Organized by LIRNEasia and Centre for Culture Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia University (with support from Ford Foundation). For persons residing in India only. The objective of the four-day residential course on How to engage in Broadband Policy and Regulatory Processes is to produce discerning and knowledgeable consumers of research who are able to engage in broadband policy and regulatory processes. At the end of the course attendees will: Be able to find and assess relevant research & evidence Be able to summarize the research in a coherent and comprehensive manner Have an understanding of broadband policy and regulatory processes in India Have the necessary tools to improve their communication skills Have some understanding of media function and how to effectively interact with media Who may apply? We will be selecting 20-25 participants (including junior – mid level officers of government and regulatory agencies, university students, lecturers, academics, media personnel and other civil society officers working in related fields) to participate in the course.
Appears Facebook will have competition in Asia. “Even if Facebook had permission, it’s probably too late,” says Wang Xiaofeng, a technology analyst at Forrester Research. “Weixin has all the functionality of Facebook and Twitter, and Chinese have already gotten used to it.” Weixin is the creation of Tencent, the Chinese Internet powerhouse known for its QQ instant messenger service and its popular online games. Tencent, which is publicly traded and is worth more than $100 billion on the Hong Kong exchange, is now seeking to strengthen that grip in social networking and expand into new areas, such as online payment and e-commerce.
The Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS) and Shanghai Liantong have developed a Linux-based new smartphone operating system. Dubbed as the China Operating System (COS), it is the country’s second move for a home-grown smartphone platform. COS has the advantage of being government backed, which in China means that local app developers will come under ever so subtle pressure to port their apps to the new platform. One area of where the OS may gain traction over Android is that apps will have to go through an Apple-style validation process and can only be sold on the official app store. That may reassure Chinese consumers in a market where Android apps are often pirated and infected with malware.
Given the slow start and the pushing back of deadlines for the NOFN, one would have thought the BJP would bash the UPA on wasting public funds on fiber. But no, they want to do more. I guess Modi will claim he can get it done, without having to distinguish Congress and BJP policies. Read the article. The feel is that Modi and Reliance Jio are on the same wavelength.
The deployment of 4G wireless as a complement to ADSL last mile by Sri Lanka Telecom suggests that the convergence process that was marked by having a single CEO for the fixed and mobile arms may be reaching its logical conclusion. Sri Lanka Telecom said it had expanded broadband service coverage by deploying fourth generation wireless technology to areas that are not served by its wired network. From January data volumes on all broadband packages had been increased. SLT provides broadband services through ADSL (assymetrical-digital-subscriber-lines), fibre to home and now through 4G LTE (fourth generation long term evolution) wireless technology. At Ruwanwella, in Sri Lanka’s Kegalle district the firm said it had given a gratis broadband connections to the public library and school which had demonstrated downlink speeds of 50 Megabits per second.
The Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) issued a public consultation on establishing a Quality of Service (QoS) regulatory framework for fixed and mobile voice services (consultation reference: TRC/CL/2/1/1/2). The document was well structured and provided insights to the international standards set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and had an overview of QoS practices by other national regulatory authorities (NRAs). LIRNEasia took the opportunity to respond and used its recently completed research module on improving service delivery in the telecom sector to better inform the recommendations. LIRNEasia’s comments can be found here.
Myanmar is a bit of a ways from the Pacific, but I am pleased PTC picked Myanmar for its comprehensive broadband study. The online document with multiple sections is now up, including a little contribution from LIRNEasia. A flood of current reports detail the opportunities for growth in telecom and other industries; while acknowledging the obvious potential, this study takes a critical approach by detailing the magnitude of the challenges that will be faced in order to provide a realistic view of how companies, policy-makers and non-governmental organizations can best proceed and collaborate. Many current studies of Myanmar’s telecom landscape focus on the great potential for comprehensive transformation, while sometimes downplaying challenges that may not be insurmountable, yet need to be fully understood so that they can be met with effective remedies and tools to support new dynamics. Among the oft-noted, thorny and complex challenges include: ongoing ethnic violence, poverty, human and institutional capacity, and broad infrastructure needs.
Why we do research is because we get surprised, sometimes. Here is a fascinating discussion on mobile use in public space in the Eastern US, comparing archival film from decades ago with current video of the same space. Many surprises, but this is the kicker. In fact, this was Hampton’s most surprising finding: Today there are just a lot more women in public, proportional to men. It’s not just on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.
There is a possible explanation for the confusion around whether the Myanmar operating licenses have been issued or not. It appears that the license reported on by Reuters was a permit relevant to the investment, not the license which is the critical document in telecom policy and regulatory terms. This is still to be issued, since the rules have yet to be finalized. Telenor and Ooredoo were selected as winners of a government bid for two private telecoms licenses in June 2013. They expected to receive their licences by last December, but the government has yet to pass a vital telecommunications by-law which will outline the rules and regulations by which the companies must operate.
Despite opposition from ITU, the industry and the lawmakers, Bangladeshi bureaucrats have succeeded to stage a legislative coupe for amending the telecoms law in 2010. As a result, whatever little authority Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) had been enjoying was hijacked by the telecoms ministry. Regulatory environment of Bangladesh went back to the Stone Age. A rouge kitty (USF), in disguise of Social Obligation Fund (SOF), was also cunningly inserted in the amended telecoms law. Moreover, the government keeps violating this law while extorting the industry since November 2011 in the name of SOF.
President Obama’s first response to the revelations of NSA malfeasance was jarring to many, an unhappiness articulated by Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Now we have Obama’s considered response: Mr. Obama also said he was taking the “unprecedented step” of extending privacy safeguards to non-Americans, including requiring that data collected abroad be deleted after a certain period and limiting its use to specific security requirements, like counterterrorism and cybersecurity. “The bottom line,” he said, “is that people around the world — regardless of their nationality — should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security.” Full report.
Or should those paying a higher price have access to better content and better quality of services? The net neutrality debate goes on, yet, in the US a Court rules against. A.U.S.
Efficiency in radio technology and heterogeneous networks (HetNet) for wireless communication has long been talked of. I first heard of it at the London Communication Symposium in 2009 at the University College London (UCL) where HIPNet (Heterogeneous IP Networks) was vastly discussed – more in theory than in-practice, at the time. HetNets enable wireless networks of varying cell sizes, output power and radio access technologies to work together towards the goal of boosting network coverage and capacity. With many wireless operators believing that small cells would be an essential part of their future strategy, there is a big industry push towards HetNets. LTE Advanced will further drive the deployment and adoption of heterogeneous networks.
An unconfirmed Reuters report indicates that the Myanmar government may have met its end of year deadline for issuing licenses to Telenor and Ooredoo. A senior Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) official said that operation licenses had been granted last week to Telenor and Ooredoo, the two international telecom giants selected through bidding mid last year, the Voice Daily reports. The two operators had earlier announced plans to invest about $15 billion and $ 2 billion respectively in the 15-year projects, it added.
Apps have attacked the lucrative harvest of voice with the tenacity of hungry locusts. Now they have targeted the farmhouse of messaging. And the device makers have joined the feast with independent messaging outfits. The revenue from messaging services fell by almost 4% in 2013 to just below US$104 billion. It predicts that the decline in messaging revenue will be more pronounced in North America and Western Europe where the greatest penetration of smartphones and data users has been prevalent.
The Skype-to-Skype international traffic has grown by 36% in 2013 to 214 billion minutes, according to new data from TeleGeography. International telephone traffic from fixed and mobile phones continues to grow as well, increasing an estimated 7% in 2013, to 547 billion minutes. While the volume of international telephone traffic remains far larger than international Skype traffic, Skype’s minutes are growing much more rapidly. Skype added approximately 54 billion minutes of international traffic in 2013, 50 percent more than the combined international volume growth of every telco in the world. Given these immense traffic volumes, it’s difficult not to conclude that at least some of Skype’s growth is coming at the expense of traditional carriers.