakkara states that ‘OPA’s experts in their presentation to the TRC, around March 2008, explained and established that the TRC’s tariff proposal recommended to the SC is flawed mathematically and technically and that it is in violation of the provisions in the Sri Lanka. In particular, Mr.