The Orascom owned mobile operator in North Korea has issued its two millionth SIM. Naguib Sawiris, Executive Chairman of OTMT, commented saying: “When we first acquired the license in North Korea, people thought the service will only be provided to a few privileged individuals. We are very proud today to witness our subscriber base in North Korea increasing at a growing rate, emphasizing the right of the North Korean citizens in DPRK to communicate.” It is worth noting that through recent decisions of the North Korean government restrictions on availing internet connections through mobile phones for foreign visitors have been reduced, allowing Koryolink to also offer some data services through its network.
Earlier we highlighted how India is learning mobile banking from Kenya. Recently the Economist said, “Paying for a taxi ride using your mobile phone is easier in Nairobi than it is in New York, thanks to Kenya’s world-leading mobile-money system, M-PESA.” This world-leading mobile-money system of Kenya is a great example of unintended consequence. It had several factors in its favour, including the exceptionally high cost of sending money by other methods; the dominant market position of Safaricom; the regulator’s initial decision to allow the scheme to proceed on an experimental basis, without formal approval; a clear and effective marketing campaign (“Send money home”); an efficient system to move cash around behind the scenes; and, most intriguingly, the post-election violence in the country in early 2008. M-PESA was used to transfer money to people trapped in Nairobi’s slums at the time, and some Kenyans regarded M-PESA as a safer place to store their money than the banks, which were entangled in ethnic disputes.
NTT Docomo has shrunk its shareholding, from 30% to 8%, in Robi Axiata – the third largest operator by subscriber in Bangladesh. The Japanese heavyweight has unleashed its fury at the regulatory malfunctions and questioned the government’s credibility. Press release of Robi Axiata on NTT’s exit is the most caustic one in Bangladesh’s telecoms history. The Docomo decision comes in the face of what it cites as an unfriendly regulatory environment and business uncertainties. The telecommunications industry is at a critical juncture in Bangladesh with many issues pending between the regulators and the government agencies, notably related to VAT rebate on 2G and 3G license and 2G licensing rules, which have not been addressed even in the recent circulars of the National Board of Revenue (NBR).
The UAE boasts of Burj Khalifa (Arabic: برج خليفة, “Khalifa tower”), the world’s tallest building, at Dubai. Now it has decided to be the very first country in Europe, Middle East and Africa in terms of futuristic mobile broadband rollout by combining 700Mhz and 800Mhz spectrum bands. The country’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has decided to bundle the 800 MHz band plan with the lower duplexer (2 X 30 MHz) – as a baseline – of the Asia Pacific (APT) 700 MHz band. It will revolutionize affordable network deployment and benefit wider population with mobile broadband connectivity. Deputy Director General of TRA Majed Al Mesmar explains: By maximising the spectrum for mobile broadband in harmony with the growing economies of scale for both bands, the TRA decision will enable nearly global interoperability and roaming.
Bangladesh has ceremoniously celebrated the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day on May 17. The day also marked eight months of shutting down of YouTube in the country. Now the authorities have decided to take over the command control of social media. Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu at a media call on the same day said the government would take the help of ‘special technology’ to bar objectionable materials from being viewed on the social media websites. It would be easier to remove disagreeable contents from Facebook once this technology was put in place, said Inu.
While renewing the 2G mobile licenses in November 2011, the authorities had mandated that each mobile operator pays 1% of gross revenue to Social Obligation Fund (SOF). It is just a version of Universal Service Fund. By far four out of six operators have paid Tk. 2.4 billion (US$31 million) to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, according to press report.
Technology dictates regulation, not other way around. And the Federal Communications Commission has found many of its regulations have lost relevance in today’s America. Such useless regulations only create confusion. Therefore, the FCC has, by far, filled its trashcan with more than 120 outdated regulations. A petition from the trade body, USTelecom, has prompted this belated housekeeping.
LIRNEasia research manager Shazna Zuhyle presented our findings on ‘Gendered use in ICTs at the bottom of the pyramid in emerging Asia’ at the WSIS forum in Geneva on the 14th May 2013. The panel consisted of selected members of the Task Group on Measuring Gender and ICTs. The session addressed the question of what current statistics can tell us about women in the information society and how women use and benefit from ICTs. The session also looked at available data on gender and ICT and proposed a set of priority areas where more data are needed. The outcome of the session will feed into the work of the Partnership Task Group on Measuring Gender and ICT.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and Access to Information (A2I) project, being blessed by the Prime Minister’s Office, are blaming each other on the controversial allocation of 800 MHz spectrum to Ollo. BTRC said, according to a report of Dhaka Tribune: “I have gone through the matter and found that there were no irregularity on our part for allocating the spectrum,” BTRC Chairman Sunil Kanti Bose told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday. “BTRC cannot deny a request from the PMO and the 800MHz band allocation is not only for Ollo, it was allocated to other ISPs before also. A2I planned to use it for digital zila Jessore as well as for the whole country.” Bose also said as far as he is aware, Ollo has special plans to provide internet in rural areas through dongles.
ITU Secretary-General, Dr Hamadoun I. Touré has delivered opening speech today at World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF-13). At the middle of his address Dr. Touré dramatically picked up a blue helmet of the UN Peacekeeping soldiers and said, And it is my pleasure to announce to you today … [pause] … that we are not taking over the Internet. The UN peacekeepers, in their blue helmets, … [pause] … are not coming to take over the world’s IXPs.
Banglalion, one of the two Broadband Wireless Access (BWA aka WiMAX) operators, has filed a lawsuit against Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) for awarding a pair of 10 megahertz of spectrum in 800 MHz band at “free of cost.” Evidently the whole issue has been scandalous all the way: BTRC commissioner, ATM Monirul Alam, admitted that the 800MHz band was declared very important by the International Telecommunication Union, only to point out that the spectrum was allocated to NGGL before the international body’s declaration. The spectrum was allocated on August 10, 2011 for a year on condition of using it properly. The government renewed its contract last December, 15 months after the original allocation. .
The demand for massive data centers close to consumers will increase rapidly as cloud services proliferate and data traffic increases. Yet, they will not emerge everywhere. Just having cheap renewables-based electricity is not enough, as is shown by Singapore and Dubai becoming attractive sites. A whole eco-system is needed. “There is major demand coming from IT-enabled service providers, online portals, e-commerce companies, stock brokerages, and insurance firms,” said Sunil Gupta, president and chief operating officer at Netmagic Solutions, a data centre company which was acquired by Japan’s NTT in January 2012.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan partially privatized their incumbent fixed telecom operators more or less at the same time competition was introduced. India, Bangladesh and Nepal did not. Bad move. The lumbering monsters could not compete. The sad state of the Indian incumbents who have been fed more subsidies than it is possible to imagine is thus described.
When LIRNEasia people were on the field interviewing BOP teleusers in Indonesia in 2011, we saw the proliferation of cheap smartphones. It appears from this report that this trend is moving to Sri Lanka as well. But the company says they will offer smart phones for as little as 15,000 rupees to close in the market gap of feature phone in the island. “We will offer smart phones at low prices to the masses to close the market gap of feature phones” Kalpa Perera, Samsung’s manger, mobile business in Sri Lanka said. Last year the phone company had sold half a million handsets of all types in Sri Lanka.
Yesterday Syria fell off the Internet. Clean cut. Then it came back. Why was it cut? Why did it come back?
The world’s largest democracy, in terms voters, now comprehensively monitors every phone call, text message, email and online activities of its citizens and indeed the visitors’. Welcome to India, where the government has built a US$74 million Central Monitoring System. This third eye of the spy outfits is claimed to be used for enforcing “reasonable security practices and procedures” within the country. But privacy and internet freedom advocates are predictably critical. Pranesh Prakash, director of policy at the Centre for Internet and Society, said: “In the absence of a strong privacy law that promotes transparency about surveillance and thus allows us to judge the utility of the surveillance, this kind of development is very worrisome.