Voting for change

Great Britain went to the polls last and is still waiting for a result. It may take days or even weeks for negotiations to form a coalition government to be completed. At worst, the Queen may have to exercise her powers and call for another general election. However,...

NBN – maker or breaker of governments

Any country wanting to embark on a National Broadband Network (NBN) project would be well advised to take a close look at the Australian experience – and learn from it. Even though the story is not complete the book should be a best-seller. Governments have...

The $200 billion gamble

I’m sure you’ve heard of Steve Jobs but I wonder if you’ve ever heard of Charles Stross. Last week his name came up twice in dispatches, firstly from my TM Forum colleague, Josh Goldfein, and secondly in a TelecomAsia article written by my good...

Bharti targets 10 million Indian roamers

Indian mobile operator, Bharti Airtel yesterday announced it has launched a new SIM card for its international travelers claiming savings of up to 85 per cent on international calls in 190 countries! The process to achieve these saving is rather interesting. A Bharti...

1 night in Bangkok hits 3 in Hong Kong

I dread ‘bill shock’ stories more than calls from my bank manager, but this one reported in Hong Kong’s, South China Morning Post is so topical I just had to write about it. As previously mentioned, mobile operators in Asia, keen to capitalize on roaming customers...

Brave new world

Airline turmoils and ash clouds may have dominated the news this week but there was some other worrying news for the telecommunications industry that may have missed closer attention.  Despite weathering the massive economic downturn of the past two years and showing...

A pigeon amongst the cats

I attended a conference this week in Singapore. In fact, I was a panelist in a session called “Driving Business Through Innovation”. The open discussion was prefaced by short presentations from two high-ranking industry experts and they talked about transformation,...

Finding fraud, finding you

Recent news that a China Mobile executive had been tracked down and detained by the company after going missing with hundreds of millions of yuan and at Magyar Telekom in Hungary that four consulting contracts entered into in 2005 were later found to serve ‘improper...