Learning Curve: Digital Bangladesh

Knowledge is power.

Sir Francis Bacon rightly predicted the future.

Let’s talk about economies dependent mostly on knowledge.

Knowledge based economy usually carries a definition that depends instead of old fashioned assembly/manufacturing of goods and products, to one that is based on research, knowledge, skill and wisdom.

Look at Singapore.

Once I read a book “As The Future Catches You” where the author asserts that nations wishing to prosper should depart from traditional resource-based economies and focus on developing “value-added” service industries. We have seen developing countries entering into higher value added downstream service activities and they are just growing. Why reinventing the wheel? We need to look around and understand why they have done it and customize that down to our need(s).

Perhaps, it was in 2006 where Fareed Zakaria wrote in one of the special editions of Newsweek on “Knowledge Evolution” and I still carry the copy;

If the rise of science marks the first great trend in this story, the second is its diffusion. What was happening in Britain during the Industrial Revolution was not an isolated phenomenon. A succession of visitors to Britain would go back to report to their countries on the technological and commercial innovations they saw there. Sometimes societies were able to learn extremely fast, as in the United States. Others, like Germany, benefited from starting late, leapfrogging the long-drawn-out process that Britain went through.

This diffusion of knowledge accelerated dramatically in recent decades. Over the last 30 years we have watched countries like Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and now China grow at a pace that is three times that of Britain or the United States at the peak of the Industrial Revolution. They have been able to do this because of their energies and exertions, of course, but also because they cleverly and perhaps luckily adopted certain ideas about development that had worked in the West—reasonably free markets, open trade, a focus on science and technology, among them.

We should not be taken by surprise that countries like Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and China not only outpaced US and UK, but cleverly adopted ideas that had worked there. They all saved R&D cost, leapfrogged to catch-up.

Back to basics. Some might argue that we need to change our model from a low cost assembly/manufacturing where most of our industries and businesses depend on cheap labour, to one that is based on knowledge and innovation. Changing model requires a great deal of learning and the learning curve depends upon proper knowledge transfer. And, yes! Are we ready for it? Little learning can be dangerous too.

Look at emerging economies where information or the so called knowledge economy is working as the guiding principle for poorer countries having a chance to get out of their present condition. Countries those are trying, they all have some sort of action plan. And, now we have one.

I personally had a blast when I have undergone a policy framework training under IDA, the merged Information and Communication regulator+policy maker of Singapore.

I believe it all started with the merger of ICT and Telecom in to one entity back in 1999 and a eGovernment Action Plan (eGAP) to fulfill the vision of making Singapore to one of the leading knowledge based economies in the world.

Please be advised, sticking to blue time line would give you better assimilation.

[The time line is linked here as a facebook album for enlarged view]

Structural or Fuctional Separation?

I’m not writing for ages! Forget about creative writing when I recently finished “Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York’s Acclaimed Creative Writing School” – yes, procrastination is long lost problem.

Writer’s block? I hear you saying that.

But, you don’t want to talk about it.

On a given 10 minutes (before power blackouts here in my place) situation and here’s what I’ve compiled as fictional non-fiction.

The words “affordable internet” are still a problem for Country “A”.

I personally believe in structural separation since everybody talks about cost of internet being skyrocketing. I have a sixteen components model, but we always tend to forget the competition part of it.

There’s something we refer as “critical resources” where any government is required to intervene on proper use of  that resource by publishing that Reference Interconnection Offer (RIO) for access seeker competing operators. The domestic transmission cost is still astronomical than that of our pricy international access.

Carrying a unit of international bandwidth to the landing station does bear about the same hefty price tag when you simply pass it on to mainland from that very landing station.

Is access still an issue? Or some directives which mandate non-discriminatory, fair and open access at the cable landing stations?

Some says, a clean split between the monopoly elements (i.e. transmission links) of the communications network and the sale & marketing of services that use it, would lead to the most competitive possible environment for telecommunication service providers – and thus would be in the best interests of people.

Let’s go back to my basic regulatory book “ICT Regulation Toolkit” which explicitly says;

There are three levels of separation under consideration by regulators and policymakers.

a. full structural separation involving separate ownership of previously commonly owned divisions;

b. functional separation of infrastructure and retail business lines involving staff divisions; and

c. accounting separation between the infrastructure and the retail business.

As it continues, structural separation requires an operator to separate its own network infrastructure from those units offering services using this same infrastructure. Also known as ‘ownership unbundling’ or ‘divestiture’, structural separation means that all of the network elements are placed in a separate legal entity and are under a different ownership.
Can you believe that?

On the other hand, Operational separation was always a second best option.

The “functional separation” dictates the separation of business units with separate accounting that are created for the network provider’s retail pricings and wholesale pricings.  The wholesale business part of it would sell to its retail business unit on the same terms and conditions as to competitors for the retail services.

I know – you have to differ here, a big time.

Sometimes, lacking the clarity of a legal separation, as it tries to create the same incentives through virtual splits between network, for the wholesale and retail, which are highly prone to discriminating against third party service providers, almost whenever it could.

Time’s up!

That being said, structural separation might seem hard when network  players are already in different licensing segments. But, operational separation would do justice when it comes to providing equitable access to transmission, that is – delineation of bottleneck resources. This requires that network provider’s control of bottleneck resources be  “neutralized” so as to prevent monopoly abuse and the accompanying  losses. Then a mobile player, in such case – would have separate subsidiaries [accounting separation] for its own ISP and network wholesale (transmission) unit. Other retail units of this mobile player would have to buy the services on the same terms and conditions as with other competitors like ISPs and different service providers.

Then on, you can expect half the price of internet what you are paying today!

Weight of the Soul

What’s the emergency?
There’s been a suicide.
Who’s the victim?

I am.

What to do when I’m left alone, self proclaimed abandoned and stranded in the middle of weekend but placed home alone. My children are visiting their grandparents and I chose to stay home, writing.

I fired up my word processor – four hours back, the cursor blinked for thousand times. There’s no deadline what I write, carefully planned escaping for ‘Tipping Point’, definitely for a good read. You may all blame it to M***** bhai for letting me to have such a cowardice escape!

Just got in to chapter four, my inner bitch provoked popping a DVD which I perhaps, have seen for couple of times. The morning seemed way better than Malcolm Gladwell, and nobody’s home – how about a good cry?

Some says, ‘Seven Pounds’ does refer to the average weight of all possible donatable human organs. As per the Answers.com, yes – after couple of googling.

Q. Weight of organs that can be donated?

A. Its seven pounds.

But some has also confirmed that the title has connection to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, in which a debtor [who owes a debt] must pay a pound of flesh in return.

In ‘The Merchant Of Venice’ Act 4, scene 1, [304–307], “a pound of flesh” is a figurative way of referring to a harsh demand or spiteful penalty, consequences of defaulting on a desperate bargain. Here the penalty/consequence was rather that an act of kindness, where this character showed kindness.

I like to look up for the metaphors, not the literal one in most of the movies and especially this one which has a huge impact on me. For the first time, I had to learn that Cardiotoxic [Jellyfish] is more of a toxic thing to the living heart but won’t damage the heart per say.

People think the focus of the movie is about the repayment – the seven favours – the seven lives he saved for the seven lives he took – for his own fault. Some says, there are only seven organs that you can donate from the human body? He even used the ice to protect his organs and instructed his friends to help afterwords in getting the body to the hospital to get the organs out right away.

And perhaps, when someone dies, it has been shown that they immediately loose seven pounds. You may say it’s the weight of the soul, which is all that survived after he gave everything else to others.

I’m still crying. I’m such a suck.

Renascence, Always Again

I watched my daughter watching this movie alongside the other weekend. I actually wished I could turn back the time. No, it’s not about turning back the clock but stopping the time for millions of reason. Am I talking about time traveling? It felt like having clasping her through this movie, yes, heaven does have a place on earth. She is growing – though I’m guilty as charged for not be able to spend time when I’m with her, duly posted to Dhaka. But, then – I’m preparing to move, once again. I wished I could stay there (just for this moment) forever, holding her – but the movie went on. Time stool still.

She is almost there, 7 is waving at her from the other side of an open door. And it is in only a few days she will walk through into a room I can’t enter. “Don’t go”, I whispered caressing her silky hair (the one she inherited from her mother) a bit ago, “don’t go”, I laughed – not knowingly what I said, “don’t grow”, and she laughed back at me, time flies, her eyes said, this is life, Baba.

It was 2003, perhaps a Barnes and Noble’s store, this 550 pages book made its way through my economy class luggage with other 19 books I carried from US. I wish my daughter takes up the habit of reading a book a day from her mother, who even reads while taking meal. And, from the book, Alba, this 5 years old girl travels time as her father did. While she was talking to Henry for the first time, I hold my daughter a bit tighter; I felt heavenly when Henry talks back to Clare about Alba, she being beautiful and smart! Wish you could see his expression. Alba, perhaps tried to save her father when he dies at her fifth birthday.

And, then when Henry travels back to Clare at eight, seems to be one of those times I rewind hundred times.

Are you married?
Yes, I am.
Is your wife a time traveler?
No. No, thank God.
Do you love her?
Yes. Very much. What’s wrong?
Nothing. I was just hoping you’re married to me.

Here, Henry could have assured she being the one, but Audrey subtly abstained putting this there – this is the power of writing. I once read a chapter by Sol Stein, “Competing with God: Making fascinating People” while creating a vivid characters like Clare or Alba.

When adult Henry met her mother, the score felt dreamy, beautiful and emotional. Initially, I actually bought couple of these tunes and then – eventually had to buy the whole album. Just like the movie creeps up on you and gets in to your heart, it stays with me long after I stop listening to it, just as the book or the movie stays with me long after I have read or seen it. Her mother, who he had watched her die hundreds of times, and he met in the train – the score stands out of the rest.

When it comes to the last scene, I don’t want to talk about it. The book has a different version she being 82 meeting Henry, 42 for a short while.

The outcome, even when I’m not writing for months, I’m now all over writing about it.

Getting Past your Past: The Movie Effect

He knows almost immediately she’s who he’s been searching for.

I was talking about this heart wrenching movie, strangely satisfying, the story hurts with the worst and bleeding inside out, making it a uniquely conflicting mix-up.

They say, it wasn’t a love story, true!

And, I say its story about love.

“I think you know it when you feel it” says Tom, in a heart melting scene in the movie. But hey, most of us don’t believe it at all. Perhaps, love is like that largely brilliant conspiracy we are all made to believe.

Most of us never feel what it feels like being there. For some, it’s either obsession or infatuation. But, for rest of us, we are happily married, raise children out of empathy of staying together – never felt true love as described in movies, books and in poems. Companies on greeting cards, movies, music and heart-shaped things (e.g. chocolates …) are making millions – ‘cause it’s rare!

What happens when you are falling for her – in true love?

First, it is eminent that your fear of loosing her doubles your uncertainty being an old you – all at the same moment. You can never go back to that previous state.

By then, things have changed – and you have lost all your self-esteem in life. Years of “there’s no such thing called love” fall flat. The two becomes one. Her being around/talking comforts you, and makes your worries go away, you would spend your lifetime till eternity, talking to her and never get bored. Mostly, everything about her seems perfect (her appearance, what she says, her voice – even the pronunciation skill – that to over phone etc.)

How about couple of emails? She’s way better than grammar girl!

Depends on who you ask. And you know the drill; your sleepless lonely nights have just begun. Most days – you can’t breath and cockroaches walk all over your heart.

The true love hurts. Not all love, but sometimes, when the person doesn’t love you back in return, you don’t know what to do and everything seems to be way out of your league. And even when she loves you back, there’s no certainty her chances of falling out of it even the day next.

The opening credit was little too much for me, who was this “Jenny Beckman”? I googled and it seemed like people have had millions of postings about her whereabouts?

As daily mail writes, it is surely the greatest act of revenge in the history of cinema. When American Scott Neustadter was dumped by an English girl, it not only dented his pride, it also inspired him to write a movie about it – which has become a hit in the U.S.

The writer had two thoughts almost immediately – after meeting this girl of his dream in London’s LSE. The first was like she’s THE one. The second was that this relationship was going to end very, very badly.

Summer seemed to be bohemian, mysterious, distant and pretty casual about life, you’d definitely fall for her. But then, when matters of the heart are involved, the line does need to be drawn somewhere.

Well, antagonist Summers are great for lifetime memories, you know – you need something to cherish [even that was a bad breakup] when you look back! We do love these withdrawn characters – who gets out of our life!

Don’t we? Most of them are forgiven, not forgotten.

And please don’t ask about the hardest part.

Have you ever been on the rebound?

Africa Connects, Plethora of Subsea Cables!

Best weather on planet earth?

Having lived there for over a year, Bunia (DRC) stays on top of my list. I do have a soft spot for Africa, and best part, it has opened up its entire bureaucratic authoritarianism to connect the world. Well, I know there have been loads of improvements in parts like health care, education and food security, but then I have to cling on to the things when it comes to communication.

Don’t fall flat when you hear a total of seven (Cable Systems) undersea fibre optic cables, with an aggregate capacity of 10.94 terabytes (10,940 gigabytes), have landing stations along the entire coast line around Africa. As referred in last September in Allafrica.com , submarine fibre optic cables landing in Africa include SAT-3, 120 gigabytes, Main-one, another cable system – 1.92 terabytes, Glo-one, 640 gigabytes, East African Submarine Cable System (EASSY), 1.3 terabytes, South Asia Telecom Cable (SEACOM), 1.2 terabytes, The Eastern African Marine Systems (TEAMS), 640 gigabytes, and the largest of them all, West Africa Cable System (WACS), 5.12 terabytes. This WACS, according to another report, the capacity will rise to around 10 Tb/s by the end of 2011, or 120 times the 2008 capacity.

TEAMS, according to the said source, is being constructed at $82 million; EASSY, $235 million; Main One, $240 million, SEACOM, $600 million, whiles WACS, SAT-3 and GLO1 are equally multi-million dollar projects. It feels great when Africans are reaching out for endless possibilities, cutting the bureaucratic channels, common sense regulation, sometimes others tend to miss.

And, here on the West Coast of Africa, some other cable systems including SAT-3 (14,000km), WACS (14,000km) and Main one (14,000 km) connect Europe to South Africa, stretching from Portugal, with several landing stations along the western coast of Africa down to the south; Glo1 (9,500km) connects United Kingdom to Nigeria, landing in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and Ghana. Can you believe that?

And then, to the East of Africa there is EASSY, which connects South Africa to Sudan, with several landing stations along the eastern coast; SEACOM (15,000km) connects France to India, with at least seven landing stations in Africa, from South Africa through the eastern coast to Egypt in the north.

According to TEAMS, which is 4,500km long cable system and links Kenya with the United Arab Emirates, with possible (some have come up already) landing stations in Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi.

How about a pictorial? At least, you might say, seeing is believing!

It is for real! Africa is connecting! What is it happening there? Click for more.

Let me go back to Stanford’s brilliant work on Internet end-to-end performance monitoring solution at IEPM. This group at Stanford monitors network connectivity and end-to-end performance for sites involved in Internet2, the U.S. D.o.E funded laboratories, laboratories throughout the world, and Institutes and Universities throughout the world involved in data intensive science. What else do you see there?

PingER monitors over 165 sites in 50 African countries!

Guess what, just yesterday, Tunisie Telecom has brought digital independence (similar concept like Digital Bangladesh) to Tunisia by landing the country’s first 100% African-owned subsea cable in Europe connects North Africa to Interoute’s pan European next-generation network, via Interoute’s landing station in Sicily.

The cable system provides Tunisia with an additional route to the Sea-Me-We-4 and Keltra submarine cables, providing a redundant and reliable international network for its incumbent, (like BTCL here in Bangladesh) Tunisie Telecom. The cable’s total capacity of 3.2 Terabytes/s is more than seven times greater than that of SEA-ME-WE-4 cable that had been serving Tunisia previously. Bangladesh has a lone route to SEA-ME-WE-4.

Too much regulation sometimes kills things. My understanding, light handed approach has been a success case in emerging countries. As per regulation body of knowledge,

Light-handed regulation allows the firm discretion in how it meets regulatory targets. Regulation that is not intrusive, in contrast to command and control or even cost of service regulation. This process is designed to reduce information requirements and high compliance costs, while introducing clear incentives for good performance.

The report by Joyce Sadka says it all.

For me, its about a simple math on demand and supply!

Happy Victory Day!

Mobile Payment, Ecommerce Ecosystem: Bangladesh

I’m pretty good at paying late fees. Keeping additional funding for my university and other utility bills has become more common rather than to go out and pay within the timeframe.

Paying from anywhere!

The phrase “go out” has other meanings too. If your office is understaffed, you can’t get out, and even if you manage time to get to some banks (because, they operate even less than our office time), maneuvering the transportation takes hours (even if you own one, I don’t), and the traffic will take almost four hours to get there and come back to your workplace. If you need to buy things, money withdrawal requires you personally being in the bank, unless you authorize someone doing your stuffs.

If you add all up, these household chores (paying all the bills, installments, money withdrawal and late fees like mine) related to money transfer, 30 man hours/month is required equating to 4 business days. Let alone, you traversing all over the city causing traffic congestion every day.

The basic understanding is about more spending, by individuals or corporations or the government, means more demand, more production, more jobs, more prosperity. When money rotates, you get the best value; everybody gets the chance of having it. There are statistics when billions of taka stay in people pocket, doesn’t get its valuation from the financial institution because, even if you want to spend, there is no mechanism, no way!

Sending money for my maid’s parents would have saved them from traveling to Dhaka every month. Thanks to SA travels, for making it easier for millions of people, unofficially. Yes, there is a great demand for it, and then if the services are not approved, people will innovate it!

If people became really aware where their money flows, they may make different decisions about how they spend their money, and communities may make different political, economic, and social choices. Right now, I wanted to buy a report from a consulting farm, legally I can’t! It’s not about that 49 USD going outside of the country, but online transactions are recorded, not the offline one.

How do you automate the whole money flow chain? If I could pay my university not leaving my office, they would have got the money in time. I could have spent some more time writing another directive for my office.

It might sound weird but African nations have developed many fold when it comes to money transaction. Think of award winning M-Pesa, the mobile payment system which works as a branchless banking service, meaning that it is designed to enable users to complete basic banking transactions without the need to visit a bank branch. This M-pesa program alone, is working in Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, South Africa, Afghanistan and even in our neighbouring India. As wiki says “The service enables its users to: −Deposit and withdraw money, −Transfer money to other users and non-users, −Pay bills, −Purchase airtime”, the last two are already here! Telco regulator has approved it long ago!

Please compare the bank account holders with the mobile users as 19 million (most of them have three or four accounts, as these branches are yet to be centralized): 52 million. I’m impressed with all the directives on ecommerce and mobile payment from the financial regulator, Bangladesh Bank. This is the best of the both world for any financial institute starting these services! Previously banks were against telco led mobile payment systems, now they have the approval with bank led/bank focused model, but readiness is in question.

All they have to do is talk to telecommunication regulator and mobile companies integrating their modus operandi to start the services. The telco regulator have initiated the process, the financial regulator have opted for a National Payment Switch (NPS) which has to be in place in two years time creating a common platform for all the banks in internet banking and e‐commerce. There are talks on revenue sharing model on amounts being transacted, business model and MoU would dictate that. But, if you ask me, does your ISP charge you when you buy things online? You pay a flat fee for using Internet only.

They relaxed the option on setting NPS, like when NPS isn’t there, providers are allowed to use interim measures for interoperability among the existing payment networks.

What else do you want?

I’m with you, want to spare more time in productivity for the country. Let the cash roll; let everybody participate in country’s productivity. Let SMEs to start their businesses within the comfort zone of a home!

Taking away four business days – in a month does hurt the productivity!

Roaming Charges Regulation for SAARC Countries, SATRC

Bill Shock, how long?

I don’t travel much but couple of them in a year won’t hurt. If you stay in some countries for day or two or transiting through, it’s not economically viable to buy prepay local SIM. It is even harder buying SIMs without proper verifications/IDs in some countries, as required by the local regulation. Being veteran skyper, my blackberry never gets any data roaming, while SMS roaming still stays out of my reach.

The first thing will cross your mind, why don’t I get roaming feature in my handset while traveling abroad?

First, the regulation isn’t that easy from the financial regulator, though the telecommunication regulator can step in to settle this but acute shortage of manpower is holding them back even providing the basic regulatory chores.

Yes, you have to have foreign credit/debit card. Then, I believe – paying in local currency could have better track record in calling expenditure.

Second, the charges are astronomically high even you are traveling in SAARC region. On the job, roaming complains are hard to mitigate due to absence of transparent tariff structure. The “bill shock” is still a common phenomenon for Bangladeshi roamer and sufferings can be prolonged one.

Have you heard of EU regulatory framework on roaming charges?

European Regulatory Framework Directive and the Commission Recommendation on relevant markets of 2003, telecommunication regulatory authorities (TRAs) obliged to define and assess the conditions of effective competition in the “national wholesale market for international roaming services on public mobile networks” (as described in WIR -market n. 17/2003).

EU retail roaming charges were roughly five times higher than domestic tariffs. Due to lack of retail price transparency; many consumers were not aware of the high charges for receiving calls. The regulatory body understood that situation which cannot be solved using existing regulatory tools.

After two levels of public consultations with all the stakeholders and consumers, the EU regulatory body enforced a new regulation on a uniform/flat tariff. In this regulation, the mobile carriers will also be required to bill customers for roaming calls by the second after the first 30 seconds, instead of on a per-minute basis. Meanwhile, data roaming charges has dropped dramatically.

The result, consumers are free from all those “bill shock”.

The South Asian Telecommunications Regulators’ Council (SATRC) can be the best suited strategy ground where all SAARC regulators can come together fixing this “bill shock”. Let me share one of our (SATRC Working Group Report) documents on “Regional Network Connectivity and Roaming and Tariff Issues among SATRC Countries“. [Mirror]

This has highlighted the present scenario of roaming charges in SAARC region.

I must share about Zain, a mobile company based in Kuwait, operates in 24 countries, 8 of them are in the Middle east, and 15 countries in Africa. While traveling through Lebanon, I found them providing local rates (local-calling-rates / free-receiving / data / local-top-up / free-voicemail / free-customer-care) between Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi, Niger, Chad, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Republic of Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo.

They call it One Network!

If it’s in the Bangladesh it’s gotta be .bd!

It must have been a week while I was attending one of the briefing sessions after the ministerial team visited “The Internet Governance Forum (IGF)” as held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

What was it for Bangladesh being in IGF, the Internet governance lobbying ground?

The team requested ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom on the inclusion of Bangla script compatible domain names as Egypt and Russia has sent similar proposals for their own IDNs.

By the way, why do we need IDN?

This Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) has been talked at length in this IGF. For last couple of years, these IDNs have become a hot topic in the field of Internet governance. As the number of non-English speakers [non Latin-based script] on the Internet grows exponentially, the limitations of the Domain Name System [DNS] have become evident to many.

It has also been said that over half the Internet users around the world don’t use a Latin-based script as their native language. It might sound great when ICANN will allow this floodgate to expand the global reach of the Internet by introducing the top-level domains in non-Latin character sets. It will help over half the world’s population who uses alphabets other than Latin, to let them read and write domain names and email addresses in their native languages. But, one thing I know for sure, search is getting hard in coming days.

It is true that the genuine community voice of the local populations in their own new idnGTLDs can be given a chance to be heard. But, then – in case of Bangladesh, adopting Bengali domain might lead us to the island syndrome where we may not be found by the international communities. It is fantastic solution for localized content, and are we there yet? Some has concerns as we need to avoid restricting new idnGTLDs to governments, many of which are often repressive or takes months to process, and we must also avoid handing the market to the Internet incumbents.

What is there for us and why isn’t everyone’s interested for IDN?

I’m not disapproving it, but are we done yet, with the keyboards war? Well, there is a keyword called “priority” before we proceed with this IDN thing. Yes, leapfrogging is great idea but sometimes shortcuts lead to nowhere.

And, under ICANN’s current plan, the only IDN domains are allowed are in country-code domains controlled by governments, like Bangladesh’s .bd, China’s .cn, and India’s .in. Here comes the moment of truth, who is administering the .bd domain?

The UAE telecom regulator [TRA] is promoting its fierce campaign for the local domain .ae [I would be surprised if you can’t find couple of promotional ads in middle eastern telecom magazines and sites] by saying …

If it’s in the UAE it’s gotta be .ae!

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has also re-delegated the UAE ENUM space (971) to TRA, which in turn delegated it to aeDA [TRA’s initiative] to manage the country top level domain [.ae ccTLD] from both administrative and technical perspectives in compliance with international best practices. According to TRA, they are aiming to attract around 200,000 registrants by 2010!

The current .bd domain administrator has acute shortage of manpower and the regulatory body has the domain administration authority in the amended act. As always, blame it on the predecessors; but this is an extra job when you don’t have proper organogram for it.

If we talk about priorities, what should be done next?

Licensing the .bd domain administration to an able body or to prepare the proposal for Bangla IDN?

Please have a look at the preparation phase of IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, welcome to the real world.

Politically, “both” would sound perfect even if I subscribe to a different school of thought!  Please be advised that it is all about empowerment of local communities doing local businesses. It is mostly about business friendly policies not only Bangla script that matters.

And, please, please fix the keyboard layout!

Happy Eid-Ul-Azha!

Digital Bangladesh Feat. Universal Services Obligation Fund

Communication has always been a human need.
ITU believes it is also a human right. — ITU Tagline

Can everybody get one for free?

Finally, the online training is over, even though the final quiz was real tricky!

How was it?

Actually, I’ve learned a great deal on this Universal Access/Universal Services (UA/US) and it is the only thing can help achieving Digital Bangladesh, the current government’s election manifesto. I simply love it! This tagline has a promise; though implementation remains obscure to the policy makers. Each government is obligated to connect everyone, how ambitious it may sound, but it starts with achievable target, like increasing tele-density each year.

How best you can do that?

By placing USO Fund.

Universal Service Obligation (USO) is the obligation placed on designated service provider/operator(s) with an aim to ensure that prescribed services are accessible to all people in a country. The exact scope of USO varies from country to country, but the essence is to connect everyone with government obligation.

How do you do that?

Let’s say, government plans to connect everyone in Domar Upazila (Nilphamari district) and requested for the RFP/TOR on providing a telephone in each household.

All operators responds with their cost analysis and government does a reverse auction.

Lets say, one operator proposed to connect every household with 30 crore (300 millions) taka, other operators would bid for 25, 20 crore and so on. The lowest bidder would get the work-order, say with 15 crore taka.

Government achieves it’s obligation connecting every household – making the tagline “Digital Bangladesh” reality.

Who is funding it?

Here comes the million dollar question.

It’s simple. Just look around, almost all countries are doing it, why would Bangladesh be left out?

The answer, operators are opposing it, saying 98% of the populations are under cellular coverage.

Is that all about coverage? Yes, the access to cheap tariff and device (i.e. handsets) is all that it matters.

Who would provide handsets for free?

Let’s go over the ICT regulation toolkit, you’ll get the answer.

Universal Access and Service Funds (UASFs) are generally financed from one or more of the following sources:

1. Government general budget (developed countries can afford to do that);

2. Industry levy, as a percentage of annual revenue, on certain classes of licensed operators (99% of the countries are following it – if the operators are making billions, they are happy to giveaway millions to connect those under-served);

3. Various other regulatory sources such as the proceeds of license competitions, frequency spectrum auctions and fees (Last example is Portugal, which gave away PCs to students as the financing for the educational programs came from telecom service providers, particularly mobile phone companies. In 2001 and 2002, several companies purchased 3G mobile licenses from Portugal’s government through a spectrum auction that raised EUR 460 million);

and

4. Once-only contributions from government, financed by loans or grants from international donors such as the World Bank, contributing seed finance to assist UASF start-up in the early years (pretty remote, I wouldn’t even endorse it).

Examples please?

How many examples do you want?

General trends in UAS finance can be found here, little dated one, a note supplied in my training (please jump to page-4, let me know if some developing countries haven’t opted for it!) [Mirror]

Do you have regulation on that?

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