Indonesia's Uncertain Future

HONG KONG — Nothing could be more symbolic of the rise in Indonesia’s status in the world: Garuda, the national airline named after the sacred, mythical bird that is its national emblem, is being marketed to global investors. It has been reaching out to global investors as the government seeks to raise at least $1 billion by selling a large stake in what was long an accident-prone carrier shunned by passengers and airports alike.

This caps a year in which Indonesia’s international stock rose faster than probably any other Asian country.

Foreign perception of the nation’s progress had long lagged behind its actual, quietly-impressive political and economic development in the dozen years since the Asian financial crisis and the overthrow of the Suharto regime. But the now bullish perception may have run ahead of reality, perhaps setting both foreigners and newly confident locals up for disappointment. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

First, it’s worth reviewing the good news. The stock market was Asia’s top performer in 2010. The economy grew about 6 percent, and the same is expected in 2011. The budget position is strong; debt is low; trade in surplus and foreign reserves is high. Foreign commentators have suggested that it be classed with China, India and Brazil as one of the group of large, fast-expanding economies identified as the spearhead of global growth.

Internationally Indonesia is now viewed as stable and strategically important. It is a member of the Group of 20 and, like Brazil, beginning to play a role beyond its immediate neighborhood. President Barack Obama has underlined its achievements, as a Muslim-majority country with a secular Constitution, democracy, pluralism and religious tolerance. It is now making an effort to reduce forest destruction and carbon emissions.

Yet the sustainability of these positive developments is questionable. Economic success owes a great deal to the near record prices fetched by most of its export commodities — coal, palm oil, copper, rubber and others. These in turn have underpinned strong growth in consumption without pushing trade into a deficit. How long this cycle will last is anyone’s guess, but a sustained retreat of prices is going come with a sharp downgrading of Indonesia’s growth prospects.

If economic worries are for the future, governance worries are here now. Investors may like stories like the success of Garuda, the national airline, but local media have been focused on a very different tale — an amazing saga that has stunned even Indonesians accustomed to graft — involving a corrupt tax-inspector and his deals with senior judges and firms linked to senior politicians.

Some of the blame for a lack of government reform lies with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. He has failed to use his 2008 electoral mandate to press on with administrative reforms or act decisively against the corruption. By putting his instinct for political compromise ahead of the law, Mr. Yudhoyono risks the governance reform vital for sustained development. Corruption among parliamentarians is rife so little legislation is passed as members jostle for favors.

Mr. Yudhoyono set a poor example last year when Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati was forced out after clashing with vested interests, including one of the nation’s richest men and the head of a major party in Mr. Yudhoyono’s coalition.

Media freedom and diversity thrives so the populace knows about a lot of the sleaze. But without leadership from the top little cleaning is possible. The government vigorously pursues Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terrorist network, but Indonesia’s traditions of religious tolerance have been damaged by failure, for political reasons, to confront localized harassment of Christians and Ahmadis (an Islamic sect regarded by some as heretical).

These problems do not suggest that Indonesia should once more be ignored. But foreign awareness of its problems, as well as opportunities, is needed and could help Indonesia achieve sustained reform rather than copy the Philippines’ record of democracy marred by weak, corrupt governance.

Yahoo's Income increased, but growth still very small

SAN FRANCISCO — Anyone looking for signs of a Yahoo turnaround will have to wait a bit longer, after a lackluster fourth quarter and a disappointing forecast.

Carol A. Bartz, who joined Yahoo as chief executive two years ago, has been trying to revive the growth after several years of sluggish results and an inability to capitalize on the rise of social networking, now dominated by Facebook.

She has cut costs, largely through a series of layoffs, while Google, for example, has added employees. She has outsourced services and plans to eliminate unsuccessful products, including the Delicious bookmarking service.

Her strategy has been to focus on Yahoo’s strengths, which include editorial content, display advertising and online communications like e-mail. Still, she says it will take time before Yahoo shows signs of major progress. The earnings report seemed to support that view.
(Source The New York Times)
Display advertising — banners and other graphic ads — was the one bright spot. But a first-quarter revenue forecast that was below analysts’ expectations sent shares down in after-hours trading.

Yahoo reported that net income in the fourth quarter, which ended in December, doubled to $312 million, or 24 cents a share compared with the year-ago quarter.

The company said revenue fell 12 percent to $1.53 billion. Virtually all the decline came from the sale of the HotJobs career site and changes to Yahoo’s search business.

The income was slightly above the adjusted income of 26 cents a share beat the 22 cents a share that was expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Excluding payments to advertising partners, revenue was $1.21 billion, or modestly higher than the $1.19 billion that analysts had expected.

Display advertising increased 14 percent to $635 million.

In a conference call with analysts after the report was released, Yahoo executives repeatedly referred to what they described as the company’s good momentum, and talked of their confidence that Yahoo will turn the corner in several important areas during the second half of this year. They pointed to the growth in profits and cast the decline in revenue as a natural consequence of their strategy.

“We just completed a very encouraging quarter and year for Yahoo,” Ms. Bartz said in the call. She went on to say that “we are making clear progress on our plan.”

The first-quarter revenue forecast was for $1.02 billion to $1.08 billion, compared with analysts’ expectation of $1.13 billion. In after-hours trading, shares fell more than 2 percent, to $15.64.

Youssef H. Squali, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., said that he was still waiting for Yahoo to show some signs of progress. Cutting costs is fine, he said, but what investors really want is for the company to restore growth, and that management will be intense pressure to do so later this year, as they have promised.

“As far as growth is concerned, it’s a show-me story,” Mr. Squali said. “The jury is still out on this one.”

In a sign of Ms. Bartz’s cost-cutting, Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., said on Tuesday that it would eliminate 1 percent of its work force, or around 140 jobs, mostly in marketing. That follows cuts last month of another 600 jobs, most of them in the product group.

Yahoo’s layoffs contrast sharply with Google, which said on Tuesday that it would add more than 6,000 employees this year. Although Yahoo said it will continue to hire in certain areas, the disconnect between the companies and their trajectories is striking.

Not only is Google hiring, it is growing quickly, reporting a 26 percent rise in fourth-quarter revenue last week.

Yahoo has bet a big part of its revival on its search partnership with Microsoft, which has taken over its search engine and associated advertising in North America. The switch in Europe and Asia will take place this year.

But Ms. Bartz indicated that there are still issues to be worked out in terms of the financial benefits of the search partnership. Important measurements of its financial performance, including revenue per search, were below what was hoped for during the quarter, although she voiced confidence in an improvement during the second half of the year.

The Quixotic Quest to Block Pornography

The controversial and conservative minister of communications and information technology, Tifatul Sembiring, has recently made his view about BlackBerry devices pretty clear. According to him, the popular devices aren’t smartphones, they’re smutphones — pocket-sized portals to porn, dangerous, deviant devices that routinely corrupt poor, unsuspecting Indonesians with a deluge of X-rated filth and indecency.

“The government is obliged to protect its citizens who use BlackBerry,” Tifatul said recently, referring to his campaign to get the Canadian-based maker of the devices, Research in Motion, to block all access to pornography on the smartphones in Indonesia or risk having its business license yanked. The company said it had put the filters in place as of Thursday.

While Tifatul’s campaign may have helped him make headlines, the fact is, even with the ban in place, people will still be able to find adult entertainment without much difficulty.

And while we don’t condone pornography, there can also be no doubt that, for better or worse, it will remain readily available to the public, with or without the help of a BlackBerry. Here’s why:

The Unblockable Internet Beast

The battle against Internet porn started a few months back, when the government attempted to block all pornographic Web sites in what proved to be a futile effort.

Proxies have been shown to easily bypass government filters, making the effort seem like a major waste of time and money.

Though a few proxy Web sites were themselves blacklisted, there are clearly far too many to be completely eradicated.

The other method for beating the system is to simply find one of the many Web sites not yet added to the government filters, of which there are plenty. It is also worth noting that many of the previously filtered Web sites are now freely accessible.

Image boards still let users post various verbal and visual messages, many of them pornographic, anonymously.

Some of the more popular image boards, such as Japanese-based 2chan, were also blocked a few months ago, but are completely accessible today.

Fajar Ai, a university student who frequents image boards looking for “cool” illustrations, pictures and “politically incorrect jokes,” says image boards provide safety because they host posts only for a short time, until they are replaced by newer posts.

“You can’t ban something, a link or a file, if it’s only up for a few minutes,” he said.

Downloading through community forums, both local and international, is also a common means of trading and acquiring materials of a dubious nature.

Though a few large local forums, such as Kaskus, have already banned the trade of pornographic materials, other still operate without much of a fuss.

Trading and acquiring files is still common through file-hosting Web sites such as Rapidshare and peer-to-peer networks that have existed for more than a decade.

These days, a more sophisticated form of peer-to peer sharing, known as “torrents,” is often used to trade large files.

The sheer volume of these Internet mainstays makes filtering attempts seem a bit ludicrous, if not utterly quixotic.

Many of these mediums cannot be totally blocked since, like BlackBerrys, they provide access to a wealth of important information – most of which is completely unrelated to nude, oiled-up bodies.

Porn on the Streets and in the Shops

Although raids on street stalls have become common throughout the city, DVD merchants continue to peddle their wanton wares by relying a little more heavily on guerilla tactics to evade officials.

Though not all DVD merchants sell pornographic films, there are a sizeable number who will happily oblige you with a hidden stash if asked.

One vendor in a trade center in Jakarta, who asked that his name not be used, said selling X-rated DVDs was easy.

Pointing to a clearly visible row of DVDs with provocative covers, he said selling soft-core DVDs — which are allowed — helped to draw people in and let them some something a little more raunchy was only a nod and a wink away.

“Soft-core is kind of like bait for guys who want X-rated films,” he said.

Noviar Akbar, who was looking through some soft-core DVDs, said purchasing porn was a breeze. “What do you mean difficulty?” he said. “X-rated DVDs are easy to buy, and they are everywhere.”

On-Demand Delivery of Adult DVDs

More than a few local Internet merchants sell their collections of X-rated films online without much hassle.

Denny, whose online “shop” (essentially a blog with a list of titles) said the process was simple.

“[Potential buyers] look at the DVD list on the Web site, then they e-mail or text us the order. No phone calls,” he said.

“After that, we send them our bank account information. When they’ve paid in full, including shipping costs, we send them their order.”

“Bob,” a 29-year-old graphic designer and adult DVD peddler, who did not want us to use his real name, said the business “is pretty rewarding financially, especially because there is no promotional cost. You just keep updating your titles on the [online] forums and Web site. You can also post ads for free on marketplace Web sites.”

So even without BlackBerry access to pornography, the routes to smut remain many.

But politicians will continue to say what they need to say, and people will continue to look for what they want to see. (Source: Jakarta Globe)

Larry Page the new Google CEO for making company more agile and innovative

SAN FRANCISCO — Google made the biggest managementshake-up in a decade on Thursday, handing the reins of the company to one of its co-founders in an effort to rediscover its start-up roots.

As it has grown into the dominant company in Silicon Valley, Google has lost some of its entrepreneurial culture and become a slower-moving bureaucracy, analysts and insiders say, in contrast to Facebook, Twitter and other younger, more agile competitors.

To counter this, the company announced that Larry Page, its 38-year-old co-founder, would take over as chief executive from Eric E. Schmidt, a technology industry veteran who was brought in a decade ago to provide adult supervision, as Silicon Valley calls it.

Mr. Schmidt, 55, will remain executive chairman of the company, which had a market value of $200 billion at the close of trading on Thursday, up from $27 billion when it went public in 2004.

“One of the primary goals I have is to get Google to be a big company that has the nimbleness and soul and passion and speed of a start-up,” said Mr. Page in a telephone interview on Thursday. He will start his new role in April.

The shake-up comes at a time of major upheaval in Silicon Valley. The company, and the search industry, face challenges on several fronts.

Google remains immensely powerful and successful — as demonstrated by the stellar quarterly financial results it reported Thursday.

But the sudden rise of Facebook has exposed Google’s failures in areas like social networking and threatens its vast share of the online advertising market. Meanwhile, although Google has had success in new areas like mobile and display advertising, it has struggled to branch out into other businesses like television.

The unspoken fear within Google is that it could become like Microsoft, a once-dominant technology company that seems past its prime and perceived as stodgier, despite successes like XBox and Kinect. Indeed, for all its financial success, Google, which has 24,400 employees, is no longer considered by many top engineers as the most desirable place to work in the Valley; a new generation of start-ups has taken that place.

And in recent years, Google has lost scores of engineers and a string of high-profile senior executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, now chief operating officer at Facebook, andTim Armstrong, now chief executive of AOL.

Mr. Page led the company in its early days but relinquished that role in 2001, when it was still private. In tapping him to return to the post, Google becomes one of the few major companies in the Valley to be put under the control of a founder after being run for so long by a professional manager. To some, the move signaled a kind of coming-of-age for Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, who were in their late 20s when Mr. Schmidt took over. Even Mr. Schmidt characterized it as a moment for the training wheels to come off.

On his Twitter account, Mr. Schmidt wrote: “Day-to-day adult supervision is no longer needed.” Later, on a conference call with analysts after Thursday’s earnings report, he said, “I believe Larry is ready,” adding, “It’s time for him to have a shot at running this.”

The management move ends an unusual experiment in which Google, the world’s largest Internet company, was run jointly by a troika of Mr. Schmidt; Mr. Page, who was president of products; and Sergey Brin, 37, the company’s other co-founder and its president of technology.

In the interview, Mr. Page also explained the move as an effort to streamline, saying the three had selected him as the top decision-maker because of “the pace of decision-making and the scale of the company.” Mr. Brin, who joined Mr. Page and Mr. Schmidt in the interview, said the three-way process confused employees.

“We wanted to make it clear to all the executives and the managers who report to us where they should send an e-mail,” he said.

Mr. Page and Mr. Schmidt said the decision was mutual. “I don’t think there’s another person in the universe that could have done as good a job as Eric has done in the company,” Mr. Page said.

The relationship between the founders and Mr. Schmidt was rocky during its early years, as the founders frequently undercut Mr. Schmidt’s decisions. Although they worked well together for the last several years, there remained recurring strains.

Ken Auletta, the author of “Googled: The End of the World As We Know It,” said in an interview that while Mr. Schmidt may simply have been ready for a change after 10 years, he may have received some encouragement to step aside.

“I don’t think he was pushed aside, but he may have been nudged,” he said.

Under Mr. Schmidt’s helm, Google has prospered, but over the years, it has become less attractive to some engineers, who say it has become harder to develop new ideas while working there. The problem is one that all big companies face, but it is more pressing in Silicon Valley, where the most talented engineers tend to have the strongest entrepreneurial drive. Google has tried to retain dissatisfied employees with perks like giving them time to work on new projects. But some insiders say those incentives have lost effectiveness.

The news of the change rocked Silicon Valley, with analysts and company insiders offering varying theories. Some said Mr. Schmidt was tired of the day-to-day hassles of management. Mr. Schmidt said in the interview, “I would tell you, frankly, a decade is a long time to be a C.E.O., and Larry will discover this.”

Others say Mr. Page always planned to re-assert his authority at some point.

“Larry has wanted to be C.E.O., so that’s not a surprise,” said a former Google sales executive who would speak only anonymously to preserve his relationship with a powerful company. “But the timing — I’ve talked to people at Google today and they were just flabbergasted.”

Esther Dyson, a veteran Valley investor who has long known the Google founders and Mr. Schmidt, said, “It is unexpected but it makes a lot of sense.” She added: “Larry and Sergey have grown up. They want to run their own company.”

After the management change, Mr. Brin will concentrate on several new products, which he declined to name, while Mr. Schmidt will focus on external business partnerships and government outreach, including fighting regulators’ concerns about Google’s growing power.

Mr. Page and Mr. Brin co-founded Google when they were graduate students in computer science at Stanford in 1998.

Mr. Page is aloof, cerebral, intensely private and occasionally brusque. While Mr. Brin is more gregarious, the two didn’t trust outside investors and sought to keep control of the company.

The co-founders and Mr. Schmidt all have controlling stakes in the company. Forbes magazine recently estimated that Mr. Page and Mr. Brin had a net worth of $15 billion each, and Mr. Schmidt, $5.5 billion.

The former executive said the change might be a welcome one if it helps launch products more quickly. “In that respect, getting one of the co-founders in place might be just the energy charge folks need.” (Source; The New York Times)

Temasek and 9-Indonesian Affliates to Pay Total Rp 150 Billion

Indonesia has fined Singapore investment firm Temasek Holdings and nine affiliates 150 billion rupiah ($16.5 million) for allegedly behaving anti-competitively in the country’s telecom market.

Indonesia’s antitrust agency had ruled in 2007 that Temasek breached an anti-monopoly law due to its then-dual ownership of the country’s two largest cellular operators – Telkomsel and Indosat. Temasek had been accused of using its stake in both companies to fix prices.

The investment firm lost its final appeal in Indonesia’s Supreme Court in May last year, and risked having its assets in Indonesia seized if the fines were not paid.

Temasek and nine of its affiliates will each pay a fine of 15 billion rupiah. Reuters reported that Telkomsel’s payment had been received Monday by the antitrust agency.

Temasek expressed regret with the Supreme Court ruling and maintained its innocence, despite agreeing to pay the fine. “Temasek is disappointed that its application for civil review has been rejected as it has not contravened Indonesia’s anti-monopoly laws,” its senior managing director of strategic relations, Goh Yong Siang, said in a statement.

Temasek has since sold its share in Indosat for $1.8 billion to Qatar Telecom in 2008, in compliance with an earlier district court ruling. The firm now holds a 35% stake in Telkomsel. (source: telecomasia.net)

Steven P Jobs leave from Apple caused a drop in Share Price

Apple’s shares showed some resilience on Tuesday after the chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, announced he was taking a medical leave of absence just ahead of the release of the company’s quarterly earnings.

The announcement on Monday that Mr. Jobs, 55, would take a leave of absence a year and a half after his return from a liver transplant raised some questions about the long-term prospects for Apple, given the influence and inspiration that he has wielded at the company he co-founded three decades ago.

But analysts have said they expected a strong earnings report later on Tuesday

“The stock has performed quite well this morning in view of the news,” Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company said, adding that the stock prices reflected a buying opportunity.

Apple’s shares fell more than 4 percent at the open but regained ground as the day went on. Even with the decline, the company’s shares were almost 6 percent higher for the year.

“The reality is the stock was not very expensive to begin with,” Mr. Wolf said. “It was downright cheap by any measure of valuation. That served to contain the decline.”

Michael H. Abramsky, the managing director for RBC Capital Markets, said that Apple’s fundamentals have not changed.

“Clearly Steve is a huge part of Apple,” Mr. Abramsky added. “At the same time Apple has great products in the pipeline.”

The company has seen strong sales across almost all of its products, and analysts have forecast earnings of $5.47 to more than $6 a share, with sales of 4 million Mac computers and 15 million iPhones. Most analysts forecast first-quarter revenue at $24.4 billion.

Mr. Jobs, who recovered from pancreatic cancer after surgery in 2004, has not appeared at public events since October, and has looked increasingly frail in recent weeks, according to people who have seen him. He also took a leave of several months in 2009, when he left Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating officer, in charge.

Mr. Cook, who will take over day-to-day operations, joined Apple nearly 13 years ago and is otherwise responsible for the company’s worldwide sales and operations. He kept the development of products like the iPhone 4 and the iPad on track, increased Macintosh computer sales and improved Apple’s financial performance during an economic downturn.

Mr. Wolf said that Mr. Jobs had a talent for bringing “disruption” to the industry with Apple products, and then building an “ecosystem” around the products that drew in customers, like with iTunes and Apps stores. He agreed that to some extent these developments have made the company self-sustaining.

“The reality is nothing is going to happen at the company for years,” he said. “The next several years’ performance is going to be absolutely identical to what it was in the past. Steve didn’t care how the stock performed.”

“The reality is I did not see any new product coming out in 2011 and possibly 2012,” he said.

Mr. Wolf said the timing of the announcement just ahead of the results report was cause for reflection. “I don’t think they would have announced it yesterday unless they had a blockbuster quarter,” he said.

“I think investors are concerned but cautiously optimistic that this situation will not be deeply negative for Apple,” he said.

“Clearly Steve is a huge part of Apple,” he added. “At the same time Apple has great products in the pipeline.”

Craig Berger, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Company, said there would “naturally” be some investor concerns about Mr. Jobs’ leave “given his importance in the company and his hands-on managerial style.”

But Mr. Berger, who analyzes companies that provide chips for Apple products, said those manufacturers were still set to supply chips for millions and millions of iPhones and iPads in 2011.

“So from that perspective this news doesn’t change anything, and the refreshed iPhone and iPad products in queue are going to launch regardless,” he said in an e-mailed statement. (source: Christine Hauser -NYT)

Australian NBN Co awarded A$1.6 Billion in FO deals

Australia's NBN Co has awarded A$1.6 billion ($1.58 billion) worth of infrastructure contracts for the government's A$39 billion national fiber network rollout.

The company set up to oversee the NBN buildout has announced passive optical infrastructure deals with Corning, Prysmian and Australia's Warren & Brown.

NBN co said the agreements will create at least 450 new jobs and result in the expansion of each company's Australian presence.

Corning, a US-headquartered manufacturer, won a deal worth up to A$1.2 billion over five years to supply aerial cables and cable sheathing for the project.

The company will invest in expanding its Australian operations, including A$25 million on developing its Melbourne facility, and expects to hire up to 300-400 new staff as a result.

Milan-based Prysmian scored a $300 million deal to provide underground cabling for the project, and plans to build a new A$13 million plant in Australia which will be able to manufacture high volumes of fiber optic cables.

Prysmian said it planned to employ up to 50 new production staff, which would also create new jobs in transport, logistics, training and administration as a flow-on effect.

Warren & Brown has been tipped to provide optical distribution frames and sub-racks in an up to $110 million deal.

NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley said a key benefit of using an Australian supplier “is the ability for Warren & Brown to fill orders within short timeframes to meet [our] rollout requirements.”

The NBN is a $39.3 billion federal government project to connect 93% of Australia's population with fiber connections of up to 1Gbps, and serve the remainder of the country with wireless and satellite technologies.

The government late last year won a key political battle by passing legislation required to split Telstra and pave the way for the operator's participation in the NBN. But the project still has some hurdles to pass in 2011.

(source: telecomasia.net)

Indian BWA interest shifted to TD-LTE

The second half of 2010 in India was abuzz with discussion of several possibilities for BWA licensees regarding whether to deploy TD-LTE, Wimax, or a hybrid-type network (supporting Wimax in the initial stage with a migration path to TD-LTE).

These speculations have been laid to rest with license holders now leaning towards TD-LTE. Indian bigwig Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) has selected TD-LTE for rolling out its nationwide BWA network.

Ever since RIL issued its first press release mentioning “a single 20 MHz TDD spectrum when used with LTE has the potential of providing greater capacity when compared with existing communication infrastructure in the country,” Maravedis predicted it would deploy TD-LTE; there was no reference to Wimax in the press release.

In November 2010 RIL showcased the results from its first field trial of TD-LTE technology using ST-Ericsson dongles. The operator said it had achieved 80 Mbps downlink and 20 Mbps uplink speeds during the trial.

It also reported full mobility with delivery of applications such as HD multimedia streaming; LIVE TV was demonstrated with on-the-go speeds of 50 and 70 kilometers per hour, as well as a seamless handover among the number of LTE base station sectors.

RIL is reported to be testing kits from Ericsson, Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent, although it is not yet clear if it intends to select a single vendor or split the contract between multiple partners. It is close to selecting the vendors for a $1 billion TD-LTE rollout, with a decision anticipated in the next
couple of months.

Maravedis predicts RIL will have a tough time launching a commercial BWA service using TD- LTE in India until the end of 2011. The fundamental question is whether there is a TD-LTE solution that can go into deployment today to meet the broadband needs of Indian consumers at an affordable price?

Current prices of LTE devices are way too high (starting at $100 for USB dongles) for the average Indian consumer.

The curve of device prices to reach below $30 (the price an Indian consumer can afford) would be on par as that witnessed by Wimax, and thus may take up to 18-24 months to reach that level. Because of this, Indian operators are expected to develop an initial strategy of targeting
business users.

From an economic perspective Chinese vendors (Huawei & ZTE) are usually cheaper, but they have faced some legal trouble when entering the Indian market due to security concerns from the government and competition between the two countries.

When price is a concern and the most price competitive vendors face roadblocks entering the market, TD-LTE adoption may evolve even slower than expected.

It will be interesting to watch – at least in the beginning – how chipset vendors manage to offer cheap LTE chipsets so the resulting device price is suitable for the Indian economy. Qualcomm is not the only chipset vendor, so the results of efforts made by the company to foster TD-LTE adoption in India will also be enjoyed by other players.

RIL's decision to deploy TD-LTE rather than Wimax is likely to be followed by the other major BWA spectrum holders, such as Bharti Airtel and Aircel. One of our industry sources has informed us that Augere, another Indian BWA licensee, has decided to go with LTE. Tikona, which bagged five circles in the BWA auctions, has already revealed that it will adopt LTE.

It will be in BWA license holders’ best interest to opt for vendor financing. Although major operators like RIL and Bharti Airtel can fund deployments, vendor financing arrangements provide additional confidence that the vendor will deliver networks that work well. It can also result in a substantial cost advantage over the duration of the financing. This tends to lock in the supplier, which is the obvious objective during this formative stage of TD-LTE trials and deployments.

Given the latest HSPA evolutions announced and the maturity of that technology, 3G licensees in India can directly compete with BWA licensees, since TD-LTE devices will be more expensive and it will take another few months for the first ones to appear in the worldwide market.

Tata Communications, by complementing its 3G deployment with residential Wimax offload, could have the opportunity to attract customers early and engage them by developing appealing value-added services – in particular, voice, since VoLTE is still far from becoming a reality in that market.

After the 2G scandal in India, providing voice services over 3G is a good way to attract and secure new customers.

There is a possibility that nationwide licensee RIL can sell wholesale services to other BWA licensees like Augere and Tikona who would be willing to expand to other circles. Augere won spectrum in one circle, while Tikona obtained spectrum in five circles in the Indian BWA auction.

Augere has funding from Orange and is in a good position to expand to other circles in India. On the other hand, Tikona received approval to increase foreign investment in the company up to 74% in March 2010. Tikona’s investors include Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, Indivision India Partners, Oak India Investments, and L&T Infrastructure Finance.

With RIL opting for TD-LTE, Wimax advocates are now betting high on the BSNL’s Wimax plans in India. BSNL is set to receive a $524 million grant to complete the rollout of a Wimax network in rural areas, having informed the government that it would only continue the buildout with additional compensation for the project. (source: Basharat Ashai/Maravedis)

BSNL, which acquired the BWA spectrum almost a year ago, has not been able to take advantage of the lead it had over private players due to delays in finalizing the tender.

BSNL has made its franchises contractually commit to converting to LTE in the event that the other operators in the country support the standard.

There certainly does seem to be cause for concern for Wimax advocates now that RIL has decided to deploy TD-LTE. However, considering that BSNL is the only operator in India who has been very active rolling out Wimax, and that it has major plans and government support, we expect it to be a late entrant (no earlier than 2012) to the LTE market.

RIM delivers BlackBerry Monitoring System for India

RIM has developed a BlackBerry monitoring solution for the Indian government it says fulfills the nation's surveillance requirements – but one which still can't decrypt corporate emails.

The company said it had completed development of an access system for its Messenger and public email services that will allow carriers to meet legal obligations on lawful interception.

RIM, which had been under pressure to enable state surveillance of its services by January 31, said in a statement sent to the media that it was pleased to have completed the solution before this mutually-agreed deadline.

But the company said the solution does not apply to its highly-encrypted corporate email service, reiterating that it is unable to provide access to these messages as it does not retain a copy of customers' decryption keys.

It said setting up an email server in India, the suggested solution to the impasse, would not work because the security architecture on its BlackBerry Enterprise Server is identical worldwide.

In an update to customers, RIM said it had been assured that all its competitors will be pressed to provide the same lawful access capabilities if they had not done so, Press Trust of India reported.

It is currently unclear whether the government, which had originally demanded complete access, will be satisfied with RIM's partial solution. India has already reportedly rejected at least one of RIM's draft monitoring proposals.

RIM last week revealed it could take 18-24 months to deliver an effective enterprise email monitoring solution.

The company, which this week was forced to agree to develop a porn-blocking solution for BlackBerrys in Indonesia, recently revealed it is currently under no pressure from India to filter any internet content.

RIM agrees to Filter porn in Indonesian BB Network

RIM has agreed to develop a solution to filter porn in Indonesia, in a bid to stave off a ban on BlackBerry services in the large market.

But the government is also pressing RIM to enable Indonesian security officials to monitor BlackBerry services, a demand that could be harder to satisfy.

Indonesian officials want RIM to to block porn browsing on BlackBerry smartphones from within the nation, in order to comply with local anti-pornography laws.

RIM has revealed it will develop a system as quickly as possible, Dow Jonesreported, marking the first time the vendor will apply internet filtering to any country.

The government will meet with RIM and six mobile operators on January 17 to discuss the matter. It has warned it may ask RIM to shut down its browser service, in advance of a potential blanket ban, if RIM does not satisfy.

RIM, which has an estimated 1.5 million BlackBerry users in Indonesia, said in a statement to Reuters it was working with local carriers to develop a compliant filtering solution.

But in response to RIM's comments, Indonesian communications minister Tiffatul Sembiring said simply, “so do it.”

The communications ministry is simultaneously pressing RIM to enable lawful interception of BlackBerry messages, through the establishment of a local server in Indonesia.

RIM has so far been unable to come up with a surveillance solution for its heavily encrypted corporate email service that satisfies the Indian government, and last weekrevealed it could take another two years to develop one. Indonesian lawmakers could prove just as hard to please.

Indonesia has been pressuring RIM to enable BlackBerry monitoring since mid-2010. (source: telecomasia.net)

Japanese Government pressed Apple on Content Filtering

The internet is abuzz with speculation that the Japanese government plans to order Apple and carrier partner Softbank to install content filtering controls for all iPhones sold in the nation.

Tech blogs and news sites have picked up on a Japanese report claiming that Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will notify the companies to implement filtering software as quickly as possible.

The ministry reportedly feels the existing parental control options for mobile browsing are insufficient to protect children, and may contravene Japan's strict laws regarding safe mobile internet usage for minors.

But Softbank believes installing filtering software for the iPhone would be impractical, as it would require users to share personal data including credit card numbers at point of purchase.

Apple has been involved in a long-running tussle with the Japanese government over 2008 incidences of exploding iPod nano devices. In August last year, Japan ordered Apple to publish a statement explaining how concerned nano users can receive replacement batteries under Apple's swap program.

The Differences between 4G and 3G

The discussion about how 4G is different or enabling compared to 3G should start with a few guideposts.

It's important to note that 4G is built upon advancements in both wireless and wired networks. The link technology of Wimax and LTE is different than 2G and3G because it uses MIMO-OFDMA rather than CDMA/W-CDMA. OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Domain Multiple Access) works in the frequency domain, which makes it more efficient and easier to take advantage of evolution of smart and distributed antenna technologies.

The most authoritative definition of real 4G comes from the ITU. Both 3GPP LTE-Advanced and IEEE 802.16m (Wimax2) were last month officially granted admittance by the ITU's Radiocomms sector into the IMT-Advanced family.

The standard sets out stringent requirements, covering spectral efficiency for various MIMO configurations and deployment scenarios. Also included are latency and jitter, channel size and aggregation, and other criteria that impact the delivery of a wide range of communications from low-duty cycle M2M monitoring to applications that support real-time video and voice. The standard pushed the envelope of performance with the result now showing up in commercial trials that demonstrate sub-50ms end-to-end latency and high bandwidths.

Wider focus

What is also important is that 4G network standards are being developed to incorporate "intelligent" or "smart networking" methodologies. In fact, the ITU describes IMT-Advanced in terms of ICT, which is more comprehensive than simply describing this as the 4th generation of wireless networks.

Where do the innovations, improvements in performance, and enabling of new types of services come from that can make 4G much different than 3G? Both 3G and 4G have much in common in terms of technologies, product designs and manufacturing methodologies, and in the evolution of commercial markets.

LTE refers more to the evolution of commercial markets than the strict evolution of wireless technologies. 3G devices and prior equipment can't be used on the same frequency bands as LTE networks and vice versa. Newer equipment is often based on SDR/SCR (software defined/configurable radio) platforms that can be software upgraded from 3G to LTE or Wimax (Wimax being unlikely).

Much of the innovation comes from the combining of benefits and new capabilities that stem from convergence of wireless broadband with wired networks and computing methods. This impacts both the highly visible consumer device level and the various levels of the network and computing environment.

I leave the discussion of device and applications innovations as this is more a step-wise improvement over 3-3.9G. The new networks will deliver much lower latency and jitter, resulting in better performance for video conferencing and other real-time streaming applications than 3G.

However, even that gets blurred because HSPA+ adopts, even at a high cost and as a dead-end strategy, many of the MIMO and self-forming network (smart network), technologies. Users will not see a startling difference in speed between networks. However, 4G provides another 10- to 20-year roadmap for improvements.

Major advances will be made over the next 20 years or so in smart distributed WBB networks (SDWN). What that represents is the evolution of smart storage, routing and computing both from central servers, mostly the model of today, to more dynamic distributed ICT topologies. The evolution pairs with that of systems on a chip, distributed processing, smart DRM and other advances.

What is different about 4G is that it is an ICT rather than strictly a wireless platform. There are distinctions that will help lead to greater use of microcell and multiple-node aggregate base stations that are more easily deployed and help deliver greater capabilities at lower cost per bit. Overall, that is compelling.

(source: Robert Syputa, Maravedis)