Multiple dishes is a common sight at many Nenasalas – the ‘telecentres’ set up under the e-Sri Lanka program, funded by the World Bank. Some of them are huge – with diameters little less than 2m. Having not done a design recently, I cannot tell the prices offhand, but I do know they are expensive – one such dish (with equipment) costs few times more than the aggregate cost of the PCs and peripherals in the centre. Why a telecenter is equipped with multiple dishes? The reason is, sadly, poor planning.
LIRNEasia plans to conduct its next round of Mobile Broadband Quality testing (in Colombo) on April 6-8, 2009. As a rule such tests are conducted unannounced, for obvious reasons, but this time we decided to make an exception by making the process open. We invite anybody who is interested to participate. If you can bring your own laptops/handsets you are free to test using any tool you wish and check the results differ from the outcome of AT-Tester. Four widely used packages – two from Dialog GSM and two from Mobitel will be tested.
In the third round, LIRNEasia has extended the testing to one more location. With that we have tested two packages in New Delhi (MTNL and AirTel), two in Chennai (BSNL and AirTel), five in Colombo (SLT ADSL, Dialog WiMax, Dialog 3G, Dialog 3G Unlimited and Mobitel Zoom 890) and two in Dhaka (SKYbd and Sirius). A strenuous task for five teams, no doubt, who took readings at different times staring from 8 am and went up to 11.00 pm (some had to spend nights at offices) but results are worth the effort. What did we learn?
Just liked everything else in telecom, the signs were visible in Asia first, Indonesia and Sri Lanka in particular. The debate in the blogsphere is all about HSPA and HSDPA, no one cares about tired old ADSL. We do, of course, and will continue to work on fixed, nomadic and mobile broadband price and QOSe. But nice to know the Economist is not too behind the curve. AS HANDSETS turn into computers, laptops are becoming more like mobile phones.
Contention Ratios varying from 1:50 and 1:20 (Can be relaxed a bit in residential as the links are not shared) is what LIRNEasia and TeNet jointly proposed, but Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) thought it best to adopt 1:50 and 1:30. According to ‘Guidelines for service providers providing Internet/broadband services for ensuring better quality of service’TRAI issued on March 2, 2009, ISPs are expected not only to maintain contention ratios above these values but also be open to subscribers on what they will deliver – instead of promises they cannot make. In addition we received some publicity from Indian online media. Good to know people start taking notes. More on LIRNEasia’s Rapid Response program here.
Several years back, Korea topped the OECD’s broadband rankings and the ITU’s Digital Opportunity Index. That caused a lot of countries to reexamine their broadband policies. It caused others to develop new indices. The NYT carries a report on one: After the United States, the ranking found that Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway rounded out the five most productive users of connectivity. Japan ranked 10, and Korea, 18.
Technology to send broadband over power lines has been around for several years, but it typically hasn’t been able to offer enough capacity at a low enough price to beat service from cable and phone companies. But with government subsidies, the approach is starting to be deployed in areas that don’t have access to other forms of broadband. I.B.M.
The world is awash in telecenter pilots. I thought all the lessons that could be learned, have been learned. Apparently not. Google is bankrolling another pilot in Kenya, including a USD 700/month broadband bill. So, for sustainability we’d need around 700 users spending a tad more than USD 2 per visit?
The stimulus packages being worked up by governments the world over all seem to have a broadband component. Even the Sri Lanka government which barely has enough money to pay its bills, is thinking of launching a USD 100 million satellite for high speed Internet (I guess this means broadband?). Leaving aside the insanity of the Government of Sri Lanka operating satellites, even the other proposals to provide government subsidies to rollout fiber networks can have bad effects that need to be thought about, before taxpayer money is doled out. As the Economist points out: Another drawback with big state subsidies for broadband is that they could distort the market and create regulatory problems.
All UK homes should have access to broadband and faster download speeds by 2012, the government has said. An interim report on the UK’s digital future also looked at plans for public service broadcasting. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said digital technology was as important today as “roads, bridges and trains were in the 20th Century”. But the Conservatives said the report promised “no new action”. The Lib Dems said it was a “complete damp squib”.
The Business Standard, 27 January 2009 The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with state-owned telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) to provide wireless broadband in rural areas. Under the MoU, BSNL will provide wireless broadband at 29,000 rural exchanges throughout the country. Each exchange will have 31 connections along with one kiosk for public use. A DoT official said, “Out of these 31 connections, 6 will be used by institutions like schools, while the rest will be for individual users.” The implementation of the entire project is expected to be completed by 2011.
Barack Obama used his first weekly address as U.S. president to provide more details of his proposed US$825 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that, among other things, will upgrade classrooms, invest in renewable energy and expand broadband Internet access. Obama stated his intention to invest in these areas during the presidential debates in September and came back to the issue in a December address that he issued as president-elect, but over the weekend he added concrete goals to the plan. But on one aspect of the recovery plan — expanding broadband access — he offered no concrete goals and a supporting document issued by the White House doesn’t mention the word “broadband” once.
A little bit of authoritarianism from a government can sometimes be a good thing – especially if it means getting your country’s telecoms industry in working order. That sentiment goes against the grain, but when you contrast the telecoms regulations in the region’s megamarkets of China and India, you can hardly help but conclude that the iron fist is preferable to the velvet glove when it comes to delivering clear-cut regulatory outcomes. India is praised for being the world’s largest democracy, but there is little doubt that its admirable ethos of allowing every man to have a say on every issue – including critical regulatory ones – is holding back its telecoms market in many respects. If there is one industry that needs a fast-moving regulatory process in which decisions are handed down smoothly and with minimum delay, it is the telecoms industry. Few industries can compare to the telecoms industry, where technologies are constantly evolving and competition in a country can be seriously compromised if a regulator does not ensure a timely and orderly deployment of new services, such as 3G or high-speed broadband.
The $825 billion proposal from the Obama transition team and House Democrats includes $6 billion to improve the U.S. broadband infrastructure, which is lacking in many rural and mountainous areas, particularly the West. There aren’t a lot of details yet on how that $6 billion would be given out, but it doesn’t seem to encompass the tax breaks phone and cable companies were lobbying for. Even so, the wireless industry was cheering Thursday morning because a summary of the spending released by House Democrats calls for the money to be used on “broadband and wireless grants.
It looks pretty simple. Incoming free. Outgoing Rs. 2 per minute (to any phone) Local SMS Rs. 1.
A new service where patients can consult doctors over webcams is starting up in Hawai’i. The full article discusses weaknesses and strengths. Patients use the service by logging on to participating health plans’ Web sites. Doctors hold 10-minute appointments, which can be extended for a fee, and can file prescriptions and view patients’ medical histories through the system. American Well is working with HealthVault, Microsoft’s electronic medical records service, and ActiveHealth Management, a subsidiary of Aetna, which scans patients’ medical history for gaps in their previous care and alerts doctors during their American Well appointment.