Worldwide mobile cellular subscribers to reach 4 billion mark late 2008

ITU estimates over 60 per cent penetration driven mainly by BRIC economies

Geneva, 25 September 2008 — ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré announced in New York that worldwide mobile cellular subscribers are likely to reach the 4 billion mark before the end of this year.

Dr Touré was speaking at the high-level events on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in New York, where he also participated in UN Private Sector Forums addressing the global food crisis and the role of technological innovation in meeting the MDGs.

The MDGs were adopted following the United Nations Millennium Declaration by UN Member states in 2000, representing an international commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development that would include making available the benefits of information and communication technologies. ICTs have been recognized as an important tool to achieve the MDGs.

Since the turn of the century, the growth of mobile cellular subscribers has been impressive, with year-on-year growth averaging 24 per cent between 2000 and 2008. While in 2000, mobile penetration stood at only 12 per cent, it surpassed the 50 per cent mark by early 2008. It is estimated to reach about 61 per cent by the end of 2008.

"The fact that 4 billion subscribers have been registered worldwide indicates that it is technically feasible to connect the world to the benefits of ICT and that it is a viable business opportunity," said Dr Touré. "Clearly, ICTs have the potential to act as catalysts to achieve the 2015 targets of the MDGs."

While the data shows impressive growth, ITU stresses that the figures need to be carefully interpreted. Although in theory a 61 per cent penetration rate suggests that at least every second person could be using a mobile phone, this is not necessarily the case. In fact, the statistics reflect the number of subscriptions, not persons.
Double counting takes place when people have multiple subscriptions. Also, operators’ methods for counting active prepaid subscribers vary and often inflate the actual number of people that use a mobile phone.

On the other hand, some subscribers, particularly in developing countries, share their mobile phone with others. This has often been cited as the success story of Grameen Phone in rural Bangladesh, for instance.

ITU further highlights that despite high growth rates in the mobile sector, major differences in mobile penetration rates remain between regions and within countries.
The impressive growth in the number of mobile cellular subscribers is mainly due to developments in some of the world’s largest markets. The BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are expected to have an increasingly important impact in terms of population, resources and global GDP share. These economies alone are expected to account for over 1.3 billion mobile subscribers by the end of 2008.

China surpassed the 600 million mark by mid-2008, representing by far the world’s largest mobile market. India had some 296 million mobile subscribers by end July 2008 but with a relatively low penetration rate of about 20 per cent, India offers great potential for growth. Market liberalization has played a key role in spreading mobile telephony by driving competition and bringing down prices. India’s mobile operators increasingly compete for low-income customers and Average-Revenue-Per-User in India has reached around USD 7, one of the lowest in the world.

ITU recently published two regional reports for Africa and Asia, which indicate how mobile telephony is changing peoples’ lives. Apart from providing communication services to previously unconnected areas, mobile applications have opened the doors to innovations such as m-commerce to access pricing information for rural farmers and the use of mobile phones to pay for goods and services. While mobile broadband subscribers remain concentrated in the developed world, a number of developing countries, including Indonesia, the Maldives, the Philippines and Sri Lanka in Asia-Pacific have launched 3G networks.

Broadband uptake enables a range of socially desirable and valuable online services, specifically targeting the MDGs in areas such as e-government, e-education and e-health. The use of broadband technologies can help overcome many of the basic development challenges faced by developing countries.

Sale of Chinese chocolates, biscuits banned in Nepal

The government of Nepal banned the sale and import of Chinese chocolates, infant milk powder, biscuits, condensed milk and skimmed milk by September 25.
Uttam Kumar Bhattarai, director general of Department of Food Technology and Quality Control (DoFTQC) said Birgunj customs office today confiscated 10,000 kg of biscuits made in China following the government’s notice. Bhattarai added that the shop owners will be held responsible if the consumers complain of health problems after consuming the banned products. “We are yet to ascertain whether the imported Chinese products contain a toxic industrial chemical, melamine,” he said, adding that the department has initiated an investigation into the matter, which might take more than two months. “We’ll also investigate whether more than 40 dairy factories licensed by DoFTQC use milk powder imported from China. Dairy Development Corporation has confirmed that it does not use milk products made in China,” he added.
Blue Bird Departmental Store at Tripureshwore will remove the Chinese food products, especially the milk-based products, from its shelves. “We’ll return them to suppliers. However, no complaints have been received so far,” said Naresh Shakya, sales officer at the store.

The European Commission is also likely to adopt tough measures tomorrow, including “a ban on all products originating from China for infants and kids containing any percentage of milk.”
Powdered milk in China laced with melamine, a chemical compound, has sickened more than 53,000 infants in China and has claimed the lives of four of them.According to New York Times, the Chinese government’s testing turned up tainted samples of milk at Sanlu Group, based in northern China’s Hebei Province, and 21 other companies.

Draft Bangladesh ICT Roadmap draws Serious Criticism

The draft 'ICT Roadmap' has faced strong criticism soon after its launch with stakeholders alleging that it contains proposals that are contrary to national laws and administrative integrity.

The government paper carried contradictory proposals like upgrading divisions to federal states and creating imaginary post like 'chief digital adviser' under the chief adviser for implementing the roadmap.
Sources in the information and communication technology sector alleged that the draft prepared at a cost of about Tk 2.5 crore was untenable and inadequate, and carried statements undermining the country's parliament.
The draft in its proposal states that 'development of clusters of high-growth ICT companies based around hi-tech parks in each division of Bangladesh by 2013, or federal states, if they are so upgraded by that time'.

It said that the ICT Roadmap will deliver through a range of strengthened governance mechanisms including an envisaged ICT taskforce with appointment of a full-time 'chief digital adviser' who will report directly to the taskforce and the chief adviser.
Among many weaknesses for ICT in Bangladesh, the paper pointed out, 'Parliament is non-functional, so weaker democratic legitimacy behind government initiatives. '
Concerned quarters have questioned the farsightedness of the consultants in seeing Bangladesh split into federal states in future, presence of chief adviser at least till 2013 and the country having a 'non-functional parliament' as stated in the draft.
Formulating the roadmap or action plan for the information technology sector was assigned to UK-based company, Gov3 Limited and their two local partners—Spinnovatio n Limited and D.Net.
The government took the initiative to formulate the national ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh under the Economic Management and Technical Assistance Program (EMTAP), managed by Bangladesh Computer Council with assistance from the World Bank.
Concerned sources said the draft roadmap would lead Bangladesh to 'nowhere' and the paper was certainly not fit for Bangladesh.
ICT sector sources said the draft was much below expected standard and the preparation process involved irrelevant people.
They alleged that the consultants had made it by ensuring foreign trips for several bureaucrats in the name of seeing development of ICT sector there.
The draft of the national ICT Roadmap was made public on Thursday at a function attended among others by agriculture adviser CS Karim, and chief adviser's special assistant Professor M Tamim, science and ICT secretary SM Wahiduzzaman, Centre for Development Research chairman Mizanur Rahman Shelly, Bangladesh Computer Society chairman Aminul Hoque, Bangladesh Computer Samity chairman Mustafa Jabbar and Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) president Habibullah N Karim.
CS Karim, discussing on the draft, said the structure of the government with a ministry and the statutory bodies under it should be sufficient for implementation of the development plans for IT sector.
The requirement of novel bodies inconsistent with the government structure was not possible, he noted.
The adviser felt that stakeholders were not appropriately sensitised to the IT Roadmap and as such it remained inadequate. He directed that all stakeholders must be within the ambit of interaction and the process had to be wholesome and comprehensive for success of any roadmap.
We have very little resources, we can't waste any. We must have precise and doable targets. Don't re-invent the wheel. Work from within the system and within the limitations of statutory requirements, ' he said.
SM Kamal, a former president of BASIS, failed to understand how this roadmap was released with the ICT policy still under review.
M Tamim, special assistant to the chief adviser, said that the roadmap lacked sufficient directions for development of skilled manpower for IT sector.
The roadmap said that high speed internet facilities should be provided to students for skilled development. More details should be there on skilled manpower development, ' he observed.
Tamim said that the country lacked skilled manpower because of wrong policy taken earlier. 'The main focus of skill development was fixed earlier to cater to the IT need of USA. It would have been better if the aim was set to meet homegrown need.'
He also opposed the recommendations on privatising state-run Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited, which was formed recently by turning Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board into a company.
Why should it be privatised? It is true that the government should not engage in business. That is why state-run companies are formed. State-run companies can compete with other business entities under good regulatory framework,' he observed.
During open discussion AKM Shamsuddoha of Dohatec stated that the draft roadmap failed to take into account the strength and achievements of the IT sector. He mentioned the successful marks of IT in the country's banking sector, the stock market, utility billing, education boards, voters' registration and National ID Project.
The proposed roadmap failed to say how Bangladesh's ICT sector should prepare itself to secure a rightful share in the global market. The draft was a poor sifting through a host of recommendations made in different forums, Doha said.
Khairuzzaman of the Dhaka Stock Exchange said that the roadmap did not address key technical issues and suggested that special emphasis should be placed on security.

Bangladesh: The first victim of climate change crisis

The UK-Bangladesh climate conference (London, 10 September 2008) has been a success at least on two counts: establishing Bangladesh's vulnerability to climate change and supporting its quest for financial assistance from international community to meeting the challenge. Attended by hundreds of members of GOs, NOGs and the civil society from Bangladesh, UK and across the European Union the conference reiterated the prevailing scientific prediction that at least 8 per cent of Bangladesh will be submerged under sea water by 2050 and that extreme weather condition will continue to wreak havoc in the national economy and human security.

In response, Bangladesh government formed an initial seed fund of $45m and UK government commits $132m, to be followed by more from the Netherlands, Denmark and the World Bank. The collection, to be known as Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF), is a significant starting point towards securing about $4 billion in the course of next fifteen years. Most of the fund is expected to gear up a series of programmes of 'adaptation' to the impact of climate change. These are all very simple equation: a poor, environmentally vulnerable country like Bangladesh shows commitment and determination to fight climate change and the international community responds positively. Yet, between the climatic science and dynamics of foreign aid, there are a few issues that demands serious attention.
First, the agreement has taken place between the UK government and a caretaker government in Bangladesh whose legitimacy is in doubt. In the context of the UK and European Union's continued pressure on this government to hold elections by December this year, the agreement seems to have been made in surprising haste and undue alacrity. The agreement will remain a bone of contention and will surely lead to protest and instability to be faced by the incumbent government.

Secondly, the entire proceedings of speeches, dialogues, recitation from creative writings, documentary shows and display of flyers and leaflets, there were no mention of the fact that despite its obvious risk to climate change, Bangladesh is, at the same time, one of the few counties in the world where a dynamic geological process of land-formation is going on in the coastal region, as reported by an environmental agency of Bangladesh government itself on the basis of satellite data. The failure to bring this issue in the conference leaves Bangladesh prone to a defensive 'adaptation' programme, although the given geological system in the region provides option for an aggressive scientific measure to enhance the natural process of the formation of new land mass, similar successful experiments having been taken up in the Netherlands.
Thirdly, the economics of the agreement is not clear. It is stated that the assistance comes in the form of a grant. It is not clear if the grant status applies to the rest of the projected amount of $4b. It is reported that the fund under MDTF will be under investment and interest accruing from it will be enough to sustain the continuous cost of adaptation in Bangladesh. This raises the question of where and with which financial institutions will the fund be invested? Is the total interest gain meant for use in Bangladesh? If not, where? There are also romanticised rumours that the fund offered by the UK is nothing but an example of pure compensation for the injustice caused to low-emitting countries like Bangladesh by high-emitting countries like the UK. If this is the case, a more reasonable option could be to have substantial debt relief for Bangladesh, which pay more than $1b in debt repayment to donors each year, rather than asking Bangladesh to set aside $45m from tax-payer's money. This is also a misnomer of compensation when no measurement of damage is yet comprehensively calculated. A further concern is that, as the Finance Adviser assured the delegates, the MDTF would be a 'window' for the NGOs and Civil Society so that they can access the fund 'direct', meaning an unfathomable chaos of multiple institutional interest and overlapping of activities.
Fourth, the proposed adaptation plan (Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (CCSAP) that the MDTF wants to carry out sounds alarming from an ecological perspective. The CCSAP seems to take major environmental, social and economic problems such as flood, drought, erosion and salinity or insecurity for human life and livelihood and above all poverty within the single package of climate change. It is assumed that all these problems will be solved if Bangladesh is 'climate-proofed'. This is preposterous.
The CCSAP tend to ignore the earth-bound specificity of some of the major environmental problems. For instance, draught in northern Bangladesh, which is now known as Monga-prone area, was common as early as Emperor Ashok's time 2000 years ago; water-logging rather than flood which is the key problem in Bangladesh today and the problem is increased by enormous extent of embankment from colonial times till date and the CCSAP proposes to build more ecologically unsustainable construction of bridges over meandering deltaic rivers with strong currents have led to siltation at some points and erosion; salinity in the coastal region is taking place because of sluggish current of sea-bound rivers due to erection of numerous bunds upstream within Indian territory and these enable seawater to overpower incoming sweetwater.
In Bangladesh, problems of livelihood and poverty are direct result of unequal access to existing resources and legal and administrative incapacity to ensure social justice than the melting ice of the Himalayas. If existing land in Bangladesh (even excluding the 8 per cent Bangladesh is going to 'surely' lose) is meaningfully reformed and already raised new landmass (including chars or river islets) are properly distributed among the landless and the land-poor, a lot of pressing social problems may be addressed.
Once put these issues in proper perspective, Bangladesh can take closer action on its mainstream development programmes while giving considered attention to the problem of climate change.
Sixthly, another alarming issue arising from taking this 'holistic' approach to climate change is the very destructive message it can send to democratic polity and governance.
Last but not least, British PM Gordon Brown in his video message to the conference hailed Bangladesh as 'world leader in climate change adaptation'. The host side has so generously depicted Bangladesh to be so throughout the conference. While this must be taken as a compliment, there is hardly anything to be complacent about it. Bangladesh is drawn into the driving seat which means it has also the responsibility to join together other developing countries by setting an 'example' of forming a global fund whose financial mechanism is not clearly charted. This is not to undermine potential lead position of Bangladesh in global context, but neither could anyone deny that debt is rising faster than the climate change and making Bangladesh a 'leader' in 'adaptation' campaign means most poor vulnerable countries would be persuaded to follow its lead in hazy climate deals-a responsibility Bangladesh can barely afford to take. In fact this agreement directly contradicts the collective goals of G77 and other poor countries in ensuring global climatic justice. Besides, Bangladesh is a country with little record of putting its own house in order through pragmatic and formative leadership so far; and yet given the task of leading the environmentally vulnerable world sounds a bit too ambitious.

In Bangladesh, there is a National Environmental Policy (NEP) and the new CCSAP must work within the framework of NEP which has a larger vision of the more immediate earth-bound environmental issues and of multiple local stake-holders, although it remains subject to further deliberations in the wake of challenges of climate change. International community, donors and well-wishers of Bangladesh must look beyond 'climate-proofing' Bangladesh and take a broader view of the situation. There is hardly any doubt that climate change is happening, but there are folks out there who are not yet ready to give up to the teleology of a doomsday predicted exclusively for Bangladesh.