Opera Mini™ is a fast and easy alternative to Opera`s mobile browser, allowing users to access the Web on mobile phones that would normally be incapable of running a Web browser. This includes the vast majority of today`s WAP-enabled phones. Instead of requiring the phone to process Web pages, it uses a remote server to pre-process the page before sending it to the phone. This makes Opera Mini™ perfect for phones with very low resources, or low bandwidth connections. Opera Mini™ offers the same speed and usability as the renknown Opera mobile browser, and uses Opera`s Small Screen Rendering™ technology to provide access to the Web. It has all the features expected of a browser, and more, such as bookmarks, browsing history, and ability to split large pages into smaller sections for faster browsing. This download file contains both MIDP1 lowfi and MIDP2 hifi versions.

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If the 3G and WiMax spectrum auctions happen in the current fiscal, they would see operators grabbing the opportunity to bid for the much needed bandwidth. But is 3G and WiMax indispensable for India? Have their services revolutionized the markets where they have been launched? Not really.

The performance of the third generation technology around the world has been a mixed bag. Though it opened the market for data traffic, the additions were not huge. WiMax deployments faced delays and we cannot even assess their success. According to COAI, for operators in other countries the non-voice revenue is not a major contributor to the total revenue.

For Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo, the contribution of non-voice data is a little over 32%, while for O2 in the UK it is 33%. In the US, for Verizon the non-voice revenue share is 33% and for Orange and SFR in France it is 18% and 16.3% respectively.

None Feeling the Impact?

Interestingly, case studies show that 3G hasn’t been able to bring any magic to the operators’ revenues. SingTel rolled out 3G in Singapore with high hopes, but the technology could see increase in penetration only by end of the second year. By the end of Q3 2005, the penetration was around 3.4%. It grew to reach 44.1% by Q3 2008. Its total wireless customer base in Q1 2006 was over 1.5 mn, and by Q2 2008 it grew to between 2.5 mn and 3 mn.

In Malaysia, 3G penetration hasn’t shown a great upswing. For Maxis, the penetration went up from 1% in 2006, to 8.6% by Q3 2008. 3G did not have a great impact on its wireless base either. In Indonesia the technology did not help increase the wireless base. Though the penetration touched 4.6% by end 2008, the number of additions were not very high. The total number of wireless customers were somewhere between 2.5-3 crore by end 2008. Thus, with such a mixed response to 3G in these markets, it is difficult to imagine what the technology will do in India. The poor response at a recently held 3G WiMax spectrum auction review meeting by the government also raises many questions.

The 3G experience in the UK should be a lesson for the Indian telcos. The rollout got delayed here because of the walloping costs incurred by operators for acquiring licenses. The major issue for operators was to break-even on the huge investments made toward bagging the 3G licenses. In the Indian context, over 70% population lives in rural India where the basic requirement is plain voice services. Therefore, getting the RoI is not going to be a cakewalk for operators. However, the reserve price set by the government will be a silver lining.

China Exception

Chinese operators are currently rolling out 3G. The Chinese government hopes the two-year $41 bn investment in the 3G network infrastructure would trigger a total investment of about two trillion yuan in the next three years.

Non-voice revenue in China totaled $157 bn in 2007, according to data by Informa Telecoms & Media, up from $116 bn in 2006. In Q2 2008 non-voice revenue surpassed $50 bn for the first time in any quarters. For 2008 as a whole they are expected to exceed $200 bn.

Revenues are heavily skewed toward emerging markets. Asia Pacific captured 39% of the global data revenue in Q2 2008, but the region is dominated by China, because of its sheer size, along with Japan and South Korea. Europe was the second-largest region, with 25% share of global revenues, followed by North America at 19%. Other regions contributed only 17% to the global revenues. Frost & Sullivan says that WiMax revenue in the APAC region could be around $11 bn, at a CAGR of 45% during 2007-13.

3G will be obsolete soon in some markets. NTT DoCoMo plans to begin commercial 4G use by 2010 in Japan. Technically, 4G is 2,000 times faster than 2G in transmitting data, and almost 20 times faster than standard copper cable-based ADSL services. 4G promises to deliver high-quality video and data transmission.

The WiMax Story

In the mobile computing domain, WiMax is a relatively new technology. It has yet to see mass deployment at a global level. The technology was developed in 2000 and can provide data rate of upto 70 Mbps from larger distances which can reach upto 30 miles.

According to projections by the WiMax Forum there would be over 133 mn WiMax users globally by 2012. Additional data from the study estimates that approximately 70% of the predicted WiMax users by 2012 will utilize mobile and portable WiMax devices to access broadband Internet services. Currently, more than thirty-five WiMax Forum member companies are creating WiMax base stations.

The ease of regulatory environment in many foreign countries have helped operators and companies to scale up opportunities in the WiMax space. Although the technology has made little progress in Asian counterparts such as Indonesia and China, industry experts feel that with the help of government polices, China alone can have over 40% of global WiMax subscribers by 2012.

In one of the most awaited WiMax auctions of Europe in 2006-07, France allotted forty-four regional WiMax licenses in 3.5 GHz spectrum to operators and local governments. As per the earlier plan, 3,564 WiMax locations should have gone live by June 2008. However, merely 14% of the total sites planned have been built during that period. According to reports, the reason for this was the poor performance of the technology. WiMax failed to meet the desired expectations of operators in the country. Also, the late approval of e standard, ie, mobile WiMax, was one of the main reasons for the slow advancement of the technology in the country.

Positive Signs

The technology is shaping up well in Latin America. There are over ninety-five WiMax deployments in the Caribbean and Latin America region. In Argentina alone over 100 companies have expressed their willingness to bid for WiMax. According to Infonetics, the number of mobile WiMax subscribers in Brazil is forecast to skyrocket from fewer than a thousand in 2007 to 3.6 mn in 2011; a compound annual growth rate of 940%. In the Asian region, Japan is likely to have dual mobile WiMax-LTE services by 2011.

Korea Telecom, with nearly 190,000 subscribers, and Wateen Telecom (Pakistan) with more than 25,000 subscribers have been the biggest WiMax deployments in 2008.

There are several factors which are in favor of an increase in WiMax deployment in India. Many Indians will access the net for the first time on their mobile. This trend is similar to wireless subscribers. A significant percentage of Indian households didn’t have access to fixed wired telephone services and many subscribers got connectivity for the first time through wireless infrastructure. The same trend is predicted for broadband wireless Internet access services such as WiMax which will provide hi-speed data services over a wireless data infrastructure.

The technologies are heading to take a new leap in some of the Asian countries, though past experiences and regulations can make the transition tricky in the years to come. Indian operators, who have shown better financial and network efficiencies to global operators, should take a cautious approach when they start investing in both 3G and WiMax.

XXXXXXXXX Censorship 2009
P2PNet: March 22, 2009

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/18843

The practice of controlling, or trying to control, information and data can take many shapes and forms.

CXXXXa’s leaders used to be pre-eminent in believing they could cxxxxx what their people sxx and don’t sxx, dx and don’t dx.

However, now AXXXXXXXX’s Labour government seems determined to join CXXXX, and one might also suggest NXXX ZXXXXXXand FXXXXXX, seemingly about to pass laws to force local ISPs to act as corporate copyright enforcers,  are also on the verge of becoming prime Net censorship countries.

And, “On Sunday, 24 February 2008, Pakistan Telecom (AS17557) started an unauthorised announcement of the prefix 208.65.153.0/24,” said RIPE NCC’s Routing Information Service (RIS).

“One of Pakistan Telecom’s upstream providers, PCCW Global (AS3491) forwarded this announcement to the rest of the Internet, which resulted in the hijacking of YouTube traffic on a global scale.”

The Pakistan hijacking  was sharp, but short. What, however, would happen if one company consciously set out to influence traffic in another?

“The treatment of Internet traffic is increasingly affected by national policies that require the ISPs in a country to adopt common protocols or practices,” say Josh Karlin (University of New Mexico), Stephanie Forrest (University of New Mexico and the Santa Fe Institute), Jennifer Rexford (Princeton University) in a new paper.

“Examples include government enforced censorship, wiretapping, and protocol deployment mandates for IPv6 and DNSSEC,” they say, but, “If an entire nation’s worth of ISPs apply common policies to Internet traffic, the global implications could be significant.”

In their abstract to Nation-State Routing: Censorship, Wiretapping, and BGP, they go on »»»

For instance, how many countries rely on China or Great Britain (known traffic censors) to transit their traffic? These kinds of questions are surprisingly difficult to answer, as they require combining information collected at the prefix, Autonomous System, and country level, and grappling with incomplete knowledge about the AS-level topology and routing policies. In this paper we develop the first framework for country-level routing analysis, which allows us to answer questions about the influence of each country on the flow of international traffic.

Our results show that some countries known for their national policies, such as Iran and China, have relatively little effect on interdomain routing, while three countries (the United States, Great Britain, and Germany) are central to international reachability, and their policies thus have huge potential impact.

And as government control over the treatment of online traffic becomes more common, “many people will want to understand how international reachability depends on individual countries and to adopt strategies either for enhancing or weakening the dependence on some countries,” say  Karlin, Forrest and Rexford.

“The work presented in this paper is an initial step towards providing the algorithms and tools that will be needed to understand and manage nation-state routing,” they state, adding:

“It is not surprising that the results show the dominance of the US at the country routing level.

“However, other countries appear to have either more or less importance than one might expect. For example, both Great Britain and Germany are second only to the U.S. in centrality, while Japan, China, and India are only 8th, 10th, and 32nd respectively. Collectively, these results show that the West continues to exercise disproportionate influence over international routing, despite the penetration of the Internet to almost every region of the world, and the rapid development of China and India. Beyond what the results tell us about the Internet today, we see the methods described in this paper as helping network designers, policy makers, and researchers better understand the likely impact of national policies on user privacy and the access to politically or socially sensitive content.”

Below is the introduction to Nation-State Routing: Censorship, Wiretapping, and BGP »»»

Internet routing is typically studied at the Autonomous System (AS) level. This is by design. Traditionally, ASes control their own internal networks and set their own policies for the routing, filtering, and monitoring of traffic, placing policy in the hands of the organizations that own them. Recently, groups of ASes have begun to act under common policies, issued by their country’s government. Examples include Internet cen- sorship, wiretapping, and protocol-deployment mandates. For instance, Chinese, British, and Pakistani ISPs are required (or strongly encouraged) to filter content deemed socially offensive. Although censoring techniques differ, all three countries are known to block traffic at the IP level (e.g., by filtering based onIP addresses and URLs in the data packets, or performing internal prefix hijacks [5, 6, 7]), which could affectthe international traffic they transit. Some countries, such as the United States and Sweden, wiretap international traffic, where even encrypted traffic is vulnerable to traffic-analysis attacks [8]. Finally, governments can attempt to force the deployment of protocols, such as the deployment of IPv6 and DNSSEC in federal agencies of the United States.

It is unclear what effect any particular country’s policies have on the rest of the Internet. Typically, censorship is applied to prevent domestic users from reaching disagreeable content. However, some censorship techniques (such as filtering based on IP addresses or URLs) may affect all traffic traversing an AS. In addition, ASes might intentionally, or accidentally as in the recent YouTube outage [6], apply censorship policies to international traffic. How many networks outside of the country would be prevented from viewing Web pages simply because their traffic traverses one of these networks? Which international traffic is vulnerable to warrantless wiretapping by the United States or Sweden? And, finally, how feasible is it to avoid directing traffic through a given country with objectionable policies by using alternative routes?

To answer these questions, we must study the aggregate effect of national policies on the flow of international traffic, rather than analyzing individual ASes in isolation. In this paper we take initial steps toward understanding interdomain routing at the nation-state level. We are particularly interested in understanding the in uence that each country’s ASes have over reachability between other countries. The resulting data and measurement techniques could be useful to many communities. First, those regions of the world with strong dependencies on particular countries could use our result to guide changes in how they connect to the rest of the Internet. Second, overlay networks (such as Resilient Overlay Networks) could use our results to determine how best to circumvent specific countries, helping to ensure that data are delivered intact, and avoid snooping. Third, our results would be helpful to policy makers to understand what impact their decisions could have on the global Internet.

There are two primary challenges in this work. The first is to determine suitable metrics for quantifying the importance, or centrality, of each country to Internet reachability. The second is to accurately infer the data needed to compute these metrics, and validate them.
We adapt the betweenness centrality metric from statistical physics as a first approximation of country centrality. Betweenness centrality is typically used as a native traffic estimator at each node in a graph. We adapt betweenness centrality to estimate the impact each country has on reachability between other countries, determining country centrality (CC) in Section 4.

Our metrics take as input the country-level paths between each pair of IP addresses in the Internet. This is a significant challenge because of the many levels of inference required to produce a country-level interdomain path. First, ASes select routes using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which chooses routes based on undisclosed routing policies, rather than simply using the shortest path. Fortunately, this is a well-studied problem and several inference algorithms exist for inferring AS-level routes. A second challenge arises because an individual AS may span many countries. This leads us to consider routing at the IP prefix level, which re- quires understanding how packets traverse each AS. Finally, each path must be converted to a country-level path by mapping IP addresses to prefixes, and then prefixes to countries (e.g., using routing registry data).

There is a risk of introducing significant, and possibly compounding, error in each step of the process. However, we present empirical evidence to suggest that our centrality metric is robust to the measurement noise, and that our results are meaningful. Our inference techniques allow us to estimate the centrality of each country, where CC values range from 0 (implying no influence) to 1 (the theoretical maximum).

Our results show that countries known for censorship, such as Great Britain, China, Australia, and Iran, have CC values of 0.29, 0.07, 0.07, and 1.12e-05 respectively.

These results suggest that, of the countries that censor Internet traffic, only some have significant impact on global routing. In particular, the countries that have received the most publicity for their censorship, such as China, have significantly less impact on international traffic than, say, Great Britain, which also censors traffic. We also show that the United States and Sweden (nations known to permit warrantless wiretapping) have CC values of 0.74 and 0.02; even if ASes actively prefer BGP routes that avoid the United States, the CC value only drops from 0.74 to 0.55.

With national policies on the rise, we believe that researchers, ISPs, and policy makers will soon need to understand the impact that these policies can have on other countries, networks, and even individual IP prefixes. Our major contribution is the development of a framework for studying interdomain routing at the nation-state level. This includes identifying and a dressing the many challenges of inferring the country level paths, developing network centrality metrics appropriate for the problem, validating the methods, and reporting initial results.

The paper is organized as follows. In the next section we briefly discuss the Internet’s topology and the correct granularity for measuring country paths. In Section 3 we design, implement, and validate the Count Path Algorithm (CPA) for inferring country-paths from a pair of source and destination IP addresses. The algorithm has several stages, as it must first infer the interdomain path, and then intradomain paths, and finally determine the country path. Next, Section 4 reviews betweenness centrality and presents two extensions for measuring a country’s influence over global reachability. These metrics take as input the global measurement produced by the CPA. In Section 5, we apply our inference techniques to sample data sets of traceroutes and AS paths, as well as inferred paths between all know IP prefixes. This helps validate that our metrics are robust to inference error. We also present initial results characterizing the data produced by the CPA. Next we discuss future work and other possible challenges at country level analysis in Section 6, we review related work in Section 7, and finally conclude in Section 8.

Stay tuned.

Resource:- http://facthai.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/world-net-censorship-p2pnet/

We have seen Telenor Pakistan’s innovation and creativity for their products, services and advertising campaigns, but it would be interesting for you to know that the company has exercised the same level of creativity in developing their way of work. Telenor Pakistan has successfully invented a unique, new and a workable way to carry forward their operations with a key focus on quality and simplicity, coupled with productivity and output.

I had a chance to visit Telenor Pakistan’s head office as a guest, where I noted following things in specific.

1. Telenor Pakistan seeks performance from its employees by implementing work structures that go beyond the usual forms of bureaucracy and multi-layered channels of communication
2. You feel a true sense of equality at the organization, where the CEO, VPs, Directors, Managers, Executives and Officers all share the same work space, the same privileges and an open level of communication that is applicable at all levels
3. You don’t need to dress formally (as long as you don’t communicate externally), hence the focus is more on getting work done by breeding a casual environment, where comfort is a prime driver for achieving difficult targets. I would say its more of a human approach to managing resources, where their comfort levels are considered as key contributors to their levels of productivity

Besides these findings, let’s have a look at techniques adopted in human resource management functions, or Human Capital management functions, as it is known at Telenor Pakistan:

1. Unique and very well structured Recruitment and Selection methods, driven by competency-based screening
2. Separate Organizational Development (OD) function
3. Revamping the human resource management division name with Human Capital Division (HCD)

Unique Selection & Recruitment Methods

Telenor Pakistan has adopted world class recruitment and selection techniques like the Thomas Personal Profile Analysis to pinpoint the exact personality fit that would work best with the organization. At Telenor Pakistan, recruitment is done at 3 levels, i.e. the Foundation, Development and Growth levels, where each level comes with a desired set of behaviors, some of which are common across all areas, while some are more specific to the required behaviors associated with particular job roles.

In a sense, Recruitment has now become further stringent by spending more time and focus to find the best possible candidates for vacant posts. As Telenor says, we hire for talent, and train for skill… prestigious schools or high CGPAs are no longer the preconceived benchmarks for talent… rather it is now about finding the right person who would be able to contribute better than the next.

I was told that for its talent hunting initiatives, the Recruitment Team at Telenor Pakistan initiated its University Visits 2008 program in January. Banking on its Graduate Employer of Choice status, the activity was foreseen to also potentially provide fuel for fresh graduate requirements as per the 2008 head count. The universities visited included LUMS, FAST, NUST, GIKI, NIMS, IBA, UET Lahore, NED, SZABIST, Bahria and CBM.

Separate Organizational Development Department

Working in a world where change is the only constant phenomenon, most organizations lack a dedicated Organizational Development function. The working of the OD unit as a separate and dedicated function at Telenor Pakistan shows their consideration for achieving a balance between the employees’ and the organization’s goals, bearing in mind the coupling of people development with overall organizational development. The company has been instrumental in being the first player in the Telecom industry to initiate the workings of OD as a separate function of human resource.

While realizing the value and contribution of the human mind, Telenor Pakistan has psychologists available to study human dynamics technically, and to develop an individual’s emotional intelligence. These have been seen to contribute greatly towards overall productivity and growth.

Revamping the Human Resource Management name to “Human Capital Division”

Adapting Adam Smith’s philosophy, Telenor Pakistan has rebranded its human resource department as the Human Capital Division (HCD). As defined, human capital refers to the stock of skills and knowledge embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value. Consequently, Telenor’s ideology and realization of the importance of human resources is reflected in the name chosen for its human resource department.

Conclusion:

Telenor has not only initiated new concepts and world class human resource management techniques, but also with its on-campus recruitment seminars and the Telenor Alumni and Ambassador Programs, the company is always on the lookout to maximize its reach in terms of its outward orientation There is also an important point raised that Telenor provides 100% focus on talent… as they say “we hire for talent, and train for skill…”

Source: propakistani.com

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China Mobile is the world’s largest telecom operator. Having a customer base of over 300 million customers, its network routes 700 million text messages every day and handles 250 million calls every hour.

China Mobile is perhaps the only cellular network that provides uninterrupted, reliable coverage through tunnels, on highways, inside sky scrapper elevators as well on top of Mount Everest.

One of the unique features of China Mobile servicing excellence is to customise its products, services and tariffs to suit the individual needs of its huge subscriber base. There are hundreds of payment/tariff options to choose from according to one’s usage pattern, budgetary limitations and nature of use.

China Mobile’s first overseas subsidiary, China Mobile Pakistan has the license to offer and operate voice, data and all value added services in the entire country. One of the fastest growing cellular markets in the world, Pakistan is a key region that is likely to offer expansion opportunities as well the chance to make a difference in the lives of a growing clientele that is demanding and understands and appreciates better quality and service standards.