Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing about NSA’s widespread surveillance and eavesdropping is taking toll on American technology industry. A new survey, commissioned by NTT of Japan, reveals that 90% of ICT decision-makers are rethinking their attitudes to cloud computing and the global Internet. Titled, “NSA Aftershocks: How Snowden has Changed IT Decision-Makers’ Approach to the Cloud” the study is based on a survey of 1,000 ICT decision-makers from France, Germany, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, and the USA. It highlights nine after-shocks from Snowden’s revelations, which are compelling companies to rethink how they use cloud computing: Almost nine in ten (88 percent) ICT decision-makers are changing their cloud buying behaviour, with over one in three (38 percent) amending their procurement conditions for cloud providers Only 5 percent of respondents believe location does not matter when it comes to storing company data More than three in ten (31 percent) ICT decision-makers are moving data to locations where the business knows it will be safe Around six in ten (62 percent) of those not currently using cloud feel the revelations have prevented them from moving their ICT into the cloud ICT decision-makers now prefer buying a cloud service which is located in their own region, […]
Connecting Asian countries is no longer the carriers’ headache; ensuring seamless connectivity is. In the recent past we have witnessed the emergence of Asia America Gateway and Google’s Unity followed by Southeast Asia Japan cable cables. Series of undersea earthquakes have been damaging the cables and disrupting the intra-Asian as well as inter-Asian voice and data connectivity. Now the Asian carriers have teamed up to roll-out another submarine cable called Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE). It will bypass the earthquake-prone Taiwanese coast.
Today at the IITCOE workshop Ashok Jhunjhunwala made a strong argument that the Indian government must hive off the backhaul networks of BSNL and have them be managed by a separate company. Interestingly Masayoshi Son, the Japanese entrepreneur has made more or less the same argument in Japan. Great minds think alike. The government is expected shortly to unveil a scheme to loop the country with fibre-optic lines that will support internet access at up to 100 megabytes a second, ten times the speed of the technology being replaced. Mr Son argues that to guarantee fair access to this network—and thus the most efficient use of it—it should be run by an infrastructure firm hived off from NTT, owned jointly by all the telecoms operators.
In 1997, NTT bought 35 per cent of a badly managed government phone company called SLT along with the right to manage it for five years for USD 225 million. The decision was bracketed by the Central Bank attack (on a per capita basis more devastating than the World Trade Center hit of 11 September 2001) and the bombing of an empty [Sri Lankan] World Trade Center. Many wondered what the logic was. One explanation was that NTT saw Sri Lanka as a stepping stone to India. But no step was taken.
Broadband | Open up those highways | Economist.com As Taylor Reynolds, an OECD analyst, puts it, innovation usually comes in steps: newcomers first rent space on an existing network, to build up customers and income. Then they create new and better infrastructure, as and when they need it. In France, for example, the regulator forced France Télécom to rent out its lines. One small start-up firm benefited from this opportunity and then installed technology that was much faster than any of its rivals’.
The usually well-informed LBO.LK appears to have gotten confused in the “fog of war” created by interested parties seeking to extract rents from the sale of 25% of SLTL shares by NTT to GTH, both private companies, and by the unfortunate opacity of the transaction (something that is quite surprising because SLTL is a publicly traded company and the interests of thousands of shareholders are affected by the transaction). The source quoted by LBO below appears to have been quite familiar with the ORIGINAL shareholders agreement signed between the Government of Sri Lanka and NTT in 1997, but appears to have been comatose since then. Provisions regarding no universal service obligations (USO) and international exclusivities were in that agreement and did bind the Government of Sri Lanka. The no-USO provision continues to date, though the international exclusivity ended with the issuance of external gateway licenses in March 2003.