The title of the article “Sri Lanka to de-regulate payphone business,” is a little deceptive, but then that is probably not the fault of the Director General, but of the editor of LBO. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka plans to allow third parties to operate payphone booths in an attempt to popularise them in far flung areas outside the city of Colombo, a top official said.The island’s eight public switched telephone network (PSTN) operators will now be allowed to appoint a third party to operate and maintain a public phone booth on a revenue sharing model. “Its a scheme similar to selling lottery tickets, where the lottery operator does not undertake the burden of running, maintaining and collecting the money,” the head of Sri Lanka’s telecom watchdog, Kanchana Ratwatte said.
Google has proposed to the FCC that instead of getting into long-term contracts for allocating spectrum, companies buying spectrum should be free to resell the spectrum in real-time auctions. This would probably not involve human beings in protracted auction negotiations but rather negotiations between devices in real-time. Since FCC’s auction is done at the wholesale level it would probably involve companies reselling spectrum that they won to consumers on real-time basis. NYT: “The driving reason we’re doing this is that there are not enough broadband options for consumers,” said Adam Kovacevich, a spokesman for Google’s policy office in Washington. “In general, it’s the belief of a lot of people in the company that spectrum is allocated in an inefficient manner.
A British climber has set a world record by making a mobile phone call from the top of Mount Everest.In the early hours of 21 May, Rod Baber made two calls from the mountain’s north ridge. In the first call Mr Baber described the view, how cold it was and what he wanted to do when back at base camp; he then rang his wife and children. The calls were made possible when China set up a mobile base station with a line of sight to the north ridge. Mr Baber set off from the UK for the Himalayas on 30 March and since mid-April has been getting used to living at high altitude.
It is learned that a fiber optic cable has been laid to connect Thimphu, the capital with the Indian backbone network, that an IT park is being established in Thimphu, and that Bhutan will soon be undertaking BPO work. If any of our Bhutanese readers (or other knowledgeable persons) can shed additional light on this subject it will be much appreciated.
Hindu Businessline ICICI Bank is gearing to conduct a test run next month. The bank has tied up with Airtel and mChek for the purpose, said Mr Sachin Khandelwal, Head – Cards Product Group of ICICI Bank. “A virtual card will be created on the phone through which an individual can carry out complete banking transactions.” Mr Khandelwal said all a customer had to do was to give his mobile number and the payment to be made to the merchant. The merchant will furnish the information given via his mobile to mChek, a mobile payment platform, which in turn will channel it to the bank for authorising the transaction, before which mChek will seek customer authorisation (PIN entered authorisation) to carry forward the transaction.
Rohan Samarajiva examines what is required to connect families at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) in South Asia, drawing from the findings of a five-country Teleuse@BOP study that included the elicitation of responses from around 9,000 teleusing households (respondents were between the ages of 18 and 60) in Socio Economic Classifications D and E (SEC D&E). His article was published by bdnews24.com on World Telecoms day.
Bangladesh government seems to be convinced to open its last monopolistic area of telecommunications; international telephony. This is a good initiative, which needs to be supported as it would bring quality and cheap international telecoms services. However looking at the on-going debate on various aspects of this subject in the name of “VoIP Licensing” no one seems to focus on the most important area: Whether Bangladesh will come out as winner or loser after liberalization in terms of valuable foreign exchange? Pakistan’s Regulatory Consultant M. Aslam Hayat writes.
The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) concludes that the scale, the scope, and the sophistication of state-based Internet filtering have all increased dramatically in recent years. The survey highlights the tools and techniques used by countries to keep their citizens from viewing certain kinds of online material. ONI is a collaboration among four leading universities: Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. Read more.
The Bush administration is putting what pressure it can on a resurgent Democrat-led Congress to formulate legislation that would put a stop to the welter of lawsuits being taken out and accusing US telcos of riding roughshod over the legally-enshrined privacy rights of ordinary American citizens via the questionable mechanism of a post-9/11 surveillance programme that does not require individual warrants. Read more.
Thailand plans to revise the registration process for prepaid mobile phone users, saying it has been loosely controlled and free SIM cards were being distributed widely without user registration. Information and Communications Technology Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom expressed concern that some operators are distributing free prepaid SIM cards without registering user names as required. The cards can be activated immediately without registration. He said that prepaid SIM cards were tightly controlled during the previous government to prevent them from being used by southern insurgents to detonate bombs. But it was relaxed since the final months of last year.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO The theme of the 2007 World Telecom and Information Society Day (May 17th) is connecting the young. It is difficult to connect the young without also connecting the old. The young usually connect within the context of economic and other decisions made by family units. This column examines what is required to connect families at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) in Sri Lanka, drawing from the findings of a five-country Teleuse@BOP study. Powered by ScribeFire.
Divakar Goswami made a presentation at Indonesia’s ICT 2007 Summit and Technoconference in Jakarta on May 3, 2007 organized by the President’s ICT Council, the Indonesian ICT Ministry, the Chamber of Commerce and MASTEL, the telecom industry association. In his presentation titled Backbone of convergence: Getting the foundation right, Divakar argued that without sufficient “big pipes” (domestic and international backbone) the potential of convergence and NGN services will not be realized. Indonesia’s inadequate international backbone infrastructure and high prices have acted as a bottleneck to the development of the Internet in the country. For example, Indonesia’s international private leased line circuit (IPLC) to Singapore costs 21 times the price of equivalent service from India based on route kilometers. Divakar contented that the Government’s plan of licensing one additional international operator will neither stimulate international gateway infrastructure nor bring down international bandwidth prices sufficiently.
India’s DoT plans to make it mandatory for all operators to open their networks to roaming customers from other service providers after the introduction of 3G telecom services in India. If implemented, private cellular operators will be largest beneficiaries as they will be roam on the extensive networks of state-owned BSNL. This proposal will also enable 3G subscribers to roam on the existing 2G networks. Read more.
In an empirical study conducted in fish markets along the coast of Kerala (South India), Robert Jensen found that the introduction of the mobile phone allowed improved flow of price information that resulted in a more efficient functioning of the market. Before mobile phone were introduced or coverage was available in Kerala, fishermen would generally return to their “home” markets with their catch. Oversupply meant that fish had to be routinely dumped into the sea to keep prices stable even if (unknown to the fishermen) there were markets 10kms away were fish were in greater demand. Mobile phones enabled price information from other markets to be available while the fishermen was still at sea. The fishermen would divert his boat to the market that offered the highest price for his catch.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) said Tuesday it has received BOI status from the Board of Investment that would enable it to import and buy locally project-related items free of customs duty. Powered by ScribeFire.
Today, at a ceremony to sign a large number of investment agreements at the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka, it was revealed that Bharti Airtel, Sri Lanka’s fifth mobile operator, is planning to invest USD 150 million. This amount is below industry expectations and suggests that Bharti will start slow, with a conventional rollout concentrated in the Northwestern, Western and Southern provinces. Pity.