14 June 2007) Rohan Samarajiva, Joseph Wilson, Harsha de Silva and Tahani Iqbal presented recent research conducted by LIRNEasia at a media and stakeholder event organized by the Pakistan Telecom Authority in Islamabad today. Following opening remarks by Chairman of PTA, Major General (R) Shahzada Alam Malik, Samarajiva and Wilson presented the new improved version of the six-country Telecom Regulatory Environment study, with emphasis on Pakistan. de Silva discussed the results of the Teleuse @ the Bottom of the Pyramid (T@BOP) survey conducted in five countries, including Pakistan. Among other things, he discussed the disparate access to ICTs between men and women at the BOP as well as the tremendous progress made in connecting large numbers of people at the BOP in the past few years. Iqbal presented comparative analysis of mobile prices in three countries of South Asia, using a basket methodology adapted from one used by the OECD since 1995.
Sri Lanka would soon be making mobile telephone numbers portable, telecom minister Rauf Hakeem said addressing the Sri Lanka Economic Summit 2007. Financial Times – Daily Mirror – 09-June-2007 The telecom industry will be ensured with a mobile number portability that is expected to result in more growth, Posts and Telecommunications Minister Rauff Hakeem said yesterday.
Sri Lanka’s Dialog Telekom has signed an investment agreement with the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BoI) to invest a further US$300 million in the country’s Telecoms and Media sectors within the next 2 years. A substantial portion of the total investment will be in fixed line Telephony and Broadband services via Dialog Broadband Networks (DBN), and Digital Television Broadcast services via Asset Media, respectively. The investments in DBN will be directed towards the growth of CDMA-based Rural Fixed Telecommunications Infrastructure, WiMax based wireless broadband infrastructure and for the deployment of a National Fibre Optic backbone. Read more.
To lose your mobile phone is unfortunate but to flush it down the toilet is especially careless, although common, if new figures are to be believed. Research suggests that 885,000 (drunk and sober) subjects of Queen Elizabeth helplessly watch their handsets disappearing into the ‘black hole’ every year. That’s roughly £342 million flushing (not contributing) to Her Majesty’s sewage network. The study also reveals that 810,000 mobiles were left in the pub each year, with 315,000 left in the back of a taxi and 225,000 on a bus. Pet dogs in UK apparently chewed their way through 58,500 handsets last year, while another 116,000 went through a spin cycle with the dirty laundry, reports The Telegraph.
How times change. The Vietnamese national telecoms operator VNPT has opened an office in the US, partly with the aim of tapping into the two million and more Vietnamese now resident in the country and who make 400 million minutes of calls to their ancestral homeland each year. Read more.
Initial enthusiasm for WiFi waned when cities that initially wanted to deploy free wireless networks realised the task requires experienced industry partners with a different view of the business model. Cities also discovered they had a political fight on their hands with carriers, other special interest groups and political parties arguing that government has no place in the telecoms business. Read more.
We have generally tried to focus on the fundamental issues of access to ICT infrastructure, and not the esoteric issues of Internet governance. However, after two and half years, we are beginning to think of broadening the scope a little. The anti-competitive uses of intellectual property have so far been discussed on this blog only in relation to attempts to claim a patent on the way the Sinhala language is standardized for the computer. Here is another aspect. A Patent Lie – New York Times Vonage developed one of the first Internet telephone services and has attracted more than two million customers.
Rohan Samarajiva and Helani Galpaya discuss how research can influence the policy process. We are an evidence-based policy organization. We work around: Inputs (money, people, etc etc) Outputs (reports, training courses, etc) Outcomes (positive changes in the policy process) IDRC: Putting money into research organizations which produce knowledge produces development. Not just putting money into ICTs. Ways that research can affect policy: 1.
For those who believed that privacy issues will take a long time come up in South Asia . . . The relevant definition is “the ability to control the boundary conditions of social interactions.” BBC NEWS | South Asia | India cell phone curbs welcomed Indian cellular phone companies and phone users have welcomed a government move to curb unsolicited calls and text messages from tele-marketers.
The broadband battle is being fought between “imperialist” telcos and “guerilla” Internet firms, a Yankee Group analyst told Tuesday. The established telcos focused on ARPUs and the idea of guiding consumers to a choice of apps on the network. “They are pretty much trying to think about voice, content and access as palette from which consumers can choose.” The guerillas are firms such as Google and Yahoo who don’t own a network and aren’t focused on ARPU, and whose apps run on PCs, mobile phones, PlayStations and all kinds of networks and devices. “They’re advertising-funded.
In one of the most detailed analyses of WiMax issued for Asia to date, the influential investment house says that it is “particularly optimistic about the prospects for fixed WiMax in developing markets in Asia, where the copper infrastructure is too weak or limited to provide broadband services using DSL.” It adds, “We believe that WiMax and other wireless broadband technologies will be particularly successful in markets with low broadband penetration, such as India, Malaysia, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia.” Read more.
The Grameen Foundation has announced a new online assistance center to help microfinance institutions (MFIs) bring the benefits of telecommunications to poor communities around the world. The Village Phone Direct Assistance Center, was launched in Nairobi, Kenya during the International Telecommunications Union’s “Public & Private Sectors Partnership Forum” (PPPF-Africa 2007) conference. It features a how-to manual, a message board, customizable templates and other information that will help MFIs work independently with local telecommunications providers to develop Village Phone Direct programs for their clients. Read more.
BBC NEWS | Technology | City wi-fi plans under scrutiny But as councils offer public wi-fi, questions are being asked about how much citizens will use them and how sustainable they are. City-wide wi-fi is the obvious next step from wi-fi hotspots, bringing them out of cafes and hotel lobbies to provide ubiquitous coverage in a town. But some analysts claim that few citizens are using public wi-fi while other call for more cautious rollouts. Companies such as BT and The Cloud are partnering with local governments in the UK to build city-wide wireless networks offering councils enhancements to public services and giving citizens the chance to connect to the web from wi-fi enabled devices. Powered by ScribeFire.
LIRNEasia and ISEAS organized an expert forum on ICT indicators in Singapore in March 2007. On the 26th of January, the Myanmar Ministry of Post and Telecom sent an e-mail to the ISEAS in Singapore, nominating an officer to attend. That e-mail reached ISEAS yesterday (4th June 2007; more than four months later). Does this not suggest a need to radically reform the Myanmar ICT infrastructure?
Plans to lay an undersea fiber-optic cable off eastern Africa could be the beginning of the end of crackling long-distance calls, slow dial-up Internet connections and universities without e-mail.Four projects are in the works to link 22 eastern, central and southern African countries to the world’s network of submarine cables and 21st century communications. They would enable cheaper international calls with no static and fast Internet access. The first cable could be finished as early as March. Read more.
Dhaka, June 1 (bdnews24.com)—Maritime thieves have stolen at least 11-kilometres Vietnamese portion of Thailand bound SEA-ME-WE3 submarine cable and sold the 100 tons of illicit cargo as scrap, reported VietNamNet Bridge online newspaper Tuesday. Such bizarre underwater international telecoms infrastructure robbery occurred on March 25 and since then Vietnam’s Internet users have been struggling with far slower speed. The broken cable system, named TVH, was built in 1993-1995, connecting Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong with a capacity of 560 megabits per second. The Vietnam Telecom International (VTI) got puzzled when the cable went down.