HUA HIN, Thailand - One of Asia's
final remaining closed telecoms markets is about
to open up as Myanmar this week invited foreign
tenders for two national telecoms service
licenses. The country has high ambitions for its
communications infrastructure, with a target of
75-80% mobile penetration in 2016 from less than
10% today.
Across the border in Thailand,
mobile penetration is estimated to be 120% despite
the Thai government's repeated failures to issue
licenses and roll out 3G across the kingdom and widespread
national protectionism in the
telecoms sector, which is still largely
state-controlled.
Communications are seen
as a key obstacle to development in Myanmar, where
mobile SIM cards until recently cost around US$250
and can still cost that much, getting a landline
installed can l cost upwards of $700, and Internet
access is mainly a luxury for the urban elite.
President Thein Sein's reformist
administration plans to announce a further two
licenses after the initial two are issued this
coming June. It will be the first big test of the
government's ability to conduct a fair bidding
procedure and will provide an indicator for
further licensing processes. According to the
Financial Times, partly Russian-owned VimpelCom,
Norway's Telenor (itself a VimpelCom shareholder),
Vietnam's VNPT-Fujitsu, Malaysia's Axiata and the
Caribbean's Digicel have expressed interest.
Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC has already
jumped onto the digital bandwagon by offering
Myanmar language handsets in the country. To
attract local buyers, HTC developed a new input
system for Burmese-language characters. Working
with its Singapore-based partner, KMD Co, the
company stated that six handset mobile will go on
sale this week, ranging from high-end models such
as the One X+ to low-end phones like the Desire.
Currently Samsung and Huawei are the top selling
mobile phones makes in Myanmar.
Security The latest piece of
software to fall to hackers and spark widespread
concern amongst its users is Oracle's Java
platform. Last week, the US government advised
people to disable Java on their computers to avoid
being compromised by flaws in the code that
enabled access to machines.
According to
Oracle, over a billion people use Java for web
applications and games. The company on Sunday
issued an emergency patch for its latest version,
Java 7. However, security experts warn that the
vulnerabilities remain. Internet security firm
Kaspersky claimed that last year 50% of hacks
carried out by seeking out software bugs were done
via Java.
A number of settings need to be
changed for users to continue running Java safely.
These include disabling the "enable Java content
in browser" option and changing the default
security level to high.
Social Facebook has announced a
new search tool this week dubbed Graph Search,
which takes aim at rivals such as Google and
promises to open up a new way of searching online
to its almost one billion strong membership.
Being able to sift through data posted by
hundreds of thousands of members who may or may
not be "friends" poses major privacy concerns.
Searches such as "photos taken in 2009 by my
friends in a certain location" or "people near me
who like certain foods or shows" or "singles
living within ten kilometers of my location" could
reveal a world of information that the owner may
not want searchable.
This is an advanced
behavioral search tool that goes beyond Google's
secretive algorithm model of key-words and page
links which can easily be manipulated by the big
websites such as Wikipedia and Amazon and often
is. Graph will prompt Facebook users to share even
more personal information and preferences online
than they already do. It is also another change in
the rules the social network has on privacy and
data usage; users will now have to be extra
vigilant on locking down their own content and
deciding who to share it with.
To calm
these concerns, Facebook is introducing the
feature very slowly rather than flipping the
switch overnight. "We take this really seriously"
said founder Mark Zuckerberg during a news
conference on the new service. Graph Search will
be available at first to only a few thousand
users, with more being gradually added over the
coming weeks and months.
Industry Apple started the New
Year the way it ended the last; pushing lawsuits
in the courtroom. A suit it filed against Amazon
in March 2011 over the use of the name "App Store"
is set to proceed later this year, although the
presiding judge has urged the two tech giants to
meet and work out an agreement in March to settle
without going to trial.
Amazon claims that
the term is generic and Apple's trademark
application for the moniker in the US is still
pending. It is not the only battle Apple has
waged. Efforts by Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, and Sony
Ericsson in May 2011 sought to invalidate Apple's
trademarks which it does hold in Europe.
If a settlement is not reached between
Apple and Amazon, the case is scheduled to go to
trial in August at a cost of several million
dollars that could be better spent on research and
development.
Martin J Young is
an Asia Times Online correspondent based in
Thailand.
(Copyright 2013 Asia Times
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