Word: telecoms
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...economic nationalism. "I think there is a growing group in Thailand that believes business here should belong to Thais, not foreigners," says Sukhbir Khanijoh, senior analyst at Kasikorn Securities in Bangkok. That sentiment was stoked by Thaksin's controversial $1.9 billion sale last year of his family stake in telecom firm Shin Corp. to Singapore's Temasek Holdings-a deal perceived domestically as delivering a key national industry into foreign hands. The tax-free sale came courtesy of the loopholes in the country's Foreign Business Act that the junta government is now eliminating. The changes aim to stop foreign...
...Internet as it exists today is far from shockproof. It has been built by independent consortia of private telecom companies and investors, and network design has been driven by economics. Reliability is important, of course, but intercontinental cable systems can cost billions of dollars, so they tend to connect to countries where demand is greatest and they often lack costly parallel backup circuits that would be underused most of the time. Vulnerabilities exist, and the recent quake found a chink in the armor. It struck in the Luzon Strait south of Taiwan, an area that has an unusual concentration...
...This month, says Ha, organizations like OFTA will hold discussions with telecom companies about faster rerouting procedures in the event of future cable failures. But it's up to the companies that own and lease the networks to iron out emergency procedures, which are complicated by contractual obligations and pricing agreements. The best solution, says Chan, is the construction of more pathways. China's Internet population alone increased by 30% last year; at current growth rates, China is projected to reach maximum capacity on its current networks by 2008. More cable networks are in the works. One consortium plans...
...While the holiday may have saved the region's businesses from major financial pain, Budde says that the outage could serve as a reminder to Asian countries of vulnerabilities in their Internet infrastructure. "(Governments) look at this as a telecommunications problem for telecoms to solve," he says. "But telecoms are looking after shareholder value, not necessarily the national interest. I think one thing that will come out of this is that countries will start to understand this is a national problem, not a telecom problem...
...Minister. "Electricity, you have to pay someone off. To import goods, you have to pay baksheesh. Everyone has a 'tax.'" Those who refuse to pay risk losing out to their business rivals. When Roshan, a cellular-phone company jointly owned by the Geneva-based Aga Khan Development Network, Monaco Telecom and MCT Corp. of the U.S., began building a network in Afghanistan in 2002, transmission equipment languished in customs for months, says Roshan CEO Karim Khoja, because the company refused to pay bribes. Leases on prime land were also lost, and bureaucrats demanded free airtime and SIM cards, says Khoja...