Ministry Of Communications Research Articles

Modeling of sediment transport direction affecting Failaka island marina bathymetry, Kuwait

Failaka Island has a marina, which was constructed in 1979 and managed by the Ministry of Communication (MOC) in collaboration with Touristic Enterprises Company (TEC). The marina is widely used for its ferry landing facility. The coastal waters around Failaka are turbid, and current velocities tend to be as high as ∼0.5 m/s during spring tide. The marina basin, with axial plane view and dimensions of about 285m by 260m, experiences shoaling of naturally flocculated fine (cohesive) sediment and coarse sand at the entrance of the channel and more generally in the southern half of the basin. Particularly noteworthy is its heavy shoaling zone along the inner side of the south breakwater close to the entrance. The Failaka island marina is suffering from siltation and sediment deposition issues. The study was carried out numerically to assess the annual sedimentation, sediment direction, and longshore current from different locations around the marina and recommend solutions to reduce the siltation and sediment deposition based on sediment transport direction at the marina entrance. The study shows that the sediment is mostly transported to the Failaka marina entrance from the southeast due to wave action. The cumulative sediment transport for the period 2016 to 2020 as depicted from locations 1 and 2, which are vulnerable to the southeast waves, is 9,164 m3 and 12,323 m3. The annual sediment transport direction affecting the marina is oriented from south to north due to wave action.

Modeling of Sediment Transport Using Wave Height action in Fialaka Marina

Failaka Island is the second-largest and one of the most important islands of Kuwait from the point of view of tourism located in the north Arabian Gulf. It has a marina constructed in 1979 and managed by the Ministry of Communication (MOC) and a tourism enterprise, and is widely used for its ferry landing facility. The coastal waters around Failaka are turbid and current velocities tend to be as high as ~0.5 m/s during spring tide. The marina basin, with axial plan view dimensions of about 285 m by 260 m experiences shoaling of naturally flocculated fine (cohesive) sediment and coarse sand in the entrance channel and more generally in the southern half of the basin. A particularly noteworthy zone of heavy and visible shoaling is along the inner side of the south breakwater close to the entrance. The marina at Failaka Island is suffering from siltation and sediment deposing issues. This study was carried out numerically to assess the annual sedimentation, sediment direction, and longshore current from locations around the existing marina to help in a suggestion of the solutions to reduce the siltation and sediment deposing based on sediments transport direction on marina entrance. A newly developed numerical solution for annual longshore sediments transport was used to estimate the total sediment transport and its direction. The study shows that the annual sediment transport directions which affect the Fialaka marina entrance are coming from the south to north due to wave action.

Perceived Technical Service Quality and Information Satisfaction at the Ministry of Communications, Kuwait

Information technology (IT) has become the backbone for many of today’s organizations in the private and public sectors. However, identifying users’ information satisfaction as well as their perception of the strengths and weaknesses of IT service represents a major challenge for IT management. This research explored the perceived IT service quality (SQ) and user satisfaction (US), the effect of SQ on US, and the impact of a number of demographic and situational characteristics on SQ and US in the Ministry of Communications (MOC) of Kuwait. Three SQ dimensions have emerged, including empathy/assurance, reliability, and tangibles. Users, however, are not certain about the quality of the provided IT service. They are also somewhat satisfied with the systems they regularly use. Age, nationality, job type, sector type, and system use varyingly affect SQ and US. SQ has also emerged as an important determinant of US. These findings as well as their implications are further discussed in the paper.

Governance Issues Related to the Decline of BSNL in Recent Years

The Process of Liberalization of the Indian economy had begun in 1991, and the National Telecom Policy 1994 was the earliest attempt at the deregulation of the National Telecom Monopoly. As a departure from the general practice of awarding mobile license first to the incumbent fixed line operator, the government had issued licenses to private players first. BSNL and MTNL (The Metro operator for Delhi and Bombay) were promised spectrum licenses as the fourth operators in India. Hitherto the telecom services in the country was met by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) under the Ministry of Communications (MoC) legalized as a monopoly under the Indian Telegraph Act 1885. In 1998 MoC decided to split the DoT into a Department of Posts (DoP), Department of Telecom Services (DTS) and a Department of Telecom Operations (DTO). The (MoC) merged the functions of DTS and DoP, and announced the formation of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) which took over all the functions of DTO. It must be stated here that BSNL started with an obvious handicap, as the private players had already established certain benchmarks for marketing and service delivery. BSNL on the other hand was a PSU; it had neither private sector liberty of operations nor special dispensation from Government of India, but had the downsides of both.

Global Knowledge Transfer and Telecommunications: The Bell System in Japan, 1945–1952

This study evaluates the Bell System's role in the revival of Japanese telecommunications during the post-World War II occupation. Civilian and military personnel who had worked for the firm and who served in the Civil Communications Service (CCS) of the Supreme Command Allied Powers represented the primary agents for knowledge transfer to Japan's Ministry of Communications (MOC) and its supporting independent equipment manufacturers. The MOC became a channel for communicating ideas about management practices at the Bell System to the local telecommunications industry. The CCS's actions in Japan represent what Alfred D. Chandler has termed the “integrated learning base” in action in the public sector. The CCS's role in knowledge transfer has been underestimated by many scholars who have focused primarily on its contributions to promoting production and quality engineering in telecommunications manufacturing. Its central achievement was laying the managerial groundwork for the establishment in 1952 of the governmental enterprise Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.

Global Knowledge Transfer and Telecommunications: The Bell System in Japan, 1945–1952

This study evaluates the Bell System's role in the revival of Japanese telecommunications during the post-World War II occupation. Civilian and military personnel who had worked for the firm and who served in the Civil Communications Service (CCS) of the Supreme Command Allied Powers represented the primary agents for knowledge transfer to Japan's Ministry of Communications (MOC) and its supporting independent equipment manufacturers. The MOC became a channel for communicating ideas about management practices at the Bell System to the local telecommunications industry. The CCS's actions in Japan represent what Alfred D. Chandler has termed the “integrated learning base” in action in the public sector. The CCS's role in knowledge transfer has been underestimated by many scholars who have focused primarily on its contributions to promoting production and quality engineering in telecommunications manufacturing. Its central achievement was laying the managerial groundwork for the establishment in 1952 of the governmental enterprise Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.

Effect of Including the Empty-adjusted Truck Factors on Pavement Design: A Case Study on Riyadh Area Road Network

Truck traffic is one of the major inputs to any pavement design procedure. In almost all pavement design procedures, truck traffic is represented in terms of the accumulated Equivalent Axle Load (EAL) applications. The level of EAL applications is mainly dependent on the prevailing values of truck factors. Thus efforts have to be made to accurately estimate truck factor values based on local loading conditions. The current practice of the Ministry of Communications (MOC) involves recording axle weights of loaded trucks only without including empty trucks. This, in turn, leads to higher truck factor estimates and consequently over-designed pavement structures. The main objective of this study is to quantify the effect of excluding empty trucks when estimating truck factors, on highway pavement design. The truck factors associated with loaded trucks were determined from MOC data files. The empty truck factors were determined from a field sample consisting of 4000 empty trucks. The empty-adjusted truck factors were calculated as the weighted average of the two truck factor values. An analysis has been conducted to study the effects of using the empty-adjusted truck factors on pavement design instead of loaded truck factors, using the AASHTO design procedure. The analysis indicated that the average truck factor for empty trucks is about 1.15, the average truck factor for loaded trucks is about 9.87 and the average empty-adjusted truck factor is about 6.63. It also showed that excluding empty trucks would result in over-designs with an average of about SR 1.0 / m2 or about SR 3500 / km-lane extra construction cost.

Highway maintenance quality optimization

The Ministry of Communications (MOC) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken an aggressive approach to optimize the condition of its highway infrastructure. This includes pavement, bridges, culverts, tunnels, rest areas, and the multitude of related highway elements that comprise the transportation network. By maximizing quality given the available resources, the Ministry ensures that the focus is global and does not result in suboptimal maintenance decisions within the various subsystems comprising this elaborate network. The MOC had the insight to realize that a quality management system was needed to address the maintenance aspects of the Kingdom globally. Describes selected aspects of that system. This system integrates many diverse components to best address attaining global or system‐wide quality.

Current policy issues in the Korean telecommunications industry

In recent times the Ministry of Communications (MOC) of Korea has backed an ambitious drive to restructure the Korean telecommunications industry. The main focus of the plan can be summarized as the introduction of competition in some sub-markets traditionally operated by monopolists. Having seen remarkable growth in the past. Korea's telecommunications industry is now at a turning point, facing a new world of liberalization and competition that it has not experienced before. The industry expects to encounter many obstacles on a long and rough transitional path from the old government-led, equity-oriented policies to modern market-operated, efficiency-oriented policies. This article considers some of the hurdles that Korea's telecommunications industry may have to clear during its transition.

Universal service policies in Korea: Past and future

Korean telecommunications policies have traditionally put more emphasis on equity than on efficiency. During the 1980s, the Ministry of Communications (MOC) and the Korea Telecommunication Authority (KTA) endeavored to provide universal service by two epoch-making policies—the Immediate Telephone Installation System (ITIS) and the Widening and Automation (WA), both of which aimed to expand subscription network, quantitatively and qualitatively. With remarkable success in the 1980s and entering the 1990s, the MOC contemplates a new, innovative type of universal service policy designed for increasing usage, the Nationwide Unified Telephone Rating System (NUTRS). Reviewing the economic and social environment of Korea that was conducive to the shaping of the ITIS and the WA, this article explores expected political and economic implications of the NUTRS.