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This joint OED (Operations Evaluation Department) / OEG (Operations Evaluation Group) study follows up OED ' s 1993 review of the Bank ' s experience in telecommunications. It assesses how World Bank Group assistance from 1993 onward has influenced the development of information infrastructure in developing countries. It finds that recommendations of the 1993 review have generally been heeded with a) the adoption of a new private-sector-led agenda; b) the incorporation of the new agenda in most recent Bank lending and non-lending interventions; and c) the increasing share of IFC in total Bank Group funding commitments for telecommunications. The study points out that, at a time when the information revolution presents developing countries with far-reaching opportunities and risks, the Bank Group ' s ability to play a global policy leadership role has been hampered by its benign neglect of the sector at both the strategic and country management levels, as well as a fragmented internal organization. As a result, the number of countries where it has had a real impact is limited. The study recommends that the Bank Group a) restate its strategy in the broader information infrastructure, with a particular focus on optimizing the use of its instruments and expert skills; and b) gaps in the existing monitoring and evaluation systems be filled, to provide the necessary framework to assess the future effectiveness of the revised strategy.

Cet article analyse les comportements auto-rapportés des conseiller(ère)s de boutique ainsi que les pratiques/politiques internes de sept firmes de télécommunications canadiennes. Les résultats indiquent que les comportements de duplicité et de mensonge ne sont pas distribués de façon aléatoire dans l'industrie. L'étude propose un modèle comprenant six pratiques/ politiques internes qui sont en mesure d'expliquer jusqu'à 68 % des variations des comportements au travail. Détails. Pas de chiffres.

Objective: to conduct a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the monograph by I. R. Begishev and I. I. Bikeev devoted to the study of a wide range of issues related to liability for crimes in the field of digital information circulation.Methods: the methodological basis of the study is a set of general and specific scientific methods of cognition traditional for works in Law.Results: the main provisions, conclusions and the authors’ suggestions set out in the reviewed monograph are analyzed, which are related to the legal nature of crimes in the sphere of digital information circulation and regulation of criminal liability for their commission. In particular, the basic definitions of digital information concepts, crimes in the sphere of digital information circulation and other terms are formulated for various branches of knowledge; the problems of “safe computer attack” are considered; based on the authors’ interpretation of crimes in the sphere of digital information circulation, suggestions are made for improving Articles 137, 138, 141, 159.6, 183, 226.1, 272, 273, 274, 274.1 272.1 of the Russian Criminal Code, and complementing Article 272.1 “Acquisition or sale of legally protected digital information, knowingly obtained by criminal means\" and Article 273.1 “Illegal circulation of special technical means intended for violation of digital information protection systems”.Scientific novelty: theoretical and applied aspects of countering crimes in the sphere of digital information circulation are evaluated. It is concluded that the monograph makes a significant contribution to the development of the Russian legal doctrine on the legal regulation of responsibility for committing socially dangerous acts in the sphere of digital information circulation.Practical significance: the reviewer concluded that the monograph by I. R. Begishev and I. I. Bikeyev has a practice-oriented character, and can also serve as an impetus for a new scientific discussion on the problems identified in the study.

Batteries are classically used as backup in case of power outages in telecommunications networks to keep the services always active. Recently, network operators use the batteries as a demand response lever, so as to reduce the energy costs and to generate revenues in the energy market. In this work, we study how the telecommunications operator can optimize the use of a battery over a given horizon to reduce energy costs and to perform load curtailments efficiently, as long as the safety usage rules are respected. First, we formulate the related optimization problem as a mixed integer program taking into account the telecommunication engineering and battery operation constraints, as well as the market rules. Second, we give two practical variants of the problem that can be solved to optimality in polynomial time thanks to a graph-oriented algorithm we propose. We also use this algorithm as a heuristic to solve efficiently the main problem. Finally, simulations based on real data from the French telecommunications operator Orange show the relevance of the model and of the graph-oriented algorithm: these prove to be computationally efficient in solving large scale instances, and significant savings and revenues can be generated through our optimized battery management policies.

Silicon photonics enables the fabrication of on-chip, ultrahigh-bandwidth optical networks that are critical for the future of microelectronics 1 , 2 , 3 . Several optical components necessary for implementing a wavelength division multiplexing network have been demonstrated in silicon. However, a fully integrated multiple-wavelength source capable of driving such a network has not yet been realized. Optical amplification, a necessary component for lasing, has been achieved on-chip through stimulated Raman scattering 4 , 5 , parametric mixing 6 and by silicon nanocrystals 7 or nanopatterned silicon 8 . Losses in most of these structures have prevented oscillation. Raman oscillators have been demonstrated 9 , 10 , 11 , but with a narrow gain bandwidth that is insufficient for wavelength division multiplexing. Here, we demonstrate the first monolithically integrated CMOS-compatible source by creating an optical parametric oscillator formed by a silicon nitride ring resonator on silicon. The device can generate more than 100 new wavelengths with operating powers below 50 mW. This source can form the backbone of a high-bandwidth optical network on a microelectronic chip. A monolithically integrated CMOS-compatible source is demonstrated using an optical parametric oscillator based on a silicon nitride ring resonator on silicon. Generating more than 100 wavelengths simultaneously and operating at powers below 50 mW, scientists say that it may form the basis of an on-chip high-bandwidth optical network.

We partner with a major multinational telecommunications provider to analyze the effect of subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services on digital piracy. For a period of 45 consecutive days, a group of randomly selected households who used BitTorrent in the past were gifted with a bundle of TV channels with movies and TV shows that could be streamed as in SVoD. We find that, on average, households that received the gift increased overall TV consumption by 4.6% and reduced Internet downloads and uploads by 4.2% and 4.5%, respectively. However, and also on average, treated households did not change their likelihood of using BitTorrent during the experiment. Our findings are heterogeneous across households and are mediated by the fit between the preferences of households in our sample for movies and the content available as part of the gifted channels. Households with preferences aligned with the gifted content reduced their probability of using BitTorrent during the experiment by 18% and decreased their amount of upload traffic by 45%. We also show using simulation that the size of the SVoD catalog and licensing window restrictions limit significantly the ability of content providers to match SVoD offerings to the preferences of BitTorrent users. Finally, we estimate that households in our sample are willing to pay at most $3.25 USD per month to access a SVoD catalog as large as Netflix’s in the United States. Together, our results show that, as a stand-alone strategy, using legal SVoD to curtail piracy will require, at the minimum, offering content much earlier and at much lower prices than those currently offered in the marketplace, changes that are likely to reduce industry revenue and that may damage overall incentives to produce new content while, at the same time, curbing only a small share of piracy. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2875 . This paper was accepted by Chris Forman, information systems.

This study examines cooperative standard setting in wireless telecommunications. Focusing on the competition among firms to influence formal standardization, the roles of standard-setting committees, private alliances, and industry consortia are highlighted. The empirical context is Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), an international standards-development organization in the wireless telecommunication industry. Panel data analyses exploiting natural experiments caused by a consortium merger and entry of Asian firms suggest that participation in industry consortia increases firms' contributions to the development of new technical specifications in 3GPP committees. Moreover, connections to standard-setting peers formed in consortia facilitate change requests to ongoing specifications. These results suggest that if firms in network technology industries want to influence the evolution of their industry, they should identify both formal standard-setting committees and industry consortia in which they can discuss, negotiate, and align positions on technical features with their peers. For policymakers, these results suggest that it is important to ensure that technical consortia remain open for all industry actors and that membership fees do not become prohibitive to small and resource-constrained players.

Although the use of free samples is extensive across industries, the effects of free samples across individuals with varying levels of usage have yet to be systematically examined. The models discussed in the literature consider targeting only the current nonusers of a product. In this research, we examine the question of targeting the current users both analytically and empirically for an experience good. Our analytical discussions highlight the reasons why some current users may be effective targets for free-sample promotions. We then conduct an empirical analysis using a data set on pre- and post-free-sample promotion mobile data usage provided by a telecom firm. The empirical findings are consistent with our analytical results. Specifically, we find the initial usage level to be a key determinant of both the redemption rate of a free-sample offer and the subsequent change in usage owing to free-sample redemption. In our context, the redemption rate increased from the low-percentile users to the high-percentile users. We also find that the change in usage was (weakly) monotonically increasing up to the 90 th percentile of usage distribution. Beyond the 90 th percentile, the effect was generally not significant. We discuss the managerial and policy implications of our findings. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

This paper proposes two models for the Technician Routing and Scheduling Problem (TRSP), which are motivated by a telecom provider based in Saskatchewan, Canada. The proposed TRSP models are distinguished from existing models by their ability to address two key issues: overnight and lunch break scheduling. The models aim to scheduling a set of technicians with homogeneous skill levels and different working hours for the purpose of providing services with different service times and time windows to a diverse set of widely spread communities. As the large-sized experiments of this problem categorized into NP-hard problems, a metaheuristic-based technique, Invasive Weed Optimization, is developed to solve them. A comparative analysis is performed to choose the optimum TRSP model based on two factors which are distance of communities to the main depot and balanced service times during planning horizon. The performance of the models is evaluated through the real-world data obtained from the telecom provider. The results prove that the overnight TRSP model is capable of substantially decreasing travel costs and the number of technicians that are required to perform the same set of services.

Scope for improvement The latest state-of-the-art oscilloscopes can achieve single-shot waveform measurements with a resolution of about 30 picoseconds. But ever greater telecommunication data rates and an expanding interest in ultrafast chemical and physical phenomena mean that there is now a demand for devices that measure optical waveforms with subpicosecond resolution. The sensitivity of conventional oscilloscopes is limited by the electronic bandwidth of photodetectors and circuits. Now Foster et al . demonstrate an all-optical method for real-time measurement of temporal optical waveforms with a resolution a hundredfold higher than electronic techniques. The heart of the device is a silicon photonic chip made with the same materials and techniques as standard microprocessors but which manipulates photons instead of electrons. The potential integration of this device in microelectronics could produce an instrument that could be used in many branches of science where simple measurements of optical waveforms are required. With the realization of faster telecommunication data rates and an expanding interest in ultrafast chemical and physical phenomena, it has become important to develop techniques that enable simple measurements of optical waveforms with subpicosecond resolution 1 . State-of-the-art oscilloscopes with high-speed photodetectors provide single-shot waveform measurement with 30-ps resolution. Although multiple-shot sampling techniques can achieve few-picosecond resolution, single-shot measurements are necessary to analyse events that are rapidly varying in time, asynchronous, or may occur only once. Further improvements in single-shot resolution are challenging, owing to microelectronic bandwidth limitations. To overcome these limitations, researchers have looked towards all-optical techniques because of the large processing bandwidths that photonics allow. This has generated an explosion of interest in the integration of photonics on standard electronics platforms, which has spawned the field of silicon photonics 2 and promises to enable the next generation of computer processing units and advances in high-bandwidth communications. For the success of silicon photonics in these areas, on-chip optical signal-processing for optical performance monitoring will prove critical. Beyond next-generation communications, silicon-compatible ultrafast metrology would be of great utility to many fundamental research fields, as evident from the scientific impact that ultrafast measurement techniques continue to make 3 , 4 , 5 . Here, using time-to-frequency conversion 6 via the nonlinear process of four-wave mixing on a silicon chip, we demonstrate a waveform measurement technology within a silicon-photonic platform. We measure optical waveforms with 220-fs resolution over lengths greater than 100 ps, which represent the largest record-length-to-resolution ratio (>450) of any single-shot-capable picosecond waveform measurement technique 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 . Our implementation allows for single-shot measurements and uses only highly developed electronic and optical materials of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible silicon-on-insulator technology and single-mode optical fibre. The mature silicon-on-insulator platform and the ability to integrate electronics with these CMOS-compatible photonics offer great promise to extend this technology into commonplace bench-top and chip-scale instruments.