Worldwide mobile messaging grew nearly 10 percent in the third quarter compared to the second quarter of the year, fueled by new trends in the messaging market, according to VeriSign, which provides Internet infrastructure services and delivers messages on behalf of carriers and content providers. The company reported Tuesday that VeriSign enabled more than 58.3 billion messages per day during the third quarter of 2008. This was up from about 52 billion messages sent during the second quarter of 2008. On average, this means that VeriSign facilitated the delivery of about 634 million messages per day during the third quarter, compared to 572 million messages a day in the second quarter.
The number of subscribers to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) services – a technology that enables broadband access on mobile phones and other computing devices – will more than double next year in Asia, according to a forecast by telco industry group GSM Association (GSMA). In an interview with BizIT, Jaikishan Rajaraman, GSMA director of product and service development, said the number of users in Asia subscribing to HSPA will swell from 26.5 million to 53.5 million over the next 12 months. Fuelling this trend are soaring demand from both businesses and consumers, coupled with falling prices of mobile broadband services, he said.
Broadband prices could rise by up to one-third if regulators in Europe insist on strict “net neutrality” rules that would block carriers from charging content providers premium prices to prioritise certain web traffic, a leading think-tank is set to warn. Net neutrality has become a big issue in the US as internet congestion has increased. In Europe, regulators and industry players have claimed that the situation is different because users have more choice of network providers, and the debate has been more muted. However, there have been growing concern among big telecoms companies that changes introduced in the European Parliament into the so-called telecoms package – the sweeping legislation which is designed to overhaul European Union telecoms laws – could open doors to net neutrality regulation in the future. Read the full story in ‘Financial Times’ here.
Thanks Steve for pointing it. We stand corrected. LIRNEasia does NOT use ‘Cloud Computing’, but is only a user of ‘Cloud Services’. Though both appears to be synonymous to a layman – and Wikipedia is yet to recognize the differentiation (type ‘Cloud Services’ and you will be directed to former) – we are told there still is a difference. Cloud Computing = you put your applications to ‘cloud’.
Vint Cerf, who can fairly be described as one of the godfathers of Internet has endorsed Barack Obama in the US presidential race, saying that his decision is swayed by Obama’s stance on net neutrality – the question of whether content providers should be charged more for different content by the “pipe” providers. Extracts: We believe that the Internet should remain an open environment. It’s vital to innovation. Companies like Google, and Yahoo, and eBay, and Amazon, and Skype and so on, got their start without having to get permission from any ISP or any broadband provider to offer services. They simply acquired access to the internet, put their services up and then made them available to the general public.
Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for U.S. president, mentioned broadband rollout as one of his top priorities during a debate Friday evening, bringing applause from several groups promoting universally available broadband as a key part of a turn-around in the U.S. economy.
Preconference workshop at the 2009 conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) | 20-21 May 2009, Chicago, Illinois, USA | Download Call for Papers (pdf) Mobile phones are becoming increasingly important in bringing people into the Information Society. It is widely accepted that the inhabitants of the future household will carry mobile devices that will be capable of voice and data communication, information retrieval and forms of entertainment consumption. Mobiles are now (and will increasingly become) payment devices that can also send, process and receive voice, text as well as images; in the next few years they will also be capable of information-retrieval and publishing functions normally associated with the Internet. Through such services and applications, industry experts predict that many in emerging markets will experience the Internet, or ‘elements’ of the Internet for the first time through a mobile phone, rather than a PC; mobile payments, mobile social networking, SMS voting are just a few examples of some of these services and applications. Emerging markets appear to be following a different trajectory from developed markets; while the latter are moving forward via triple- and quadruple-play scenarios, the former are moving on paths that involve mobile phones as the key […]
Canada is woefully positioned for future internet usage and the quality of current broadband networks is barely enough to cope with current traffic because of a lack of investment by providers, according to a new study. The survey, conducted by the Oxford Said Business School in London and the Universidad de Oviedo in Spain and released Friday, found that Canada is below the global broadband quality threshold, which measures the proliferation of high-speed internet in a country, as well as the speeds available and the reliability of connections. While Japan was the only country to meet the study’s standards for future readiness, broadband networks in countries such as Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria scored better than Canada, which ranked 27th out of the 42 nations covered. The United States ranked 16th. Researchers calculated a broadband quality score, or BQS, by testing download and upload speeds in each country, as well as latency, a factor that measures how instantaneously information travels over a broadband network.
The era of the American Internet is ending. Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States. Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.
We pay for other utilities (electricity, water, phone services) by the amount utilised, but usually a flat rate for broadband depending upon the bandwidth. I have earlier compared this to paying for water based on the diameter of the pipe, instead of liters consumed. The following letter by a reader to USA Today highlights similar concerns – may be in another context. WHY SHOULD BROADBAND BE FREE? James Lakely – Chicago Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin’s reference to the phone industry exposes the weakness of his argument to provide free broadband access in the USA.
Barack Obama stands for Net Neutrality while John McCain sternly opposes. Internet should be open space, says Obama, for anyone to use any application of his/her choice without discrimination. That is like saying the roads are free for anyone to drive any vehicle they like at any time. It sounds good in theory. However, in practice it is a different story.
Leading Democrats on Tuesday attacked the Bush administration’s broadband policy and the technology track record of GOP presidential hopeful John McCain, while leading tech companies pushed for a more tech-savvy and innovative federal government. “The Obama campaign is the broadband campaign and the McCain campaign is the dial-up campaign,” said Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecom and the Internet. Markey and other members of Congress were on hand at the Democratic National Convention in Denver for several technology panels hosted by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado. “On McCain’s watch, the U.S.
A leading US adviser to the Iraqi telecommunications network reconstruction effort is circulating an extensive critique of progress there, charging that Iraq badly lags on development of core fibre infrastructure, faces a massive ICT training shortfall and has erred in rewarding politically-influential US vendors with supply contracts. Bob Fonow, who completed a 18-month stint as senior consultant, telecoms and IT at the US State Department in Baghdad earlier this year, also charges that the recent military surge has seen the US Department of Defense command excessive influence in telecom reconstruction, often in areas where it has insufficient expertise. For example, Fonow talks of a “very pleasant buck sergeant” assigned to advise the Ministry of Communications regional director in Tikrit who’s job back home in Arkansas was to stack Wal-Mart shelves, while a reservist Navy captain software executive from California was assigned the task of booking meetings for a visiting Defense official. Fonow also charges that the so-called “fusion cell” or consensus approach exercised by the US military may be counter-productive in telecoms, retarding decision making and discouraging the civilian sector from standing on its own feet. Read more.
The U.S. needs a broadband policy targeting unserved areas that’s backed by action, not just words, said several speakers at a technology forum in Denver. The U.S.
Indian mobile telecoms firms added 9.2 million users in July, taking subscribers in the world’s fastest growing wireless market to nearly 300 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said on Monday. Leading mobile firm Bharti Airtel signed up 2.7 million customers, enough for it to overtake state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd as India’s largest telecom firm by total subscribers, including fixed-line subscribers. Second-ranked mobile firm Reliance Communications added 1.
Strange will be the telecom world in emerging markets. Free incoming calls are the norm in many counties. Ever thought it can get even better? Operator paying the mobile users for incoming? Where on earth such crazy things happen?