It was in January 2007 that we started CPRsouth in Manila. Now the 10th conference is coming back to East Asia, to Taipei. And as it was in Manila, there will be a strong presence from LIRNEasia. The conference program. I was the only board member then.
The cost of international capacity between the US and Asia has dropped dramatically in the past ten years. In 1996, US$10,000 would buy a 64kbps IPLC between Asia and the US. The same money buys a STM-1 (155Mbps) circuit in 2006. Dramatic drops in the price of international capacity as a result of market deregulation in the Asia Pacific is resulting in a shift in the dynamics of Internet traffic, according to a presentation at the APRICOT conference in Taipei this week. Read more.
The strong quake off Taiwan’s coast on December 26 damaged six separate submarine cables and severely disrupted telecom links in the East, Southeast and South Asia. Internet connectivity in a number of countries are either down or are slowed down thanks to taffic that is being rerouted over networks that have escaped damage. Most of Jakarta (Indonesia) and Pondicherry (Southern India) have been without Internet until this afternoon (Dec 27) at least. In our office in Sri Lanka, SLT’s ADSL connection (though congested) is working. However, Lankacom’s leased line is down since it probably connects to the Internet backbone via Singapore.
Taipei to replace cellular with wifi? 10 July 2006 Source: www.telecoms.com/itmgcontent/tcoms/news/articles/20017362396.html Taipei’s City Government has launched a voice over wifi trial it believes could lead to 200,000 using the technology by year end.
BBC News | Taipei to embrace net telephones The city of Taipei, in Taiwan, could have 200,000 people making phone calls using wi-fi by the end of 2006. Ten companies are pushing a “Taipei Easy Call” initiative which involves mobiles which can switch between calls using wi-fi and the phone network. “If this is successful, then the model could be copied in cities elsewhere in the world,” said Daniel Wongg, of the Taipei Computer Association. The wi-fi mobiles provide a cheaper alternative to mobile phone calls.
What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It? – New York Times “Despite WiFly’s ubiquity — with 4,100 hot spot access points reaching 90 percent of the population — just 40,000 of Taipei’s 2.6 million residents have agreed to pay for the service since January. Q-Ware, the local Internet provider that built and runs the network, once expected to have 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but it has lowered that target to 200,000. That such a vast and reasonably priced wireless network has attracted so few users in an otherwise tech-hungry metropolis should give pause to civic leaders in Chicago, Philadelphia and dozens of other American cities that are building wireless networks of their own.
Dr Huichuan Liu, former Chair of Department of Information and Communication at TamKang University arranged a 3-hour meeting of 8 telecom policy-regulation researchers at the downtown campus of TamKang. Six researchers attended the session and participated actively: Professor Yu-Li Liu, National Chengchi U, Dept of Radio TV; Asst Professor Kuo-Feng Tseng, National Chengchi U, Dept of Radio TV; Associate Professor Eunice Hsian-Hui Wang,Yuan Ze U, Dept of Information Communication; Asst Professor Ying-Hsun Wang, TamKang U, Dept of Information and Communication; Assoc Professor Huichuan Liu, TamKang U, Dept of Information and Communication; Dr YunTsai Jessica Chou, Chairperson, Research Development and Evaluation Commission, Taipei City Government. A photo of the researchers who remained until the very end of the session Given the fact that is in the process of enacting legislation to create a National Communication Commission, LIRNEasia work was of particular interest, especially to the attendees who serve on the committee working on the legislation. Dr Chou arranged for a visit of the Taipei City Government’s WiFi project, which is reported on here.
Rohan Samarajiva and Asantha Sirimanne, spoke at the Taipei Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), 26-29 July 2005, in Taipei. Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director of LIRNEasia gave a presentation on ICTs and disaster warnings (presentation slides available below. The underlying paper, in pre-publication form, is also given below. Its final version will shortly be published by New Media and Society. Mobilizing ICTs for early warning: Lessons from the 2004 tsunami, Rohan Samarajiva, IAMCR, Taipei (presentation slides) Mobilizing information and communications technologies for effective disaster warning: Lessons from the 2004 tsunami (underlying paper, pre-publication) | accompanying graphics Asantha Sirimanne, of LankaBusinessOnline who led the team of journalists who were the first to report the tsunami story, gave a talk entitled ‘No Warning,’ which is available below.
“Hazards to Disasters the role of Electronic Communication,” by Rohan Samarajiva and Asantha Sirimanne is currently in session (April 29, 5.30PM). Rohan has circulated a paper titled Mobilizing information and communications technologies for effective supply of disaster warnings: Lessons from the 2004 tsunami. The paper is the basis for the discussion. Asantha will elaborate on the media aspects that flow out of the paper.