The US has hundreds of airports. My country has one. I know where things are at that airport, I don’t need apps to guide me. What I’d like to know is where things are in the Asian airports that I frequent, like the maze that goes by the name of Suvannabhoomi or the upstairs section of Terminal 3 in New Delhi. Most likely some kind soul will soon come up with a nice mobile app that I can use to find a decent place to eat or buy a book or whatever.
We’ve never been fans of all you can eat pricing, because that does not fit the Budget Telecom Network business model. Here‘s the story on the only remaining all you can eat plan for mobiles (not for tablets) in the US ALL the data you need on a smartphone, at full speed, for a single price — Sprint Nextel is the only major wireless carrier in the United States that still offers this with new cellphones. And by the way, Sprint has not made a profit in a long time.
Making m payments work is not easy. Common standards have to be created and accepted, so that retailers have to invest in one piece of equipment. They are trying to do it in the UK but also giving the elbow to a disruptive competitor. That may be changing, however. In France, the government in 2010 began trials of mobile payments for bus and train tickets in Nice and Paris.
Our good friend Nalaka Gunawardene has blogged about the difficulties of figuring out how many people are actually using the Internet in Sri Lanka. He shares our frustration with the archaic data reporting by the TRCSL. This produced a total of 2,184,018 — which takes the percentage of population to almost 11%. And if we apply the same average number of 3 users, it could give us 30% of population accessing and using the Internet. But is that assumption of 3 users per subscription equally applicable to mobile devices?
The retirement of Steve Jobs from active management at Apple has been commented on by many. Paul Saffo’s comment about the reconceptualization of the Internet experience resonates with much that LIRNEasia has been talking about. The other point about not anchoring innovation on how consumers actually live their lives is more problematic. As the NYT says: Mr. Jobs did not so much see around corners; he saw things in plain sight that others did not.
The government has not backed off on the discriminatory and anti-poor “market competition factor” that was subject to a detailed critique when announced. Per Mhz spectrum charge has been set on the basis of their market share or ‘market contribution factor’ (MCF) which was previously known as ‘utilisation factor’ in the draft licensing guideline of the BTRC. According to the policy of the MCF prescribed by the telecom ministry, if an operator has more than 20 percent market share, it will have to pay additionally, while an operator with less than 20 percent share will pay at a reduced rate. The MCF for Grameenphone now stands at 1.48, Banglalink 1.
Irene was far from our areas of interest, but not far from the newspapers we read. Looks like mobile networks performed well; while fixed had trouble. Wireless phone networks held up well against Hurricane Irene despite widespread losses of power. Many people who lost electricity were able to communicate using e-mail and social networks, thanks to battery-powered mobile devices. As cleanup crews and homeowners began to assess the scope of the damage on Sunday, wireless phone companies were reporting that the storm’s effect on their networks was minimal and that most customers did not experience cellular disruptions, despite the high winds and ferocious rains.
Jeffrey Sachs is a superstar. His advice contributed to the mess in post-Communist Russia, but that did not hinder him in any way from dispensing advice elsewhere (I met him when came to Sri Lanka in 2002; after I told him what we had done or were doing on telecom, he moved on to dispense advice on other topics). His opinion matters much. He has described the mobile as the single most transformative technology for development. He expands on this statement in an interview on AllAfrica.
My colleague who made the previous post had neglected to look at the cause of the so-called spike in inactive SIMs. The cause is a change in definition, plain and simple. The market revaluation has been triggered by rule changes in the activity period allowed for prepaid users and the effect of mandatory SIM registration. Previously, users would see their services terminated if they had not recharged their prepaid cards or placed/received a call within a period of 180 days. In 2010, that period was reduced to 90 days and, recently, the TRAI has reportedly reduced the period to just 20 days.
It’s nice to know we’re in the post-PC world. It’s just two years since we were being asked to participate in debates about mobile vs PCs. And just one year since Steve Jobs called the PC a truck. Now the debate has shifted. We know what world we live in.
We have been talking about the need to prepare for qualitatively higher volumes of data in Asia as more people start using 3G networks. Our proposals have focused on adding to international backhaul capacity in order to reduce prices of this key input that is now 3-6 times more expensive than capacity in Europe and North America. The New York Times discusses how the data flood is playing out in the US. The projections are that the networks will have to carry the total traffic they carried in all of 2010, in just two months in 2015 in the US. Cellphone plans that let people gobble up data as if they were at an all-you-can eat buffet are disappearing, just as a new crop of data-gobbling Internet services from Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Apple and the like are hitting the market or catching on with wide audiences.
Interesting piece in the Guardian on mobile more than voice. What I found most interesting was the emphasis placed by the Community Knowledge Worker on things other than communication, such as the reliable weather information and the cooperatization. To register, a farmer must provide exhaustive details about his farm, household and income, as well as the things he needs most to improve his livelihood. Many in the area still wonder why Grameen isn’t providing them with physical aid, but Simon tells me he is working to change that mindset. “Let someone give you knowledge, then you are rich.
Since 2004, India has been behind Pakistan on a key indicator: mobile SIMs/100. Few in India wanted to talk about this. But we did. Now finally, India has pulled ahead, as it should. I discuss the reasons in a recent piece done for Pioneer.
Causation is a central concern of science. In closed systems such as those found in Chemistry and Physics, this is generally not too difficult. In open systems such those that we work on (i.e., telecom use) it is a tremendously difficult problem because multiple factors are at work at the same time and interacting with each other and with the phenomenon we’re trying to establish the cause for.
I still recall what Nobel Laureate Yunus told Harsha de Silva during a television interview: the mobile was going to the new Aladdin’s Lamp, giving its user not one thing, but many. I don’t think he meant it would open doors, but that’s what this story documents: Front pockets and purses are slowly being emptied of one of civilization’s most basic and enduring tools: the key. It’s being swallowed by the cellphone. New technology lets smartphones unlock hotel, office and house doors and open garages and even car doors. It’s a not-too-distant cousin of the technology that allows key fobs to remotely unlock automobiles or key cards to be waved beside electronic pads at office entrances.
How much should a teleco know about the apps you are running on your mobile? In other words, should it be able to check if you are using Skype on your mobile? According to KPN, 85 percent of the company’s customers who use a Google Android phone downloaded WhatsApp onto their handsets from last August through April. As a result, KPN’s revenue from text messaging, which had risen 8 percent in the first quarter of 2010 from a year earlier, declined 13 percent in the first quarter of this year. At a presentation to investors in London on May 10, analysts questioned where KPN had obtained the rapid adoption figures for WhatsApp.