The Internet and mobile phones are changing the face of radio across the world. Their appropriation by private, public and community radio is transforming radio as a medium thus making it, at least in principle, more accessible through multiple platforms such as webcasting and mobile streaming. In most cases, these technological transformations have had some profound ramifications on radio‘s institutional cultures and practices especially with regards to the way radio produces and disseminates its content and interacts with audiences. Digitization and convergence are not merely blurring the boundaries between radio and other media, but have a direct impact on journalistic practices in terms of the gathering, manufacturing, and subsequent presentation of content to audiences. Audiences themselves are seen as becoming increasingly more actively involved in radio content production and dissemination through online platforms like Websites, Facebook, Twitter, chat forums, podcasts and indeed mobile facilities like SMS (texting) and voice calls. Theoretically, convergence has therefore empowered ordinary people to tell their stories themselves through radio. Scholars have variously referred to this new experience as ̳citizen journalism‘, ̳participatory journalism‘, ̳citizen-generated media‘, ̳we media‘, ̳grassroots media‘, ̳self service media‘ to emphasize the notions of inclusion and participatory communication that are often associated with digital media (See Atton, 2003, Gillmor, 2006; Kolodzy, 2006, Allan, 2010). In most cases, however, the celebration of the emancipatory power of these so-called ̳technologies of freedom‘ (Morriset, 2004), is often empirically informed by the socio-economic and technological contexts of the industrialized North, especially Europe and North America. Yet the appropriation of convergence and digitization by the media and their audiences can hardly be said to be unidirectional and always predictable across the world. Hence, this study is a contribution to the global debate on how new ICTs are influencing radio‘s institutional cultures and practices within the context of the Southern African region. It focuses on radio convergence in four countries in the region namely Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, and Malawi. While these countries certainly offer variegated social and technological experiences that have varying imprints on the appropriation and uses of mobile phones and the Internet by radio institutions, they also share certain similarities which have helped the study to generate some analytical observations on trends and patterns in radio production, dissemination, consumption and the emerging audience participatory cultures. The study is broadly institutional and focuses mainly on radio organisations‘ uptake of the new ICTs in the production and dissemination of news and current affairs programmes. However, it also interrogates how the digitisation of this institution is influencing participation by citizens in radio programmes on the one hand, and issues of governance and public concern, on the other hand. As such the concerns of the research are three fold and can be summed up as follows: To examine how the selected public, private and community radio stations in the 4 countries use the Internet and mobile phones to enhance audience participation in news and current affairs programming. To evaluate how these uses are promoting bottom-up and democratic participatory cultures occasioned by convergent radio through Web 2.0, SMS, Voice calls, E-mail, etc. To discuss how participatory cultures on radio create a potential for civic engagement on development and governance issues. Philosophically, the debate on the benefits of the new ICTs to the media and society alike is by no means a simple one. It has generally been characterized by two seemingly radical and incommensurable schools of thought. On the one hand, is what has been variously referred to as techno-euphorists or technological determinists. Their views on the relationship between digital media and the society are characterized by eulogistic accounts of what new ICTs can do for individuals, institutions, and society. The advent of the new media of the Internet and mobile phones has re-ignited this optimism where the information society and its concomitant innovations in communications are blindly celebrated as the panacea to all human development challenges. In Africa,thenewwaveoftechnological ̳hype‘and ̳utopianbliss‘1 bouncedbackinthe1990swiththe spread of the Internet and mobile phones across the continent. We heard the hollow and apocalyptic claims of the end of the mass media and the mass audience just as we heard the optimistic and ethereal accounts of citizen empowerment virtual public spheres and network societies that are characterized by seamless spaces of participation and free expression for the citizen. Technological determinists continue to advance a commonsensical and utopian view of the neutral to ICTs and their universal and linear effects everywhere. In doing so, they have often overlook critical questions of the social, political, economic and organizational contexts of technologies use. These questions are considered fundamentally important in this study as they shape how the radio institutions and their audiences are likely to use digital media and harness other benefits that are occasioned by digitization and media convergence. Hence, by way of a literature review, this study begins by giving a comprehensive overview of the socio-economic, political and technological regimes that constitute the contexts of the uptake of the Internet and mobile phones by radio and its audiences. Five critical structural points that inform the uptake of ICTs by radio stations and their audiences are highlighted and consist of the following: Constitutional and legal environments, Political and economic environments, Radio and ICTs ownership and funding, and the regulation of broadcasting. For example, the use and relevance of convergent radio therefore largely depended on how widespread the new ICTs as ̳technologies of freedom‘ are used by audiences. Questions of the availability and affordability of these new technologies are important in understanding public participation levels in convergent radio, especially the question of who participates and the kinds of discourses that emerge from that participation. There is always a financial cost tied to the access of these new ICTs and the services they provide. For example, although the Internet and mobile network prices in the region are slowly coming down as a result of the combined effects of regulatory intervention and competition between service providers, they have been and continue to be for the most part, very high and prohibitive to the ordinary person. For example, until recently in Zimbabwe, Econet Wireless 1 For further details of Technological determinism in Africa, see Mudhai, (2009: 1). 14 tended to abuse its market dominance in mobile broadband charging as much as US$98 a gigabyte.2 In South Africa, mobile phone operators charges remained in the top 5 highest in the world charging R1. 29c per minute. When the South African government proposed a 60c per minute through ICASA, they refused and pegged their price at 89c per minute instead (Business day, 2010). Theoretically, the questions of corporate dominance in new ICTs are embedded with a Critical Political Economy (CPE) critique of new media technologies. A very radical Marxian strand of theory is made of technological pessimists or techno-essentialists who argue that digital media in their convergent and divergent form are always in service of corporate profit maximization, domination and power. They argue that technologies, including new ICTs, represent and advance the interests of the powerful in society and claims about their potential for promoting human freedoms and civic engagement are nothing but just an illusion or mirage.3 In researching convergence and radio in Southern Africa, this project clearly took a middle of the ground critique by emphasizing the social character of technologies. We argue that digital media do not have a ̳singular essence...and can be reconstructed to play different roles in different social systems‘ (Feenberg, 1999: 7). They can empower or disempower citizens depending on the social context. For example, the foregoing examples on Zimbabwe serve to demonstrate how cost of digital media services can be inimical to sustained participation by audiences in radio programmes and public affairs. Indeed, this means that the claims of the impact of the Internet and mobile phones on radio‘s institutional cultures, practices, and the participation by audiences have to be subjected to specific social and organizational contexts within which such technologies are used. Following Slevin (2000, 155, therefore, ̳any meaningful analysis of the impact of the Internet... [and mobile phones] on society must be fundamentally cultural‘.

The privatization and liberalization of telecommunications services have been debated and pursued with varying speed and success by countries throughout the world. In Turkey, efforts to privatize Tu¨ rk Telekom and liberalize the telecommunications regime have not yet been successful. At the same time, the Internet has experienced dramatic growth.

Every company has its prime aim to Growth. With the changing times increase in competition has become their core competencies and has a competitive edge over others. Business matrices like Net sales, Profit (%) after tax,Total Income (Capitalization), Total Expenditures and level of satisfaction of the customers are important indicators representing the stand of companies in the market. A comparative analysis of the major telecom providers like Bharti AirtelLimited, Tata Communications Limited, Idea Cellular Limited, Reliance Communications Limited,Vodafone India Limited and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)and in India has been presented in this paper on the basis of secondary data which includes last five year Profit (%) after tax, Total Income and Total Expenditures. This data has been collected to measure the level of satisfaction (LOS) of the Indian telecommunication customers. This LOS was evaluated for various factors like network coverage; customer service,tariffrates, plan and accountability of bill. An empirical study has been done and conclusions have been brought out on the basis of the data collected though an online field surveyto achieve this objective. An online questionnaire was prepared and was distributed to mobile phone users viasocial networking sitesandemail for this purpose. The collected data was analysed with the help of prowess software. A sensitivity analysis was done to verify the significance of the factors considered for determining the LOS. In this paper, it was concluded that Bharti Airtel is the overall leader in all business matrices mentioned above.

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is a resource pooling mechanism which splits data across multiple subflows (paths) and ensures reliable data delivery. Although Multipath TCP is a relatively small technical change to the TCP protocol providing improved resilience, throughput and session continuity, it will have considerable impact on the value networks and business models of Internet access provisioning. In this paper, we evaluate the viability of different MPTCP deployment scenarios and present what new ISP business models might be enabled by the new flexibility that MPTCP brings. This allows the research community to focus on the most promising deployment scenarios.