There’s nothing like increasing fuel prices to generate telecom-transportation tradeoff stories. This is very promising stuff for people like us live 3.5 hours flying time from anyplace important. But none of these innovations can work here until we get decent quality on our broadband links. Has anyone tried skype videoconferencing other than in Singapore or Europe?
Maldives is the South Asian country that has reached market saturation in mobiles. Now the game is services. According to the report below, they have introduced a new service to move money from bank machines into prepaid accounts. One wonders how many of Maldives citizens have bank accounts. If a great majority do, this can be a very useful service, in places like Male and Hulhumale where most Maldivians live and work.
It is literally a child’s play getting a false UK passport, Frederick Forsyth said in 1972. In his bestselling thriller, The Day of the Jackal the protagonist used the birth certificate of a dead child to obtain a fake passport. Thirty two years later, BBC was not sure the loophole was plugged or not. Not sure how many mercenaries still benefit. The UK passport cannot be the only document an interested party can manipulate.
Lin Sun is a Beijing-based consultant with more than 20 years’ experience with the Chinese telecom industry. Recently he has analysed the future of WiMAX in the backdrop of 3G in an atricle. Excerpts are stated bellow: If speed is compromised, cost will become a serious concern. According to estimates, operator capex for WiMAX will be 20 percent to 50 percent higher than for HSDPA, a software-enabled overlay for sending data over 3G networks. At higher frequency, say 3.
This is an old debate. Back in 1999, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates were debating this. Thin client computing, the one-laptop per child, etc are all variations on the theme. Our interest is in what differentiates a netbook from an advanced mobile phone? Smaller PCs Cause Worry for Industry – NYTimes.
Dialog Telekom, Sri Lanka’s leading mobile communications service provider announced the launch of its 3G/HSPA service in Manipay Jaffna following the setting up of the 530th 3G Base Station in Manipay, Jaffna. Dialog Telekom earns the distinction of being the first mobile service provider to provide 3G services in Jaffna. Dialog 3G will deliver the unique communication channel of video calling to customers in Jaffna who will now be able to have face to face conversations with their loved ones locally and internationally. Read the full story in Daily Mirror here.
There is always a standards battle going on in telecom. The current fight is about LTE and WiMAX. Even though the main battlegrounds are the ITU, GSMA and various locations in the developed world, skirmishes will take place in places like India and Sri Lanka where WiMAX deployment has already started. This will be something to keep an eye on. Wireless telecoms | Culture clash | Economist.
In a previous post, I discussed the importance of making more services available online in order to exploit the telecom-transport tradeoff. My argument was based on the delays and waste caused by the poor transport system in Sri Lanka, exacerbated by the government’s eagerness to close roads at the drop of a security hat. According to the story below, e- commerce is rapidly gaining ground in the US, where roads are rarely closed but the price of fuel has increased (though still much cheaper in in purchasing-power terms than Sri Lanka). To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click – NYTimes.com Online shopping is gaining at a time when simply filling up a gas tank to head to the mall can seem like a spending spree.
A recent LIRNEasia media outreach effort timed to coincide with the upcoming SAARC Summit in Colombo has been picked up by AFP. Leaving aside the question of the operators in the SAARC countries collectively lowering their termination rates to make possible more reasonable intra-SAARC call charges, the data also show that Pakistan has the overall lowest international telecom prices and Nepal has the highest. Hopefully, some of these prices will come down, now that the comparisons have been made! South Asian leaders urged to slash telco tariffs – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE Calls were cheapest in Pakistan, where fixed and mobile phone users pay three US cents a minute to call many non-SAARC destinations, including the United States and Hong Kong. But users pay 12 US cents to call Bangladesh and India.
Dialog Telekom and Sri Lanka Telecom won the first and second places respectively among the Business Today’s Sri Lanka Top Ten business firms. President Mahinda Rajapaksa presented the awards at a function organized by the Business Today Magazine. The recipients were Dr. Hans Wijesooriya of Dialog Telekom, Leisha De Silva of Sri Lanka Telecom, Harry Jayewardene of Distilleries and Aitken Spence, Sumithra Gunasekara of John Keells, Rajendra Thyagaraja of Hatton National Bank, Ravi Dias of Commercial Bank, Eran Wickremerathne of NDB Bank, Nustanfer Ali Khan of Ceylon Tobacco and Thila De Soysa of Bukit Darah. Source: Colombopage
Perhaps to the shock of those who wholeheartedly justified the new regulations on mobile and CDMA phones, it looks as if Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) has decided ‘National Security’ can be compromised for another eight months. You still can afford not having a piece of paper (aka a license) to carry your phone through a check point. We do not know how many terrorists will take advantage of TRCSL’s ‘flexibility’ or why TRCSL wanted to back off if that move were so essential for security reasons. All we know is this (temporary?) backing off will help at least one third of the population – those who don’t own the phones they use – at the bottom of the pyramid.
The summary results of the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2006/07 conducted by the Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics make interesting reading. According to the latest HIES, an average household spends LKR 539 per month on communication (2.35 per cent of the total). We know that there are no subsidies here. In contrast, the monthly spend on education, which is free from kindergarten to undergraduate degree and beyond costs an average household LKR 632 per month (2.
In a TV interview yesterday, I said that the new anti-sharing and certificate-carrying rules promulgated by the TRC would affect the poor disproportionately, because the rich could buy their children phones, while sharing was the only option for most Sri Lankans. Indeed, a special package for parents wanting to be in touch with their children in these uncertain times has been just announced (below). But the question that a commenter raised on the other discussion thread is whether it is any longer possible to buy a mobile for your own child. If a National ID is required to own a SIM, and the child does not have a NIC, it seems to follow that the child cannot have a mobile. Has anyone studied the ramifications of the rule before running press notices?
Net neutrality has become the hot-button issue in US telecom policy. Barack Obama is for net neutrality and the Republican-dominated FCC is leaning in that direction as can be seen below. However, is this something we need to import? If everyone is charged the same irrespective of use, what really happens is that the low-users end up subsidizing the high-users, especially in countries of the South, where the biggest cost driver is international bandwidth. What we need is a business model wherein low users pay only for what they use, in small amounts.
The motto of any typical bureaucrat is “First my convenience!”. How can one expect Sri Lankan types to be different? In late 1980s, when motor cyclists were found responsible for few key assassinations, the Police reacted first by banning helmets (before that it was compulsory) and then by prohibiting pillion riders. Why this nuisance?
Using the opportunity created by an invitation to make a dinner speech at the second international symposium of the Sabaragamuwa University, in scenic Belihuloya, I worked up a talk that drew on three different strands of LIRNEasia work, Teleuse@BOP, m-gov services and AgInfo, to work up what I thought to be a useful talk on what ICTs can do to help alleviate climate change caused by green house gases. The slideset (a tad big because of all the nice pictures) is here. Once the paper is ready for publication, a pre-pub version will appear here.