My Diary-2067 (2010/2011)

Stable, the most stable and the exciting year 2067 for me. I found myself almost successful in my every job and activities throughout the year. However I became offset when a pocket picker picked up my mobile during Nepal banda in May. I walked to office by foot during the day so called strike announced by Maoist. Hence I lost my set what I purchased from Singapore during the conference visit. It was a nice Samsung set with so many functionality.

I became quite busy during the whole period of year 2067. The cause was my added responsibilities in my office due to the shortage of human resource in the engineering section of NTA. I am supposed to be a bit more experienced in the event management which I managed a couple of times before while I was in Institute of Engineering (IOE) Pulchowk Campus. I remember the day while on IOE that two times I was able to organize Free Students Union Election through software voting. These ware quite risky events what I had decided to handle and managed all technically. It made me experience what I gained in my life. The event what I followed is workshop “SATRC” (http://baburamdawadi.blogspot.com/2010/08/2nd-international-event-management.html) which was successfully conducted by the NTA team in which I was one of the team member.

Government decided to band porno sites via the ISP network and services. The responsibility was given to me to be a focal point to verify the legality of the sites and issue letters to ISPs. The job became quite tough for me because I hadn’t have the guidelines (Code of conduct) to make sure that any complained site is porno or not.  It was one of the criticizing decisions.
Unfortunately some musical and news related sites were listed on the illegal list. This was simply a pretty mistake that was done to find the illegal sites searching through Google with the work “Sex”. It was gonna be an international issues what I realized after I got a call from US Embassy in Nepal. However the whim calm down soon after NTA reviewed the list. Still it becomes the subject of debate. I knew, we can’t block millions of site that can easily be downloaded from blacklist.com. Although, it’s government responsibility to control someone’s illegal activities to stop making people harass and blackmailing within the country.  May be someone of our relations might be in such situation. Again the debate is the technical implementation. “The control should be on the Network Service Provider (NSP) side”, said ISP. But NSP said, “It’s not under our license condition as whatever content flows through network that is not our concern and we are just the bandwidth provider”. May be it could be better to set under the framework of lawful interception and make control over international gateway.

Year 2067 hit me with another issue that is VoIP crime within the country. I became the member of VoIP illegal call bypass control committee within NTA and coordinator of MRTG (Multi-Router Traffic Grapher) investigation of ISPs.   VoIP is legal but it is made illegal by the telecom operators. Telecom operators don’t want to implement VoIP license which leads to maximum profit to those who are illegally doing their business in call termination. Government tried to control these illegal activities by the massive operation carried out by the CIB (Operation Voice Fox) in one hand and on another hand CIB and NTA collaboratively started investigating MRTG of each ISP.  MRTG is one weak technique to suspect activities in illegal call bypass however support from ISP is the most on this matter to properly identify it. I don’t know why ISPs neglect government. Whenever NTA fetched letter to ISPs for the information, it’s very hard to get back the reply. I visited almost 10/15 ISPs within the Kathmandu valley for the monitoring of ISP system with MRTG. Some of the ISPs are the ISP only without any infrastructure. Seems it’s very hard for them to sustain in the market. However they are struggling. The ISP market is in decreasing scenario. Either the state plan for the sustainable market model or otherwise within the next 10 years 3-4 ISPs only come into existence and all other more than 40 ISPs have to think for alternative sustainable business by themselves. 

The root line what I think to control illegal call bypass is the “SIM” or Telephone Line. I learned on the newspaper many times that thousands (bundles) of SIM were illegally distributed which leads to illegal call bypass. Operations Voice Fox is quite appreciable and NTA’s prompt decision to control VoIP is also measurable. These days the operation constitutes to increase in operator’s revenue. But the SAD thing is they provide the SIM illegally and blame that government is as being passive on this matter. But happiness is that CIB and NTA both are in operation to make telecom operators more profitable and able to increase the tax for the government. Tax is just 25%, the rest 75% goes to operators profit pocket. That’s why I would like to request telecom operators to remember your 75% increase in profit and fully control SIM Distribution. Until and unless SIM distribution is not managed, the illegal activities never end.  NTC opened up SIP call for NRN that makes one part of the investigation more complicated. Whenever anyone gets a call from abroad and the phone number of the caller is local then we simply informed to authority/CIB/Operators to blacklist the SIM immediately. But partial opening of VoIP by NTC makes us confused whether the call originated is legal or illegal. With the license, it is necessary to advice operators to set the range of SIMs for VoIP and inform to public about the legal SIM range.

Surprisingly, I got an opportunity to participate on the ACMA/ITU international Training program (http://baburamdawadi.blogspot.com/2010/12/events-and-trip-from-beginning-were.html). It was my memorable moment of the year 2067. This program encouraged me to expose on the field of telecommunications via policy and regulatory aspects. This program highlighted a policy that was Australian Broadband Policy developed by Mr. Colin Oliver in support of ITU. Whenever I returned back from Australia, NTA approved the ITU project for Nepal Broadband Policy “Regulatory Guidelines on Broadband through Universal Service”. (Glimpse of  Workshop Below).

Visit to Nepal Telecom in Broadband Mission Program

Workshop Program at Radisson Hotel

Workshop Inauguration

ITU decided to bring the same Australian broadband master planner: Colin Oliver for Nepal. It was my another exciting moment in the year 2067 to successfully complete the ITU mission program and conducted half day workshop “Stimulating Broadband in Nepal” (http://www.nta.gov.np/en/content/index.php?task=articles&option=view&id=65). Now NTA received the draft report of the mission program. Hope this guideline helps Nepal to be a broadband country.

New Entry in 2067: Cherisa

The most exciting moment of the year 2067 is being a father of a daughter. I achieved to be a father of my first baby after a successful surgery. Now more responsibilities added to me. During the moment, I spent a week in Patan Hospital. But it’s amazing seeing the service scheme provided by Patan Hospital. It is like  “service government; payment private”. Whenever we choose a private ward, the charge on every category ( eg: operation, delivery, nursery et…) is at least two/three times the general. I thought that the private hospitality would be definitely better. But they are staffs of government hospital and so service is never like private. I paid Rs 16,000 for the same type/pattern of surgery instead of Rs 8,000. My temporary friend was quite happy that he paid Rs 12,000 only for the same case while I paid Rs28000 (bebkufff…).

I don’t know whether I am happy or sorrow with my written exam result by TU Service Commission. I appeared on the exam of Asst. Professor in the year 2067 and am eligible for interview. The set of rules into the recruitment criteria by TU is quite embarrassing. However the manipulated rules are not written on the TU RED BOOK but the recruitment committee has set of readymade rules to create its own favorable situation: (Rules on Open Competition; I don’t think that it’s an open competition).

• TU announced vacancy with open competition. It counts experiences, thesis supervision, papers published on the journal, research/training and Ph.D. Marks.
  
• The amazing thing is that experience is countable only the applicant is faculty of TU Campuses. Even one can’t provide the teaching experiences of Private TU-affiliated colleges. TU don’t recognize professors, lecturers of Purbanchal, Pokhara and Kathmandu University.

• Another interesting thing is thesis supervision. Thesis supervision within Masters Degree of TU campuses only is countable. Those who supervise thesis in KU, PU are useless.
  
• The most interesting thing is the research paper. Research performed during master’s degree and paper published during master’s degree is not countable. As all of these are to be done to gain the degree. All the papers published to achieve degree are not acceptable.

The level of experience, national/international papers, and thesis supervisions may lead the marks.  But these are nothing behind the interview marks (30) allocated for. Peoples are on the big political playground with the objective candidates are elected based on the advertisement and appeal for voting. Seems no one appeal for the vote would definitely defeat the election. So I would be the one who defeat the case because I am not appealing for the vote and it’s not necessary for me to appeal too.  I think professional power is better than political power for the long lasting future. Target can be achieved from anywhere.

The year 2067 with NTA is very encouraging, experiencing, exciting, favorable and fruitful for me. I am expecting the same for the coming years. 

“HAPPY NEW YEAR 2068”.