This past Saturday at a conference organized by the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing Harsha de Silva chaired a session with Hans Wijayasuriya of Dialog Telekom, Rohan Samarajiva of LIRNEasia and Keith Modder of Virtusa that addressed issues such as this. One point that ran through the discussion was the need for companies to develop self-regulation to safeguard the trust of their customers. China’s mobile network: a big brother surveillance tool? – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE “We know who you are, but also where you are,” said the CEO of China Mobile Communications Corporation, Wang Jianzhou, whose company adds six million new customers to its network each month and is already the biggest mobile group in the world by users. He was explaining how the company could use the personal data of its customers to sell advertising and services to them based on knowledge of where they were and what they were doing.
Sustainability First: Tapping the Bottom of the Pyramid According to Lirneasia research, 41% of the BoP in Sri Lanka, owns their own phones and 21% of them are mobile phones. Another 31% is planning to buy a phone. But 28% is not planning to buy, mostly because they cannot afford to buy. This can be a primary market for telecentres in Sri Lanka, according to Prof Rohan Samarajiva of Lireneasia. Powered by ScribeFire.
Click on the links to see the full articles covering LIRNEasia’s book, ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia: Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks. ‘BSNL’s monopoly over infrastructure a hindrance to growth’ – Financial Express (India) Rural connectivity is now the focus of every telecommunication player in the country. Almost all stakeholders, from handset manufacturers to service providers, believe that the next wave of growth is in the rural areas.”However, India’s roll out (of telecom services) in rural areas has been slow. BSNL has the backbone infrastructure but is not yet ready to share it with private players,” he added.
Swami is an employee of My Mobile store in Noida can tell how the mobile business at his store has been dwindling in one of the most popular markets in New Delhi region for mobile phones and its accessories. Before January, My Mobile would sell goods worth about Rs 2.5 lakh on any given Sunday but sales started dipping about four to five months ago and the Sunday before Christmas, which should have been a busy period, with sales being down in the range of Rs1 lakh. “Our future is in danger,” Swami says pointing to a Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications’ service centre that doubles as mobile phone retail store located bang opposite My Mobile outlet. The Sony store opened a year ago.
A thoughtful contribution by someone who is developing a voice interface for the mobile internet. The Mobile Web is NOT helping the Developing World… and what we can do about it. By Nathan Eagle | MobileActive.org This is not to say that these billions of mobile phones do not have the potential to access content from the web – rather, the traditional browser-based paradigm of internet usage does not cater to them. The idea that the mobile web consists exclusively of mobile devices running web-browsers identical to the web experience we are used to with IE/Firefox is simply wrong.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka’s top celco Dialog Telekom wants to collect a million old phones and recycle them in the next two years in an initiative that will keep dangerous heavy metals from contaminating the environment, officials said. Phone batteries for example have heavy metals such a lead, nickel and cadmium. Dialog is collecting old phones and accessories from today. “In Sri Lanka there are about 10 million mobile phones, and mobile phones become obsolete in two to three years,” says Michael de Soyza from Dialog who heads the project. “Though some are handed down to friends and siblings, eventually they are discarded and are disposed of through the garbage collection system.
Yunnan-based Chinese companies are offering cheap phones and illegal mobile service in the North of Burma, according to a research report, prompting the military authorities to seize all Chinese mobile phones. It says the Chinese providers are “taking advantage of the inability of the Myanmar military junta to provide satisfactory and affordable mobile phone services in the Shan State and the Kachin State areas of North Myanmar.” Read more.
Paraguayan mobile operators must implement by January 15, 2008 platforms that automatically detect and block the use of SIM cards from stolen mobile phones, Víctor Martínez, head of the technical department of telecoms regulator Conatel, told BNamericas. Besides, by January 1, all mobile operators should start exchanging their lists of stolen devices, the official said. Conatel is also asking all operators to have in place by July 1 an equipment identity register (EIR) system to identify stolen phones when users try to activate them. The EIR platforms cost around US$500,000, Martínez said. Paraguay’s mobile operators are Telecel, a unit of Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular, Hola, which is backed by Japanese investors, Telecom Argentina’s unit Personal and Mexican giant América Móvil’s CTI Móvil.
At a roundtable over the weekend as part of the Bangkok International ICT Expo, independent ICT expert Dr Anuparp Teeralarp said that Thailand has already wasted 10 years talking about convergence without doing anything, and warned that plans for a merged broadcasting and telecoms regulator, the proposed National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), would not change fundamental problems. This was because the NBTC would be divided internally into a telecommunications arm and a broadcasting arm, similar to the past, rather than having an infrastructure division and a content division, he said. As a result, he concluded that there are many grey areas where nobody is willing to take responsibility. “Who regulates pictures broadcast over the Internet like the Camfrog web site or clips sent between mobile phones? The NTC says it’s not my problem as it is a matter for broadcasting.
Internet Governance and Access Unfortunately we arrived a little late for this session because the opening ceremony and opening session dragged on for an extra half an hour. By the time we grabbed a quick, yummy lunch of “pao de queijo” from the coffee shop and checked out the IDRC booth, we were about twenty minutes late. I regret missing these first couple of minutes because Ms. Helani Galpaya of LIRNEasia was wrapping up her talk and one of her recommendations was the use of mobile phones as an alternative method of accessing the Internet. As I hope to discuss this topic further in the paper I am expected to write at the end of the conference, it would be have indeed been an useful presentation for me.
Strange is the day I come out in support of taxes; and today is very strange. But please read this in context: we wish the 10% tax had not been imposed on mobiles; but there was absolutely no reason to tax mobile while exempting fixed; that is why I support the extension of the tax to fixed CDMA. But for some reason the government seems to have difficulty in doing anything right the first time. Why, for God’s sake protect fixed wireline? These are most privileged people in the country.
In the great tradition of banning everything that moves, Minister Sumedha Jayasena has stated that the government is considering banning the use of mobile phones by children. Isn’t this an unjustified intrusion by government into a decision best left to parents? And doesn’t Mrs Jayasena have more important things to do, like enforce existing (and ignored) prohibitions on child labor? In a country where law and order is deteriorating, the government has no business trying to take away the right of parents to be in touch with their children. Ethalaya බාලවයස්කරුවන්ට සෙලියුලර් තහනම් වේද ?
The Lakbima newspaper (30 October 2007) reports that Central Environmental Authority Chairman and Jatika Hela Urumaya politician Udaya Gammanpila is advocating a “green tax” on mobile phones, tyres, electronic equipment and asbestos. It appears that the JHU has a vendetta against the 6 million plus mobile users in Sri Lanka. They originated the idea of taxing mobiles to pay for government expenses (an amended law to this effect was enacted in September 2007); and now they want to impose another tax, this time in the name of the environment. Why not on fixed phones? On computers?
India’s mobile phone market has become the fastest growing in the world, with Indians adding nearly six million new connections every month. As Anjana Pasricha of VoA reports from New Delhi, much of the growth is among low-income consumers. Telecom companies are going all out to woo such customers, offering them deals that make cell phones affordable for even those who earn as little as $125 a month. Handsets are available for $45. Users can buy new pre-paid phone cards for less than 50 cents.
Our friend and colleague from TVEAP, Nalaka Gunawardene, writes from Geneva: Message to aid workers: Go mobile — or get lost! « Moving Images, Moving People! It might be that aid workers are all frustrated computer geeks…because all their talk was about collaborative and networking software, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the use of really high resolution (read: oh-so-sexy) satellite imagery, and the latest analytical tools — all requiring high levels of skill and personal computers with loads of processing power. But no mobile phones! This was too much to let pass, so I raised the question: did you guys even consider this near ubiquitous, mass scale technology and its applications in crisis and disaster situations?
Mobile phones are about to become the simplest and quickest way to transfer money across borders, under a deal announced yesterday by Western Union and GSM Association, the main mobile phone operators’ body. The agreement could have a big impact on global cross-border remittances, worth an estimated $500bn a year, and provide a springboard for mobile carriers and Western Union to offer other mobile banking services using “mobile wallet” technology. Cross-border money transfers valued at up to $100 in countries such as India, the Philippines, Mexico and China – which have large volumes of remittances from migrant workers – will be an early priority of the deal. Thirty-five mobile operators with 800m customers in more than 100 countries have signed up to take part in the GSMA Mobile Money Transfer pilot scheme led by Sunil Mittal, managing director of Bharti Airtel. Other participants include MTN, Orange, Orascom, Smart, Telenor and VimpelCom.