The acquisition of Skype by Microsoft was a big story. So was Nokia’s tie-up with Microsoft. But now comes the question of how to realize the synergies. Good piece in the NYT. Stephen Elop, the chief executive of Nokia, a maker of Windows Phones, told an audience at a recent conference that “the feedback from operators is they don’t like Skype” because its cheap and free phone calls can steal revenue from traditional phone businesses.
Claude S. Fischer wrote one of the most important books on teleuse, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, University of California Press. (1992). I’ve owned the book for years; recommended it to many. He knows what he’s talking about.
All that was wired (telephone) will henceforth be delivered wirelessly. All that came wirelessly (radio and TV) will henceforth be delivered through wires. That was the Negroponte Switch. No longer theory and speculation, it seems: The decline in landline use, which has been under way for several years, has picked up speed in recent months. In the first half of 2005 only 7.
Nicholas Negroponte said, in the context of the United States, that all that was carried on wireguides would shift to wireless (e.g., telephony) and all that was carried by wireless (e.g., television) would shift to wireguides.
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.
In the remote agricultural province of Lao Cai in Vietnam a few shared community phones are being replaced with high-speed WiMAX broadband connections and VoIP telephony for thousands of residents. In rural Cambodia, a new 3G/UMTS mobile network is being deployed for delivery of high-bandwidth wireless services, including live streaming of mobile TV channels. In rural India, farmers can monitor crop prices and place orders for goods electronically by visiting broadband “community centers” that are taking root around the country. All are examples of a “rural revolution” enveloping less-developed countries in Asia and around the world, made possible by advanced telecommunications technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and 3G. This revolution is bringing high-speed Internet access and next-generation telephony to millions of users who previously had little or no access to even the most basic telecoms services.
It was only in 2005 that Bangladesh got connected to the world through an undersea cable. It is being claimed that this link has been sabotaged, at the same time as the government ordered the shut down of mobile networks, serving multiple millions of customers. :: bdnews24.com :: Dhaka, Aug 23 (bdnews24.com) – International telephony, internet and private international data circuits went down when the submarine cable link was “sabotaged” at 00:05am Thursday, a senior BTTB official confirmed.
The government will auction three international gateway (IGW) and two interconnection exchange (ICX) licences among private operators in October, a top official said Monday. But no foreign company or foreign joint venture will qualify to apply for IGW or ICX licence. Even the non-resident Bangladeshis’ business outfits are not eligible either. Only the companies fully owned by resident Bangladeshi citizens are qualified for these international telecoms licences. Private fixed or mobile phone operators also cannot contest in this race.
The Drum Beat is a weekly electronic publication exploring initiatives, ideas and trends in communication for development, published by The Communication Initiative. This week’s issue (# 399) focuses on mobile telephony, and is relevant for planning LIRNEasia’s next research cycle. Some of the articles include: Pocket Answer to Digital Divide (Jo Twist) Telecommunications: A Dynamic Revolution (David White) New Trends in Mobile Communications in Latin America (Judith Mariscal and Eugenio Rivera) From Matatu to the Masai via Mobile (by Paul Mason) Wireless Communication and Development in the Asia-Pacific: Institutions Matter (Rohan Samarajiva) The Real Digital Diversity (Seán Ó Siochrú) Must Haves: Cellphones Top Iraqi Cool List (Damien Cave) UK Children Go Online: Final Report of Key Project Findings (Sonia Livingstone and Magdalena Bober) Read more on The Drum Beat
Bangladesh government seems to be convinced to open its last monopolistic area of telecommunications; international telephony. This is a good initiative, which needs to be supported as it would bring quality and cheap international telecoms services. However looking at the on-going debate on various aspects of this subject in the name of “VoIP Licensing” no one seems to focus on the most important area: Whether Bangladesh will come out as winner or loser after liberalization in terms of valuable foreign exchange? Pakistan’s Regulatory Consultant M. Aslam Hayat writes.
Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger, Associate Professor at Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachussetts, has criticised the increasing global tendency for everything on the Web, in telephony and in computing to be recorded, archived and kept forever. He said, “In March 2007, Google confirmed that since its inception it had stored every search query every user ever made and every search result ever clicked on. Like the Soviet state, Google does not forget. Google remembers forever.” He adds, “If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved…our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context…the lack of forgetting may prompt us speak less freely and openly.
CDMA has been a major force in helping drive down per-line costs of telephony. Has this been possible even with excessive royalties extracted by Qualcomm? Qualcomm Under Scrutiny by Korean Antitrust Agency – New York Times The South Korean antitrust agency has formed a task force to investigate the licensing and business practices of the wireless technology company Qualcomm, the latest in a string of legal battles for the company, officials said on Tuesday. In Japan, Europe and the United States, Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego, faces accusations by rivals that it has abused its market dominance in wireless technology to demand excessive royalties and block fair competition. Qualcomm is known for developing code-division multiple access, or CDMA, wireless technology, which is a rival standard to the global system for mobile communications, or GSM, technology.
The Hindu Businessline, Thomas K Thomas, New Delhi , July 13Increasing usage of broadband and Internet-based services has prompted Indian international bandwidth providers to raise their capacity by 95 per cent over a one-year period. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, bandwidth owned by various gateway service providers such as VSNL, Reliance Communication and Bharti has gone up to 12.7 Giga bytes in March 2006 compared to 6.5 Giga bytes at the end of the previous financial year. Explaining the growth, Mr Kiran Karnik, President, Nasscom, said: “Bandwidth requirement is largely being driven by the IT industry, particularly the BPO sector, and also rapid Internet adoption at homes.
From LankaBusinessOnline Extended Family 05 June 2006 14:23:29 Sri Lanka opens the door for fifth mobile phone operator June 5, 2006 (LBO) – Sri Lanka plans to expand its mobile phone market to five players, in a bid to bring down costs of telephony, the telecom regulator said Monday. Sri Lanka’s mobile market had grown 53.5 percent to 3.34 million customers as at end 2005, according to TRC figures. The island’s cellular penetration is expected to increase to 20.
Avanti Moonesinghe, Harsha de Silva, Neluka Silva & Ayoma Abeysuriya April 2006, Version 2.2 Version 3.0 The latest in the series of Teleuse on a Shoestring papers is now available for comment. It is often claimed that access to telecommunication facilities is a propeller of economic prosperity in developing countries. Mobile phones in particular are considered pivotal in encouraging growth.
NEW DELHI, APRIL 13: The government is in the process of amending the Indian Telegraph Act to extend the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund support to cellular mobile services (both GSM and CDMA). As of today, the government is giving USO fund support to only the fixed line operators offering services in the rural areas. “We are looking at amending the Telegraph Act to accommodate the cellular services and CDMA-based services to reach the rural areas. We are looking at sharing of the passive infrastructure with the cellular service providers,” communications and information technology (C&IT) minister Dayanidhi Maran told reporters. Besides covering the villages, the minister is of the opinion that the wireless services should also provide connectivity to the Railways and highways especially in rural areas.