In the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the World Dialogue on Regulation carried a discussion on regulatory responses to disasters. It appears that this discussion has continued relevance to developed countries as well, as seen in this communication from the National Regulatory Research Institute in the US: “Severe January ice storms left over 450,000 customers from Texas and Oklahoma to Michigan, New York, and New Hampshire without power. In Oklahoma, sleet and freezing rain built up ice four inches thick, bringing down trees and power lines, leaving some customers without power for as much as a week. Commissions typically investigate a utility’s response to a long-term major outage, and these severe winter storms will cause regulators to refocus on outage management and restoration issues. An ongoing NRRI study on electricity outages recommends that regulators make their expectations of electric utilities more specific and investigates regulatory approaches that encourage adoption of efficient outage management and restoration systems.
Singapore government hits back at American allegations that US telcos continue to face trade barriers in the island republic. Details in http://www.telecomtv.com/news.asp?
The Philippine ICT Researchers Network through the National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG) of the University of the Philippines will be hosting the first international conference on “Living the Information Society: The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on People, Work and Communities in Asia” which will be held on April 23-24, 2007 at the Renaissance Hotel, Makati City, Philippines (program attached). Early registration (download form) for the Conference is now open and entitles the participant to a 20% discount. This conference funded by the International Development Research Centre – Canada, is being organized in support of the growing community of researchers and practitioners conducting research on the social, cultural, psychological, economic, political, and other transformations brought about by information and communications technologies (ICT) in the Asia-Pacific region. The conference provides a forum for discussing life in the information society. Over 75 papers will be presented by researchers from different countries and disciplines on the usage and effects of ICTs on culture and society.
By Divakar Goswami (LIRNEasia) Bisnis Indonesia (Leading financial paper of Indonesia): OpEd (In Bahasa) January 10, 2007 Mobile talk is not cheap in Indonesia. Despite limited competition, mobile calling prices are among the highest in Asia. Only fixed wireline service, where PT Telkom has a de facto monopoly, sees calling prices to be among the lowest in the region as they are rigidly regulated by the government. But as everyone knows, it is difficult to get a fixed line and the quality is poor. It is therefore not surprising that policymakers and regulators in Indonesia have become impatient with the results of competition and started to voice their resentment of the high profits being declared by the private telecom companies.
Seems like a good business idea for entrepreneurs in countries like Bngladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, with large migrant populations. Even at double the US set up costs, it won’t take long to start earning returns. Of course, good broadband is a necessary condition. Abroad at Home – New York Times Because of stricter border enforcement since 9/11, increased broadband access and reduced cost of video equipment, more businesses are offering videoconferencing services to reunite immigrants with their families back home. Typically found in or near places immigrants frequent like money-transfer operations or consular offices, these kinds of services are often reserved for weeks in advance.
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 low-cost and quick deployment time of wireless technologies give them the potential to connect communities and regions that are currently disconnected. However, governments in many developing countries have not unlicensed the use of spectrum that is necessary to deploy wireless networks like Wi-Fi. In many countries, transmission of data using unlicensed spectrum over public areas is prohibited, which makes connecting villages, for example, impossible. In some countries like the United States, telephone companies are actively lobbying against unlicensed use of the spectrum. These were some of the key issues that came up at the Air Jaldi wireless infrastructure summit held in Dharmasala.
FLAG Telecom plans to deploy the largest IP-based submarine cable network that will connect 60 countries, including many that currently have poor connectivity by 2009. India, Indonesia, and Philippines are among the countries that FLAG’s NGN network will have a presence in. Reliance to carry FLAG far and wide: “We live in a world where there is too much of bandwidth for some, little for others and none for many – there is unequal access to bandwidth in and across countries, continents and communities,” said Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, chairman, Reliance Communications. “FLAG NGN will democratise digital access,” he added. FLAG NGN will comprise of our systems.
A study by RAND noted the vulnerability of submarine cables to undersea attacks by hostile forces in order hamper communication links to the United States. Using Taiwan as an illustrative case, the study said the following: As seen in Table I.2, a recent survey of the number of international submarine cables reaching Taiwan is particularly disconcerting. Four out of five undersea fiber optic cables reaching Taiwan do so at either Fangshan or Toucheng (the fifth, a “self-healing loop” reaches Taiwan at both, meaning that both cables would have to be damaged for Taiwan to be cut off). Two more planned cables have landing areas at Fangshan.
Indian Ocean tsunami warning system on slow track: Tsunami Warning Remains Elusive – Council on Foreign Relations The wave which swept so many away two years ago (BBC) has faded from memory in many parts of the world, even though as many as two million people remain in temporary shelters in parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. But surely the less onerous task of setting up a skeletal tsunami warning network must be well along, right?Not quite. While enormous sums of aid flowed in for relief and reconstruction efforts, the less glamorous work of positioning seismic warning buoys around the rim of the Indian Ocean lags financially and organizationally. As this new Backgrounder explains, several piecemeal systems are up and running, but the goal of creating an Indian Ocean early-warning system to rival the ones run by the United States and Japan in the Pacific remains a long way from being reached (TIME).
Rohan Samarajiva chaired the Universal, Ubiquitous, Equitable and Affordable session at the ITU World 2006 that raised some fundamental questions about Universal Service Obligation (USO) programs around the world. Rohan introduced the topic [PDF] drawing from LIRNEasia‘s recent Shoestrings II study on telephone use at the “bottom of the pyramid.” The first Keynote speaker, Zhengmao Li, VP China Unicom, described the efforts of the Chinese govt and his company in building a harmonious digital society. Thanks to the govt’s policy to provide access to ICTs on an equitable and affordable basis, more than 97 percent of administrative villages in China have a phone. The second Keynote speaker, Tom Philips, Chief Regulatory Officer at the GSM Association forcefully argued that USO programs in most parts of the world have not resulted in improved access but have rather harmed the objective of connecting those who currently do not have access.
Rohan Samarajiva and Divakar Goswami, chaired sessions at the first Telecom World event , ITU Telecom World 2006, to be held in Asia, in Hong Kong SAR, 3-8 December 2006. This event, held once in four years, is normally held in Geneva. It was moved to Hong Kong to recognize the leading role of the Asia Pacific in the ICT sector today (see Figure 1).Samarajiva and Goswami were the only persons from Sri Lanka featured in the program of the Forum at Telecom World. Figure 1: Goswami, lead researcher on LIRNEasia’s Indonesia ICT sector and regulatory performance study, chaired a session that included keynote presentations by Dr Sofyan Djalil, the Indonesian Minister of ICTs.
India’s Department of Telecom (DoT) has mandated non-discriminatory access to international cable landing stations which are an essential facility for a host of international data and voice services. VSNL has agreed to open three landing stations to all operators on a non-discriminatory manner. LIRNEasia has been pushing for having access regimes in place for telecom infrastructure bottlenecks like cable landing stations and backbone in a number of countries we work in. Hopefully, this will be emulated in other countries in the region. DoT will also introduce resellers for international bandwidth in order to further bring down international bandwidth prices since the liberalization of the international gateway (IGW) in 2002.
As part of the Six Country Indicators Project, Joseph presented the interim findings from the Pakistan country study (over Skype). The study assesses Pakistan’s telecom sector and regulatory performance. It employs the common methodology and list of indicators adopted for the Six Country study.
Early warning regarding tsunamis depends on skilled interpretation of earthquake data from seismic monitors like the one at Pallekale and data from ocean based buoys that detect fast moving bodies of water. The ocean between Sri Lanka and Thailand now has one. It is up to us to make sure that the warning that get communicated from international and regional warning centers will be communciated to the affected communities promptly and that those communities will be prepared to respond properly. NOAA Provides First Tsunami Detection Buoy for the Indian Ocean: Financial News – Yahoo! Finance Following a ceremony in Phuket, Thailand, where the 2004 Boxing Day event caused the most extensive tsunami damage in Thailand, the MV SEAFDEC set sail today to deploy the buoy about mid-way between Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Beyond the horizon, but worth keeping en eye on . . . BBC NEWS | Technology | Physics promises wireless power US researchers have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players wirelessly. The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres, the researchers said.