Detachment and Liberation (K2 #83)

Question of the Week 
I feel that Facebook is bad for me and I want to delete my account. How do I do that?
— Facebook addict

Answer
Dear Facebookaholic,

There’s a small but growing trend of people quitting Facebook. Some are worried about their online privacy. Many find that using the social network depresses them. Yet others are worried that they spend way too many hours chatting or playing Candy Crash instead of spending face-to-face time with their family and real friends. Whatever the reason, leaving Facebook is not difficult.

Initially, you may want to deactivate your account. What does deactivation mean? When you deactivate your account, your timeline disappears immediately. Your friends will no longer be able to find your information, photos or old posts. Deactivation is reversible — all your information is still stored on Facebook’s servers. If indeed you want to deactivate your account, click on the account menu at the top right, select Settings, then Security at the left column, then click Deactivate your account. One caveat: if you administer any Facebook groups (or events), your admin status in those groups (or events) will not be automatically restored upon reactivation.

As long as you keep away from Facebook, your account will remain inactive. To reactivate it, simply log back into Facebook. That’s it - you are back in the trap, with all your status updates, photos, and old friends (unless they happen to “unfriend” you).

Deactivation can be a good way to test the waters and see if you can survive without Facebook. If you decide that that’s it - you are 100% sure - you can go the whole hog and permanently delete the account. This can be done by visiting www.facebook.com/help/delete_account. Before you do that, however, you might want to “liberate” your information that is stored on Facebook’s servers, including those unforgettable Pattaya photos, by downloading the entire archive of your account content including photos, wall posts, and more to your computer. To download the archive, click on the account menu at the top right, select Settings, find and click Download a copy of your Facebook data, and follow the instructions.

Many heavy Facebook users admit that even a 30-day “detox” period has tremendous benefits. Perhaps its worth giving it a try.

Domain Ownership (K2 #82)

Question of the week
How can I find the real owner of a website?
— T. Dorji

Answer
Dear T. Dorji,

Indeed, website ownership is often more than meets the eye and some detective work might be needed. Start by visiting the website. If the website has an “About us” or “Contact us” page, the answer to your question might appear right there. Some website owners, however, do not provide that information on the website. In that case, your next best bet is to try and find out who owns the domain name for the website (the domain name is the address that you enter in the browser, for example www.google.com).

The domain ownership information is often stored online in a special database called WHOIS database, and you can use free WHOIS lookup services to query this database. One such free service is the excellent DomainTools. To look up a domain, visit whois.domaintools.com, enter the website address, and hit Lookup. If the lookup was successful, you will find plenty of information about the owner, which might include their address and phone number. For example, when you look up www.google.com, you will find that the owner is (surprise!) Google Inc. in Mountain View, California.

Sometimes the output from the lookup will send you to another website, requiring an additional step to uncover the ownership information. For example, if you search DomainTools for www.bpc.bt, you will get the following response: “For more information, please visit http://www.nic.bt”. That’s the case with all Bhutanese domains. The website www.nic.bt indeed has ownership information for Bhutan-registered websites, and it will tell you that bpc.bt is registered by Pema Tshering of Bhutan Power Corporation in Thimphu.

Some website owners do not like the idea of having their personal details available online, so they use a domain privacy service. In such cases, the website owners’ details in the WHOIS database are replaced by the name of a company which acts as their proxy. Popular domain privacy services include “Domain by Proxy” and “Domain Privacy Services”. To find out who is behind a privacy-protected domain, you will need to contact the owner’s proxy and convince them why you need the name of the domain owner. If you have a good reason (for example, the website is doing something illegal), and a good lawyer, you might be successful.

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Readers are encouraged to submit technology-related questions to boaz@thimphutech.com

Major DrukNet hosting outage

Tens of Druknet-hosted websites are currently down, most likely due to a faulty database server. These include Bhutan Chamber of Commerce, BICMA, Bhutan National Bank, eDruk, Mangdechhu Hydroelectric Project Authority, NCWC, Office of the Attorney General, Royal Education Council, Government to Citizen Initiative, and many others.

Is a BICMA decision impacting Bhutan's inflation?

As a country's radio spectrum is a limited and highly-valuable resource, governments pay a lot of attention to its management and allocation. I already wrote a few posts about BICMA's decision to allocate the north American 850 band for 3G networks in Bhutan (in addition to 2100) instead of the SE Asian bands of 900/2100. But I have not touched on its effect on the country's economy. Here are a few points to consider:

• Stale Inventory: 3G phones available in Bhutan's mobile shops are imported from India. While roaming a little around town yesterday, I found that many 3G phones do not support the 850/2100 bands, and are thus as good as 2G phones. Many dealers are not aware of the frequency issue (why?), so the wrong phones were/are imported. Some savvy consumers are deciding not to buy these phones. Others find out that their new phone doesn't support 3G and exchange it with a more expensive phone. Dealers in Bhutan are now stuck with lakhs-and-lakh-of-rupees worth of obsolete inventory which was (or perhaps still is) imported from India. Given the rate with which new phone models are launched, the value of these phones is constantly dropping.
• Trade Balance: 3G phones supporting 900/2100 can now be bought for less than Rs 5,000 (for example, the Nokia 208 Dual SIM). In contrast, Indian-imported phones that support 850/2100 are much more expensive, usually starting at around Rs 20,000. The result: more rupees leaving the country.
• Inflation: Mobile phones are now part of Bhutan's Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket. More and more people are switching from 2G phones to 3G phones. For many in Bhutan, a mobile phone is their most valuable asset. Instead of buying a 3G phone for Nu 5000 to Nu 10,000, many consumers now spend Nu 20,000 and above for a phone that supports 3G in Bhutan. People are spending more on 3G phones than they should have. While I do not have the details of the weight of mobile phones in the new CPI basket, the net result is that there's a good chance BICMA's decision has contributed to Bhutan's inflation.

Phone buyer, beware!

Planning to buy a phone soon? Watch out. Many of the 3G phones sold today in Bhutan can only be used as 2G phones. Why? Most phones sold in Bhutan are imported from India, where the 3G frequencies are 900/2100. However, the frequencies used in Bhutan are 850/2100. This is unfortunate. Many of the smartphones imported from India only support 3G at 900/2100. These phones will not be able to use 3G in locations where 850 is used, such as Thimphu, Bajo, and more. In addition, TashiCell's 3G network is also using 850, and so these phones will not be able to take advantage of this upcoming alternative to B-Mobile's 3G network.

Here is a photo I took today of a typical display window in a mobile shop in Thimphu.

Do (NOT) buy me!

Here are the 3G specifications of these phones.

• Samsung Galaxy Music Duos: 3G at 900/2100
• Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos: 3G at 900/2100
• Samsung Galaxy S Duos: 3G at 900/2100
• Samsung Galaxy Grand: 3G 900/1900/2100

(The Samsung REX 60, 80 and 90 do not support 3G at all)

All the 3G smartphones in the above photo do not support 850. If you plan to use them to connect to the Internet, you are wasting your money. A similar situation exists in other shops in Thimphu. Shops are packed with 3G phones that will not work in Thimphu. You will need to search carefully and make sure that the phone you buy supports 3G at 850. They are not easy to find: the selection is relatively poor, and their prices are high.

Is Bhutan ready for 4G? A few issues related to the upcoming LTE launch

"And I have promises to keep..."

B-Mobile is launching LTE tomorrow, October 24. LTE is a fourth-generation (4G) mobile broadband technology. According to the launch announcement, it will be available in selected parts of Thimphu (Ministers' Enclave, Dzong, Norzin Lam, and a few other areas). To use LTE, you will need a mobile handset (or data card) that supports the new technology.

While keeping up with the latest technologies is nifty, a few issues related to this new launch come to mind.

Speed

Surprising, the expected download speed is not mentioned in B-Mobile's launch announcement. A promotional ad that I found on BT's Facebook page promises "4 times faster than 3G, 10 times faster than home broadband!". Yet, an older announcement that can be found on BT's website talks about 35-40 Mbps. Here is a summary of this information:

LTE Speed is ...	... according to this source
20 Mbps	"10 times faster than home broadband" (maximum broadband speed is 2 Mbps)
35-40 Mbps	Announcement
84 Mbps	"4 times faster than 3G" (maximum broadband speed is 21 Mbps)

So what speed is LTE in Bhutan going to support? Your guess is as good as mine. In any case, this is only the theoretical maximum speed. What the actual speed will be is anyone's guess. For example, the 3G download speed mentioned on BT's website is a cool 21 Mbps. I have never been able to come even close to that speed.

Cost

BT's LTE is expensive for customers. First, you will need a special LTE SIM, which is Nu 500. Granted, this includes Nu 500 worth of data, which you'll have to use within a week. It's not clear why you need to hurry up and use that data so quickly.

Over and above the one-time SIM investment, there is of course the recurring cost of data. The price per KB for LTE is Nu 0.001, which translates into Nu 1048/GB. That's "10 times more expensive than home broadband, and 3 times more expensive than 3G!". Compare that to LTE in India, which costs the same as 3G, and as little as Rs 50/GB.

More troubling is the question of payment when your LTE phone is out of the LTE coverage zones, and then falls back to using 3G, or even worse, EDGE or GPRS. Do you still pay the subscription prepaid rate of Nu 1048/GB, or will you be charged according to the much cheaper 3G tariff? In other words, does BT keep a separate account for data usage for each of the technologies? This is not clear and I could not find any information about this issue on the website.

Band

About a year ago, B-Mobile switched the frequency of 3G in Thimphu from 2100 MHz to 850 MHz, as the lower frequency offers better reception in buildings. In general, frequencies in the 2000 MHz range cannot penetrate buildings very well. The new LTE band to be used in Thimphu is 1800 MHz, which is again not optimal for urban areas. LTE can also support lower frequencies such as 700, 800, 850 and 900 MHz, which offer superior reception in buildings. I am not sure why LTE in Thimphu will be using the higher frequency of 1800 MHz; there might be a hidden technical issue that I'm not aware of. Otherwise, should we expect another change of frequency, as was the case with 3G?

User Equipment

LTE requires LTE-compatible handsets that support this standard. They tend to be expensive, and not easy to procure, especially in India. My guesstimate is that at least 99% of smartphones in Bhutan do not support LTE.

For example, the popular Samsung Galaxy S III (GT-I9300) does not support LTE (contrary to what's mentioned in the Kuensel article). The Samsung S III LTE, which is a different variant (GT-I9305), does support LTE, but it is generally not available for purchase in India.

Another example is the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5's US/Canada edition (A1428) does support LTE, but not the 1800 band, so this phone will not be able to use 4G in Bhutan.

Does Bhutan need 4G?

Aside from all these issues, the key question is: why now? Who will benefit from the deployment of LTE at this point in time?

LTE is a new technology. Although it has various advantages compared to 3G (and will eventually supercede it), many of these benefits do not play off in Bhutan. For example, LTE offers better handling of fast-moving mobile phones (up to 500 km/hour). I don't see that as a useful feature in Bhutan until we get our first bullet train. It also offers advantages in highly-congested metropolitan areas. Again, not very applicable for Bhutanese towns.

In contrast, 3G and its 3.5G derivatives, such as HSPA and HSPA+ (with a theoretical download speed of up to 168 Mbps) are mature technologies which are backward-compatible with 2G. 3G uses cheaper telecom equipment, cheaper handsets, and when deployed correctly, can provide adequate mobile broadband for Bhutan's needs in the foreseeable future.

Relative growth of 1G/2G/3G/4G users worldwide
shows greatest increase in 3G (apologies for the 3D bar-chart)

Internet service interrupted (again)

Thousands of broadband and mobile users were not able to connect to the Internet this morning. Service disruption started sometime after 3am and was finally restored after 9am. Mobile Internet was restored first, later broadband. This happened a few days after the country suffered from network hiccups after one of the two main gateways showed signs of exhaustion.

Like electricity or water, Internet is an essential utility these days. Governments, corporations, small businesses and private citizens have learned to depend on a reliable internet connection. It is not a novelty or luxury any more. ISPs in the country should support Bhutan's effort to become an ICT hub and a knowledge-based society. This means that ISPs should  (1) install systems for monitoring Internet availability 24x7, rather than waiting for users to complain (2) proactively dispatch technicians to fix any disruptions 24x7 (3) provide regular status updates to users.

Internet in Bhutan crawls. What's going on?

Ever since Sunday morning, Internet in Bhutan has been patchy. International websites either load very slowly, or do not load at all.

I could not find any updates by DrukNet on their website (www.druknet.bt) or their Facebook page. And the most recent tweet by @bhutan_telecom is "Missed Call Alert is soon gonna be launched........good news for customers...".

So what's happening here? One can only guess. There are currently two international gateways from Bhutan: P/Ling and Gelephu. According to my cursory examination, the Gelephu gateway has been displaying erratic behavior starting yesterday, but for some reason traffic was kept being routed to both gateways. Destinations that were routed via P/ling (e.g., twitter.com) were doing much better than those routed via P/Ling (e.g., google.com).

At around 9:10 this morning (Monday) all traffic started flowing via P/ling, so hiccups should be less frequent. On the other hand, it means increased load on the only operational gateway.

Domains, hosting, and websites (K2 #45)

Question of the Week 
I created a website using Google Sites which I want to use with my own domain. I need a reliable hosting company. Can you recommend one?

— Harilal, Thimphu

Answer
 Dear Harilal,

Google Sites, websites, domain names, hosting… Hold your yaks! Let’s get things in order. First, let us talk about the difference between websites, domains, and hosting. A website is a collection of files holding the content (text, photos, etc.) which is displayed to the user. These files need to be stored somewhere. They are stored on a server, which can be either owned by you, or - if you don’t want the headache involved in maintaining a server - by a hosting company.

Whenever a user accesses the website, the server delivers the information back to the user. Like all computers on the Internet, the server has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address, which is a sequence of numbers. For example, the IP address of BBS’s server is 202.144.155.2. If you want to read the news from BBS, just enter 202.144.155.2 in your browser’s address bar and click Enter. Try it!

Most people are not very good at remembering sequences of numbers such as 202.144.155.2. That’s where domain names become useful. Domain names (like www.bbs.bt) are easier for people to remember. When you use a domain name, your browser automatically translates it into an IP address. Domain names are not free, however. They need to be purchased from a domain name registrar, a company that registers domain names. Check the table to see annual prices for domains. Naturally, you can only buy domains that are not already taken.

Domain type	Yearly fee	Registrar
Second level .bt domain, such as harilal.bt	Nu 1000	www.nic.bt (DrukNet)
Third level .bt domain, such as harilal.com.bt or harilal.org.bt	Nu 500	www.nic.bt (DrukNet)
Other (non-.bt) domains, such as harilal.com, harilal.info, harilal.me	US$4-$20	Name.com, GoDaddy.com, 1and1.com, and plenty of others

Many companies (for example, DrukNet) double as hosting companies and domain name registrars. It is often convenient to use the same company for both, but it is not mandatory. For example, you can buy a domain name from DrukNet, but your hosting company can be in India. Or you can buy a domain name from a US-based registrar, but the server can actually be located in your Thimphu flat.
Back to your original question: Google Sites is a service from Google that allows anyone to build a website with a few clicks, and Google also hosts that website for free - so your search for a reliable hosting company is over! The only missing piece is your own domain name. Just hop over to the DrukNet office and you can buy one in a jiffy.

How does all this techie stuff work? Free online course

A new free online course is being offered next month by a Princeton professor using Coursera. The course name is a bit mysterious: Networks: Friends, Money, and Bytes. So what is it about? Here are the 20 questions that the course is intended to answer -- this list is actually the course syllabus:

SMS and Internet surveys in Bhutan

Note: this post is aimed at clarifying the statistical aspects of polls and does not take a stance on the Pedestrian Day issue.

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Pedestrian Tuesday has raised a debate regarding the public sentiment, with different sides showing contradicting poll results. Following these polls, the issue of the validity of Internet and SMS polls has been raised. Today's Kuensel editorial brought up the critical issue:

SMS-phone polls and online polls, although gather huge pools of respondents, rarely represent the larger population. 

Why is this true?

Choosing a Mobile Internet Package (K2 #42)

Question of the Week 
I saw a notification from B-Mobile about their new mobile Internet packages.
Which package do you recommend?
-- “Surfer”, P/ling

Answer
Dear Phuentsholing “Surfer”,

Thanks for your question! With more and more subscribers in Bhutan using data cards to access the Internet, this is an issue that affects many. Starting August 2012, B-Mobile will avail three mobile data packages: “Pay-as-you-go”, “99”, and “999”. Take a look at the comparison table. In addition to the package name and monthly fee, the table shows the monthly data quota, and the charge per extra MB once you exceed the quota.

Finally, Bhutan Telecom updates mobile broadband plans

Bhutan Telecom announced four changes to the post-paid mobile broadband plans. Here is a summary of the changes:

The New Internet Gateway

Bhutan's international connection to the Internet was, until now, via a single gateway in Phuentsholing. Today, however, all this is supposed to change, and a second international link in Gelephu will finally start operating, according to the Kuensel ("2nd International Gateway: Bhutan will have 24/7 connectivity once this link is ‘lit’').

But will this provide a true 24x7 redundancy?

SSEASR conference is on, website is off

No mountains here!

RUB is hosting the 4th SSEASR conference on "Mountains in the Religions of South and Southeast Asia: Place, Culture, and Power". The conference started yesterday and will go on during this weekend.
The conference title seemed interesting, so I went online to find out the program. The official website is http://www.sseasr.org/. Unfortunately  the site is down  - just when you need it (see photo). According to Google, which keeps snapshots of many webpages, it was up only a few days ago and so I was able to find an copy of the SSEASR's home page from last Sunday, but not a lot of information is there. I also found this nice "call for papers" poster, but it doesn't contain the program. If you happen to have an online copy of the conference program, please let me know.

DrukNet-hosted websites are down

A major outage: Websites hosted by DrukNet are currently inaccessible. Examples are businessbhutan.bt and thejournalist.bt. Other .bt sites which are not hosted by DrukNet - for example bhutanobserver.bt and most government agencies - are fine.

Most likely: The DrukNet servers have crashed. Let's pray for a quick recovery.

Update: DrukNet sites are now up.

Village renames itself Snapdeal.com nagar

Shiv nagar, a village in Uttar Pradesh, recently renamed itself snapdeal.com nagar after being adopted by an internet company. More here.

Again, Bhutan is cut off from the world

For the better part of today, Bhutan was cut off from the world: DrukNet's international Internet connection was down. This means that users in Bhutan were not able to access international websites, and people outside Bhutan were not able to reach .bt domains. (The last major Internet outage was reported here about two months ago). When I called DrukNet this morning, I was told that the fibre optic line to Hong Kong had some issues. There's also a line connecting Bhutan to London which apparently was intact. It is not clear why traffic was not routed through there.

For many countries today, a major Internet outage entails huge economic losses. This is still not the case in Bhutan, where most people and businesses don't rely on the Internet for their livelihood. However, dependency on the Internet will increase in upcoming years. Similar to water, electricity or phone service, Internet access will eventually become an essential utility.

P.S.: As a service to its customers, it would be useful for DrukNet to provide up-to-date information on outages and estimated time of resolution. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the outage on DrukNet's website (which was accessible within Bhutan during the outage) or BT's twitter account (which can be updated using SMS). Another medium for communicating with the public is SMS. This is currently used by Bhutan Telecom to advertise its own products, but it can also be used to inform the public about such outages.

New server to improve response time, not bandwidth

The Kuensel recently reported that according to Bhutan Telecom officials, "internet services would be much faster" following the launch of a new DNS server. Unfortunately, this is not accurate. While we might notice an improvement in the response time  - i.e., the time it takes until the download or upload starts - the download and upload speeds are not expected to improve dramatically.

Bhutan Telecom Internet woes

Surfing out-of-Bhutan websites came to a crawl this morning (accessing .bt websites is speedy). Internet outages are not uncommon in Bhutan, and most Internet-addicted consumers can survive a few hours without updating their Facebook status (usually not without withdrawal symptoms).