This is a question that is central to the mission of LIRNEasia. The link below connects to a very accessible discussion on the subject:
In Conversation: Carol Weiss and Evert Lindquist on Policymaking and Research: International Development Research Centre
Monthly Archive for January, 2006
Microsoft Would Put Poor Online by Cellphone
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: January 30, 2006
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 29 — It sounds like a project that just about any technology-minded executive could get behind: distributing durable, cheap laptop computers in the developing world to help education. But in the year since Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, unveiled his prototype for a $100 laptop, he has found himself wrestling with Microsoft and the politics of software.
Mr. Negroponte has made significant progress, but he has also catalyzed the debate over the role of computing in poor nations — and ruffled a few feathers. He failed to reach an agreement with Microsoft on including its Windows software in the laptop, leading Microsoft executives to start…
LIRNEasia organised a press conference to highlight two major initiatives in the area of hazard warning, one that it launched on providing disaster mitigation and last-mile connectivity to tsunami-affected villages and the other that it wrapped up on dam-related hazard warning system for Sri Lanka.
LIRNEasia released A Concept Paper for a Dam-related Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka: A Participatory Study on Actions Required to Avoid and Mitigate Dam Disasters in collaboration with its project partners, the Vanguard Foundation, Sri Lanka National Committee on Large Dams (SLNCOLD), Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) and Sarvodaya. This work was funded by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives. Prof. Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director of LIRNEasia, handed over the final concept paper to U. W. L. Chandradasa, Director, Disaster Management Centre,…
Dr. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, Principal Researcher at Point Pedro Institute of Development presented some of his work on research methods for contraband trade and on general methodologies for estimating the size of trade in grey/ informal markets.
Colloquium: Methodologies for estimating grey/informal markets – Power point presentation slides
Some points from the discussion are below:
Muttukrishna Sarvanathan (MS): official data is available for goods from Central Bank. For services, data is not as widely available. Contraband trade includes false invoicing of exports and imports (partial evasion of tariffs) and complete non-recording of trade (total evasion of tariffs)
false invoicing can be detected / estimated by:
Partner-country data comparison model and unit price comparison model. There are limitations with both. With the unit price comparison model for example it doesn’t’ account for…
Colombo, Sri Lanka, 19 December 2005: Men and women in Sri Lanka and India engage in similar levels of telephone use in low-income settings, according to a recent study carried out by LIRNEasia.
A study conducted by LIRNEasia, an Asian research organization based in Colombo, explores the use of telecom services amongst people whose incomes are less than approximately USD 100 per month in Sri Lanka and India. The study provides evidence that there are few significant differences between men and women in the use of fixed, mobile or public phones at these income levels. These results challenge the findings of several prior and well-established studies……..
LIRNEasia in collaboration with The Vanguard Foundation, Sri Lanka National Committee on Large Dams (SLNCOLD), Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) and Sarvodaya has released A Concept Paper for a Dam-related Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka: A Participatory Study on Actions Required to Avoid and Mitigate Dam Disasters. This work was funded by The Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.
The Concept Paper (version 2.0) and Annexes can be downloaded by following the links:
Throughout the past year we have debated the pros and cons of "free" (as in beer) WiFi networks in cities, especially the sustainability and fairness of using taxpayer funds to pay for the network. An interesting commentary on the state of play in the US is given at
Advocates of Wi-Fi in Cities Learn Art of Politics – New York Times
BY ANJANA Samarasinghe (Daily News) www.dailynews.lkTHE Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) has allocated Rs. 2.5 million for the “eNABLE” project this year. “eNABLE” is a project which will serve communities in remort areas with special emphasis on women and people with disabilities. The project has empowered the universal access/service concept, which facilitates the communication needs of everybody. Under this project telecommunication facilities have been granted for Ranaviru villages, Homes for children with disabilities and homes for elders. Director, Legal Affairs of the TRC P. R. Amarasiri said this year TRC expects to establish five new ICT centres in Ratmalana, Ragama, Matale, Wattegama and in the South. These centers will specially focus on empowering people with disabilities through ICT. These centres will consist of… |
Colombo, Sri Lanka. 19 December 2005: Sixteen per cent of the revenues of Bangladesh’s Grameen Phone come from four per cent of customers. And they are not the most affluent people; they are village phone ladies. This is one of the key findings of recent research conducted by LIRNEasia.
LIRNEasia, an Asian research organization based in Colombo with a particular focus on issues relating to ICTs and development, today released a study titled, “An Investigation of the Replicability of a Microfinance Approach to Extending Telecommunications Access to Marginal Customers” which indicates that the widespread perception that it is not economical to serve “marginal customers”/ the poor is a myth. “The results of this research underscore the fact that the poor are a good investment; that developmental and…
As a part of LIRNEasia’s Telecom Use on a Shoestring project, a third country, Bangladesh is studied. While surveys were conducted in India and Sri Lanka, a substantial amount of similar research has already been carried out on Bangladesh, in the context of Grameen’s Village Phone program. Therefore, this part of the study is in the form of a meta-analysis of some of these key studies.
A draft is available for comment here:
Teleuse on a shoestring: Bangladesh meta analysis v.2.0 Jan06
The Pacific Telecom Council meetings where I first presented our analysis of the tsunami reponse has scheduled a major session on disaster communication at the 2006 meetings.
As part of our partnership with Sarvodaya on using ICTs for disaster management, LIRNEasia is managing www.webhamuva.org. The excerpt below is from the Daily Mirror of 10th January 2006(www.dailymirror.lk). We understand that a reader has offered to donate some bicycles to one of the families featured on the blog
"Sarvodaya has initiated and activated its development programs at the grassroots level, taking the ideas and suggestions of benefiting people as the foundation of the schemes and their active participation as the main component of the projects. However, the movement recognized that this might not be the way that all organizations conducting post-Tsunami work coordinate their activities. So in a bid to give voice to the people whose opinions go unheard in the reconstruction work, it set…
Colombo, Sri Lanka, 19 December 2005: A recent study has shown that fifty-eight per cent of low-income telephone users are absent from conventional telecom indicators. The study also shows that they are spending more of their monthly incomes than expected on telecom services. The study supports C.K. Prahalad’s claim that there is a fortune to be made at the ‘bottom of the pyramid,’ not only at the top.
Decisions in the telecom sector are frequently made based on the number of telephone subscribers per 100 population, an indicator called teledensity. A path-breaking study of telecommunication use by people in Sri Lanka and India with incomes of below approximately USD 100 per month reveals that 58 per cent of these low-income users do not own the phone…
Dec 23, 2005, By: Robert Clark, Wireless Asia
http://www.telecomasia.net/telecomasia/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=274336
The UN summit in Tunis last month did not turn out to be the showdown expected between the and the rest of the world.
That particular non-event, and the anti-social behavior of ’s police, took the headlines, such as they were. By the end, journalists were reduced to counting the number of delegates (19,400), sessions (316) and participating organizations (264).
It is worth recalling that one of the key missions of the grandly-named World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was to figure out ways of narrowing the digital divide.
And despite the grandstanding, WSIS did leave behind a few small straws of progress for the three billion citizens on planet earth who don’t have access to modern communications. I’m not…
Why people still think that there is something good about being undersupplied by local inept monopolies versus getting good service from decent companies is a mystery. But I guess this kind of thinking is the reason South Asia remains the sick man of the world.
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