The Japanese Ministry of Information and Communication has recently published a report on Network Neutrality, which notes that simply increasing the number of Internet exchanges may not be enough to address Internet traffic flow problems.

In Japan, Internet exchange (IX) points  for ISP peering are concentrated in Tokyo and Osaka areas, with only a few IXs in local regions. In most cases, the local ISP routes its traffic through an IX located in Tokyo or Osaka. However, lines have a high cost burden (even when they are shared among multiple ISPs) and supply on backbone infrastructure is extremely tight.

In order to improve information traffic flow, increasing the number of local IXs in itself would not solve the network traffic problems: "In addition, it is necessary to respond to increases in cost burden and insufficient capacity on the relay backbone. One important measure is to equip local IXs with cache servers for information aggregation. Fetching information from a local cache would ease network pressure and improve the Internet usage environment for all local users. Therefore, from the viewpoint of cache aggregation on local servers, it is appropriate for administrative authorities to support cooperation between related operators and to take necessary measures (for example, by considering how the system should deal with issues such as copyright protection)" (page 29).

For more information, please see here.

Geocell is expanding its portfolio of 3G services.  Having launched 3G service in 2006, the company reports that the launch of value-added services has helped it increase its subscriber base by 37.5% year-on-year in 2007 and boost customer loyalty. Today, GEOCELL offers around 100 services to more than 1.3 million customers.

GEOCELL currently serves more than half of all mobile users in Georgia, with services available on 95% of the populated area of the country.

For more information, please see here.

China's two mobile operators have released interim results for the first half of 2007. China Mobile, which accounted for over three-quarters or 301.2 million of China's  total 461 million mobile subscribers at year end 2006, noted a stunning 21.6 per cent increase in turnover over the first half of 2006. It is reporting net monthly additions in excess of five million new subscribers a month, with half of all these new subscribers coming from rural areas. By June 2007, total subscribers amounted to 332 million. Value-added services now account for 25.5%or over a quarter of all mobile revenues  in mid-2007, up from 23.5% for all of 2006. For more information, please see here.

China Unicom, based in Hong Kong, reported a more modest five per cent increase in revenues. As at 30 June 2007, China Unicom had a total of 151.632 million cellular subscribers, a net increase of 9.266 million cellular subscribers in the first half of the year. Value-added services now account for 21% of all mobile revenues, up from 19.5% for 2006. For more information, please see here.

Overall, the picture of booming growth in China's massive market for telecom services continues. India pipped China to the post for overall net gains in mobile subscribers last year, but if current growth rates continue, growth in China might outstrip India in absolute terms soon.

The Pakistani financial newspaper, the Business Recorder, is reporting that the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) plans to launch an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service in October 2007.

Dr. Abdul Jabbar, Director-General of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) stated that "PTCL has won the first license to launch IPTV service which would be a landmark development in the country's telecom industry". Dr Jabbar added that other companies that meet the set criteria would also be issued such licenses, adding the Authority would monitor the IPTV service on the basis of the parameters being followed regarding electronic channels. The Business Recorder reports that the PTCL project is supported by the Chinese telecom equipment giant, Huawei (which will provide servers and set-top boxes) and Irdeto, a Netherlands-based content security company (which will provide content security solutions).

For more information, please see here.

Asia-Pacific continues to lead the world in digital opportunity, home to five of the top ten countries in digital opportunity.  The Republic of Korea ranks first in digital opportunity with a DOI score of 0.80, but its lead is being fast eroded by Japan's strong gains in mobile broadband subscribership, which boosted its DOI score to 0.77.  If current growth rates continue, Japan could overtake the Republic of Korea as early as next year.

 

The Digital Opportunity Index measures advanced technologies such as broadband Internet and 3G mobile, which means that it is ideally designed to capture the growth in these markets.  In Singapore, the "wired island", fixed broadband Internet subscribers rose as a proportion of the Internet subscriber base from 70% to 83%, which boosted its Utilization Index and catapulted it to fifth place in the world rankings.

Asia-Pacific also encapsulates a regional digital divide, however. It is home to Myanmar, with the third-lowest digital opportunity in the world, at 0.04, as well as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Lao PDR and Korea PDR. These are issues that organisations such as the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) (which has launched an e-ASEAN Framework Agreement) and LirneASIA are fighting to address.

For more information, please see the ITU/UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007.

WiMAXCounts.com provides data on the top operators in terms of BWA/WiMAX subscriber numbers as of Q1 2007. According to WiMAXCounts.com, three of the top nine operators originate in the United States (Clearwire, Mobile Pro and Aerotechtel), while two of the top nine operators are Spanish (Iberbanda and Banda Ancha). These results can be compared with findings from the research consultancy ABI Research, which projects that Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, and NextWave Wireless will be the three dominant mobile WiMAX service providers in the United States, with a range of mobile services to support different devices.

For more information, please see here.

WiMaxCounts.com suggest that the total number of WiMax subscribers worldwide is set to break through the one million subscriber count anytime soon. WiMaxCounts.com records 950 million WiMax subscribers by the end of Q1 2007, 17.5% up on December 2006 and equivalent to 85% growth year-on-year over Q1 2006. At the start of 2007, the market for WiMAX was growing at a rate of 150,000 subscribers per quarter.

This rapid growth in subscriber numbers confirms the growing market acceptance of WiMax. For more information, see here.

In this year's edition of the World Information Society Report 2007, ITU includes the very latest statistics monitoring the evolution of the digital divide, using a variety of statistical techniques. The digital divide is narrowing most rapidly in mobile telephony, with one in two people in the world expected to have access to a mobile phone by the end of this year. Low-income countries are making important gains in mobile telephony (see Figure), with mobile phones outnumbering fixed lines by seven to one in LDCs and by as much as nine to one in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The digital divide is also narrowing in terms of Internet usage.  In 1997, the nearly three-quarters of the world's population living in low-income and lower-middle income economies accounted for just 5% of the world's total Internet users.  By 2005, they accounted for 32.5% or nearly a third of all Internet users. The digital divide is evolving, however, and gaps in access in the high-speed broadband technologies that will matter the most in tomorrow's 'information economy' are more marked - low-income economies accounted for under 1% of total broadband subscribers worldwide, while lower-middle income economies accounted for just 20% or one fifth of the global total.  The digital divide may be narrowing, but it is taking on new aspects in terms of speed and the quality of access.

"Chapter two: Bridging the Digital Divide" of the World Information Society Report 2007 can be read here.

The ITU has monitored trends in broadband subscribers and the price of broadband services around the world since 2002.  By early 2007, broadband was commercially available in 170 countries, with the latest country to launch commercial ADSL services being Lesotho in early 2007.

In 2002, broadband services were available in just 81 countries, mostly industrialized OECD countries, transition economies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and some developing countries in Asia-Pacific.  By 2006, the number of countries with commercial broadband service had more than doubled to reach a total of 166 countries, with a number of operators in African countries launching broadband services, including in Botswana, Ghana, Rwanda and Libya.

Chapter three: The Digital Opportunity Index of the World Information Society Report 2007 tracks growth in the Information Society around the world, particularly in the more advanced broadband technologies of 3G mobile and broadband Internet service.  It examines key trends in telecom markets, such as whether subscribers are 'cutting the cord' and the death of dial-up.  To download the text of the chapter for free, please click here.

Using age-disaggregated data from the most recent 2006 Infocomm Survey of the Singapore Infocomm Development Agency (IDA), ITU has calculated the age divide for Singapore using the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The Digital Opportunity Index is calculated on the basis of eleven indicators (grouped in three clusters of Opportunity, Infrastucture and Utilization) which can be disaggregated by age, gender, area or region to investigate different aspects of the digital divide.

Not surprisingly, in Singapore, the 15-29 age group makes the most use of ICTs, with a DOI score of 0.80, eight percentage points above the national Digital Opportunity Score of 0.72. Conversely, the 60+ age group lags behind the national average by some nine percentage points.  The total gap in digital opportunity between tech-savvy youth and the elderly amounts to some 17 per cent, with the greatest gaps observed in rates of Internet usage. The only area where the elderly (60+) do better than the youth of Singapore is in access to mobile broadband, which may reflect the greater disposable income of retired workers and ability to buy more sophisticated mobile handsets.

The Government of Singapore has introduced a comprehensive plan, IN2015, that seeks to address the age divide, amongst other issues.

This analysis is presented in chapter four of the ITU-UNCTAD World Information Society Report 2007, available to buy here.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has just issued its Quarterly Performance Indicators of Telecom Services for the quarter ending 31 March 2007. Total gross telephone subscribers (wireless and wireline) surpassed 200 million subscribers for the first time. Total telephone subscribers grew from 189 million in December 2006 to 205 million in March 2007, an increase of 8% during the quarter. Year-on-year growth is even higher, with total telephone subscribers having grown by 46% since March 2006, mostly due to stunning growth in the mobile market, with over 5 million new mobile subscribers being added each month and 6.6 million mobile subscribers during the month of May 2007 alone. (For a comparison of April 2007/May 2007 results, please see here).

Intriguingly, trends in mobile Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) are mixed. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India reports that the all-India blended ARPU for GSM services fell by 5.7% from Rs 316 in December 2006 to Rs 298 in March 2007, while the all-India blended ARPU for CDMA services grew by 3.1% from Rs 196 to Rs 202 over the same period.

The number of broadband subscribers (with connections at speeds in excess of 256 kbit/s) grew by 13.8% over the first quarter of 2007 to 2.34 million at 31 March 2007.

These performance indicators confirm that the impressive growth in the Indian telecom market is continuing. Such growth is contributing to progress towards the milestone of half the world's population having access to a mobile phone, a milestone that ITU expects will be achieved before the end of this year.

For access to all recent press releases by the TRAI, please see here.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) are jointly holding a meeting of high-level experts to identify key trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

To view the ITU/EBU conference via webcam, click here.

More information about this meeting can be found here.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will jointly organize a Meeting of High-Level Experts on “Competitive Platforms for the Delivery of Digital Content” to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

ITU Member States, EBU Membership, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their competitive platforms for digital content related contributions to the meeting at digitalcontent@itu.int

Click here to see the meeting agenda.

Onlline registration is available here.

Information about this meeting can be found here.

 

 

 

 

The Internet Society of New Zealand (InternetNZ) has recently released the ISP Spam Code of Practice for public consultation. The Code is posted on the InternetNZ website. Four weeks have been allowed for comment to be received, with a deadline of 18 June 2007.

The Code has been prepared by a working group comprising representatives of the Telecommunications Carriers’ Forum, the Marketing Association, and InternetNZ. According to the website, InternetNZ executive director Keith Davidson says the preparation of the Code is an excellent example of how the industry is working together to fight a common enemy. "Spam is clogging up our inboxes, soaking up our bandwidth, and providing vectors for scams and malware." "The ISP Spam Code of Practice recognises that Service Providers can assist in the minimisation of Spam through their technical approach, by being a first port of call for information and complaints from internet users, and by working with law enforcement agencies."

The ISP Spam Code of Practice is complementary to the New Zealand government’s Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act in that it outlines the responsibilities of ISPs under a self-regulatory model. This was anticipated in the passing of the Act. It is planned that the Code will go live on the same date as the Act of 5 September 2007. It is also complementary to the Marketing Association’s Code of Practice for Direct Marketing, the TCF’s SMS Ant-Spam Code and the TCF’s Customer Complaints Code.

See the Internet Society of New Zealand website for further details.

ITU and UNCTAD are delighted to announce the publication of the World Information Society Report 2007, published on 16 May 2007. The Report seeks to benchmark progress in meeting the WSIS targets, to be achieved by 2015 at the latest, and evaluates the evolution of the digital divide. It presents 200 pages of analysis of the latest trends in ICTs, exploring whether consumers are 'cutting the cord', the death of dial-up and growth in broadband and 3G. It evaluates the digital divide using a variety of techniques and finds that the strong growth of mobile telephony offers the greatest potential to bridge the digital divide.

Using the methodologies endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society, it finds strong growth in digital opportunity around the world. Asian and European countries continue to lead in digital opportunity, but there are shining examples of strong progress in the take-up of ICTs in Africa - five of the ten top gainers in digital opportunity are African economies. Last year's World Information Society Report benchmarked the gender divide and regional divides. This year's Report uses the Digital Opportunity Index to benchmark gaps in access and use of ICTs by different age groups in the age divide in Singapore.

Growth of the Information Society is not without risks, however, and online security threats remain a cause for concern, however. Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs was a key aim of WSIS, and the report examines the evolution in cyberthreats, including spam, spyware, botnets, identity theft, breaches of privacy and other risks associated with online transactions.

The Report also examines national strategies that various countries have adopted to promote growth in ICT development, illustrating these with reference to a wealth of country case studies. It presents examples of successful projects promoting WSIS implementation around the world. The Report combines theory with authoritative analysis from the ITU and UNCTAD and country examples from around the world. It is due to be presented to the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, holding its Tenth Panel Meeting in Geneva next week to discuss progress in WSIS implementation.

For more information, please see here. Articles will follow all next week, to highlight different aspects of the Report.

The Chinese news Agency Xinhua has reported that, in the early hours of Monday, 14 May 2007, China launched a communications satellite for Nigeria, the first of its kind in Africa and the first time a foreign buyer has purchased both a satellite and its launching service, as part of a US$ 311 million deal.

The launch heralds a new era in Sino-African relations, and was attended by the Nigerian Minister of Science and Technology with other high-ranking officials and broadcast live by the Nigeria Television Authority.

Experts say that the satellite program will revolutionize telecommunications, broadcasting and broadband multimedia services in Africa. It is projected that it should create more than 150,000 jobs for Nigerians, save broadband users more than 95 million U.S. dollars a year, as well as providing Internet access to remote rural villages, and save more than 660 million U.S. dollars in phone call charges, Xinhua reports. The satellite has a lifespan of 15 years.

The satellite is one of around thirty foreign satellites that China has been commissioned to launch. For more information, please see here.

According to a recent Press Realease by The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), Singapore is already looking into a new five-year infocomm security roadmap (2008-2012) as it embarks on the final year of the current three-year Infocomm Security Masterplan (2005-2008). The Infocomm Security Masterplan was launched on 22 February 2005 as a strategic roadmap to chart Singapore's national efforts in developing capabilities to prevent cyber-security incidents and protect the critical infrastructure from cyber-threats. According to Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore "cannot afford to be complacent, especially with new and dangerous threats evolving and growing at such an alarming rate. Instead of simply taking one step forward, we need to be many steps ahead in our efforts to combat cyber threats."

Providing a glimpse of the new five-year Masterplan to be launched in 2008, Dr. Balakrishnan shared that the new infocomm security roadmap will build on Singapore's existing efforts to focus on more international collaborations to improve Singapore's ability to combat cyber threats. The collaborations will look into knowledge exchanges and regular communication between governments on cyber threat trends and protection of critical infrastructure. When launched in 2008, the new security roadmap will also secure Singapore's ultra high-speed and pervasive Next Generation National Infocomm Infrastructure (NGNII) to provide a secure and trusted environment for the creation of new value-added services such as location-based marketing, goods tracking and localised information services and the pervasive adoption of online services such as those in the area of banking, healthcare and education.

Under the current Masterplan, the government has developed various security initiatives to equip public officers with more timely information and knowledge to assess and improve on their cyber defence. This allows them to better protect, detect and respond to cyber threats. An example is the Cyber-WatchCentre which monitors cyber threats real-time and round-the-clock. By mid 2008, the centre will ensure end-to-end security for all public officers, allowing government agencies to better anticipate cyber attacks and respond to them speedily.

For more information on these inititiatives, view the IDA Press Release.

Under the aegis of the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Initiative and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Geneva Declaration of Principles (December 2003), which affirms “…the common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life…” the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will jointly organize a High-Level Experts Meeting on “Competitive Platforms for Digital Content” to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

ITU Member States, EBU Membership, meeting participants and other interested parties are encouraged to send in their competitive platforms for digital content related contributions to the meeting at digitalcontent@itu.int

More information about the Call for Papers is available here.

More information about the Meeting can be found here or by contacting Cristina Bueti at digitalcontent@itu.int  

An International Telecommunication Union (ITU) delegation headed by ITU Secretary General Hamadoun I. Touré visited European Broadcasting Union (EBU) headquarters in Geneva today. The delegation met with EBU Secretary General Jean Réveillon, Phil Laven, Stefan Kürten and Giacomo Mazzone and visited EBU headquarters and Eurovision.

In the afternoon future common activities were discussed and a letter of intent was signed by the EBU and the ITU confirming both Unions' commitment to work collaboratively on a number of inititatives and activities in relation to the implementation of the plan of Action of the WSIS (World Summit for the Information Society.)

                                   

A high-level experts meeting, jointly organised by the ITU and the EBU and entitled “Competitive Platforms for Digital Content”, will take place at EBU headquarters on 21 and 22 June 2007.

The main aim of this meeting is to identify global trends and to address the new technological and policy challenges in the digital content delivery environment.

Click here for more information on this meeting.

EBU press release is availble here.

 

For the first time, Denmark tops the rankings of The Global Information Technology Report 2006-2007’s "Networked Readiness Index", as a culmination of an upward trend since 2003. Denmark’s outstanding levels of networked readiness have to do with the country’s excellent regulatory environment, coupled with a clear government leadership and vision in leveraging ICT for growth and promoting ICT penetration and usage.

The Networked Readiness Index (NRI) measures the propensity of countries to leverage the opportunities offered by ICT for development and increased competitiveness. It also establishes a broad international framework mapping out the enabling factors of such capacity.

More information can be found here.

Customers with 3G mobile phones can now make international 3G Video Calls from Qatar. Following the successful launch of local 3G Video Calling last year in July 2006, the launch of International 3G Video Calling yesterday, on 25 March 2007, will allow Qtel's 3G mobile customers to make face-to-face 3G Video Calls to friends, family and clients in many different destinations around the world, to over 90 operators in 50 countries.

This is the latest in a string of innovations from the Qatari incumbent, Q-tel, which was one of the first operators to launch a Triple Play ADSL offering in the Middle East combining voice, IPTV and Internet access (p. 30 of Q-tel's Annual Report 2006) using its commercial MPLS (Multiple Protocol Labeling System) network.

For more information, see here.

The Indian Merchants' Chamber held its 5th international conference on communications convergence on 16-17 March 2007 in Mumbai, focusing on the theme: new technologies, new business horizons (webcast).

Speakers included, among others, J. Patil (Minister for Finance and Planning), S. Pitroda, V. Bhatkar (Chairman, ETH Research Lab), R.A. Mashelkar (Former Director-General, CSIR), N. Rupani (Chairman, Enkay Technologies), R. Patel (Chairman, Bombay Stock Exchange Ltd), S. Chowdury (CIO, Reliance Communications Ltd), K. Goyal (Chief General Manager, BSNL) and K. Dasgupta (CEO, Sony Entertainment Television Pvt. Ltd).

ITU's Lara Srivastava delivered a talk in the plenary session entitled "communications convergence and the new global village". Her presentation is available here.

 

 

The WSIS Stocktaking is a continuous process and the database remains open for all new submissions. During the WSIS process, stakeholders expressed their wishes that this publicy-accessible database of WSIS-related implementation activities should be further maintained (see Tunis Agenda, para 120). It should become an effective tool for the exchange of  information on the projects fostering development of the information society, structured according to the 11 WSIS action lines. All WSIS stakeholders were encouraged to continue to contribute information to this public database.  

As part of this stocktaking exercise of WSIS-related activities, especially regarding implementation of the WSIS Plan of Action, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the ITU Secretary-General, has just sent out a letter and a questionnaire to all stakeholders inviting them to share the information on the implementation activities and projects. The information collated from the WSIS Stocktaking questionnaire is archived in the database of WSIS Stocktaking activities.

In order to submit new project or make an up-date, please click one of the following shortcuts: NEW PROJECT / UP-DATE

To search the WSIS Stocktaking database, please click here.

The SHA-1 algorithm, which has been widely used in many of today's mainstream security products since 1995, was significantly compromised in February 2005 by a team of researchers led by Xiaoyun Wang based at China’s Shandong University. (This team had already undertaken attacks against the MD5 and SHA: hash functions previously, prior to their attack on SHA-1).

Their success prompted calls for a replacement algorithm. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology had already announced that they planned to phase out the use of SHA-1 by 2010 in favour of the SHA-2 variants. The need for a replacement algorithm has now led NIST to launch a contest to devise a successor on 27 January 2007. The competition is to begin in the fall of 2008, and continue until 2011, with full completion and approval by 2012. Contests like this one have a promising history in cryptography. Notably, the Advanced Encryption Standard (devised as a more secure replacement to the prior Data Encryption Standard) was devised through an open competition between fifteen teams of cryptographers between 1997-2000.

The 2007 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms Competition has just been launched.

The ITU Young Minds in Telecoms Competition is open to graduate students and recent graduates in economics, political science, law, literature, telecommunications, computer science, information systems and related fields. The objective of the ITU Young Minds Programme is to give young people valuable exposure to the international telecommunication environment and to the work of the ITU. The first Young Minds in Telecoms Competition was launched by the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in 2005. Information on the winners and runner-ups for the 2005 and 2006 competitions are available on the Young Minds in Telecoms website. One of the main criteria for evaluation is the submission of an essay and those essays that were highly-ranked in the evaluation process have been made available on the Young Minds in Telecoms site.

The essay topics for the 2007 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition are:

• What do you understand by the concept of technological convergence and what are its key trends?
• In your view, what are (1) the main benefits arising from technological convergence as they relate to the information and communication technologies (ICTs) sector? (e.g. new devices, new applications, new services etc.), and (2) the biggest challenges brought about by technological convergence? (e.g. regulatory challenges, cybersecurity threats, socio-ethical implications etc.).
• How can we ensure that the drawbacks of convergence do not outweigh its benefits?

See details on how to take part in the 2007 Young Minds in Telecoms competition here.

On 3 February 2007, the Afghan Ministry of Communications issued two regional Local Fixed Service Provider (LFSP) licenses, in accordance with the Government's telecommunication and ICT policies. The first license of this kind was issued for seven northern provinces in May 2006 to Wasel Telecom, the Afghani arm of Dubai-based Modern Technologies International. The two further licenses have been issued to Shaheen and Ertebat telecommunication companies. It is hoped that these licenses will stimulate the telecom market, reduce prices and increase subscribers.

For more information, please click here.

The Chairman’s Report from the ITU New Initiatives Programme workshop on "What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs?", held in March 2006 in the ITU Headquarter, is available on the event's web-page.

To download the document, please click here. 

The Chairman’s Report (Version for Comments) from the ITU New Initiatives Programme workshop on The Future of Voice, held January 15-16, 2007 in the ITU Headquarter, has been made available for comments on the event's web-page.

To download the document, please click here. 

All comments and remarks, to be reflected in the final version of the Chairman’s Report should be sent via email to SPUmail@itu.int no later than the 19th February 2007.

 

Under the "Shaping Tomorrow's Networks Project" and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (November 2005), that “… ITU and other regional organisations should take steps to ensure rational, efficient and economic use of, and equitable access to, the radio-frequency spectrum by all countries ….”, ITU and the Ugo Bordoni Foundation (Italy) jointly organized a workshop to identify global trends and good practice in radio spectrum management.

The Workshop on "Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management" was held from 22 to 23 January 2007 at ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.  

In preparation for the workshop a Background Resources Website on Spectrum Management was created. This website aims to provide a number of background resources on regional and national initiatives as well as some background information on spectrum management policy and regulation in general.

Background papers as well as Contributions to the workshop can be found here.

To download the Speaker's Presentations, please click here.

Link to Workshop Webcast Archives is available here.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Project can be found here.

More information about the workshop can be found here.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

We would like to inform all workshop participants that the Chairman's Report will be made available at the event website in the next few weeks.

ITU is hosting a Workshop on “Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management” in collaboration with the Ugo Bordoni Foundation (Italy), 22-23 January 2007.

The dramatic increase in demands for radio spectrum from every industry segment – from broadcasters, wireless carriers or satellite providers to emerging unlicensed services or even the public safety and homeland security community – has highlighted the critical importance of spectrum management and related spectrum issues. This timely conference will present an unusually broad and deep look at the full range of issues affecting today’s “spectrum wars”.

Furthermore, in light of the work being carried out under the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme this workshop will serve as a basis of discussion for possible future approaches, in line with recent technological developments, attempting to provide realistic forecasts in an increasingly ubiquitous, user centric and converged telecommunication environment.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme can be found here.

All presentations can be found here.

More information about the international workshop on the topic can be found here.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

For the purposes of the New Initiative Programme event on The Future of Voice, held on 15-16 January 2007 in ITU Headquarters, five background papers as well as four regional studies have been developed and presented for comments. In order to access documents, please click on the links below.

Background Papers

• "Innovation Dynamics in the IP Environment" by Dr. Knud Erik Skouby and Dr. Reza Tadayoni
• "The Future of Communications in Next Generation Networks" by Dr. James Alleman and Dr. Paul Rappoport
• "Regulatory Trends: New Enabling Environment" by Dr. Aniruddha Banerjee, Dr. Gary Madden, and Joachim Tan
• "The Status of Voice over Internet Protocol Worldwide, 2006" by Phillippa Biggs
• "The Future of Voice: Consumer Issues" by Ewan Sutherland

Regional Case Studies

• "Future of Voice in Africa" by Russell Southwood
• "Communications: Government and Business Practices in the Asia Pacific Region" by Khelia Johnson and Oluwaseun Oyeyipo
• "Regulatory Challenges of Voice over IP Telephony: Analysis for Selected South and Eastern European Countries" by Anna Riedel
• "Ruling Voice over IP: Challenges for Regulators in Latin America"

The ITU has just published a Survey on Radio Spectrum Management, available for download here (.pdf format).

The survey was prepared by Marco Obiso, Cristina Bueti, Rochi Koirala and Lorenzo Mele of the Strategy and Policy Unit (ITU).

Together with other background papers will form part of the input material for an international ITU/FUB Workshop on Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management to be held in Geneva (Switzerland) from 22-23 January 2007.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the Workshop can be found here.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme can be found here.

Prepared especially for ITU TELECOM World (December 4-8 2006 in Hong Kong), the 8^th in the series of ITU Internet Reports, entitled digital.life, begins by examining the underlying technologies for new digital lifestyles, from network infrastructure to value creation at the edges. In studying how businesses are adapting to fast-paced digital innovation, the report looks at how they can derive value in an environment driven by convergence at multiple levels. Moreover, a great challenge lies in extending access to underserved areas of the world. In light of media convergence, a fresh approach to policy-making may be required, notably in areas such as content, competition policy, and spectrum management. And as our lives become increasingly mediated by digital technologies, digital identities (both abstract and practical) take on a new dimension. Concerns over privacy and data protection do not seem to be sufficiently addressed by today's online environments. In this context, the report examines the changing digital individual, and outlines the need for improving the design of identity management mechanisms for a healthy and secure digital world.

The summary of the report highlights a few themes from each chapter to give a flavour of the report and puts forward key findings of digital.life.

 

For more information about the report as well as for downloading the full text of the report, please see the digital.life website or download the presentation from the digital.life press briefing.

You can purchase a hard copy of the report as well as a full electronic copy (including the complete statistical annex) online at the ITU Electronic Bookshop.

For more information about the report (including media enquiries), please contact lara.srivastava(a)itu.int.

OFCOM has just released its first research publication, The International Communications Market 2006. Report focuses specifically on the international communications market, reflecting the increasing impact of global issues on the UK commercial and regulatory communications agenda. 

To read executive summary, please click here.

To download the document, please click here.

OFCOM has just released a new public discussion document on Regulatory Challenges Posed by Next Generation Access Networks. 

To read executive summary, please click here.

To download the document, please click here.

The Telecom Evolution Business Forum 2006 was held in Moscow, Russia, from 23-26 October 2006 to evaluate current trends in telecommunication markets and the strategy options open to operators in response to an evolving market. The TeleEvo 2006 conference was hosted by Ernst & Young Russia and included two days' of hands-on training, followed by a further two days of presentations, panel discussions and Question & Answer sessions by experts, consultants, regulators and key stakeholders from the telecom industry, government and civil society. The conference combined a broad overview perspective of the evolution of worldwide telecom markets with more specific presentations by operators focused on markets in the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States. 

ITU's Phillippa Biggs spoke at the conference on VoIP: Current Trends and Future Evolution.  Her presentation examined the key forces driving the rapid growth in VoIP (such as growth in broadband), VoIP's current and projected market size, as well as regulatory responses to VoIP based on ITU's ongoing work surveying VoIP regulation.

Recent presentations by the ITU's Strategy and Policy Unit can be found here.

The gender divide is a key facet of the digital divide that merits the attention of policy-makers and ICT stakeholders, based on a substantial body of evidence from different countries and cultures that children's welfare can be enhanced through improved maternal education and hygiene.

Despite this, in many countries around the world, women are limited in their abilities to access ICTs and reap their benefits - in better communications, a wider education and better livelihood. This may be partly through external factors (e.g. women may be restricted in their access to a mobile/computer or prevented from frequenting Internet cafés) or through personal choice (e.g. ICTs are not perceived as a priority, and women may prefer to spend any income they may have on food and clothing).

Many development projects seek to address these issues - through community centres, programmes of free or subsidised access to ICTs for women, publicity/awareness campaigns and specific projects aiming to get women using ICTs - for education, information on healthcare and hygiene and e.g. contacts and networking, to sell trade and handicraft products to more markets at better prices. Examples of all these projects and many more can be found on the ITU Success Stories website.

However, impact analysis to monitor the evolution of the gender divide and the impact of projects such as these is difficult, as ICT indicators disaggregated by gender are extremely scarce. Detailed information on gender access to ICTs exists only for a tiny number of countries. In this year's World Information Society Report, Digital Opportunity (DOI) was assesssed for the Czech Republic, on the basis of information prepared for last year's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In the Czech Republic, women can readily become engineers, factory managers, lawyers and accountants on the basis of hard work and a relatively meritocratic education system. Men and women face the same prices for access to ICTs, but a slight difference in income and purchasing power. However, 8% fewer women have mobile phones, whereas the number of women with advanced, mobile broadband phones is only half that of men (see figure below). All in all, the evidence shows that the ICT gender divide in the Czech Republic is negligible, at around 5% less digital opportunity for women than for men.

This methodology is very flexible and can be applied to other countries and cultures where evidence suggests that the gender divide may be greater. ITU will continue to monitor efforts to extend the benefits of ICTs to women, as well as the progress made by countries in addressing this issue. The Digital Opportunity Index offers an accurate and informed analysis of the evolution of the gender divide in countries around the world.

The gender divide in the Czech Republic

Source: ITU, abridged from information provided by the Czech Statistical Office and the Ministry of Informatics of the Czech Republic.

For more information about the World Information Society report, please click here.  For information on the applications of the Digital Opportunity Index, please click here.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is a composite index that has been developed by the ITU/Digital Opportunity Platform to measure countries' progress in ICTs and digital opportunity, as part of the endorsed methodology for WSIS evaluation and follow-up. It is a flexible methodology that has been used in many different ways. Every day this week, SPU will demonstrate a different application of the DOI, to show its flexible and versatile applications for policy analysis.

The urban/rural digital divide is one of the most obvious divisions in many countries (depending on their geography, degree of urbanisation and industrial development, among other factors). ITU has traditionally sought to monitor the urban/rural divide in telecoms using the indicators of % of main lines in urban areas and mainlines in the largest city. For example, in China, as recently as 2004, just over two-thirds of all mainlines were to be found in urban areas (World Telecommunication Indicators).

However, the urban/rural divide extends far beyond connectivity. Differences in digital opportunity between urban and rural areas are also evident in the price of access to ICTs (often more expensive in rural areas), speed and quality of access (what the Nigerian blogger Oro calls "plug and pray") and technology in e.g., coverage of population with a mobile signal. The Digital Opportunity Index measures all these different aspects to access to ICTs.

For most countries, detailed data on urban/rural differences for all these aspects are difficult to come by. However, at the recent Digital Opportunity Forum held in Korea, the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology presented its expert analysis of the urban/rural divide in Egypt (see figure below). Taking into account differences in price, coverage, Internet availability and usage, the Ministry calculated that the rural population in Egypt has one quarter less opportunity to access and use ICTs as in urban areas. This points to a measurable and significant urban/rural divide in connectivity in a country where the vast majority of the population (95%) live in the fertile Nile valley. The DOI provides a means not only of quantifying the extent of this urban/rural divide, but also of monitoring its future evolution.

The urban/rural divide in Egypt

Source: Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, presented to the Digital Opportunity Forum, 1 September 2006.

For more information about the Digital Opportunity Index, click here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 70,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR) since July.

The World Information Society Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The Digital Opportunity Index can strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The DOI has been cited by the US Federal Communications Commission to measure the state of broadband in the United States, monitored in Ireland to track the price of broadband and used by the Egyptian Government to measure the urban-rural divide in Egypt.

Every day this week, SPU will profile a different practical application of the Digital Opportunity Index, to demonstrate its genuine use for policy purposes and to show how it can monitor WSIS follow-up. The Digital Opportunity Index is relevant for policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

To find out more, please click here.

As a result of a British documentary, India is now under pressure to strengthen its laws combating data theft and other electronic crimes in the country. Amendments to India’s IT Act of 2000 have been proposed and should be enacted by the national parliament in its upcoming winter.

Read the full Information Week article here.

See also Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies for more information.

‘Teledensity‘, or the number of phones per 100 inhabitants, is one of the more useful measures of an economy’s ICT infrastructure. In the early 1990s, ITU carried out research on the progress of Asia-Pacific economies in achieving the ‘teledensity transition‘ in their fixed-line networks (see left chart). The ‘teledensity transition‘ may be defined as passing from a teledensity of 10 lines per 100 inhabitants to 30 per 100. Below a teledensity of 10, access to telecommunications is restricted to a small part of the population and few businesses and therefore the impact of telecommunications on the economy and society is limited. With a teledensity above 30 per 100, access to telecommunications is available to a majority of households and virtually all businesses. Thus, the use of telecommunications can be expected to have a comparatively greater impact on the economy and society.

For the developed economies in the Asia-Pacific region, it took between 8 and 35 years (average 16 years) to make the transition between 1935 and 1995, with a progressive acceleration over time. However, for a sample of developing economies in the same region, it took only between 2 and 6 years (average 3 years) to make the transition between 1995 and 2006 (see right chart).

The main difference between the two charts is that the developed countries made the transition using fixed-line networks, whereas the developing economies have invariably made the transition using mobile networks. Mobile networks can generally be rolled out much more quickly, and more cheaply, and are more convenient for users (e.g., through pre-paid cards). Furthermore, mobile networks are relatively ‘development-neutral‘, in the sense that developed economies made the mobile teledensity transition only marginally more quickly (2.6 years) than developing ones (3.1 years).

For more insights from telecom transition and digital opportunity in the information society, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

The map illustrates the strong lead taken by Asia, together with Europe and North America, in realizing digital opportunity. Two Asian countries top the world rankings – the Republic of Korea and Japan, and the average DOI scores for the region are higher than the world average of 0.37. Central Asian countries are catching up fast with large infrastructural investments and strong gains in mobile and internet subscribers, including 3G mobile technologies (CDMA 2000 1x and W-CDMA). It is worth noting that five out of the top 15 gainers in the DOI come from the Asian region: these are India, China, Indonesia, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

The Asian Tigers, together with Scandinavian countries lead in internet subscriptions, with around a third of their population subscribing to the internet, but only half of these subscribed to broadband services. This is in contrast to the Republic of Korea, where virtually all internet users are broadband subscribers, with access to faster, advanced services such as video, teleconferencing, multiplayer gaming and triple play. These different profiles of internet usage could result in the development of more varied skill sets and contrasting rates of innovation and, over the longer term, may shape the Information Society differently, according to the type, speed and capacity of internet access available. However, there are often large differences in the level of development within the region - the Asia-Pacific region contains both high-income and Least Developed Countries. In many economies fixed line telephony has been challenged by the worldwide growth in mobile phones.

However, there remains a strong need for basic connectivity in Asia, where connectivity is the main factor driving the digital divide and limiting access to ICTs.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

"The ICT industry is expected to grow by 6% in 2006 and, looking ahead, highest growth will be driven by Internet-related investments, Linux servers, digital storage, personal digital assistants and new portable consumer products." But any return to the heady days of 20% and 30% growth in many products and market segments in the 1990s are unlikely, according to the 2006 edition of the OECD’s Information Technology Outlook 2006.

For more information, see the OECD Information and Communications Policy website.

As part of the ITU's work in follow-up to the WSIS, the World Information Society Report 2006 is addressed to all stakeholders and intended to provide insights as well as useful benchmarks for building the Information Society. The Report gives practical examples of how the DOI can be used, and highlights projects around the world that are working to meet the commitments made at the WSIS.

Chapter five, Beyond WSIS: Making a difference globally, focuses on WSIS implementation and follow-up in different countries. The WSIS called for governments to move from principles into action. There are many efforts underway, both large and small, to implement the WSIS goals, involving a range of stakeholders at the community level, regionally, nationally and internationally. This chapter of the report highlights some of these initiatives to implement the WSIS Plan of Action, from national strategies to grassroots projects. A variety of initiatives have been launched to promote digital opportunity, infrastructure and advanced ICT applications and these highlight fresh approaches and innovative new solutions to ICT development.

One of the biggest challenges for the uptake of ICTs and for building a people-centered and development-oriented Information Society is the affordability of the services. The Digital Opportunity Index monitors the mobile communications that promise to bridge the digital divide in many parts of the world, as well as more recent technologies such as broadband and mobile Internet access. The price of broadband continues to fall worldwide, by as much as twenty per cent a year over the last two years according to ITU’s analysis, while broadband speeds continue to increase. The lower cost of ICTs greately facilitates their diffusion and utilization, and contributes to increased digital opportunity.

Internet affordability (cost of 20h internet connection as a % of monthly GDP per capita)

Note: 1 means affordable; 0 means that the price of lower-user basket is in excess of average GNI per capita.

These positive trends are not restricted to developed countries, and many valuable multi-stakeholder initiatives are underway to further promote ICT development worldwide in the wake of WSIS. 

The DOI has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, the Digital Opportunity Platform, comprising ITU, UNCTAD and KADO (the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion) and which is open to new partners. It will be reported annually in order to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets, and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society, by 2015.

"Chapter Four: From Measurement to Policy-Making" considers the changing telecommunications policy landscape, in areas of universal access/service, affordability, digital inclusion, broadband and wireless, amongst others. It shows how policy-makers can use the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to inform policy-making and policy design to achieve the WSIS goals. The DOI is not an abstract mathematical construction, but has real ‘hands-on’ applications for policy-makers, particularly in the context of the commitments made by governments at the World Summit on the Information Society.

Chapter Four uses the DOI for analysing digital gaps between regions at the national and international levels, for assessing gender gaps and for monitoring digital inclusion. The DOI is a useful policy tool that can be adapted to assess all of these data requirements. Chapter four of the World Information Society Report uses the DOI to analyse digital opportunity throughout the continent of Africa; perform a benchmark comparison of India’s performance relative to its neighbouring countries (see Figure below); examine regional disparities in digital opportunity in Brazil; and examine the gender gap in the Czech Republic. The chapter also outlines the next steps in ICT measurement for policy-making that the Digital Opportunity Platform plans to undertake.

Using the DOI for Policy Purposes

To find out more about the World Information Society Report, please click here.

"Chapter Three: Information Society Trends" tracks the shifting dynamics of the Information Society worldwide. It monitors the changes in digital opportunity across different countries and regions, and investigates those that have made the strongest gains in digital opportunity.

The Asian economies of the Republic of Korea and Japan continue to lead in digital opportunity, mainly due to their pioneering take-up of broadband and 3G mobile services. Nearly all Internet subscribers in the Republic of Korea are broadband subscribers, whilst Japan is the only market where Internet subscribers are most likely to access Internet over their mobile. Dramatic progress has been achieved by developing countries, however, which made the greatest progress in digital opportunity - notably India, where digital opportunity nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005, and China, which experienced remarkably strong gains in infrastructure. Some countries are leveraging their investments in infrastructure more successfully than others, however.

Major Gainers in digital opportunity (2001-2005)

Note: Component indices of the DOI are represented by O = Opportunity; I = Infrastructure; U = Utilization.

Chapter three analyses trends in digital opportunity, broadband speed and price, as well as the price of other telecommunication services. Find out more about the WISR here.

"Chapter Two: Measuring the Information Society" introduces the structure and methodology of the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). It explains why the component indicators were chosen and how they measure different aspects of digital opportunity, in: opportunity to access telecommunications (including basic access to telecommunications and affordability, with detailed price information); the basic infrastructure available in a country; and actual utilization of ICTs, in the use of the Internet and broadband technologies (fixed and mobile).

This chapter reviews trends in the individual indicators making up the DOI, including: the growth of mobile coverage (both 2G and 3G); a comparison of Internet and mobile prices; household penetration of ICTs and broadband and mobile Internet. It illustrates these trends with a wealth of country information and regional comparisons, to show how the DOI captures the growth in digital opportunity around the world.

The DOI is a flexible and forward-looking index, which includes measurement of the promising technologies of tomorrow in broadband and mobile Internet subscribers (as a proportion of total Internet subscribers and total mobile subscribers). It is the major index to date that includes up-to-date and current price information for both mobile and Internet access. Find out more and download the DOI as part of the World Information Society Report here.

Structure of the DOI:

The DOI is currently being updated for 2006 information, as part of the ongoing work programme of the Digital Opportunity Platform.

 

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" outlines the background to the World Information Society Report (WISR). It sets out the background to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the origins, aims and achievements of the Summit. In particular, it considers the call by member governments for an effective means and methodology for follow-up to monitor progress in building the Information Society through implementation of the Summit's recommendations.

The Geneva Plan of Action calls for a composite ICT Development (Digital Opportunity) Index to be published annually, or every two years, in a report on ICT development to clarify the magnitude of the digital divide in both its domestic and international dimensions.

Chapter One of the WISR reviews WSIS implementation since the Summit concluded in Tunis in November 2005, and explains why composite indices give a more complete picture of the development of the Information Society in any given economy than a single indicator. It gives an overview of the main composite Indices for measuring Digital Opportunity, and how they differ. It concludes by explaining the main virtues of the Digital Opportunity Index, especially for developing countries: it evaluates digital opportunity in 180 countries, the most of any index published to date; it is based on standard indicators (as defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development); it uses objective data rather than survey data; it can be split into its fixed and mobile components, so developing countries can be measured on the basis of their strengths; it uses household penetration data (which favour developing countries, on the basis of their large average household size); and it is simple and easy-to-use.

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" of the World Information Society Report can be downloaded for free here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 17,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR), over the two months since its publication.

As part of the ITU’s follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The DOI is part of the agreed evaluation methodology endorsed during the WSIS and will be published annually in the World Information Society Report to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society by 2015.

The WISR shows how the Digital Opportunity Index can be used to strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The Report is addressed to policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

Starting next week, SPU will profile a different chapter of the World Information Society Report each day, to show how the Information Society is evolving and how you can contribute to WSIS follow-up. 

For more information, please see the WISR website. 

A recent APDIP e-Note goes into the discussion of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and Internet Governance.

As the number of non-English speakers on the Internet grows exponentially, the limitations of the Domain Name System have become evident to many.

The APDIP e-Note examines "how IDNs relate to cultural diversity and the basic human right to communicate in one's own language on the Internet. While the bulk of the content on the Internet has been in English, this is rapidly changing. In China, for example, over 60 million of the nation's 100 million-plus users browse the web only in Chinese, yet top-level domain names remain in Roman script for all users. The APDIP e-Note further discusses the ongoing debate on how best to allow users to navigate the Internet in their own language. Different systems available for multilingual domain names and future scenarios are also explored.

Download the full APDIP e-Note.
View other APDIP e-Resources here.

The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region.

A select committee has recommended a major change to New Zealand's anti-spam bill, suggesting anyone should be able to send unsolicited emails that are of an entirely non-commercial nature and need not desist even if asked to do so by the recipient. The original anti-spam bill said that organisations that sent unsolicited emails to promote their aims or ideals - such as school newsletters and messages from political lobbyists - would fall foul of the spam bill. This is if they did not stop sending messages when asked to do so, by letting recipients "opt-out". The select committee dropped this requirement in amendments it proposed early September 2006.

The proposed amendments also drop the legal requirement that spam be reported to a customer's internet service provider before Internal Affairs could take action. Other proposed amendments eliminate the distinction between emails whose prime purpose is commercial and ones that are primarily promotional, but which contain a commercial element, and lift a ban on possessing or supplying email harvesting software, but bans New Zealanders from using such software to send spam.

This news item was retrieved through the APCAUCE Newslog.
The full article is available at stuff.co.nz.

A presentation entitled "Booming Broadband for a Wireless World" was given by Lara Srivastava of ITU on 22 August 2006 at BroadbandAsia 2006 in Shanghai, China. Other speakers included, inter alia, L. Ladid (President, IPv6 Forum), T. Poulos (Asia-Pacific Head, Global Billing Association), A. Hassan (Executive Director, Wi-Fi Alliance), J. Wang (Secretary-General, TD-SCDMA Forum), S. Ramaswamy (Senior Vice President, Bharti AirTel).

The Vietnamese Ministry of Trade is drafting a circular governing advertising activities by electronic means, including emails, pop-ups and mobile phone messages.

"Local Internet users have been bombarded with spam mails but most of them are from overseas. Now such a circular is necessary as local spamming activities are on the rise.

The circular has basic requirements for users to fight spams such as opt-out options, genuine sender addresses, sender telephone numbers and obvious headings. But it seems that the draft circular is too lenient towards spammers when it provides them five working days before they have to stop their spams in case recipients choose to opt out. It also allows for the collection of personal data including email addresses and telephone numbers. Even though the circular requires collecting parties to ask for permission first and to keep those data confidential, this provision can be abused and can cause disputes later on.

This is all the more possible because the circular provides two scenarios: A complete ban of sales of email addresses and telephone numbers to advertisers; or allowing such an activity. Unsolicited short mobile messages are now possible because some carriers are selling subscribers’ numbers to various advertising companies. Users are especially frustrated when senders use some automatic message generation device so that they might receive an advertising message in the middle of the night.

The fines provided in the draft circular are from VND5 million to VND20 million, which many say are not heavy enough to prevent harmful violations of personal information."

[via APCAUCE and Viet Nam News]

An article entitled New regulation to monitor online video spoof craze in Xinhua Online says that new regulations are in the pipeline to regulate video content on the internet in the wake of a surge in short satirical films online, according to the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

"Video spoofs have become so popular that netizens have even coined a slang term, "egao," to describe the act of using real film clips to create mocking send-ups.

From late August or September, only authorized websites such as sina.com, sohu.com and netease.com, will be allowed to show short films under the new regulations, Xinhua News Agency reported, citing an announcement by the administration."

[via Smart Mobs]

The International Herald Tribune has an article about the growing problem of "cyberviolence" in South Korea, which has one of the world's most developed Internet communities:

'Complaints filed with the government's Korea Internet Safety Commission more than doubled to 42,643 last year from 18,031 in 2003. Women have reported sexual harassment. A 16-year- old schoolgirl accused of informing on an abusive teacher ran away after her photos and insults were splashed on her school Web site. A singer struggled with rumors that she was a man. Twist Kim, a singer and comedian, had a nervous breakdown after pornographic Web sites proliferated under his name, as if he had created them, causing television stations to spurn him.

In most countries, Internet users oppose government attempts to censor the Internet. In South Korea, however, in both government-funded and private surveys, a majority of people support official intervention to check unbridled freedom of speech on the Internet.

A poll taken in November showed that nearly one of 10 South Koreans from 13 to 65 said they had experienced cyberviolence.

The problem in South Korea may presage what will happen in other countries, according to the authorities, who have begun cracking down on the problem.

"In the past few years, the Internet has grown in South Korea explosively," said Kim Sung Ho, secretary general at Kinternet, a lobby of domestic portals. "The Internet community has developed faster and stronger in South Korea than elsewhere. So we are struggling with its side effects earlier than other nations."

Since last year, dozens of people have been indicted on charges of criminal contempt or slander for writing or spreading malicious online insults about victims like Kim Myong Jae. They face fines of as much as 2 million won, or $2,067.

This month, the National Assembly will debate a bill that would require the nation's 30 major Internet portals and newspaper Web sites to confirm the identities of visitors before allowing them to use bulletin boards, the main channel of cyberviolence.

"The idea is to make people feel more responsible for what they are posting on the Net," said Oh Sang Kyoon, a director at the Ministry of Information and Communications. "Victims cannot live a normal life. They quit jobs and run away from society. They even flee the country. It's like lynching victims in a 'people's court on the Web.'"

Some critics question whether such a law would solve the problem. Cyberviolence, they say, has been increasing even though most of the country's major Web sites are already applying the policy.

"This is violating privacy in the name of protecting it," said Oh Byoung Il, director general at jinbo.net, a civic group. "It discourages anonymous whistle- blowers. It impedes the free flow of communication, the soul of the Internet."

Official interference will also discriminate in favor of foreign portals like Google, said Kim of Kinternet. For instance, when users search for "sex" in a South Korean portal, they must first prove they are adults by supplying personal data - a requirement that does not apply to the Korean-language Google, which operates with an overseas server.

But Kim Myong Jae condemned the portals as willing accomplices in online mob attacks. While painfully slow to respond to victims' complaints, Kim said, the portals - the largest of which, naver.com, attracts 15 million users a day - highlight real-time lists of the most- clicked-on news, thus helping spread sensational, and often libelous, items.

Kim said he had filed suit against the nation's top four portals: Naver, Daum, Yahoo! Korea and Nate.

And portals say they are now screening their contents more vigorously. "Rather than being an arena for sound debate, the Web bulletin boards have to some extent become a place for verbal defecation," said Choi Soo Yeon, a naver.com spokeswoman. "We have 300 monitors who work round the clock to delete abusive and defamatory language." But ultimately, the portals say, the users who post on the Web should be responsible for content.

South Korea saw an explosion of Internet users as the country emerged from decades of military rule, and citizens jumped on the new technology as a way of expressing long-suppressed views. About 33 million South Koreans - out of a population of 48 million - use the Internet, most of them with broadband connections. And many of them are not shy about their feelings.

News articles on portals or newspaper Web sites often are accompanied by feedback sections, where readers comments. Some news articles attract thousands of entries, ranging from thoughtful comments to raving obscenities. When suspicions first emerged last year that the cloning expert Hwang Woo Suk had faked his groundbreaking work, few dared to speak in public against the man lionized as a hero. Scientists, who unveiled evidence of fabrication through anonymous postings, brought about Hwang's downfall.

One of the most famous victims of online mob rule was the so-called "dog-poop girl." A cellphone photograph of a girl who failed to clean up after her dog in a subway car was posted on the Internet. For weeks, people pursued her relentlessly; the girl reportedly dropped out of school as a result.

To Kim Myong Jae, it was familiar. "Two months after I became the target, I visited a plaza near my old company. I dressed differently. Still a person reported my appearance on the Web, how I looked and how that person felt sick to see me," Kim said. "It's a handicap I may have to carry for a long time."'

A forthcoming ITU-T IPTV Global Technical Workshop will review and examine IPTV standardization, political and regulatory aspects, business models and various case studies as well as technical developments and service provider’s operational aspects.

IPTV represents a convergence between the traditional telecommunication and broadcast industries. And, as with any convergence a lot of work is needed to ensure interoperability. Globally accepted standards are clearly a key enabler for this. With many of the conditions necessary for IPTV rollout in place - global IP connectivity over managed broadband infrastructure with such guarantees as QoS and security, and broadband connectivity with enhanced network capabilities - there is a strong demand for standards to ensure smooth service rollout and interoperability.

The workshop will provide a review of the current status of IPTV work as well as an examination of where to go next.

See the meeting website for further information.

[ITU-T Newslog]

Implementation of the outcomes of the recently concluded World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) gathered momentum with the launch of the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS). High level representatives of twenty-two UN agencies met on Friday, 14 July 2006 at ITU Headquarters in Geneva under the chairmanship of ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi to facilitate the process.

UNGIS will serve as an interagency coordinating mechanism within the UN system to implement the outcomes of WSIS. The Group will enable synergies aimed at resolving substantive and policy issues, avoiding redundancies and enhancing effectiveness of the system while raising public awareness about the goals and objectives of the global Information Society. UNGIS will also work to highlight the importance of ICTs in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

See ITU Press Release for full text. 

"South Korea has commercially launched its mobile broadband internet service WiBro. South Korean internet service provider KT and mobile phone operator SK Telecom have begun the service based on Intel's WiMax standard in parts of Seoul and surrounding areas. KT claims that WiBro users can get wireless access to the internet even when travelling at speeds of 120km/hour".

"Subscribers can access the service by using a PCMCIA card provided by Samsung Electronics. The telcos plan to cover the entire country with the service by 2008".

For more information, please see the article featured in Digital Media News for Asia (DMasia.com). 

This story was accessed through the SmartMobs blog.

On 20 June 2006 Singapore launched a new ten-year infocomm masterplan that will propel the nation into 2015 and beyond, with a line-up of activities and goals that spell benefits for the people, businesses and the global community. The vision is to turn the country into an Intelligent Nation and Global City, Powered by infocomm. The masterplan recommends the way forward for Singapore, into a future where infocomm will bring a sea change and become intrinsic in the way people live, learn, work and play.

The masterplan sets bold targets for 2015:

• Singapore to be No. 1 in the world in harnessing infocomm to add value to the economy and society
• Achieve a two-fold increase in value-added¹ of the infocomm industry to S$26 billion
• See a three-fold increase in infocomm export revenue to S$60 billion
• Create 80,000 additional jobs²
• Have at least 90 per cent of homes using broadband
• Ensure 100 per cent computer ownership for all homes with school-going children

Further information on the masterplan is available here.

The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts has conducted a legislative review of the Spam Act.

The review is required by legislation to assess the operation of the Spam Act after two years of its operation. The Department prepared a report based on the submissions received. The Minister tabled the report in Parliament on 22 June 2006.

The Minister’s press release is available here.

More information can be found here.

Ministry of Information Industry (MII), Internet Society of China (ISC) and China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) launched a national anti-spam campaign on June 21, reports Nanfang Daily. An insider at ISC said MII has set up a hotline at 01-12321 for spam-related tip-offs and is preparing to send out one million anti-spam notices.

The report said that professional training will be offered for 1,000 email administrators and that 20,000 anti-spam volunteers will be recruited.

This news item was accessed through Slashdot Newslog.

A news release by the Japanese MIC announces the signing of a "Joint Statement between France and Japan, Concerning Cooperation in the Field of Anti-spam Policies and Strategies".

Particular areas of cooperation will include:

• Exchanging information about anti-spam activities such as anti-spam policies and strategies, as well as technical and educational solutions to spam, including mobile spam;
• Encouraging the adoption of effective anti-spam technologies and network management practices by French and Japanese Internet service providers and major business network managers, and further cooperation between government and private sectors;
• Supporting French and Japanese marketers or bulk email senders in adopting spam-free marketing techniques;
• Identifying and promoting user practices and behaviours which can effectively control and limit spam and supporting the development of public relations and awareness campaigns for the multi-stakeholders to foster increased adoption of anti-spam practices and behaviours by end users in France and Japan;
• Cooperating to strengthen anti-spam initiatives being considered in international forum.

More information can be found here.

[Via APCAUCEWiki News]

The ITU has just published an Issues Paper on the Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services, available for download here (.pdf format).

The paper was prepared by Lara Srivastava, of the Strategy and Policy Unit (ITU), and Ingrid Silver & Rod Kirwan of the law practice of Denton Wilde Sapte.

Together with case studies (on Germany, China, Hong Kong SAR) and a thematic paper on spectrum flexibility, these background papers will form part of the input material for an international ITU New Initiatives Workshop on The Regulatory Environment for Future Mobile Multimedia Services, to be held in Mainz (Germany) from 21-23 June 2006, and jointly hosted by Germany's Federal Network Agency.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the ITU New Initiatives Programme can be found here.
More information about the international workshop on the topic can be found here.  

 

Australian PC users can now get more proactive about combating SPAM email with the launch of a reporting system by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

More information can be found here.

On 1-2 June 2006 the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) in collaboration with London Business School (LBS) will hold a joint conference on the measurement of ICTs and the macro-, micro- and meso-impact of ICTs in the Information Society.

The conference will explore the impact of ICTs in industry, firms, growth and productivity. What is the real meaning of the digital divide? Can investment in ICTs help to reduce the productivity gap? Are countries really at a disadvantage through falling behind in take-up of ICTs?

For more details on this event please click here.

This brochure summarizes the results of a workshop on Tomorrow’s Networks Today, held in Saint Vincent (Aosta), Italy from 7 to 8 October 2005. It was prepared by Cristina Bueti and Marco Obiso on the basis of specially prepared case studies, input documents and contributions to the workshop. The enclosed CD-Rom contains the background materials and documents of the workshop as well as a wide range of background resources related to tomorrow’s networks.

More information can be found here.

Click here to buy the brochure.

The April MessageLabs Intelligence Report includes analysis of the threat landscape during the first quarter of 2006. Overall, threat levels remained largely stable with previous months, with the U.S. continuing to play the role as the largest source of malware, spam and phishing attacks, hosting 18.1 percent of the world’s compromised (zombie) computers in the first quarter of 2006 (down from a high of 44 percent in Q2 05).

More information can be found here.

Use the Internet at home and you have a 1-in-3 chance of suffering computer damage, financial loss, or both because of a computer virus or spyware that sneaks onto your computer. That's one of the unsettling conclusions from the 2005 Consumer Reports State of the Net survey of online consumers.

More information can be found here.

On 17 May, World Information Society Day, ITU together with other partners (including UNCTAD and the KADO) launched a new series of reports entitled World Information Society Report. The summary of the report is available on the website at www.itu.int/wisr. The report itself will be published in June 2006.

The partners involved have created the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to measure digital opportunity for 180 economies. It is a composite index created from a set of eleven internationally agreed core ICT indicators (established by the Partnership on Measurement of the Information Society). The DOI has a flexible and versatile structure, based on three categories: opportunity, infrastructure and utilization.  This classification is intended to help policy-makers in determining where countries are strong and weak in order to focus attention on priority areas. The top ten economies for Digital Opportunity are shown below on the left with Korea and Japan leading the rankings. The top major gainers in the DOI during the period 2001-2005 is shown on the right with India and China leading with the most gains. The rankings of all measured economies is shown on page 17 of the World Information Society Report summary.

  

The Filipino telecoms watchdog, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), says it will revoke the mobile licence of any operator found guilty of breaking its guidelines on unsolicited broadcast messaging via SMS. The amended rules and regulations also require content providers – alleged to have sent out spam promos to subscribers – to register with the NTC.

This will serve as the basis of an application with the Department of Trade and Industry that grants permits to allow companies to advertise promos. Mobile phone operators and content providers risk being blacklisted if found guilty of violating the agency’s rules.

More information can be found here.

The Draft Amendement to the Rules and Regulations on Broadcast Messaging Service is available here.

Mobile Industry Outlook 2006, a new 180-page report from Informa Telecoms & Media answers the most significant questions facing today's mobile operators, equipment vendors and handset vendors as they seek to plan their strategy in 2006.

The report is available here.

3 Italia has launched Walk TV, the first digital TV mobile broadcast using DVB-H technology in Europe. Programming will initially consist of channels from state broadcaster RAI, Mediaset and News Corp unit Sky Italia. And in June, the TV services will expand to include 3 Italia's own La3-branded channels, and World Cup soccer action, for which 3 Italia has bought the DVB-H Italian territory rights.

The 3 Italia DVB-H service reaches 65% of Italy's population and customers will need specific handsets to access the content.

More information can be found here.

Singapore’s mobile users – 99.8% of Singapore’s population, according to the Infocomm Development Authority’s (IDA) February 2006 stats – will have more protection against mobile spam in the future. IDA has put its foot down on this issue, warning of “swift enforcement” of penalties should mobile operators continue to fail to resolve mobile spam issues satisfactorily.

A strong warning letter was sent to SingTel, StarHub and M1, the three mobile operators in Singapore. In addition, IDA decided to make an example of errant content operator mTouche in the highly publicized mTouche spam case. Between 30th January to 5th February this year, 300,000 mobile end users were billed S$1 for unsolicited SMSes sent by mTouche through the three telcos.

More information can be found here.

China has introduced regulations that make it illegal to run an email server without a licence. The new rules, which came into force two weeks ago, mean that most companies running their own email servers in China are now breaking the law. The new email licensing clause is just a small part of a new anti-spam law formulated by China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

The impact on corporate email servers, which are commonly used by companies with more than a handful of employees, appears to have gone unnoticed until now. However, Singapore-based technology consultant, James Seng, who first drew attention to the new email licence requirement, believes the inclusion of the prohibition on mail servers is no accident.

More information can be found here.

The "Survey on Industry Measures taken to comply with National Measures implementing Provisions of the Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications relating to the Security of Services" conducted by the Technical Department of ENISA, Section Security Policies is available here.

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has published on March 10 the results of an estimate of the amount of internet traffic in Japan. According to the study, based on the total volume of traffic calculated from broadband subscribers in Japan, average traffic reached 468 Gigabit per second (Gbps) as of November 2005.

For comparison, Telegeography estimates that as of mid-2005, the combined average traffic on all cross-border internet backbone routes stood at just under 1 Terabit per second (Tbps).

This means that MIC is estimating that Japan's domestic average traffic represents almost half of all average international internet traffic.

A new wave of spam could be on the way that tricks recipients by looking like it’s a message sent from their friends' e-mail address. This sort of spam would bypass even those filters that currently weed out 99% of the bad stuff, says John Aycock, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Calgary.

Aycock and student Nathan Friess conducted research and wrote a paper dubbed "Spam Zombies from Outer Space" to show that generating such customized spam -- such as in the form of e-mail replies -- would not be too difficult, as has been assumed in the past. Spammers have leaned toward bulk e-mail generation that is less customized.

More information can be found here.

Looking back, 2005 saw a rise in profit-driven attacks. These were reflected by phishing, which now represents as much as one percent of the global e-mail traffic and is far more effective than spamming.

Viruses, worms, and malicious software are becoming part and parcel of information and communications technology. According to Trend Micro's report, called Virus and Spam Roundup 2005 and Predictions for 2006, this year will see more spy phishing and spear phishing on the Internet.

More information can be found here.

Though the United States is making progress in the war on unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam, it still generates more than any other nation in the world, according to recent statistics from Sophos, a provider of anti-malware solutions.

Sophos ranked spam outputs of the top 12 countries and top six continents based on messages it received in its “global network of spam traps” between January and March, according to the group’s release.

More information can be found here.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) joined 29 other countries in calling for increased cooperation between nations in combating spam. The FTC signed off on a set of anti-spam recommendations by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a coalition of 30 countries organized to promote economic growth and trade.

More information about OECD activities on  countering spam can be found here.

Please clik here to read the article.

China’s Ministry of Information Industry has adopted the Measures for the Administration of Internet E-mails. The regulations, which took effect from 30 March 2006, are designed to apply to email service providers and apply to any person operating an email service for Internet users in Mainland China.

The regulations are as follows:

• A provider is defined as any person in the service supply chain involved in delivering or helping users to receive email;
• Service providers must register with the government and obtain a license before providing email services;
• Violators face warnings or penalties of up to 30,000 yuan (approx. $3,700 US) and risk losing their license;
• Firms are barred from sending unsolicited commercial messages without prior consent from recipients;
• All commercial email must have a subject header of “AD” or the Chinese character for advertisement;
• The rules only apply to email containing commercial advertisements;
• The rules state that providers must stop delivery of any messages containing commercial advertisements even if a recipient first consents, but later changes his or her mind.

A copy of the rules (in Chinese) can be found here.

 

Internet service providers could face huge fines if they do not provide spam filtering or impose email sending limits under new rules set down by a communications watchdog. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) today registered the world's first legislative code of practice for internet and email service providers.

More information can be found here.

"The case for promoting a global culture for cybersecurity was strongly emphasized at the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) during an information session for participants conducted by ITU on Friday.

ITU pointed out that in an increasingly interconnected and networked world our societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on our economies and on our societies. In order to safeguard our systems and infrastructure, we need to strengthen our collective cybersecurity.

As this depends on the security practices of each and every networked country, business, and citizen, we need to develop a global culture of cybersecurity. According to ITU, cybersecurity is critical in the use and development of ICT. The lack of adequate security is an obstacle for using ICTs that rely on the protection and confidentiality of sensitive data. Unless these security and trust issues are addressed, the benefits of the Information Society to governments, businesses and citizens cannot be fully realized.

The information session was aimed at raising awareness on this very important subject and to contribute to bridging the information and knowledge divide between and within countries.

At that session, ITU launched a new reference guide on Cybersecurity for Developing Countries and informed delegates of ITU’s initiative in Promoting Global Cybersecurity as the theme for World Telecommunication Day on 17 May this year. ITU will also assist developing and least developed countries in increasing cybersecurity and will conduct workshops and seminars to enable countries to exchange ideas and discuss common issues." [Via WTDC 2006 Highlights]

For more information about the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC), please click here. 

At a workshop on ICT Indicators for performance benchmarking, held in Delhi 1-3 March, under the auspices of LIRNEasia and TRAI, representatives from the region's national statistical offices and regulatory agencies committed themselves to developing a set of ICT Indicators for the region based around "core set of ICT Indicators" defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development. This methodology means that they will be able to apply the composite "Digital Oppoportunity Index", which has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, including ITU, KADO and UNCTAD, for the measurement of the digital divide within the region and within individual countries.

The proceedings of the conference, which included presentations from TRAI, LIRNEasia, ITU, OECD and NRRI, are avaialble on the LIRNEasia website at: http://www.lirneasia.net/2006/03/workshop-on-ict-indicators-for-benchmarking-performance-in-network-and-services-development/.

Efforts by governments to counter internet spam by tracking down and prosecuting spammers have had limited impact and require far more resources than most countries can muster, the United Nations telecoms agency (ITU) warned on Tuesday.

It says in a report that while all countries need anti-spam legislation so that spammers have nowhere to hide, a more effective approach would be to require the establishment of enforceable codes of conduct by internet service providers (ISPs).

For more information about the article, please click here.

For more information about the report "Stemming the International Tide of Spam", please click here.

Recognising the importance of electronic interdependencies, India and the United States on Thursday agreed for greater cooperation to protect electronic transactions and critical infrastructure from cyber crime.

"The two sides recognised the importance of capacity building in cyber security and greater cooperation to secure their growing electronic interdependencies, including to protect electronic transactions and critical infrastructure from cyber crime, terrorism and other malicious threats," the Indo-US joint statement said.

For more information, please click here.

Vodafone's Face Sensing Engine uses a 3.2-megapixel camera to authenticate a user's facial features and eliminate the need for passwords or fingerprint verification.

A face recognition technology with a one second validation feature from Oki Electric will be offered on a Vodafone Group handset in Japan this April, according to an announcement Tuesday by Oki.

For more information, please click here.

APCAUCE's 2006 meeting was organized in Perth, Australia in conjunction with the APRICOT Conference. The Regional Update meeting was on Sunday 26 February 2006, and APCAUCE (Asia Pacific Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) will also organize an antispam technical conference track as part of APRICOT on 1 March 2006.

For more information, please click here.

This publication, with a foreword by Nitin Desai, provides an overview of the key debates on Internet governance. It presents the work of the Open Regional Dialogue on Internet Governance, an Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) initiative that has collected perspectives from regional experts and end users.

According to an article from Interfax China, the Ministry of Information Industry has announced the revamping of the country's Internet domain name system which will be enforced from March 1, 2006.

The new domain names system consists of a total of 4 Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) including the English language domain .CN and 3 Chinese-character top-level domains "中国" (.China), "公司" (.com)- in China .com is used to refer to companies, and "网络"(.net).

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has published comments received on its recent consultation paper on Issues pertaining to Next Generation Networks (NGN) released in January 2006. Also see accompanying Press Release.

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit is hosting a workshop entitled What Rules for IP-enabled NGNs? in March 2006. The ITU also has a website on related national, regional and international policy and regulatory initiatives.

The Japan E-mail Anti-Abuse Group (JEAG), a working group founded by Japan's ISPs and mobile operators to counter spam, has drafted a list of recommendations for the reference of companies and mail server system administrators that are considering counter-spam measures. The recommendations include information on introducing effective technological counter-measures and working policies to eliminate spam.

For more information, please click here.

  The Golden Book — a record of work undertaken to implement the goas of the World Summit on the Information Society and build the future Information Society — was launched on 24 February 2006 during the Consultation Meeting of WSIS Action Lines Facilitators/Moderators, convened by ITU, UNESCO and UNDP in Geneva.

This Golden Book highlights some of the valuable work being done around the world to promote ICTs in projects, large and small, by governments, individuals or team effort, for the benefit of all. It provides illustrative examples of new and innovative projects to build infrastructure, promote ICTs in education, health and governance, ensure fair access and enhance online security.

The Golden Book has been published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as a permanent record of the new commitments and resources pledged by stakeholders during the Tunis Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). All WSIS stakeholders at the Summit were invited to submit an online questionnaire with details of their activities announced during the Tunis Phase. These activities have been planned or are already being undertaken to implement the WSIS Plan of Action. The Golden Book also serves as a tool helping to coordinate the action taken to implement the 11 Action lines and avoid duplication.

More than 375 submissions were made to the Golden Book by governments, international organizations, NGOs, companies and individuals, describing their work towards promoting ICT activities. ITU estimates that the activities announced during the Tunis Phase to promote WSIS goals represented a total value of at least € 3.2 billion (US$ 3.9 billion). Governments committed to implement projects for some € 1.9 billion, representing nearly two-thirds of estimated total value of all commitments, while international organizations pledged to carry out activities for around half that amount, i.e. 0.83 billion Euros. Business entities announced plans to realize projects for around 0.35 billion Euros and civil society projects amount to least 0.13 billion Euros.

Amount of financial commitments by stakeholder

Breakdown by anticipated expenditure

For more information on the Golden Book, please see here.

The proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries has the potential to bring a wide range of financial services to an entirely new customer base. This report explores the use of mobile phones to expand financial services in the Philippines.

The proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries has the potential to bring a wide range of financial services to an entirely new customer base, according to a new report commissioned by the Information for Development Program (infoDev) in partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the GSM Association.

For more information on the Report, please click here.

Click here to read the Report.

China's Ministry of Information Industry launched its anti-spam center, www.anti-spam.cn, today as part of their net safety efforts. There are ongoing efforts to also enhance its email management sometime between March and April 2006.

Additionally, the Chinese government issued a regulation on the management of emails, which will take effect on 30 March 2006. Sending advertisement emails without the receiver's permission is banned, according to this new regulation.

For more information, click here

Today (7 February 2006) marks the third edition of Safer Internet Day, held under the patronage of Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

Safer Internet Day is celebrated by more than 96 organisations in 36 countries across the world: 24 EU countries, and others including Russia, Argentina, New Zealand and the USA. Safer Internet Day's biggest event is a worldwide blogathon on safer use of internet launched by Commissioner Reding in Brussels at a minute past midnight, then taken up by New Zealand who post an entry a few minutes later.

All day long the blogathon will continue to move across the world, through Australia and Russia to Europe, then across to Argentina, Canada and the USA. Over 300 local, regional and national events include press conferences, and competitions in Finland, Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic. There will also be internet safety quizzes and crosswords in Greece, pupil-teach-parent days in Belgium and the Netherlands, conferences in the UK, Hungary and Argentina and a broad palette of activities in schools and libraries.

For an overview of the days' events, see the main Safer Internet website.

To view the International Telecommunication Union's entry to the blogathon, click here.

The World Dialogue on Regulation (WDR), a LIRNE administered project, has made eight research reports available online. Produced by WDR partners and associates, the reports fall within the WDR Third Cycle research theme Diversifying Participation in Network Development. 

The following reports were made available between 30 November and 20 December 2005. For more information and downloads, follow the links to the World Dialogue on Regulation website.

Replicability of a Microfinance Approach to Extending Telecommunications Access
by Malathy Knight-John, Ayesha Zainudeen & Abu-Saeed Khan (LIRNEasia)

Diversifying Network Participation: A Study of India's Universal Service Instruments 
by Payal Malik & Harsha de Silva (LIRNEasia)

Variations on the Expenditure in Communications in Developing Countries
by Sebastian Ureta (LIRNE)

More reprts are available on the World Dialogue on Regulation website.

More regulation while competition is increasing? That does not sound right, according to the GSM Association. Instead, given the innovative nature of 3GSM, its embryonic status and the current lack of market and legal certainty, regulatory forbearance is advisable.

10 Regulatory Principles:

1. Regulators should continue to seek a balance between the benefits and costs of intervention, on the one hand, and regulatory forbearance, on the other.

An overly interventionist approach, which could lead to short-term benefits, could potentially stifle a dynamic market process with inevitable and adverse competitive, economic and even social consequences on the longer term. In general, competition is deemed to be a better approach to economic efficiency than regulation, and the regulators must encourage sustainable competition for the long term.

2. Regulation should be based on clearly defined goals and policy objectives and should be kept to the minimum necessary to meet these objectives.

Once effective competition is established or there is a reasonable prospect of a effectively competitive market in the near term, regulatory forbearance should prevail (with competition law providing appropriate safeguards).

3. Regulators should acknowledge that 'normal' competitive markets reflect a range of operator return and should not intervene in competitive markets where one or more operators' return appears to be above the 'norm'.

In the mobile market, the reality is that some operators have made good returns (on invested capital), while others have not. This situation is not of itself a cause to regulate away 'excess profits'. If a regulator judges from the highest standard, and regulates accordingly, then the less performing companies will unavoidably hit, thus further reducing already inadequate returns and threatening long term competitive development.

4. Regulation should fit (reflect) the market situation and balance the micro and macro views.

For example, when in certain cases mobile termination or roaming charges may appear high to regulators in certain countries, these cannot be judged in isolation.

5. Regulators should be publicly accountable and act in a transparent way.

Regulatory intervention should only be imposed after an appropriate public consultation process, which in most cases, will include market definition and assessment and a further assessment as to the appropriate regulatory remedy. A full right of appeal both on grounds of law (substance) and procedure (process) is an essential element of the checks and balances, which are necessary between operators and regulators.

6. Governments should adopt licensing practices that encourage new investments in telecommunication infrastructures and facilitate competition within the sector.

Un-harmonized license award procedures together with varying license conditions/obligations may lead to varying investment incentives in national markets and may eventually give rise to some discrepancy with respect to the levels of mobile service developments. Licensing policies and procedures must be applied judiciously] since not only they can influence market entry but also the post-entry conditions affecting competitiveness and market development. For auctions to contribute positively to economic welfare, they must meet a set of stringent preconditions (all potential bidders must be fully informed as to any Government imposed terms and conditions, including fees and changes to fees). When designing auctions, policy-makers should seek to achieve efficient resource allocation rather than primarily aiming to raise surplus government revenue. High license fees in some developed countries may constrain the ability of operators to invest in developing countries.

7. Spectrum should be allocated on the basis of achieving economically efficient, competitive and structurally desirable outcomes rather than to extract monopoly rents from the industry.

If the market is the best allocator of scarce resources, as most economists would argue, it is important that countries should be able to develop their own spectrum trading arrangements. In principle, regulators should allow for secondary trading of spectrum within planned internationally frequency allocations, after a thorough consultation process with the industry (i.e. mobile operators) evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of spectrum trading.

8. The feasibility and commercial desirability of sharing of facilities and infrastructure is a matter, which is operator and market specific.

In certain circumstances, sharing can be beneficial by, for instance, driving efficiencies through accelerated network rollout, the potential elimination of unnecessary cost duplication and the minimization of certain adverse environmental impacts. Accordingly, regulators should enable commercial negotiations on facility sharing among mobile operators to proceed subject however to license conditions not prohibiting the proposed form of sharing and competition not being materially and adversely impacted by the proposed form of sharing.

9. Restrictions on the deployment of mobile networks should be based on science and substantiated studies, and not in response to 'public concern' which is without scientific basis.

10. Adequate consumer safeguards against the inappropriate use of customer data are in place in most countries.

In overseeing the implementation of those safeguards, regulators should balance the interests of consumers to data privacy, on the one hand, and timely and easy access to services and information on the other. Further, regulators should look first to relevant self-regulatory industry initiatives to achieve those objectives.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has published updated indicators on mobile penetration and growth in India. TRAI reports that:

"India has become one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. The mobile services were commercially launched in August 1995 in India. In the initial 5-6 years the average monthly subscribers additions were around 0.05 to 0.1 million only and the total mobile subscribers base in December 2002 stood at 10.5 millions. However, after the number of proactive initiatives taken by regulator and licensor, the monthly mobile subscriber additions increased to around 2 million per month in the year 2003-04 and 2004-05. For the year 2005-06, the first 9 months have seen an addition of 26 million mobile subscribers, which translates into average addition of 3 million subscribers monthly. The additions in the month of December 2005 alone have touched around 4.5 million."

With currently about 76 million subscribers, TRAI says that monthly mobile growth rates have reached those of its neighbour, China.

Pan Asia Networking (PAN) at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is pleased to share two interactive maps with you. The first of these maps provides information about the ICT market structure, regulatory functions, and the national regulatory agency for countries in Asia. You can access the map here.

The second map provides a list of indicators (including population, GDP per capita, main telephone lines, mobile cellular subscribers, radios, televisions, and internet users) in Asia since 2001. In addition, this map allows one to compare an indicator across up to three countries. An animated instruction guide for this map is attached. You can access the map here.

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC) has announced the latest news on its recently established (October 2005) "Study Group on a Framework for Competition Rules to Address Progress in the Move to IP". The Study Group is considering i) basic concepts of competition rules in preparation for a full-fledged IP age, as well as ii) interconnection and tariff policies in the future.

At the first meeting, members of the Study Group discussed an agenda to be deliberated upon and adopted a draft agenda. From the standpoints of i) improved transparency for open deliberations and ii) further enhancement of the themes, the Study Group decided to invite public comments on the draft agenda during November 2005. During the second meeting of the Study Group on December 21, 2005, the Study Group adopted the Consideration Agenda Concerning a Framework for Competition Rules to Address Progress in the Move to IP.

According to the 18 November 2005 Newsletter of Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, they have decided to set up a “Study Group on a Framework for Competition Rules to Address Progress in the Move to IP", with the aim of laying out basic principles on a framework for competition rules applicable as well as clarifying specific directions concerning interconnection and tariff policies.

In other news, Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has recently announced (Japanese) that they have established a IP-based Next Generation Network promotion forum. About 190 entities are participating in the newly established forum which will feed into ITU's work on NGNs.

The International Telecommunication Union is pleased to announce the 2006 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition.

The essay topics for this year's Young Minds competition are:

• What are the key opportunities and threats raised by the growing use of services over IP, such as voice (VoIP) and television (i.e. IPTV)?
• What are, in your view, the most important regulatory challenges raised by an increasingly wireless world?
• What does the term "internet governance" mean to you? What needs to change as a result of the World Summit on the Information Society outcomes?
• What, in your view, are the most important mechanisms available today for bridging the digital divide by bringing connectivity to underserved areas of the world?
• How can the interests of end-users in the information society (e.g. affordability, privacy protection) be balanced with the interests of business (bottom line, rapid innovation)?

Information on eligibility and how to apply can be accessed on the link below.

Deadline for applications is 17 March 2006.

Click here to learn more about the 2006 ITU Young Minds in Telecoms competition.

Let There Be Wi-Fi: Broadband is the electricity of the 21st century—and much of America is being left in the dark, by Robert McChesney and John Podesta Two decades ago, the chattering classes fretted about economic upheaval rising from Japan and the Asian Tigers. They feared an invasion of cars, microchips, and Karaoke that would take away American jobs, take over U.S.-dominated industries, and shift cultural norms. In the 1990s, America responded with a boom in high technology and Hollywood exports. But a revolution is again brewing in places like Japan and South Korea. This time it's about “broadband”—a technology that, in terms of powering economies, could be the 21st century equivalent of electricity. But rather than relive the jingoism of the 1980s, American policy makers would be wise to take a cue from the Asian innovators and implement new policies to close the digital divide at home and with the rest of the world. The article cites ITU broadband research such as this and this.

Asia-Pacific maintains its lead in providing the best broadband bargains to be found worldwide. The latest ITU research comparing international prices for broadband access confirms that the three cheapest broadband economies are in Asia, with Japan still the cheapest at just 7 U.S. cents per 100 kbit/s followed by Korea. Both Japan and Korea offer the highest speeds for the cheapest prices per 100 kbit/s.

Prices among the cheapest fifteen broadband economies continued to fall and nearly halved, falling by 46.6 per cent from 2004-2005. Other countries are following Asia’s lead in bargain-value pricing. In 2004, just five economies offered broadband access under 1 USD per 100 kbit/s (which included four from Asia). In 2005, eleven economies offered cut-price access, including six from Europe. The good news for operators is that such pricing strategies seem to build market share. Eleven of the fifteen cheapest economies also rank in the fifteen economies with the highest broadband penetration. This implies that operators are successfully winning customers through cheaper pricing plans. Whether strong market shares can be translated into profit is another question, however. Bargain-value pricing builds subscriber bases at the expense of profit margins, which are likely to be eroded.

Source: ITU research, based on data available in the Statistical Annex to ITU Internet Report 2005: The Internet of Things, November 2005.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) runs public consultation on Issues relating to Convergence and Competition in Broadcasting and Telecommunications. Written comments on the issues raised may please be furnished to Secretary, TRAI by 30th January, 2006.

The consultation paper published on 2nd January 2006 is available here.

The mainr issues for consultation include:

1) Comprehensive Legal Framework

Keeping in view the various convergence related issues discussed in the Consultation paper and as a measure to facilitate competition and promote efficiency in operation of telecom services so as to facilitate growth in such services.
a) Whether there is a need for having a comprehensive legal framework to deal with various issues arising out of convergence of technologies and services? If so
b) Whether, the legal framework must be developed around the Communication Convergence Bill, 2001? If so.
c) Whether changes may be required in the Bill especially taking into account TRAI’s unified licensing recommendations dated 13th January, 2005.
d) Whether regulation of carriage and content should be separated, as the skill sets required for the two are grossly different?

2) Unified Licensing

To ensure the compatibility of comprehensive legal frame work and the Unified Licensing Regime as recommended by the TRAI vide its recommendations dated 13th January 2005 and also after taking into account the subsequent developments should there be changes required in Unified Licensing ?

3) Spectrum related issues

Whether there should be flexibility in spectrum allocation to take full advantage of new services and new technologies for existing services that may evolve with time?

4) Rationalisation of Differential Custom Duty Regime

Whether changes should be made in customs duties as proposed by the Committee to promote effective competition amongst telecom and cable operators?

5) Restriction on use of Protocols

Whether call termination should be permitted on Customer Premise Equipments (CPEs) using any protocol recommended by ITU/IETF?

6) Institutional funding

Whether the Government should intercede with the banks and financial institutions to emphasize the importance of these projects in building up the country’s communication infrastructure and to provide funds to the cable industry wherever found commercially feasible?

7) FDI Limits

Whether there is a need to undertake a complete review of the FDI policy for the various sub sectors in telecommunications and broadcasting so that there is consistency in policy and a level playing field between competing technologies?

8) Right of Way

Right of Way to Cable operators providing digital services has already been recommended in TRAI recommendations dated 14th September 2005 on Digitalisation of Cable Television. Pending these amendments whether further action should be taken as proposed by the Committee?

 

Malaysia has recently launched its latest 5 year ICT master plan called MyICMS 886.

[Via James Seng's blog]

The WSIS Stocktaking Report has been officially launched during the World Summit on the Infrmation Society in Tunis. The report has been prepared on the basis of activities entered to the WSIS Stocktaking Database that by November 2005 contained more then 2500 entries. 

For the launch presentation see Stocktaking.pdf (1.47 MB).

For the WSIS Stocktaking Database see here. 

From the soon to be released ITU Internet Report 2005: The Internet of Things comes this fresh survey data showing the top 10 3G mobile markets worldwide, by millions of subscribers and type of technology (CDMA 2000 1x and W-CDMA) at the end of 2004. The USA leads in total number of 3G subscribers with 49.5 million (16.7% of the population) but the Republic of Korea has the highest national percentage with 57.4 of the population using 3G services (27.5 million subscribers).

These comparative pie charts demonstrate an ongoing shift in Internet demographics from the Americas to the Asia-Pacific region. In 2001, the Americas had 38% of the world's Internet users and Asia-Pacific had 32%. In 2004, this is essentially reversed with Asia-Pacific having 37% and the Americas with 31%. Europe has kept a relative 29% share but Africa has seen a slight gain from 1% to 3%. Because of their much larger populations and potential for growth, the Asia-Pacific region will continue to take a larger and larger percentage of the world's Internet users.

NTT Docomo has announced a new 3G handset that can receive S-band satellite broadcasting. Korea has also deployed what it calls Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) to handsets in its native market. The definition of DMB according to a proposal from Korea to the ITU Standardization Sector to include DMB in the reference architecture for NGN Release 2 efforts is:

DMB Service is the next generation digital broadcasting service for indoor and outdoor users. The DMB users can enjoy CD quality stereo audio services and real-time video/data streaming services anywhere while moving at the speed of up to 200 km/h. ...There are two kinds of DMB services, terrestrial DMB and satellite DMB.

The Economic Impact of Telecommunications on Rural Livelihoods and Poverty Reduction: A study of rural communities in India (Gujarat), Mozambique and Tanzania. Project managed for the UK's DFID by Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation.

The last five years have seen tremendous growth in telephone ownership and use in developing countries. Until the mid-1990s, telephones were only available in the urban centres of poor countries. Some African countries had telephone densities as low as one per thousand people. Since then, mobile telephone networks have spread rapidly in most low income countries. Many people, even in low income communities, now own telephones; and most adults make some use of them, wherever they are available, usually relying on public kiosks, phone shops or airtime bought from individual phone owners. The mobile phone has become a symbol of the use of new information and communication technologies (or ICTs) in the developing world.

But what impact has the telephone had on livelihoods – on how people live their lives, protect themselves against vulnerability and take opportunities for a more prosperous future? Do people use the telephone for social or business purposes? How important is it to them in emergencies? Does it make a difference to how they obtain the information they need to run their lives? And how does it fit into the pattern of other communication channels they have available?

The recent Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) Symposium on Network Security and SPAM presented background information, detailed the current situation, new developments and steps ahead on network security and fighting spam in the Asia-Pacific region.

TSB presented highlights of ITU-T work on security, also detailing the level of participation of the AP region in Study Group 17, the ITU-T group that looks at security issues. Mr Jianyong Chen (ITU-T SG 17 Vice Chair from China ) also attended the event and made a detailed presentation on current SG 17 work. He also chaired two sessions.

In addition TSB presented the results of the ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity held in Geneva , 28 June – 1 July 2005. The meeting was organized in three full-day sessions and was attended by some 70 representatives from the Asia-Pacific area. The first day was dedicated to cybersecurity, the second to countering spam, and the third to cooperation initiatives.

The complete set of presentations given at the APT meeting can be downloaded here. The meeting invited AP countries to step-up their capability building initiatives and encouraged APT to increase its collaboration on network security and spam with international organizations working in the area.

For more information, see the ITU-T Newslog.

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), in collaboration with the Attorney-General's Chambers of Singapore (AGC), has issued a second public consultation paper on the proposed Spam Control Bill in Singapore. The proposed Spam Control Bill includes, in addition to email spam, legal measures to manage mobile spam in Singapore. The Bill also proposes that anyone who suffers damages or loss arising from spam be given the right to initiate legal action against non-compliant spammers. The draft Bill also proposes that if found guilty, non-compliant spammers can be directed by the court to stop their spamming activities or pay damages to the affected parties.

Details on the proposed Spam Control Bill can be found on the IDA website.

This information was accessed through James Seng's blog.

Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) recently announced a Public Consultations on Number Portability and as well as results of their Numbers Auction inconjunction with the launch of ENUM pilot trials. 

1. Public Consultation on Number Portability (pdf)
IDA intends to review the implementation for number portability for fixed line and mobile telecommunications services in Singapore. The review is in with IDA's policy objectives of promoting competition in the infocommunications sector to benefit of consumers and businesses in Singapore .

According to James Seng's blog; what Singapore currently has "Call Forwarding" and the country is aiming trying to move to "Onward Routing" or "All Call Query". Both will provide true number portability (ie, the Caller ID will match your number) but the true significance is in the efficiency of the system. If a small percentage of users do number port, then Onward Routing is more efficient and if a large percentage of users do number port, then All Call Query will be more efficient.

2. IDA Announces Results of Numbers Auction & Launches ENUM Pilot Trial
To ensure that Singapore's scarce number resources are managed in an efficient, objective and transparent manner, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) announced the results of its fixed-line, Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and mobile numbers auctions conducted in early September 2005. At the auction, 4 operators got "3" level number (ie. +65 3xxx xxxx).

To leverage on the convergence of Internet and telecommunications technologies and to take advantage of the wide range of applications supported by such convergence, IDA is also inviting companies to participate in an Electronic Numbering (ENUM) pilot trial to see how numbers can be used innovatively for multiple services in addition to IP Telephony. The IP Telephony numbers auction and ENUM pilot trial is a follow-up from IDA's launch of the IP Telephony and ENUM policy framework in June 2005. The framework is designed to facilitate the entry of companies interested in offering IP Telephony services in Singapore and is expected to bring about reduced costs and more choices in providing telephone services.

For further information, see the IDA website and James Seng's blog.

The Australian Communications Industry Forum (ACIF) has announced it is bringing together a number of Australian industry leaders to advise on convergence issues.

The new ACIF Convergence Group will advise on the best way to tackle issues relating to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Next Generation Networks (NGN), content and other associated areas.

ACIF’s chief executive officer, Anne Hurley, who chairs the new group, explained that the convergence of multiple technologies was blurring the boundaries of the various regulatory regimes and creating new challenges which the industry needed to address.

China mobile phone subscribers totals 363 million: China had 363.2 million mobile phone subscribers and 337.4 million fixed-line telephone subscribers as of the end of June, accounting for 28% and 26% of its current population, according to statistics published by China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII). For Internet-access services, China had 31.7 million broadband subscribers, of which 21.9 million (69.1%) used xDSL.

From DigiTimes via Ewan Sutherland's weblog.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has released its 16th China Internet Survey Report last week. According to the report, through the end of June 2005, China had 103 million Internet users, up 18.4 percent year on year. The number increased by nine million from January. Broadband users increased 23.8 percent year on year to 53 million, according to CNNIC. The number of computers in China connected to the Internet hit 45.6 million, said the report, up 25.6 percent year on year.

The world's largest mobile operator, China Mobile, has announced June operational data on Wednesday. China Mobile added 3.276 million users in June, including 125,000 contract subscribers and 3.151 million prepaid subscribers. This brings China Mobile's total users to a total of 223.78 million at the end of June 2005 (up from 204 million at the end of 2004). The company had 60.632 million contract subscribers and 163 million prepaid subscribers.

From Pacific Epoch via http://3wan.net/v-web/b2/index.php?p=6026&c=1

Korea's Chosun Ilbo has an article on how competition is heating up in deployment of Korea's national NGN project which is called the Broadband convergence Network (BcN). BcN is the fusion of communication, broadcasting and the Internet, is a next-generation information network that the Korean government is pushing to complete by 2010 as part of its national IT 839 Strategy.

Article featured in Total Telecom talks about Japan's intentions to work towards developing an NGN standard.

"The Japanese government is to urge private telecom carriers to upgrade domestic telecoms networks to next-generation IP-based telecommunications networks (NGN) by 2007.

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, the policy has been decided in order to try and push Japanese NGN standards in the hope of getting a big slice of the international equipment market for Japanese equipment manufacturers.

The International Telecommunication Union is expected to decide on the global specifications for NGNs by around 2008. The Japanese Ministry of Communications aims to have developed and proposed a standard to the ITU by then after working with the country's major telcos, including Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), KDDI Corp. and SoftBank, as well as manufacturers of communications equipment including NEC Corp., Fujitsu Ltd., and Hitachi Ltd."

"The ministry hopes Japan will seize the initiative by being the first to come up with a tried and tested set of standards that might be accepted for international adoption, thus giving local manufacturers a huge leg up on international markets. While Japanese manufacturers have dominated their domestic market for telecommunications equipment through working with NTT, U.S. firms control 90% of the global market for routers. The Japanese firms are hoping the switch to a new set of standards for NGNs will help them overcome this imbalance.

The adoption of NGNs is expected to substantially lower communications costs because they will require only half the plant and equipment investment and maintenance expense required for current phone systems, according to the report, which says the networks will use a new breed of low-cost routers. Replacing Japan's current domestic phone networks will require an investment of an estimated 3 trillion to 6 trillion yen (22 billion to 44 billion euros) in plant and equipment over a five-year period. KDDI has been proposing replacement of its copper network by 2007 and NTT by 2010, but the Ministry hopes to speed this up to fit in with the ITU's schedule."

Australia's broadcasting and telecommunications watchdog has won its first injunction against an alleged spammer under anti-spam laws introduced early last year.

The full article can be accessed here.

Following months of discussions, China has agreed to sign up to the London Action Plan, which will mean greater cooperation between countries in analyzing spam campaigns, investigating their origin and encouraging ISPs around the world to take appropriate measures to defend innocent users.

Click here to view the full article.

Hong Kong Special Administrative Region plans to enact an anti-spam law next year to crack down on companies that send unsolicited e-mails or make automated telemarketing calls to consumers.

"Au Man-ho, director-general of the Telecommunications Authority, said in a statement Saturday that direct marketing companies using automated calling on an unsolicited basis can be considered a spam problem."

Click here to view the full article.

Here is an unusual production of local Internet content: photographs from the web site of the small Japanese village of Inakadate showing off their beautiful rice-paddy art:

• Aerial photographs of the rice-paddy art (Babelfish translation) with links to how it was done
• Time Series of the Mona Lisa

The 2005 ASEM Cyber Security Workshop, Seoul will be held in Republic of Korea, hosted by the Ministry of Information and Communication of Korea. The ITU WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity will follow shortly afterwards, June 29-July 1 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The internet edition of the "E-Commerce and Development Report 2004" published by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has been released. The E-commerce and Development Report is intended to provide policy-makers and practitioners with information and analysis to better assess the implications of the growing role of ICTs in economic development.

From the report foreword by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan:
"Information and communications technologies have considerable potential to promote development and economic growth. They can foster innovation and improve productivity. They can reduce transaction costs and make available, in mere seconds, the rich store of global knowledge. In the hands of developing countries, and especially small- and medium-sized enterprises, the use of ICTs can bring impressive gains in employment, gender equality and standards of living".

To view the full report and highlights from the report, click here.

 

 

Japan's Vodafone K.K. announced today (PDF) new anti-spam measures to make its Vodafone live! mobile internet service more dependable for customers. As a measure to prevent nuisance mails, the number of SMS that can be sent to from a Vodafone K.K. 3G handset within one day will be limited to 500 starting 31 May 2005. Handsets that exceed this limit will not be able to send additional SMS for the following 20 days.

The Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Conference (WSIS thematic meeting): Toward the realization of a Ubiquitous Network Society, organized by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and United Nations University (UNU), has opened. The programme and related presentations/documents are available on the meeting website.

Singapore's IDA has announced Intelligent Nation 2015 or iN2015 — a 10-year master plan to grow the infocomm sector, and chart the use of technology for work, life and leisure. [via James Seng's Blog]

News on VoIP regulatory proceedings since the beginning of 2005 from the ITU-D's Regulatory Reform Unit newsroom.

• The Norwegian Post and Telecommunications Authority issued an outline of the regulation of VoIP (21 April 2005) Executive Summary
• The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission rendered its decision on 9-1-1 emergency services for VoIP service providers (4 April 2005) Press release - Decision
• Philippines' NTC issues draft VoIP rules for public comment (30 March 2005) - Memorandum - Draft VoIP Rules
• United States' Federal Telecommunications Commission (FCC) prohibits blocking of VoIP applications (3 March 2005) - Press Release -  Decree
• The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) from Philippines declares its support for VoIP deregulation (22 February 2005); See related NTC's VoIP regulation consultation process: - VoIP Discussion Paper; - Comments from Operators
• The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) of Ireland issued draft Directions to allow access to the new ’076’ number range for voice over Internet phone services (VoIP) (17 February 2005).
• The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) proposes regulatory guidelines for VoIP and International Access/Gateway (11 February 2005)
• The European Regulators Group (ERG) for electronic communications networks and services issued a Common Statement on Voice over IP regulatory approaches (11 February 2005) - Press Release
• The Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) of Spain finalizes consultation on VoIP regulation and proposes VoIP numbering and portability guidelines (7 February 2005, in Spanish) - a) Press Release - b) Results from VoIP public consultation
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) of Japan invites comments on draft report concerning Measures for Preserving Important Communications Such as Emergency Messages on IP Networks (28 January 2005)

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) is hosting a 3-day workshop on anti-Spam strategies from 3-5 May 2005. The workshop is conducted as a result of the last ASEAN Telecommunications Regulatory Council (ATRC) meeting in Vientiane, Laos (July 2004) where the ATRC has agreed to the setting up of a Working Group (WG) to work on anti-SPAM measures led by MCMC.

The Australian Government Information Management Office has recently released A Guide to Open Source Software for Australian Government Agencies". [via Slashdot] 

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC) has published its statistics on the number of Internet Users in FY2004. Over 75 million Japanese access the Internet through mobile phones. [via my weblog]

ZDNET Australia is reporting that Australian regulators have signed an agreement with Asia-Pacific nations to step up the war against spam.

Twelve Asia-Pacific communications and Internet agencies have joined the Australian Communications Authority in signing a memorandum of understanding -- the Seoul-Melbourne Anti-Spam Agreement --on cooperation in countering spam.

ACA acting chairman Bob Horton said the memorandum was "focused on sharing knowledge, information and intelligence about known sources of spam, network vulnerabilities, methods of spam propagation, and technical, educational and policy solutions to the spam problem".

Other agencies involved include:

• the Internet Society of China;
• Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau, Hong Kong (CITB);
• Philippines Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT);
• Philippines Computer Emergency Response Team (PH-CERT);
• the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC);
• the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan (METI);
• Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan (MIC);
• New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development (MED);
• Taiwan Computer Emergency Response Team / Coordination Centre (TWCERT/CC) and;
• the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Kingdom of Thailand (MICT).

The new document is based on an agreement signed in late 2003 between the ACA, the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) -- since renamed the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) -- and the Korea Information Security Agency.

Furthering cooperation among international initiatives in countering spam will also be discussed at the ITU's upcoming WSIS Thematic Meeting on Cybersecurity which will begin with a countering spam day as a following up to ITU's meeting in July 2004 on countering spam.

Intel Corporation has announced the availability of its first WiMAX product, providing equipment manufacturers and carriers the ability to deliver next-generation wireless broadband networks around the world. In addition, several service providers worldwide announced plans to begin commercial WiMAX trials based on Intel silicon products later this year, giving consumers and businesses a glimpse at this emerging wireless high-speed broadband technology. Key equipment providers also announced WiMAX solutions based on Intel's product..

The Register (via Wireless Watch) had a recent review of the WiMAX Summit in Paris, France and the related standards debate.

• It quickly emerged that the issue preoccupying both vendors and potential operators is the road to mobility and exactly how the transition to the forthcoming 802.l6e mobile standard will be achieved. With a key WiMAX Forum meeting to be held in the coming week in Spain, and 802.16e set to be ratified this year, it is essential to the uptake of the platform that the route to mobility is clarified as soon as possible.
• All agree that 802.16 will be the platform with which WiMAX hits the big time. Most of the equipment majors are merely licensing fixed 802.16d (now renamed 802.16-2004) gear, while focusing their own development efforts on 'e'. That means that the chances for chipmakers to net the big OEM deals - with Alcatel, Nortel and the others - rely on the mobile standard. But there are two basic schools of thought among the chipmakers and their licensees as to their strategy in the interim.
• One is that there is a period of at least two years before 802.16e achieves volume, and that the upgrade path will be complex. That means the priority is to make 802.16-2004 as impressive as possible in order to drive short term sales and increase confidence in WiMAX. This will mean creating a so-called 'd+' technology that goes beyond the basic stipulations of the fixed standard, with a focus on aspects such as quality of service for voice and video, and portability with consumer grade subscriber equipment.

• The other view is that the market needs to move to mobility more rapidly, by offering pre-standard networks that provide most of the functionality promised for 'e'. This strategy rests on the belief - or hope - that the mobile standard will come to market rapidly and that the leap from its predecessor will be a simple one.

In related news, only days before a deadline for its first licensing fee payment, South Korea’s Hanaro Telecom announced Tuesday it will forego a license to roll out a WiBro mobile broadband network (based on 802.16e technology). Hanaro was one of three Korean operators granted licenses by the Korean Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) in January. "We still believe WiBro is commercially viable. We plan to grant the remaining licensee withdrawn from Hanaro to an eligible hopeful,’’ MIC director general Kim Dong-soo said.

[via my weblog, The Register, MIC]

According to an article in The Australian, the Australian Communications Authority will launch a year-long trial starting May 5, 2005 of ENUM, in conjunction with Australia's internet administration authority, AusRegistry.

The Australian Communications Authority Vision 20/20 project's final report is available on the project website. The Vision 20/20 project was a foresight project, designed to develop a greater understanding about the future of communications and the consequences for regulation. Following the preliminary report released in August 2004, the final report:

• provides a holistic framework to examine the future strategic landscape
• identifies the best possible outcomes and pre-conditions
• covers the emerging IP-based architecture, digital content and convergent business models in more depth
• provides a more substantive assessment of the issues related to digital participation
• places current regulatory assumptions under more scrutiny and
• provides possible direction on strategic action.

The project has been a collaborative project, with approximately 200 people in Australia and internationally having participated through interviews, workshops and discussion.  The Australian Communications Authority hopes the report will contribute to strategic thinking and discussion about future regulatory approaches within government, industry and the wider community. The project and presentation page now includes notes from a Telecommunications & Disability Consumer Representation (TEDICORE) workshop held in November 2004.

Houlin Zhao, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector presented ITU and IPv6 (PowerPoint) at the Global IPv6 Summit in Beijing on 5 April 2005. In a related article in China Daily entitled IP Address Supply Facing Crunch.

A recent report by KPMG Australia (press release) illustrates the powerful impact that broadband is having and will continue to have on national economies. The report gives one of the clearest pictures to date as to why broadband should be a national priority for all countries and not just Australia. KPMG has gathered information from recent research and empirical evidence and produced a report entitled Leaders or Laggards? Australia's Broadband Future (PDF). [via CommsWatch]

Korea has the highest Internet broadband penetration per capita in the world and by a very large margin (the runner-ups are not even close). It's always interesting to look at how technology leaders address policy issues as it indicates where other countries might be heading. For example, as I explained in my earlier mention of "Cyber-Crime and Cyber-Terrorism in Korea", the government is attacking a wide range of hacking and cyber-crime issues. In its latest initiative, this article in the Korea Herald explains how the the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication has now unveiled plans for tough new laws dealing with SPAM.

The Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT), a regional intergovernmental telecommunication organization, in its preparation of common proposals to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, 23 September - 18 October 2002, includes a proposal from APT members concerning the Role of Member Administrations in the Management of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and Addresses (Word), which would include an instruction to the ITU Secretary-General to promote effectively the role of Member States in the internationalization of domain names and address of their respective languages.

The Australian has news about advances in quantum teleportation at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. Using a process known as quantum entanglement, the researchers have disassembled a laser at one end of an optical communications system and recreated a replica a metre away. "The applications of teleportation for computers and communications over the next decade are very exciting" says physicist Ping Koy Lam, leader of the project. Some web pages at ANU explain some of the background on quantum teleportation.

Korea has (by far) the highest broadband penetration in the world with about 7.8 million households with broadband connectivity, representing 30% of Korea's 25 million Internet users (2001). Here in Seoul at our workshop, we've just had a very interesting presentation on the present status of Cyber-Crime and Cyber-terrorism in Korea and the counter measures that the Korean Cyber-Terror Response Center of the Korean National Policy Agency are taking. In 2001, they made 7,595 arrests for hacking, virus attacks, etc. Of those, 1,473 they classified as cyber-terrorism. In Korea, they have 651 members of the police force dedicated to cyber-crime activites. 232 police stations have 495 police officers tasked to deal with cyber-crime. Absolutely amazing numbers indicating that the government has no tolerance for this activity. Is this the price that will be paid when broadband is deployed? I guess all those "always-on" broadband connections are tempting targets for launching zombie attacks...

The ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, with the support of the Korean Administration is running a workshop on Creating Trust in Critical Network Infrastructures. Lots of thought-provoking papers and presentations are being given.