ComScore has published its tech predictions. It’s all about mobile. The mobile transition is happening astonishingly quickly. Last year, smartphone penetration crossed 50 percent for the first time, led by Android phones. People spend 63 percent of their time online on desktop computers and 37 percent on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, according to comScore.
One of the great ironies of the present discourse on Internet/broadband is the appointment of Carlos Slim Helu, the world’s richest man and possibly the single most significant barrier to greater Internet access in Latin America, to serve as the Co-Chair of the ITU-UNESCO Broadband Commission. It is widely recognized that Telmex exerts significant market power to keep prices up, users out, and its profits high. I co-authored a few pieces on Mexico’s early reforms in the 1990s so I have some knowledge of the subject. Now the government has set its sights on telecoms. According to Aurelio Nuño, the president’s chief of staff, within two months the PRI will present a bill to attack the “great problem of concentration” in telephony, internet and television.
Information and communication technology causes unprecedented consequences. It knits the networks of people who challenge the establishment, as the printing press of Gutenberg did to the Vatican. Church is no longer the crucible of political power. But few years back Father Federico Lombardi, the outgoing Pope’s spokesman, has tested the water by warning “of the corrupting influence of mobile phones and the internet on our souls.” He is not alone.
I’ve been thinking about big data and privacy these days. I used to think about this subject a lot in the early 1990s. Back then I did not have a lot of company. But now, there is plenty. But as I read what is being written, I worry.
The irony was palpable. At the recent talk I gave on telecom sector reforms at the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, I used Khan Academy to illustrate what Digital Bangladesh would give the people of Bangladesh. Everybody was very happy, since Salman Khan has Bangladeshi roots. But I knew, and they knew, that the government bans YouTube at the drop of a hat and at that moment, it was blocked for all users of BTCL connectivity. So no Khan Academy.
In the late 1980s, I supervised a Masters thesis on the emergence of the fax. Those days, fax was big. Among the drivers she found were the significance of Japanese corporate culture and ideograms. It appears that the Japanese who were then the most enthusiastic adopters have not given up on it yet while the rest of the world has. Japan is renowned for its robots and bullet trains, and has some of the world’s fastest broadband networks.
Renesys report how Egypt went dark. They have worked out a way to tell which countries are easiest to cut off from the Internet and which are harder. How many phone calls does it take to kill the internet? It seems like an odd question to ask about a network once thought to be strong enough to withstand a nuclear attack. However, first-strike mushroom clouds aren’t the biggest threat to the internet anymore.
Verizon has started to assess and issue “report cards” on mobile apps that its customers are likely to use, according to the NYT. Sounds like a noble effort on Verizon’s part, but why is the carrier reviewing apps in the first place? After all, Verizon would benefit from apps using excess data, because that would result in higher cellphone bills for customers. David Samberg, a Verizon spokesman, said that it behooved the company to inform customers on how apps affect their smartphones because an app that behaves badly can detract from the entire customer experience. And dissatisfied customers might complain to the carrier, not the app maker.
“Only five years after its launch, Skype has emerged as the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world,” said TeleGeography in 2009. Today Skype is barely a 10-year old. Yet, its year-on-year increase of 51 billion minutes in 2012 is more than twice the collective increase achieved by all international carriers worldwide. International telephone traffic grew 5% in 2012, to 490 billion minutes and cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 per cent to reach 167 billion minutes. International migration, the rapid uptake of mobile phones in developing countries, and steady reductions in international call prices—especially in the form of flat-rate (and even free) calling plans—have contributed to traffic increases.
Just today, my friend Abu Saeed Khan was telling me this was something the mobile operators of Bangladesh could easily do. And here, the Economist carries a story about how the Dutch have done it. Each technique has its upsides and downsides. Radar and satellites can cover swathes of land, yet they lack detail. Gauges are much more accurate, but the price of that accuracy is spotty coverage.
Today I delivered the keynote at well attended workshop on how the Telecom Sector could contribute to Digital Bangladesh. It was organized by the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute. Attendees included the Ministers of Post and Telecom, ICT and Information. The Chair of BTRC and the Secretary of the Ministry of ICT, a key actor in Bangladesh’s e gov activities, spoke. The government envisions a Digital Bangladesh that makes the full potential of the Internet available to its people, but appears unclear about how they will be connected.
A death of a scientist is occasion to reflect on the role of behavioral research in the design of telecom devices. It is not so much that Mr. Karlin trained midcentury Americans how to use the telephone. It is, rather, that by studying the psychological capabilities and limitations of ordinary people, he trained the telephone, then a rapidly proliferating but still fairly novel technology, to assume optimal form for use by midcentury Americans. “He was the one who introduced the notion that behavioral sciences could answer some questions about telephone design,” Ed Israelski, an engineer who worked under Mr.
CPRsouth is LIRNEasia‘s capacity and field-building program to develop an Asia-Pacific knowledge network on ICT policy regulation. Through the annual conference CPRsouth provides a forum for policy-engaged scholars to meet face-to-face to exchange ideas, network and improve the quality of their scholarly work. See below for more details of the conference. CPRsouth8/ CPRafrica 2013 Innovation & Entrepreneurship in ICT: Changing Asia / Africa 5-7 September 2013, Mysore, India Organized by LIRNEasia, Research ICT Africa, and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and Supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada (IDRC) and the Department for International Development, UK (DFID) Communication Policy Research: south (CPRsouth) intends to build human capacity in the South by reinforcing and developing the knowledge, skills, and commitment of ICT policy and regulation scholars in the region or with substantial interest in the region. The overall objective is to create policy intellectuals capable of informed and effective intervention in ICT policy and regulatory processes in specific country contexts.
The Minister of Science, Technology and Environment, Dr Keshav Man Shakya, who inaugurated the conference said that he kept thinking e governance though he was asked to speak on e democracy. In my talk, I decided to explore the interface between the two. I did not think it very useful to talk in broad generalities but wanted to bring up specific things that Nepal could do within a year or two. What is e democracy? Is it the broadest meaning of replacing representative democracy with direct democracy enabled by the ability of citizens to ostensibly vote on all matters requiring collective decisions?
GPS tracking devices are appearing all over the place. This NYT article gives a very positive spin to the tagging of wild animals and to the making of the data widely available, seeing it as a way of building public support for conservation. Some scientists are beginning to provide the public with direct access to tracking data. For instance, the leaders of the Tagging of Pacific Predators project, a 10-year tracking study of 23 different marine species, created a Web site broadcasting the movements of their subjects in real time (or close to it). While the project lasted, anyone with an Internet connection could follow the wanderings of Monty, the mako shark, Genevieve, the leatherback turtle, or Jon Sealwart and Stelephant Colbert, both northern elephant seals.
With eighteen companies having thrown their hats in, it is easier to discuss who has not, yet. Of the groups active in the region, the most notable absentees are the Arab groups: Etisalat, Wataniya, Zain, etc. Ten years ago, we would have expected to see Telstra and at least one American company, but not now. South African telecoms group MTN is in talks with Myanmar’s Directorate of Investment and Companies Administration (DICA) with a view to gaining an operating licence in the south east Asian country, local source Eleven Newsmedia reported. MTN is thought to have joined a list of around 18 companies which have submitted an expression of interest (EoI) in acquiring Myanmar licences, including India’s Bharti Airtel, Singapore’s SingTel, Malaysia’s Axiata, Caribbean group Digicel, Singapore-based telecoms investor ST Telemedia (with interests including StarHub and Malaysia’s U Mobile), KDDI of Japan, Thai operator AIS (via parent Shin Corp/InTouch) and Norway’s Telenor (parent of Thailand’s DTAC).