CDMA has been a major force in helping drive down per-line costs of telephony. Has this been possible even with excessive royalties extracted by Qualcomm? Qualcomm Under Scrutiny by Korean Antitrust Agency – New York Times The South Korean antitrust agency has formed a task force to investigate the licensing and business practices of the wireless technology company Qualcomm, the latest in a string of legal battles for the company, officials said on Tuesday. In Japan, Europe and the United States, Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego, faces accusations by rivals that it has abused its market dominance in wireless technology to demand excessive royalties and block fair competition. Qualcomm is known for developing code-division multiple access, or CDMA, wireless technology, which is a rival standard to the global system for mobile communications, or GSM, technology.
More on the Negroponte laptop. It has built-in wireless and a completely different interface. BBC NEWS | Technology | $100 laptop project launches 2007 The so-called XO machine is being pioneered by Nicholas Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab in 2004. Test machines are expected to reach children in February as the project builds towards a more formal launch. Wireless networking Mr Negroponte told the Associated Press news agency that three more African countries might sign on in the next two weeks.
The low-cost and quick deployment time of wireless technologies give them the potential to connect communities and regions that are currently disconnected. However, governments in many developing countries have not unlicensed the use of spectrum that is necessary to deploy wireless networks like Wi-Fi. In many countries, transmission of data using unlicensed spectrum over public areas is prohibited, which makes connecting villages, for example, impossible. In some countries like the United States, telephone companies are actively lobbying against unlicensed use of the spectrum. These were some of the key issues that came up at the Air Jaldi wireless infrastructure summit held in Dharmasala.
Thailand conducted tsunami preparedness drills in 2005. Now Indonesia has too. Organizations such as Sarvodaya/LIRNEasia in Sri Lanka have conducted drills, but isn’t it time the government got involved directly? Northwest Herald – Asian nations remember those killed in 2004 natural disaster Indonesia said its tsunami drill on Bali was aimed at raising the public’s awareness of safety measures and testing technology deployed over the last two years.Warnings were sent from the capital, Jakarta, to radios along the beach.
FLAG Telecom plans to deploy the largest IP-based submarine cable network that will connect 60 countries, including many that currently have poor connectivity by 2009. India, Indonesia, and Philippines are among the countries that FLAG’s NGN network will have a presence in. Reliance to carry FLAG far and wide: “We live in a world where there is too much of bandwidth for some, little for others and none for many – there is unequal access to bandwidth in and across countries, continents and communities,” said Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, chairman, Reliance Communications. “FLAG NGN will democratise digital access,” he added. FLAG NGN will comprise of our systems.
A study by RAND noted the vulnerability of submarine cables to undersea attacks by hostile forces in order hamper communication links to the United States. Using Taiwan as an illustrative case, the study said the following: As seen in Table I.2, a recent survey of the number of international submarine cables reaching Taiwan is particularly disconcerting. Four out of five undersea fiber optic cables reaching Taiwan do so at either Fangshan or Toucheng (the fifth, a “self-healing loop” reaches Taiwan at both, meaning that both cables would have to be damaged for Taiwan to be cut off). Two more planned cables have landing areas at Fangshan.
The strong quake off Taiwan’s coast on December 26 damaged six separate submarine cables and severely disrupted telecom links in the East, Southeast and South Asia. Internet connectivity in a number of countries are either down or are slowed down thanks to taffic that is being rerouted over networks that have escaped damage. Most of Jakarta (Indonesia) and Pondicherry (Southern India) have been without Internet until this afternoon (Dec 27) at least. In our office in Sri Lanka, SLT’s ADSL connection (though congested) is working. However, Lankacom’s leased line is down since it probably connects to the Internet backbone via Singapore.
According to the Independent, Sri Lanka is the best prepared to communicate tsunami warnings to at-risk populations on the coast. We wish to believe this. But unlike the highly-trained journalist from the Independent, we have taken the trouble to ask a few questions: 1. Does Sri Lanka have a single national multi-hazard warning center? NO.
The TRE 2006 results [PDF Download] of the first Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) survey applied across six Asian countries were released in New Delhi yesterday. The TRE Assessment, developed by LIRNEasia and already implemented in a number of countries, is a perceptual index which gauges regulatory performance across six dimensions. The TRE survey carried out in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand as part of a multi-component study, closely reflected regulatory reform actions undertaken in the respective countries along with sector performance. The Hindustan Times, a leading newspaper in India, covered the findings from the TRE surveys [PDF Download] focusing on the comparison between India and Pakistan’s scores. Pakistan Bests India in Telecoms Regulation by M.
Rohan Samarajiva chaired the Universal, Ubiquitous, Equitable and Affordable session at the ITU World 2006 that raised some fundamental questions about Universal Service Obligation (USO) programs around the world. Rohan introduced the topic [PDF] drawing from LIRNEasia‘s recent Shoestrings II study on telephone use at the “bottom of the pyramid.” The first Keynote speaker, Zhengmao Li, VP China Unicom, described the efforts of the Chinese govt and his company in building a harmonious digital society. Thanks to the govt’s policy to provide access to ICTs on an equitable and affordable basis, more than 97 percent of administrative villages in China have a phone. The second Keynote speaker, Tom Philips, Chief Regulatory Officer at the GSM Association forcefully argued that USO programs in most parts of the world have not resulted in improved access but have rather harmed the objective of connecting those who currently do not have access.
Rohan Samarajiva and Divakar Goswami from LIRNEasia chaired back-to-back Forum sessions at the ITU World 2006 in Hong Kong on December 7. The Building Digital Communities session, chaired by Divakar, covered a wide-swathe of topics. In his opening remarks [PDF], he outlined on some of the issues that would be covered in the presentations and discussion to follow. In his Keynote address, the Indonesian Minister of Communication & IT, Sofyan Djalil proposed that global equipment manufacturers should adopt a new business model where they share some of the investment risk with operators while deploying infrastructure in financially unviable areas in developing countries. He suggested that the current model where developing countries are only purchasers of high cost equipment and services, breeds dependency and is unsustainable in the long run.
Indonesia’s telecom industry association and regulatory authority requested the participation of LIRNEasia at a seminar in Jakarta to address two key issues: 1) what telecom investors are looking for from the regulatory and policy environment in the country; 2) a review of current policy and regulatory challenges facing the Indonesian telecom sector. Prof Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director addressed the first issue in his presentation Enabling Investment: Lessons from the Region [PDF] and Divakar Goswami, Director of Organizational Development & Projects made a presentation, Telecom Reforms in Indonesia: Current Achievements and Challenges [PDF] to address the second issue. The final report from the presentations are available here [PDF]. The Seminar was organized by MASTEL, representing a wide spectrum of ICT industry representatives and by BRTI, the Indonesian regulatory authority. The audience consisted of commissioners from BRTI, policymakers from the Ministry of Communication and Information, representatives from the operators, industry associations and civil society groups.
LIRNEasia Lead Economist, Dr. Harsha de Silva presented findings of a new study on telecom use at the bottom of the pyramid in five emerging Asian countries at the well attended ESOMAR global market research conference, Telecom 2006: Convergence Revolution held in Barcelona from 29 November – 1 December 2006. The study covers India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand. de Silva presented some findings contained in a paper written with LIRNEasia researcher Ayesha Zainudeen on the costs and benefits of access to telecoms and the expected next billion subscribers. A particular finding of interest to local policy makers was that almost a quarter of Sri Lankans at the bottom of the pyramid believe that direct access to a phone (i.
Harsha de Silva, LIRNEasia’s Lead Economist presented a few of the preliminary findings of the Teleuse@BOP (Shoestrings:2) study at CEPA’s (Centre for Poverty Analysis) Annual Symposium on Poverty Research in Sri Lanka at the JAIC Hilton on December 6 2007. The presentation turned around much of the discussion at the Forum, in line with Prahalad’s thinking, taikng a stand that the ‘poor’ should not be seen as a burden to the private sector, but more of a gold mine. The presentation was based on a paper, co-authored with Ayesha Zainudeen, which will be published by CEPA in the coming months. View presentation slides Download paper: Poverty reduction through telecom access at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ – Harsha de Silva & Ayesha Zainudeen
Several weeks ago we speculated on why the Maldives, with its tiny population, needed two undersea cables. The answer is that the first cable is a collaboration between the new entrant Wataniya and India’s disruptive competitor, Reliance (through its FLAG unit). This created enormous pressure on the complacent incumbent Dhiraagu, the result being the cable to Colombo. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO A new fibre optic undersea cable that connects Maldives to Sri Lanka will bring down international call charges from the Indian Ocean coral atoll, officials said Tuesday.Until the cable was commissioned this month, bilateral traffic of 600,000 minutes per month was routed via more expensive satellite links.
Faculty of Humanities, The University of Manchester The BWPI de Silva PhD Scholarship for Sri Lanka Award of this scholarship has been made possible by the generosity of Dr Harin de Silva (BSc Mech Eng 1982). Value of award: Total award = US$90,000 (this will be augmented through BWPI support for fees and maintenance) Criteria: This scholarship is open to Sri Lankan nationals to research poverty and poverty reduction in Sri Lanka. The award seeks to support a Sri Lankan citizen in their intellectual development and it is hoped that the successful candidate will subsequently work on poverty analysis from a Sri Lankan base and push forward the understanding of how to reduce poverty in the country.