Among the comments to an informative article on Zuckerberg’s interactions with telecom CEOs at GSM Mobile World tamasha in Barcelona was this: The carriers are making tons of money supplying pipes. The expensive pipes are in demand because of the low cost apps people can run over them. It would be like power companies complaining they don’t make money off ...
The Packet Clearing House is a great repository of knowledge about the way the Internet is developing. Being a decentralized network there is no central entity that decides on things or even collects data about what is happening. So entities such as PCH play an important role. The recent UN General Assembly speech by President Rouseff was perhaps the strongest ...
Reliance on public-sector entities alone was identified as a critical weakness in India’s NOFN plans during the Expert Forum we organized in New Delhi in March 2014. The event had significant participation from senior Indian government officials. Did it, and other writings, make any contribution to the change in course described below? In a shift from its previous stance, the ...
This is stuck at the end of a New York Times article on how the new FCC Chair has been doing in his first months. Worth pondering over. But he has yet to speak plainly about his plans to overcome the net neutrality decision. Critics say that in doing so he has hidden just how much power the F.C.C. had ...
Today, our CEO Helani Galpaya was on a panel “Harnessing the power of convergence and big data for enterprise success” at a Sri Lankan summit called “Enterprise 2.0: building future ready enterprises” (full video of the panel session is available HERE). I thought some of the ideas she proposed about were worthy of further discussion. LIRNEasia is curently working on ...
This past Thursday (15th October 2015) I was invited to give my comments at event, alliteratively titled “An open dialogue on open data.” The dialogue was organized by InterNews and Transparency International and held at the Sri Lanka Press Institute in Colombo. I was part of a panel that included Nalaka Gunawardene and Sanjana Hattotuwa. I was asked to speak ...
Setting the Scene Focus Session – Tuesday, September 2 • 11:00am – 12:30pm Sub-themes for IGF 2014 a) POLICIES ENABLING ACCESS Speaker: Rohan Samarajiva, LirneAsia, Sri Lanka Rohan will provide a bird’s eye view on progress and challenges in achieving affordable access for all. He will highlight controversial issues that came up in the last year, such as: net ...
LIRNEasia has achieved a milestone in the Pacific Region by launching the office of Pacific ICT Regulatory Resource Centre (PIRRC) on 10 November 2011 in Suva, Fiji. Earlier this year, LIRNEasia won the contract to establish the PIRRC with initial funding from World Bank and relocated its Senior Policy Fellow M. Aslam Hayat to act as PIRRC’s founder director. Permanent ...
Bhutan Telecom is launching Long Term Evolution (LTE) service in two locations of its capital city Thimpu. Coverage of this 1800 MHz network will encompass a radius of up to 1km, promising a theoretical downlink speed of up to 40Mbps. Cellular News reports. Meanwhile, the fate of 3G in Bangladesh looks as gloomy as its political future. The regulator could ...
I’ve been putting a significant amount of my time in the past three months into Constitutional reforms because an unusual “policy window” or Constitutional Moment opened up as a result of the outcome of the Sri Lankan Presidential election of January 8th. The Common Candidate of the opposition included a series of good governance measures that had been promoted by ...
JOIN US IN SRI LANKA – Indian Ocean Tsunami 10th Year Anniversary (IOTX) – CAP WORKSHOP DOWNLOAD THE CAP WORKSHOP FLYER These are exciting times for alerting enabled by the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard (ITU-T Recommendation X.1303), especially as major online media and technology companies continue their support and promotion of CAP. One theme is the emergent support for ...
It started with the infamous “SIM tax” in 2005. Although mobile covers nearly 100% of population and geography, a highly ambiguous Social Obligation Fund (SOF) was created in 2010. Consequently the telecom regulator has been illegally amassing huge wealth since 2011. Now the tax authorities have decided to impose 1% surcharge on mobile usage to “promote rural education.” And for ...
The rollout everyone is waiting for is from Reliance’s Jio Infocomm. The Ambanis tend to change the game. But in the meanwhile, Zong has beaten Warid to announce a seven-city rollout in Pakistan Dr. Fan said that Zong will inject 1 billion dollars in Pakistan over the span of three to four years. He said that his company aims to ...
Gregory Mankiw is a gutsy economist. He defended outsourcing while still serving in the Bush administration. He is a also a good economist. He could make a living on textbooks alone. He is now advising Mitt Romney as he campaigns for the presidency. In an interesting op ed, he lays out some simple principles for the design of systems of ...
So I was asked why Airtel was quitting Sri Lanka, the first foreign market they entered. Here is the summary of what I said. Perhaps because it was its first foreign excursion, Airtel was very slow to roll out. In May 2007 they signed an investment agreement. I commented then that the amount committed was too small for a rapid ...
SLASSCOM is the software and BPO industry body in Sri Lanka. It is organizing a discussion on innovation-friendly policies. SLASSCOM are to host CXO Breakfast Briefing on “Impact of policies concerning the internet on innovation and economic growth” on 05th September from 7.30 to 11 AM at Kings Court, Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, Colombo. This event will feature a keynote address ...
The policy statement of the new government headed by Narendra Modi promised to continue the NOFN initiative and work toward a Digital India: “We will strive to provide Wi-Fi zones in critical public areas in the next five years. My government will rollout broad band highway to reach every village and make all schools e-enabled in a phased manner. … ...
It was just a few weeks ago that reports said Asian markets had more or less saved the year for both Ericsson and Nokia. Yet the product launch focuses on Europe and US. Go figure. BTW, these handsets are LTE. Nokia’s chief executive, Stephen A. Elop, presented the Lumia 800, a 420 euro ($584) touch-screen device, and the Lumia 710, ...
Usually one has only the time stipulated in the consultation paper to prepare a response. In this case, the Chair is giving extra time to intervenors to get organized. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chair Rahul Khullar on Wednesday said the authority would come out with a consultation paper on broadband next month. The objective of the broadband consultation ...
infoDev has released the Sri Lanka broadband study authored by Helani Galpaya. The introduction: Sri Lanka, an island nation located in the Indian Ocean just south of India, has lately experienced an explosion in the use of broadband services. This report, part of the Broadband Strategies Toolkit, explores the various factors that have contributed to Sri Lanka’s broadband success, ranging ...
