Title: Broadband in Morocco : Political Will Meets Socio-Economic Reality
Author: Samantha Constant
Pages: 36 pp.
Source: infoDev
Publisher: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank
Date (published): 27/10/2011
Date (accessed): 18/11/2011
Type of information: report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"Fully one quarter of Moroccan households boast a broadband connection - up from just two percent in 2004. This report seeks to understand Morocco's relatively high broadband adoption while proposing additional areas of focus to move beyond this initial success.

This report presents the broadband landscape in Morocco and the approach by which the country has advanced its ICT sector over the past fifteen years. Despite being constrained by human development challenges and regional political uncertainty in today’s “Arab Spring,” Morocco has emerged as a trailblazer in certain areas with particularly impressive mobile broadband results.
The mobile industry is a big spotlight in Morocco’s broadband achievements. The introduction of third generation wireless technology in 2007 led to substantive growth of overall Internet subscriptions. This however has come at the cost of investment in fixed infrastructure. There is a need to boost fiber deployment in both local access and backbone networks. Understandably, such civil works require financing that will only happen if the private sector is confident it will see a return in its investments.

Going beyond its initial broadband success and making broadband sustainable and transformational will be a challenge for Morocco. Deeping broadband access must find a way to deal with the social and economic reality of a lower-middle-income country. This will require fresh and innovative solutions including more emphasis on bottom-up initiatives."

Title: Broadband in Vietnam: Forging Its Own Path
Author: Tran Minh Truan
Pages: 29 pp.
Source: infoDev
Publisher: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank
Date (published): 18/11/2011
Date (accessed): 18/11/2011
Type of information: report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"Wired broadband in Vietnam has grown over one thousand percent since 2005. While the country has made tremendous achievements in broadband, there are challenges arising from its rapid growth. This report identifies the key factors that have defined Vietnam's broadband trajectory and the role broadband might play in the future.

Solid economic growth in Vietnam has coincided with increased broadband usage. Liberalization of the telecommunications sector has led to growing competition with 11 enterprises providing infrastructure. Service providers have developed modern IP-based networks with extensive fiber optic backbones. Incomes have risen so that more people can afford broadband. This in turn has created a virtuous circle with explosive demand creating a larger market, resulting in economies of scale and lower prices. Another factor driving fixed broadband growth is that Vietnam was a latecomer to the IMT-2000 WCMDA mobile broadband technology. Major mobile operators did not launch their networks until 2009 with around 15 percent of mobile subscribers having WCDMA capability towards the end of 2010.
Despite these successes, Vietnam faces challenges broadening broadband access, particularly in rural areas where some 70 percent of the population resides. Young people in urban areas “live” with high-speed Internet access; however, less than one percent of rural households had any type of Internet access in 2008.

The cost of fiber optic access is only economical in new urban areas and for large enterprises so DSL remains the fixed broadband choice of households. But copper lines provide less quality than fiber and it is difficult to upgrade the transmission capacity. At the same time, telecom enterprises have been lately focusing on developing mobile broadband subscribers to the detriment of the fixed network.

The large number of operators has led to overlap in investment in the access network. Interconnection is difficult because operators use a variety of technologies, impacting standardization of the national telecommunications infrastructure. Intense competition has resulted in price wars threatening long-term sustainability. Service providers are looking to reduce duplication by cooperating on shared infrastructure but so far no specific measures have been implemented."

Title: The World in 2011: ICT Facts and Figures
Pages: 8 pp.
Publisher: ITU
Date (published): 25/10/2011
Date (accessed): 04/11/2011
Type of information: mini-report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"ITU took the occasion to unveil a new mini-report, The World in 2011, which reveals impressive growth in areas such as global Internet use, particularly in developing countries. The publication confirms that ICT growth continues apace, with close to six billion mobile cellular subscriptions forecast by the end of 2011, and around 2.3 billion people using the Internet.
Growth is fastest in the developing world, and amongst the young, with almost half the world’s online population now under 25 years old. That number should continue to increase steadily as Internet penetration continues to grow in schools.

The developing world’s share of the world’s total Internet users has grown from 44% five years ago, to 62% today. Global Internet penetration has grown by over 50% in three years – from 13% in 2008 to 20% in 2011.

The new ITU figures provide a quick snapshot of broadband deployment worldwide, revealing gaping disparities in high-speed access. While international Internet bandwidth has grown from 11,000 Gbps in 2006 to close to 80,000 Gbps in 2011, Europeans enjoy on average almost 90’000 bps of bandwidth per user compared to Internet users in Africa, who are limited to 2,000 bps per user.

The report shows that the world’s top broadband economies are all located in Europe, Asia and the Pacific. In the Republic of Korea, mobile broadband penetration now exceeds 90%, with nearly all fixed broadband connections providing speeds equal to or above 10 Mbps. In comparison, broadband users in countries such as Ghana, Mongolia, Oman and Venezuela are limited to broadband speeds below 2 Mbps."

Title: AfTerFibre Update
Author: Steve Song
Source: Many Possibilities
Date (published): 21/10/2011
Date (accessed): 25/10/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"This is a short summary of progress and learning from the first couple of months since launching AfTerFibre, a project to map terrestrial fibre projects in Africa. From the beginning AfTerFibre has been designed as an open project both from the point of view of transparency and from the point of view of participation. So the first goal was to make it easy to share information. This involved setting up a AfTerFibre Google Group so that anyone could contribute information or ask questions. Next we needed a place to store resources as we found them so a wikipedia page was set up to capture information and links to maps of terrestrial fibre projects. That part has gone reasonably well. We now have 83 people in the Google Group and the Wikipedia page now has 67 African operators known to have fibre projects listed, for which about half have links to maps. Where possible I have linked directly to the map on the web if it exists. In other cases, I have uploaded map images that I have found to a Flickr set. Finally there is also a Diigo list of news links related to AfTerFibre.

Having gotten the repositories for the raw information in place, the next challenge was to find out how to create an information chain that would make it easy not only for people to contribute map information but also to submit updates. I’ve been working with some of Google Africa’s GIS team in Nairobi to solve this."

Title: Government of Bhutan, Ministry of Information and Communications: Annual Report: 2010-2011
Pages: 38 pp.
Source: Ministry of Information and Communications
Publisher: Government of Bhutan
Date (published): 06/07/2011
Date (accessed): 07/09/2011
Type of information: statistical report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"This Annual Report of the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) in the present format is being produced for the first time although the system of sharing and disseminating such information existed even in the past. The present report provides a general overview of some of the main activities implemented by MoIC and its line agencies during the financial year 2010-2011. Hereafter, this will become an annual feature and even expanded to provide thorough and more detailed statistical information, together with analysis of sector performance during the one year period."

Title: Open-source cell phone network could cut costs to $2 per month
Author: Michael Riggs
Source: e-Agriculture
Date (published): 05/08/2011
Date (accessed): 11/08/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Think what this could mean in the developing world, in remote areas and in rural locations where the population density is too low for current mobile operators to invest.

According to the team behind OpenBTS, this cellular network can be installed and operated at about 1/10 the cost of current technologies, but is still compatible with most of the handsets that are already in the market. The technology can also be used in private network applications. It has already been tested in the physically challenging environment of the Nevada (USA) desert and on the island of Niue.

Read more on Engineering for Change at http://bit.ly/oNTCvR or NetworkWorld at http://bit.ly/orai2p

For technical information, source code and more, see the Knowledge Base reference or go directly to the source at http://openbts.sourceforge.net/."

Title: Open Source Effort Will Deliver Low-Cost Wi-Fi for All
Author: Katherine Noyes
Source: PCWorld
Date (published): 05/08/2011
Date (accessed): 11/08/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"One of the great things about open source software is that it doesn't just bring a wealth of benefits to businesses. Rather, by making low-cost, high-quality software widely available to everyone, it also has the potential to change lives around the world.

Most of us are familiar with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) effort to put low-cost computer hardware in the hands of the world's poorest people, but a like-minded project that's less well-known aims to do something similar with Internet access.

The goal is to develop low-cost, open source Wi-Fi software, and on Wednesday Geeks Without Frontiers--an initiative of the not for-profit Manna Energy Foundation--announced the final development of just such a solution.

'Millions More People'
Facilitated by a grant from the Tides Foundation, the new open80211s (o11s) technology will enable the development and rollout of large-scale mesh Wi-Fi networks for roughly half the cost of a traditional network, says Geeks Without Frontiers. Designed to use existing hardware to minimize cost and maximize availability, it's expected to be particularly important in areas where legacy broadband models are currently considered to be nonviable economically.

Built primarily by Cozybit, the technology is managed by Geeks Without Frontiers and I-Net Solutions and sponsored by Google, Global Connect, Nortel, OLPC and the Manna Energy Foundation.

“By driving down the cost of metropolitan and village scale Wi-Fi networks, millions more people will be able to reap the economic and social benefits of significantly lower cost Internet access,” explained Michael Potter, one of the founders of the Geeks Without Frontiers initiative."

Title: The Little Data Book on Information and Communication Technology 2011
Author Editor:
Pages: pp.
ISBN: 978-0-8213-8248-6
e-ISBN: 978-0-8213-8447-3
Publisher: World Bank
Date (published): 22/06/2011
Date (accessed): 09/08/2011
Type of information: book
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"The impacts of information and communication technologies cross all sectors. Research shows that investment in information and communication technologies is associated with such economic benefits as higher productivity, lower costs, new economic opportunities, job creation, innovation, and increased trade and exports. Information and communication technologies also help provide better services in health and education and strengthen social cohesion.

The Little Data Book on Information and Communication Technology 2011 charts the progress of this revolution for 213 countries around the world. It provides comparable statistics on the sector for 2000 and 2009 across a range of indicators, enabling readers to readily compare countries.

This book includes indicators covering the economic and social context, the structure of the information and communication technology sector, sector efficiency and capacity, and sector performance related to access, usage, quality, affordability, trade, and applications. The Glossary contains definitions of the terms used in the tables."

Title: Getting the next 50 million Nigerians on broadband
Author: Nmachi Jidenma
Source: The Next Web's Africa
Date (published): 08/08/2011
Date (accessed): 09/08/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"With a population of over 150 million people, Nigeria has the potential to be Africa’s leading broadband powerhouse. However, according to Main One Cable, a private undersea cable infrastructure provider in West Africa, broadband penetration in the country is currently less than 3%. As such, there is tremendous opportunity in the broadband space in Nigeria especially in the mobile broadband space where the country is estimated to have about 90 million subscribers.

At the recent Broadband Investment Summit held in July in Lagos, Nigeria, industry operators, stakeholders and service providers ranging from Google Nigeria to Phase 3 Telecoms were present among others, and industry papers were presented on broadband access in Nigeria. Titled Broadband as an Enabler to Connecting the Next 50 Million Telecoms Users in Nigeria, the summit emphasized the power of broadband as a tool for wealth creation in the country."

Title: 3G Breaks India’s Bandwidth Bottleneck
Source: TeleGeography
Date (published): 19/07/2011
Date (accessed): 24/07/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Fixed broadband services in India have grown at a steady, but unspectacular, pace since their introduction in 2003. Providers had signed up 11.5 million subscribers at the end of Q1 2011, up 31 percent from a year earlier. Nevertheless, Indian broadband penetration stands at only 5 percent of households. In contrast, 34 percent of Chinese households have broadband access.
While India’s fixed broadband growth is plodding along, data from TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database reveal that 3G mobile subscribers are growing at a breathtaking pace. The number of customers signed up to third-generation mobile services skyrocketed 400 percent between March 2010 and March 2011, reaching 12.2 million. This growth is particularly impressive in light of the fact that 3G services were only introduced in 2009, and 3G service has only become widely available from multiple providers in recent months. Indeed, growth has accelerated as 3G coverage and competition has increased, with subscribers increasing by an astonishing 73 percent in the first quarter of 2011."

See also:
In India, Broadband means a 3G connection, By Om Malik,