We were flattered to see the highest authority for telecom in India use an image from our Teleuse@BOP research, unacknowledged, on the front page of its website. The image appears to have been taken from a post from our partner on this project, Nalaka Gunawardene. We have more good images. We’d happy to share them with an entity as prestigious as the DoT. Just ask.
Interesting, but perhaps not fully accurate, first read of the emerging cloud-centric model from the NYT. We are seeing a new business ecosystem with all sorts of mobile and cloud-connected devices. Each is a powerful computer, with connections to a nearly infinite amount of data storage and processing in the cloud. “We’re entering this era where consumer electronics is the hardware, and the software and the cloud,” said Matt Hershenson, Google’s hardware director. His view increasingly holds for business computing, too.
Al Jazeera reports that a lot of server farms got knocked out by bad weather in the US. Instead of making us rethink the cloud, this suggests that we need more redundancy, preferably with server farms on the other side of the world. Sean Ludwig, from VentureBeat, wrote in a blog post, “The outage underscores the vulnerabilities of depending on the public cloud versus using your own data centers.” The outages on Amazon’s cloud server come two weeks after a similar incident when a number of popular websites hosted by Amazon went down. A report into the incident by Amazon found that a configuration error was made during a routine upgrade.
WSJ has a piece on big data. “It’s not unlike a microscope—taking something you can’t see and bringing it into the scale of perception,” Aaron Koblin, 30, told me at lunch in Google’s San Francisco office. He’s head of the company’s Data Arts Team. Mr. Koblin’s work sits right on the line between art and information.
Google is entering the cloud services market. Cloud computing just got a lot bigger. On Thursday Google announced that it would offer computing as a service accessible over the Internet, much like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace and others. Google said its prices would be about 50 percent below those of current market rates. Urs Hölzle, the Google senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said Google was drawing off its own long history of managing millions of servers around the world.
The ITU homepage announces the death of former Secretary General (1983-89) Richard Butler. Dick Butler had many achievements to his credit, the most well known being the successful outcome of the crucial and difficult World Administrative Telephone and Telegraph Conference (WATTC) held in Melbourne in 1988 at which new rules governing the conduct of international telecommunications services were approved in a fraught environment. There is value in looking at that achievement today, especially in light of the upcoming WCIT in Dubai, that will seek to revisit the International Telecommunication Regulations adopted in Melbourne during Dick Butler’s watch. What we’d like to emphasize is that Dick Butler was a forward looking man. Having been in the ITU for over two decades prior to becoming Secretary General, he could have acted to reinforce the existing dysfunctional status quo.
We’ve been taking the position that flat-rate pricing (all you can eat) is not what will work in the context of the Budget Telecom Network. Some of our past comments are were in the Indian media and simply blogposts. But now it looks like the big boys in the US are moving away from flat rate. Usage-based billing is seen by some as a fairer alternative to broadband caps, a term most closely associated with Comcast, which had been enforcing a limit of 250 gigabytes per Internet customer per month. Although only a small minority of customers ever exceeded the cap, it became a lightning rod for competitors like Netflix, which accused Comcast of unfairly favoring its own services.
BDnews24.com reports that The minimum tax of Tk 3,000 was endorsed by the MPs, barring those from the boycotting opposition, while the Minister withdrew his proposal to impose tax at source on mobile phone bill.
Less than a month ago, we expressed an opinion on the Bangladesh Finance Minister’s proposal to pile on more taxes on mobile use. Obviously, we could not have been the only people who objected, but looks like it has worked. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has given to pressure from exporters as she asked Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Wednesday to cut the proposed export tax to 0.8 percent at source. Speaking on the proposed budget for the next fiscal beginning on July 1, she also wanted the planned 2 percent tax at source on mobile phone bills altogether waived.
The findings of the survey of degree opportunities available in Sri Lanka were announced by Sujata Gamage, Team Leader of the Human Capital Research Program, and by Tilan Wijesooriya, Researcher, at an event organized by the Education and Human Resources Committee of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce on 27 June 2012. The presentation is here. First report includes: In 2010 the graduate output was about 19,000 people. While 12,250 came from the conventional public education system, 4,150 came from semi-public and 2,500 came from private institutions. While output in the conventional system is actually down from 2009, other categories are up.
In the larger scheme of things, telecom reforms are easy. But they involve technical expertise and are likely to result in terrible errors like Timor Leste’s multi-decade monopoly, Thailand’s concession contracts, Bangladesh’s fixed licenses, and so on, as we pointed out. The Reuters report provides a good overview of the challenges facing reformers in Myanmar. As Myanmar opens up after almost 50 years of army rule, and foreign investors descend on the resource-rich country of 60 million, its long-isolated institutions are struggling to keep up, raising the risk of a policy misstep that could wreck stability in this nascent democracy. The pace of change, already frenetic, looks set to accelerate after President Thein Sein announced on June 19 a second phase of reforms.
LIRNEasia’s thinking, right along, has been, if one is prepared to appropriately warn of rapid onset tsunamis then they are quite ready for all-hazards. Then why did the already established warning centre fail on 2011 November 21. Preparation, Warning, and Response are three linked components of the Disaster Management life-cycle common to all-hazards. Development of systems for those three components in relation to tsunami warnings can be extended to all-hazard early warnings. Question is “how does one extend those capabilities to avoid missing deadly alarming events beyond tsunamis such as the 2011 November 21 Matara Mini Cyclone as well as reduce the false warnings?
Vertical integration has been a no-no. The advantages of specialization (sticking to one’s knitting) have been emphasized. And now, Microsoft moves into hardware. That, in turn, has limited their ability to take the kinds of risks on hardware innovation that have helped define the iPad. Furthermore, with the iPad, Apple has proved that there are significant advantages to designing hardware and software together.
In a widely reported speech, the President of Myanmar has announced the government’s intention to permit private investment in telecom: Thein Sein, who took office 15 months ago after the military handed over power to his quasi-civilian government, said there was a need to consider reducing the state role in several key industries, including telecommunications, electricity, energy, forestry, education, health and “financial matters.” “The privatization that is in the second wave of government reforms does not mean we are going to break them up and sell them,” he added. He said the government aimed to triple GDP per capita by fiscal 2015/2016 and there was a need for more foreign help in terms of aid and expertise to boost the economy. “If you observe developing nations, the government’s budget alone is not sufficient to achieve their development goals … that alleviate poverty and require international grants, aid, loans and technical expertise,” he said.
I’ve been harping on the value of focusing on earnings per employee if we are to pay decent salaries. This was in the context of the IT and ITES sectors in Sri Lanka, where I have the data, but the argument applies to the entire service sector (where most of the jobs of the future will be) and to all countries. A recent report on Apple’s earnings per store employee v salaries paid to those employees, highlights the issues again: By the standards of retailing, Apple offers above average pay — well above the minimum wage of $7.25 and better than the Gap, though slightly less than Lululemon, the yoga and athletic apparel chain, where sales staff earn about $12 an hour. The company also offers very good benefits for a retailer, including health care, 401(k) contributions and the chance to buy company stock, as well as Apple products, at a discount.
My previous post on the subject of ITU moves on the Internet elicited a response: a link to a speech made by the ITU Secretary General where he says the criticisms are ridiculous. This is good. Let’s see what his main argument is: There are many important issues that may be addressed at WCIT, but I would like to focus on one broader issue in particular: how do we ensure sufficient investment in broadband network infrastructure? . .