Local Telecommunications Research Articles

Intervention fidelity and factors affecting the process of implementing a mobile phone text messaging intervention among adolescents living with HIV: a convergent mixed-methods study in southern Ethiopia

ObjectiveTo assess the intervention fidelity and explore contextual factors affecting the process of implementing a mobile phone text messaging intervention in improving adherence to and retention in care among adolescents...

Assessing the Possibility of Implementing Distributed Diagnostic Systems for Hydrogen Fuel Cells Using Local and Global Telecommunication Networks

The development of effective methods and means for diagnosing hydrogen fuel cells during their operation is an urgent task, since their implementation will improve the energy characteristics and stability of operation by detecting incorrect operating modes and malfunctions at the early stages of development. This problem can be solved by using various approaches based on the analysis of impedance, relaxation or fluctuation-noise characteristics. All of these methods require the implementation of rather complex computational procedures and the accumulation of fairly large amount of statistical data, which makes it difficult to implement diagnostic devices on inexpensive embedded microprocessor tools. To overcome this drawback, this work proposes the use of distributed diagnostic systems with high-performance server devices connected to local modules via global or local telecommunication networks. Such an implementation will significantly simplify the requirements for local diagnostic modules and reduce their cost, but this raises the question of the efficiency of making diagnostic decisions by such systems.The work carried out, is a study of delays in making diagnostic and control decisions when using remote server devices for signal processing. It has been shown that the use of such systems makes it possible to achieve delays of less than one second even when using intercontinental communication lines. It should be noted that in applications critical to time delays, the distance between the client and server systems should be reduced. The advantages of the proposed implementation of a diagnostic system for electrochemical energy sources are the possibility of simplifying local measurement systems installed on individual sources, the possibility of accelerating signal processing through the use of more productive computing tools and the accumulation of statistical data.

COVID-19 control measures unexpectedly increased the duration of stay at High Speed Rail stations during the first community outbreak in Taiwan

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan has implemented strict border controls and community spread prevention measures. As part of these efforts, the government also implemented measures for public transportation. In Taiwan, there are two primary public transportation systems: Taiwan Railways (TR) is commonly utilized for local travel, while the Taiwan High-Speed Rail (THSR) is preferred for business trips and long-distance journeys due to its higher speed. In this study, we examined the impact of these disease prevention measures on the number of passengers and duration of stay in two major public transportation systems during the first community outbreak from April 29th to May 29th, 2021. Using data from a local telecommunications company, our study observed an expected decrease in the number of passengers after the cancellation of non-reserved seats at both TR and THSR stations across all 19 cities in the main island of Taiwan. Surprisingly, however, the duration of stay in some of the cities unexpectedly increased, especially at THSR stations. This unanticipated rise in the duration of stay has the potential to elevate contact probability among passengers and, consequently, the transmission rate. Our analysis shows that intervention policies may result in unforeseen outcomes, highlighting the crucial role of human mobility data as a real-time reference for policymakers. It enables them to monitor the impact of disease prevention measures and facilitates informed, data-driven decision-making.

The impacts of organizational culture on the organizational commitment: A case study of Vinaphone’s business centers in Southwest Vietnam

This study aims to demonstrate the extent to which organizational culture factors impact the staff’s organizational commitment in a local telecommunication company located in Southwest Vietnam. Together with secondary data provided by these centers’ official reports, primary data collected from 405 employees were analyzed by descriptive and factor analysis methods. The result shows that among seven key factors in organizational culture impacting organizational commitment in a telecommunication company, team working has the strongest impact on the employees’ commitment, while the weakest is risk acceptance. This study concludes that management strategies to build organizational commitment in companies located in Southwest Vietnam should take into account the cultural context. Suggestions to improve organizational culture are built based on those findings, respectively.

Delivering an mHealth Adherence Support Intervention for Patients With HIV: Mixed Methods Process Evaluation of the Philippines Connect for Life Study.

BackgroundThe Philippines HIV epidemic is one of the fastest growing epidemics globally, and infections among men who have sex with men are increasing at an alarming rate. Connect for Life Philippines is a mobile health (mHealth) intervention that supports antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence in this key population through individualized voice calls and SMS text messages.ObjectiveThe objective of this process evaluation is to assess the intervention reach, dose delivered and received, fidelity, and acceptability and to describe contextual factors affecting the implementation of an mHealth adherence support intervention for patients on ART in a clinic in Metro Manila, Philippines.MethodsA mixed methods process evaluation approach was used in an observational cohort study. Quantitative data sources for the process evaluation were call and SMS text message logs obtained from the mHealth platform and questionnaires collected at 12-, 24-, and 48-week study visits. Qualitative data were collected from process reports and through a series of focus group discussions conducted with a subset of participants during the intervention development phase, after an initial 8-week pilot phase, and at the end of the study.ResultsThe 462 study participants received 31,095 interactive voice calls and 8234 SMS text messages during the study. Owing to technical issues, intervention fidelity was low, with only 22.1% (102/462) of the participants receiving reminders via voice calls and others (360/462, 77.9%) receiving only SMS text messages during the intervention. After 48 weeks in the study, 63.5% (293/462) of the participants reported that they would be quite likely or very likely to recommend the program to a friend, and 53.8% (249/462) of the participants reported that they benefited quite a bit or very much from the intervention. Participants who were on ART for <6 months at the beginning of the study and those who received the daily or weekly pill reminders were more likely to report that they benefited from the intervention (P=.02 and P=.01, respectively).ConclusionsThe Connect for Life intervention had high participant satisfaction and acceptability, especially among those who received high dose of the intervention. However, poor reliability of local telecommunication networks had a large impact on the intervention’s usability, fidelity, and dose received.

We just ‘SHAREit’: Smartphones, data and music sharing in urban Papua New Guinea

AbstractThis article examines how the use of mobile phones and associated software creates and sustains regionally diverse urban communities. There is an interdependent connection between music that is highly participatory and locally relevant, and processes involved in sustaining key social relationships across a variety of groupings. Increasingly ubiquitous technologies such as mobile phones are used for musical purposes in ways that specifically put certain processes to work to sustain these social phenomena. This connects people with transnational software‐based commerce through social media, local telecommunications companies and phone manufacturers. That results in the navigation of ecologies and economies of data, hardware and software that work in local urban circumstances. In the case of data, we demonstrate how modes of exchange and reciprocity tied to social relationships exhibit similarities with informal economies of tobacco and betelnut. With social groups, the church‐based community perspective provides urban examples of communities that cross regions, and extended family networks. This ethnographic perspective shows how increasingly global technologies are used in urbanite Melanesia in ways that sustain longstanding values and practices, while also incorporating identities and associations around changing urban, national and international circumstances.

Assessing Brunei Darussalam Public and Private Sector Readiness Towards Big Data Application

This exploratory study aims to assess and investigate Brunei Darussalam’s readiness in developing and applying big data technologies for its public and private sectors, using Social, Technological, Environmental and Policy (STEP) framework. The results show that the population are digitally literate (Social) and utilises smart devices as well as internet network connectivity that is widely offered by the local telecommunications company (Technology). The government of Brunei Darussalam established multiple digital transformation initiatives including implementation of 5G connectivity as well as digital economy masterplan to digitally transformed in the near future (Environment). Regardless of the absence of national digital data privacy policy (Policy) in Brunei, the recent nation’s successful big data application in public sector – BruHealth Application – to contain Covid-19 community spread was achieved. Alas, the existence of such policy in the near future will create opportunities for the local private sectors to capitalise big data technologies to their business strategies.

Assessing Brunei Darussalam Public and Private Sector Readiness Towards Big Data Application

This exploratory study aims to assess and investigate Brunei Darussalam’s readiness in developing and applying big data technologies for its public and private sectors, using Social, Technological, Environmental and Policy (STEP) framework. The results show that the population are digitally literate (Social) and utilises smart devices as well as internet network connectivity that is widely offered by the local telecommunications company (Technology). The government of Brunei Darussalam established multiple digital transformation initiatives including implementation of 5G connectivity as well as digital economy masterplan to digitally transformed in the near future (Environment). Regardless of the absence of national digital data privacy policy (Policy) in Brunei, the recent nation’s successful big data application in public sector – BruHealth Application – to contain Covid-19 community spread was achieved. Alas, the existence of such policy in the near future will create opportunities for the local private sectors to capitalise big data technologies to their business strategies.

Sustainable Synergy of Government and Community Internet Development Effort Based Community on Batik Industrial 4.0

The research is aimed at Policies in Motivation for Sustainable Synergy between Government and Society for Internet Development Based on Community-Based SME Batik Industry 4.0 in Sragen Regency. The Government and Community Synergy Policy regarding telecommunications based on Law Number 36 of 1999 concerning Telecommunications, focuses on villages that are categorized as remote areas, underdeveloped areas, pioneering regions, hinterlands, suburbs, or economically disadvantaged areas. Article 16 paragraph 1 of Law Number 36 Year 1999 states that USO is an obligation for local telecommunications network providers. Village Internet to provide telematics access in rural areas and is a continuation of the village internet. For the government, the availability of one access in one village to meet communal needs at affordable prices is considered adequate. The digital transformation of business processes is seen as an asset based on modernization technology that affects the organizational structure, strategy and business processes of the concept of smart city development in Indonesia must begin with the development of adequate infrastructure. This is because the existence of this infrastructure will become a community need for Sustainable Entrepreneurship efforts. Internet development in rural areas, despite various obstacles and problems that villages do not have internet access, at least there is an effort to provide access to Information and Communication Technology to remote areas to minimize information gaps in all fields and connect the community, government, businessmen, and various parties that can be useful for village development.

Rural Uncommoning

Shared use of small-scale natural commons is vital to the livelihoods of billions of rural inhabitants, particularly women, and advocates propose that local telecommunications systems that are oriented by the commons can close rural connectivity gaps. This article extends insights about women's exclusion from such Community Networks (CNs) by considering ‘commoning’, or practices that produce, reproduce and use the commons and create communality. I generated data in interviews and observations of rural CNs in seven countries in the Global South and in multi-sited ethnography of international advocacy for CNs. Male biases in technoculture and rural governance limit women's participation in CNs, and women adopt different approaches to performing their communal identity while using technology. This situation contributes to detaching CNs from relations that are produced in women's commoning. It also illustrates processes that co-opt the commons in rural technology endeavours and the diverse ways commoners express their subjectivities in response.

ICT policies in Latin America: Long-term inequalities and the role of globalized policy-making

ICT policies have been presented as one of the keys for inclusion in the global economy. For instance, in countries like Peru, the need for increased connectivity appears crucial, as integration to the global economy through free trade agreements with developed economies becomes an essential part of economic policy. However, it can be argued that the actual impact of such policies is marginal, and that the actual policy-making process is not helping, as much as competition, at the local telecommunications markets. At the same time, other elements composing an ICT strategy, including cultural and social aspects, are weakly presented. After discussing the facts, an exploration of the limitations of state policy is drawn from the combined conceptual frameworks of Rodrik’s notion of the Trilemma of Global Economy and Held’s Vicious Gridlock. Also, the analysis of policy-making in Latin America and Peru by local scholars is explored to propose that digital inequalities are only addressable by market forces under the current policy arrangement available to governments like Peru’s. Finally, the article argues that it is needed to both abandon “information society” as a policy trend and instead, confront the decreasing political capacities of emerging states to thus, influence the outcomes of telecommunications/media development investments in their regions and countries.

The history of privatization and re-privatization of PJSC Ukrtelecom

The privatization of strategic assets, which was announced last year, has not yet begun. In 2018, the State Property Fund of Ukraine plans to bid 893 enterprises for privatization and receive UAH 22.5 billion from privatization. One of the reasons is that it is difficult for potential investors to understand the legal framework and the conditions in which the entire law enforcement system operates. The purpose of the study is to identify the main problems, obstacles, mechanisms of privatization of state-owned enterprises on the basis of the historical analysis of privatization and re-privatization of PJSC “Ukrtelecom”, which is a typical example of privatization of large strategic objects of the country.The article discusses the history of privatization of state-owned enterprises, in particular the advantages and disadvantages of the decision to re-privatize the strategic object of Ukrtelecom PJSC and the reasons for the return to the state ownership of a stake in the enterprise. A comparative analysis of the company development indicators, including the number of staff and the volume of local telecommunication services and Internet services from 2007 to 2018, was found. Privatization did not help to increase the efficiency of the company, but its indicators are steadily decreasing. Thus, in 2007, the company employed 105 thousand people, and in 2018 - 25 thousand people. The volume of services is also steadily declining. Also, the owner does not invest in the company, which was a condition for privatization. Failure by the new owner of social and other obligations, which may be grounds for re-privatization of the company.Despite numerous attempts to oblige investors to fulfill their commitments, the company continues to be in a state of contraction. But attempts at re-privatization have not been implemented at this time. The analysis showed that in times of fighting in the country, the investment climate is unstable and volatile, the issues of re-privatization should be approached with caution. Thus, the re-privatization of Ukrtelecom may adversely affect the investment flow in Ukraine, and this negative factor may affect the plans of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine for large-scale sale of state assets, creating so-called "image losses" of the country.

EXTENDING ONLINE AND BLENDED LEARNING TO CORPORATIONS IN THE NEW YORK METROPOLITAN REGION

WebCampus.Stevens, the online graduate education and corporate training unit of Stevens Institute of Technology, delivers one of the largest and most effective ALN and blended programs of any college or university in the New York metropolitan region. Under a newly awarded Sloan Foundation grant [1], the school is extending its engineering and management programs to area corporations, supporting local telecommunications, pharmaceutical/life sciences, media, finance and other key industries. Stevens provides local employees of Fortune 500 and other companies access to high-quality online advanced technical and managerial skills, preparing them for success in global competition.Established in 1870, Stevens offers baccalaureate, masters and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science, management and technology management, as well as a baccalaureate in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university enrolls about 1,800 undergraduates and 2,600 graduate students. It is one of the oldest and most respected engineering and management schools in the nation with a long tradition of meeting the technical and managerial needs of local industry.

Effectiveness of Basic Special Services as A Guideline for Programming Urban Nodes. Ariadne Thread Research

Creation of the urban nodes is a widely studied issue. In the era of intensive development of cities, that are affected by an urban sprawl, as well as areas exposed to degradation not only through human activities (areas of military conflicts) but also through natural factors (earthquakes), it is necessary to develop mechanisms for creating urban nodes that would be applicable for various environments. In the author’s opinion, an important element in ensuring the safety of life in urbanized areas is the programming of urban nodes in a way, that make them create the security system. The research conducted by the author aims to diagnose the relationship between the needs of the inhabitants of a fragment of urban area and the concentration of functions at an important point of the program of the urban node and its architectural interpretation, with time fluctuations taken into account. The research discussed here is carried out within the ‘Ariadne Thread’ project, and is a new approach to urban node formation. The ‘Ariadne Thread’ is a pilot project whose first phase focuses on an attempt to integrate four major urban systems: signage, urban lighting, local telecommunication facilities, and security systems. Through the parameterization of the factors divided into categories, it will be possible to develop a mechanism of urban nodes’ creation. A flexible and universal mechanism, which - depending on the established parameters - will be applicable in slums, shandy towns as well as areas devastated by natural disasters. In this paper, author describes the principle of creating this mechanism by presenting one of the parameters adopted as a criterion and guideline for programming, namely the effectiveness of the primary services, such as emergency services, fire brigades and police. Through the series of surveys conducted among departments of special service units, confronted with data and guidelines contained in regulations for their functioning, the author obtained a pool of parameters which are the guideline for the programmed node, showing what territory the given operational base can serve, which is the basis for developing quantitative parameters for the designed node. The author also draws attention to the principle of functioning of the already existing node, in situations of events that exceed its effectiveness or require rapid intervention in emergency situations, such as terrorist attacks. This will affect the operation of the various units, where additional large units will be needed. It will be necessary to develop a network of urban node connections by developing mechanisms for linking them to airports, helicopter landing sites and important external entities.

Ventilation Performance Improvement in a Container with an Extraction Free Cooling System

In this study, a far-off local zone telecommunication infrastructure container ventilation system with cabinets is modelled. CFD analysis is performed to obtain the temperature and velocity profile inside the container with given heat loads and volume flow rates provided by fans. In the second part of the study, performance improvement scenarios are simulated. Hot regions are found at the back sides of the cabinets and vortices are formed in the middle plane zone of the volume which reduces the air intake of the fans in corresponding cabinets inside the container. To overcome this issue, a flow director, i.e. vortex breaker is designed to redirect to enhance fan suction, and the orientation of the cabinets have rearranged. According to the results, it is possible to improve the ventilation performance of a container with such an approach. In this study, %2.0735 of improvement is achieved by changing the location of the cabinets and placing a vortex breaker inside the room, where it is a significant change for such far-off local zone telecom applications, considering the extreme environmental conditions.

A Best Practise Business Intelligence Framework for the Telecommunications Industry

This article endeavors to assess and evaluate the current level of efficiency by which the business intelligence (BI) department is able to deliver decision-making support and to propose a suitable business intelligence framework. The framework would be recommended for the local telecommunications industry towards the enhancement of decision making thereby improving productivity and overall decision-making efficiency. Every company needs a clear set of goals to achieve the maximum benefits from its BI solution. Articulating organisational BI goals are essential. An organisation must however do more than just state its goals to achieve its BI objectives; it needs a working framework that provides a blue print for success. The success of a business intelligence program depends on the approach or methodology used to implement the business intelligence strategy and the related components.

Churn classification model for local telecommunication company based on rough set theory

Customer care plays an important role in a company especially in managing churn for Telecommunication Company. Churn is perceived as the behaviour of a customer to leave or to terminate a service. This behaviour causes the loss of profit to companies because acquiring new customer requires higher investment compared to retaining existing ones. Thus, it is necessary to consider an efficient classification model to reduce the rate of churn. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new classification model based on the Rough Set Theory to classify customer churn. The results of the study show that the proposed Rough Set classification model outperforms the existing models and contributes to significant accuracy improvement. Keywords : customer churn; classification model; telecommunication industry; data mining; rough set.

Provisioning dynamic and critical demand structures for geographically correlated failures

During disasters and other geographically correlated failures, the local telecommunications infrastructure undergoes a unique set of challenges. First, the telecommunications infrastructure is typically damaged reducing the capability to sustain the normal level of demands on the networks. Second, the demands on the telecommunications infrastructure increase typically by an order of magnitude. This is both for critical demands and non-critical demands. Third, critical demands, which may now be used to support disaster first responder and recovery efforts take on a crucial role. In this work, we propose multi-situational linear programming techniques to create disaster modes that take advantage of the non-coincidence of disasters in different geographic areas simultaneously reducing cost and improving restoration of demands during disasters. We also propose efficient heuristics to provision for disasters at a lower cost than standard provisioning with 1 + 1 redundancy. Additionally, we use diverse routing techniques to reduce the likelihood of damage to critical services. The restoration of demands during disasters also presents challenges for network provisioners. We present both heuristic and linear programming methods to assist with restoration of services in stressed network environments giving critical demands priority. Finally, service level agreements (SLAs) are used to provide a framework for these concepts.

Consumers’ Perception on Organisational Corporate Social Responsibility Practices and its Implications on Consumer Attitude: Evidence from the Malaysian Telecommunication Industry

This paper aims at investigating consumers’ perception on the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices of the telecommunication service companies in Malaysia, and its antecedent to consumer attitude. The local telecommunication service providers have emphasized on service quality, stakeholder value, corporate reputation, and innovation to achieve good business performance. However, little is known about the contribution of service quality, stakeholder value, corporate reputation, and innovation on the effectiveness of organisational CSR practices. Furthermore, lack of previous studies that have investigated the impact of organisational CSR practices on consumer attitude, particularly in the context of Malaysian telecommunication industry. With the adoption of structural equation modeling approach and survey method, a total of 360 samples comprising the prepaid and postpaid mobile consumers were obtained for this study. The results shown that consumers’ perception on service quality and stakeholder value had significant relationship with CSR practices. However, consumers’ perception on corporate reputation and innovation had no significant relationship with CSR practices. CSR practices was positively related to consumer attitude. In the theoretical implications, service quality and stakeholder value variables were found as important elements in the proponents of Strategic CSR Theory. In the managerial implications, this study recommended that the telecommunication service providers should highly focus on more effective planning and implementation of CSR practices through better integration of CSR in its core business functions and value chain system, diversification of CSR scope and stakeholders engagement.

Temporal Statistical Analysis of Degree Distributions in an Undirected Landline Phone Call Network Graph Series

This article aims to provide new results about the intraday degree sequence distribution considering phone call network graph evolution in time. More specifically, it tackles the following problem. Given a large amount of landline phone call data records, what is the best way to summarize the distinct number of calling partners per client per day? In order to answer this question, a series of undirected phone call network graphs is constructed based on data from a local telecommunication source in Albania. All network graphs of the series are simplified. Further, a longitudinal temporal study is made on this network graphs series related to the degree distributions. Power law and log-normal distribution fittings on the degree sequence are compared on each of the network graphs of the series. The maximum likelihood method is used to estimate the parameters of the distributions, and a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test associated with a p-value is used to define the plausible models. A direct distribution comparison is made through a Vuong test in the case that both distributions are plausible. Another goal was to describe the parameters’ distributions’ shape. A Shapiro-Wilk test is used to test the normality of the data, and measures of shape are used to define the distributions’ shape. Study findings suggested that log-normal distribution models better the intraday degree sequence data of the network graphs. It is not possible to say that the distributions of log-normal parameters are normal.