New York Times TOKYO — The United States may be the world’s largest economy, but when it comes to Internet connections at home, many Americans still live in the slow lane. By contrast, Japan is a broadband paradise with the fastest and cheapest Internet connections in the world. Nearly eight million Japanese have a fiber optic line at home that is as much as 30 times speedier than a typical DSL line. But while that speed is a boon for Japanese users, industry analysts and some companies question whether the push to install fiber is worth the effort, given the high cost of installation, affordable alternatives and lack of services that take advantage of the fast connections. Powered by ScribeFire.
On October 1, LIRNEasia’s Director of Strategic Development Helani Galpaya made a presentation at the University of Southern California. Her title is a play on an old song celebrating the golden era of radio: “Video killed the radio star.” The slides she used are available here . USC Annenberg | Annenberg Research Network on International Communication Speaker Series: Helani Galpaya Join students and faculty for a presentation by LIRNEasia’s Director of Strategic Development, Helani Galpaya. Her topic: “Mobile Kills the Telecenter Star.
The colloquium which was conducted by Ms Natasha Udu-gama and Nuwan Waidyanatha was focused on the material to be presented at the Disaster management workshop to be held in Dhaka. The Colloquium started off with review of the sessions and programme of the workshop. Sujatha Gamage stated that the term ‘Last- Mile’ should be used in conjuction with the First Responder Action title for Session III to maintain consistancy. Nuwan argued that this is not the case as the term last- mile is more related to the concept of communication rather than the last respondent. Professor Rohan Samarajiva questioned if the message relay function can be seen to be as a seperate operation to ICT networks.
:The Daily Star: Internet Edition Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka’s largest community-based organisation, and LIRNEasia, a regional ICT policy think-tank, collaborated on a 32-village pilot project that sought to identify the best technologies for reaching villages; to identify the significance of organisational strength and training for risk reduction; and to assess the participation of women in these activities.The community-based approach implemented in the project is different from a public-warning approach, but has lessons for government communications with first responders and for community organisation and training as well. For example, the project field tested addressable and remotely activated satellite radios that have coverage over the entire Bay of Bengal region. Other equipment deployed included Java and Symbion enabled mobile handsets capable of generating loud alarms and multi-language alert messages. The Bangladesh Network Office for Urban Safety (BNUS) of the Department of Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) is co-organising a workshop with LIRNEasia entitled “Sharing Knowledge on Disaster Warning: Community-based Last Mile Warning Systems” to discuss the findings of the Last Mile Hazard Warning System (Hazinfo) Pilot Project as well as share the lessons of community-based last mile warning systems in Bangladesh.
Cell phones double as electronic wallets – Yahoo! News Mobile banking services, which are also catching on in Kenya and South Africa, enable people who don’t have bank accounts to transfer money easily, quickly and safely. It’s spreading in the developing world because mobile phones are much more common than bank accounts. The system is particularly useful for the 8 million Filipinos — 10 percent of the country’s citizens — who work overseas and send money home, like Dennis’ mother, Anna Tiangco. Previously, she sent money via a bank wire transfer, which costs $2.
BANGALORE, India (AFP) — India remains the favoured technology outsourcing destination, an industry report said Sunday, amid concerns a rising rupee and soaring wages would blunt the country’s competitive edge. A study by industry publication Global Services and investment advisory firm Tholons put the Indian cities of Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune at the top of a list of 15 emerging outsourcing destinations for global companies. Kolkata at number five and Chandigarh at number nine were the other two Indian locations on the list, which contained three Chinese and two Vietnamese cities as well.
Dr Hans Wijayasuriya, the CEO of Dialog Telekom, Sri Lanka’s largest mobile operator, gave an illuminating talk on his company’s BOP strategy on the 27th of September, at the Central Bank lecture series. He claims that his company was the first in the region to move away from a focus ARPU to a profit-per-minutes focus as early as 1997-98. Here is another mobile operator who is doing well with a similar strategy. Telecoms in the Caribbean | The Irish are coming | Economist.com Digicel has prospered by introducing modern technology and innovative services into stodgy, uncompetitive markets.
Missed calling (also referred to as beeping, flashing and many other names) has been most talked about in Africa; Johnathan Donner has been talking and writing about it for some time now; his research provides interesting insights into what he calls the ‘rules’ of beeping. A recent Reuters article looks at the growing phenomenon in not only Africa but other regions too. LIRNEasia’s Teleuse@BOP survey findings also show that the phenomenon is considerably common among bottom of the pyramid (defined here as Socioeconomic Classification groups D & E) phone users in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. But what’s more interesting, is that the phenomenon was seen as being used more or less to the same extent in the ‘middle and top of the pyramid’ (defined in the study as Socioeconomic Classification groups A, B & C). This held true for phone owners in all five countries studied – Pakistan, India (with some of the lowest per minute call rates in the world), Sri Lanka, Philippines and even Thailand (the country with the highest per capita GDP among the set of countries studied).
The phone company has reversed its position on censoring content intended for their customers who have indicated their consent to receive the content, but continues to assert its right to decide what messages it will transmit. Public policy must ensure that the common-carrier principle be formally extended to text messages as well. Verizon Reverses Itself on Abortion Messages – New York Times Reversing course, Verizon Wireless announced yesterday that it would allow an abortion rights group to send text messages to its supporters on Verizon’s mobile network.“The decision to not allow text messaging on an important, though sensitive, public policy issue was incorrect,” said Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for Verizon, in a statement issued yesterday morning, adding that the earlier decision was an “isolated incident.”
Total broadband growth in the Philippines from 2005 to 2006 was at 157% while Greece’s was 168%, Ovum said. The Philippines had 127,942 subscribers in 2005 and this number grew to 329,216 as of end-2006. The cost of broadband in the Philippines is also expensive relative to average monthly disposable incomes of subscribers. The highest monthly fee in 2006 was $96.08, with the lowest at $17.
It has long been a staple of telecom law that telcos could not decide what went through the tube. According to the article below, this principle does not apply to text messages. One academic apologist goes as far as claiming that competition will look after the problem. He misses the point that under present arrangements there is only one way to reach a mobile user with a text message, though his/her operator (an equivalent condition does not exist in the Internet). Until that changes, the common-carrier principle must applied, be it for text or voice.
The break up of AT&T in 1984 led to a seismic shift in telecom policy and regulatory thinking worldwide and also created the conditions for the Internet boom. New Zealand is a small country quite unlike the US, but it has taken an unprecedented step that has the potential of changing policy and regulatory thinking again. As the excerpt below says, the split is on the lines of the BT reorganization in the UK. That is true. But the key difference is that BT reorganized voluntarily and NZ Telecom, not.
With foreign journalists barred from what is one of the world’s most closed states, much of the worldwide media coverage is coming from exiled newshounds in countries such as Thailand and India — and their clandestine contacts on the inside. Technology ranging from the latest Internet gizmo to satellite uplinks to camera phones are ensuring pictures of the massed marches of monks and civilians and the response by security forces is on TV screens around the world in hours. The contrast to Myanmar’s last major uprising, in 1988, could not be more stark. Then, as many as 3,000 people were killed when soldiers opened fire on the crowds but it took days for the news — let alone pictures or video footage — to emerge. “The difference is night and day,” said Dominic Faulder, a Bangkok-based British reporter during the 1988 uprising.
Paper titled ‘Wireless Mesh Networking as a means of connecting rural communities: advantages, constrains and challenges – an analysis based on a case study from rural Sri Lanka’ co-authored by Chanuka Wattegama (LIRNEasia) and Rehana Wijesinghe (Enterprise Technology) has been accepted to be presented at the Wireless World Research Forum Meeting to be held 5-7 November, Chennai, India. The objectives of this paper are to discuss the appropriateness of Wireless Mesh Networking in a rural environment in empowering the community, the design and implementation challenges and how they were addressed, related policy issues including the unlicensing of 2.4 GHz and 5.1 GHz bands and explore the possibilities of replicating the Mahavilachchiya model. WWRF (http://www.
BY VERONICA S. CUSI, Businessworld THE PHILIPPINES was the second fastest-growing market for broadband worldwide in 2006, according to a study by UK-based research and consultancy firm Ovum. This was primarily due, however, to the fact that broadband is just taking off in the country, and Ovum said growth could be significantly higher if regulators allow more competition that would lead to cheaper services. Greece took the top spot in the study, and the other countries in the top ten list were Indonesia, India, Ukraine, Ireland, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia and Turkey. Total broadband growth in the Philippines from 2005 to 2006 was at 157% while Greece’s was 168%, Datamonitor affiliate Ovum said.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO “We hope to have 100 percent population coverage within the next 12 months, from 90 percent we have now,” Wijayasuriya said. “About 60 percent of our 450 million dollar investment pipeline for the next two-years will go into mobile, the rest into new areas like WiMax, cable TV, fixed-line telephones and grow our Internet business,” Wijayasuriya said. Powered by ScribeFire.