Since 2010, we at LIRNEasia have been engaged with problems of international backhaul. Renesys, an authoritative voice in this space, has a nice summary of developments in 2013. Here is their conclusion, influenced no doubt by the incredible damage done to US players in this space by the indiscriminate snooping of NSA. Increasingly, simply having inexpensive connectivity in our interconnected world is not enough. As enterprises become more sophisticated consumers of Internet transit, they seek connectivity alternatives that will keep their own customers happy.
I once invited Bruce Schnier to speak on cryptography at a Ohio State U conference. He came and gave a good talk. But he’s now a star. He exposed the NSA inserting back doors into national cryptography standards. Here is his big picture analysis: Not only is ubiquitous surveillance ineffective, it is extraordinarily costly.
We think about transaction-generated data (TGD) a lot. The essence is that data generated as a by-product of some activity (and which is therefore highly accurate) can tell us more about behavior (even future behavior) than all the questionnaires in the world. Behavior associated with music, closely tied to emotion,seems like an even better candidate than reading. During the next federal election cycle, for instance, Pandora users tuning into country music acts, stand-up comedians or Christian bands might hear or see ads for Republican candidates for Congress. Others listening to hip-hop tunes, or to classical acts like the Berlin Philharmonic, might hear ads for Democrats.
A few weeks back, we wrote about how late the NOFN train was running. It appears the USOF has accepted the reality that it cannot accelerate from 60 to 25,000 in 12 months and is asking for a two-year delay. We all know why government programs have tight deadlines. It has to do with the electoral cycle. What Nilekani achieved, Pitroda could not.
Babus in public offices sit by the pile of files catching dust. Because, the Babus are busy with drinking tea, chewing beetle-leaf, reading newspapers and gossiping with colleagues. This is the general profile of public offices in South Asia. Public offices are neither zoo nor theme park. Yet a notice hangs at the Babu’s door saying, “Visitors are not allowed.
Developed world’s bastions of consumer electronics have fallen like house of cards. Thanks to the proliferation of cheaper components. Off-shoring of manufacturing to developing world has also built its capacity to produce cheaper devices and even counterfeit. Control of mobile terminals is now at terminal stage. The market has been fast migrating to the world of solution and applications.
In November 2013, the Myanmar Ministry of Communication and Information Technology called for comments on a set of draft rules that would govern the liberalized telecom sector. LIRNEasia submitted Comments on Draft Rules Dec 2013_1 covering all but one of the topics.
Contrary to the news report that I based my earlier post on, the Internet use data comes from a preliminary report of the 2011-12 Census. It is based on five percent of the responses from each district. Unfortunately, the data are presented in a somewhat confused way. The first column is simple enough: ability to access Internet from the house. The second column is the problem.
There was a time when voice telephony was seen as a public utility, requiring government involvement in supply. In most parts of the world, the end result was waiting lists and poor service. Now the same refrain is being sung re broadband. Why not take a look at Hong Kong? Here is where to start.
The full report of the 2012-13 Household Income and Expenditure Survey is not yet public, but LBO had got hold of the Internet data: About 11.4 percent of households in Sri Lanka have internet access at home, with 9.2 percent accessing through other means with communications centres were playing a key role, official data shows. The highest internet access was in the Colombo district at 26.9 percent of households with 15.
In a recent contribution to a just-published UNCTAD report on cloud computing we said: The other aspect of the problem is whether data are subject to the laws of the jurisdictions where the cloud computing companies are located. For example, take the case of a company in Country A using the services of a cloud computing supplier registered in Country B, which dynamically stores and processes the Country A firm’s data on server farms located in Countries C, D and E. Country A may not be happy to have the laws of Country B apply to the data and that its police may go trawling therein. The applicability of the laws of the country where the storage and processing occurred poses a new set of problems, because even determining which country has jurisdiction may be difficult in light of dynamic resource allocation. This was well before Snowden changed the entire discourse.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has been dictating the termination rate of international voice traffic. This foolish act has made bypass pervasive and unstoppable. Now BTRC has trespassed into the central bank’s domain to dictate the fees of mobile banking transactions. Even the central bank doesn’t dictate the costs of mobile banking transactions. The telecom regulator is, however, reluctant to recognize the market.
In September 2012, for the first time we explained to ESCAP the fragility of Internet in Asia. In response, the UN outfit had engaged Terabit Consulting to study the state of connectivity across Southeast Asia. The study found that Vietnam’s international connectivity is “Somewhat weak” at regional standard. It said more specifically: “Viet Nam’s submarine cable connectivity is significantly less than other Asian nations.” Last Friday (December 20) Vietnam’s Internet connectivity was shaken when its branching unit to the Asia America Gateway (AAG) was severed by the anchor of a ship.
Both the horses are to be similar in size and strength while pulling a carriage. That was missing between India’s Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) and Reliance. As a result, Reliance has walked out of its rural mobile coverage project under the scheme of USOF. The issue dates back to 2007 when a scheme was launched under the USOF to provide subsidy support for setting up and managing 7,871 infrastructure sites, or telecom towers, in rural and remote areas in 500 districts of 12 states. RCOM and RTL had entered into an agreement with the USOF in June that year, under which they took responsibility for setting up nearly half of these towers.
Singer is synonymous with sewing machines. Like Xerox for photo copiers. And now Singer is selling more phones than sewing machines. And more smartphones than feature phones? Not quite yet.
I am a fan of Mitchell Lazarus. This engineer-cum-lawyer, who is also a PhD in psychology, has brilliantly narrated the evolution of PSTN. He believes that regulating IP telephony is as challenging as “updating the rules of the road from horse-and-carriage traffic to modern automobiles.” It’s all about regulating the interconnected and non-interconnected VoIP services. There used to be a marked difference between the two: where interconnected VoIP needed no special skills, the typical non-interconnected VoIP customer was a highly computer-literate person with a headset plugged into a laptop.