As various free trade negotiations hit the headlines –AFTA, TPP, BTAs, etc – ASEAN seems to be finding a new lease of life.  It already has well established institutions, and with Myanmar apparently on the road to reform there is…

Obituaries are best written before death, and in the media they are. They can be written in relative calm and closer to the truth; after death the temptation is to use superlatives and become superficial. But in the case of…

The need for regulation arises for 3 reasons: to assign scarce resources; to protect citizens; and to promote public policy. In the case of telecoms, these equate to, for example: (i) assigning radio spectrum, or rights-of-way; (ii) enforcing public health…

Anyone following technology markets cannot have missed the growing use of patent wars to cripple or extort or hamper or simply bully competitors into technology agreements or into paying high fees. Patents are a lawyer’s dream and a consumer’s nightmare,…

The demise of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World in the UK had nothing directly to do with competition from social media. On the contrary, it was a profitable news “rag” appealing to the lowest common denominator of readership, and…

The profits warning by KPN (Netherlands) in Apr set off alarm signals. When the CTIA, the wireless telecoms industry association of the US, announced that SMS traffic had grown only 8.7% in 2010, the lowest growth figure for a decade,…

In the latest in an ever growing number of massive cyber security breaches the Sony PlayStation Network (PSN) and Online Entertainment Services were hacked for more than 100 million names, addresses, IDs, passwords and possibly credit card numbers, according to…

In 1381 the nobility of England were rocked by the Peasants Revolt. There was no Facebook. In 1848 the ruling classes of Europe were rocked by worker uprisings. There was no Facebook. In 1968 student protests swept much of Europe,…

Natural disasters are at one and the same time to be expected and yet shock us to the core when they occur. The world of ICTs tends to be one of optimism, hope, anticipation of ever better things to come.…

Finally it happ Win Ex Wife Back After Divorce ened. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has run out of IPv4 numbers. The world now has 2 choices. Either source IPv4 numbers that have been issued but are…

The Wall Street Journal (16 Dec 2010) cited an interesting research paper from the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo on China’s trade balance with the USA. The researchers examined the trade in parts for an iPhone. The traditional measure…