Monthly Archives: March, 2006
Applications now open for LIRNEasia Young Scholar Tutorials, hosted by NUS, Singapore. Click here for info on how to apply.
Clinton on the last mile in disaster warning
“Bangladesh learned about the value of [early warning] in 1970 when a cyclone resulted in more than 300,000 deaths. The government and people subsequently put in place effective early warning and preparedness measures involving modern cyclone-forecasting systems and more than 5,000 people to get the message to the villages.
When a cyclone of similar force struck in 1997, 200 people were killed, which brings up to mind a point I want to make. The interesting thing to me is what Bangladesh did to marry old-fashioned communication with modern technology, the so-called ‘last mile’ of the early warning system. It’s something that we dare not forget in our UN work for the tsunami…
All the sophisticated technology won’t matter if we don’t reach real communities and people. Satellites, buoys, data networks will make us safer, but we must invest in the training, the institution building, the awareness raising on the ground.”
Reuters AlertNet – Highlights of Clinton’s speech on disaster reduction
The Bangladesh story was a key element in our NEWS:SL concept paper. And this would be a good opportunity to announce that the “train-the-trainer” workshop of the LIRNEasia-Sarvodaya last-mile project, designed and delivered by Buddhi Weerasinghe and Nalaka Gunawardene of ..read more
Information sought on siren systems and school drills for tsunami preparedness
An AFP report states that: UN Under Secretary Patricio Bernal said Egeland and former US president Bill Clinton had taken to task government officials from countries in the Indian Ocean in a closed-door meeting here in a bid to speed up the process. “We are not worried about the technical side. At the moment we have 17 sensors in the Indian Ocean and by July we will have 23. If anything happens tonight, somebody will be there to move an alert,” he told AFP. “What we are afraid of is whether this information will flow down. The countries have not done enough. There is a lack of political will,” he said. He praised Sri Lanka for setting up siren systems and drilling school children, but said all efforts needed to be directed from the highest political office in every country to avoid confusion when a climate disaster strikes.
When the Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights was asked a direct question on the progress that had been made on early warning systems, in the direct presence of the President and on live TV, he talked about plans and preparations rather than sirens and drills. This suggests that both ..read more
Lifetime free prepaid
At the Delhi Indicators Meeting earlier this month, there was discussion about how one would count the lifetime free subscriptions being offered in India. The following excerpt from Business Today, may shed some light on this new product:
“However, there’s more to lifetime offers than meets the eye. First, call charges at Rs 1.99 per minute for local and Rs 2.99 per minute for STD are not necessarily low. Customers with ordinary prepaid cards pay anything from Rs 0.70 (local) to Rs 1.20 (STD). As BSNL Finance Director S.D. Saxena puts it, these schemes do not benefit customers who make outgoing calls. They are for those who don’t (but receive lots of calls), such as an aged parent or a chauffeur who have traditionally opted for ‘free-incoming’ schemes. Then, the talk time offered by lifetime schemes (between 12 minutes in the case of private telcos and 49 minutes for BSNL) is too low for the Rs 999 they charge. Most telcos claim that customers will not have to pay any transaction charge on future recharges and that they will get the entire talk time they pay for.
Next is the whole question of ‘lifetime’. As far as we can make out, all ..read more
Sri Lanka “encourages” CDMA rollout by increasing duty on handsets
The LBO story states:
Sri Lanka’s two private wireless local loop telecom operators have been called up to pay around Rs. 400 million as duties for importing handsets, industry officials said.
Last month, the island’s Board of Investment (BOI) slapped a 33 percent import duty on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) handsets with immediate effect.
CDMA is a low cost cellular technology that has been effectively used world over to provide cheaper connectivity to rural homes. Though the technology is similar to mobile phones, the handsets are similar to a bulky fixed line unit.
Being BOI companies, Suntel and Lanka Bell, are allowed to import customer premises equipment or handsets without paying import duties.
However, since rolling out CDMA services since last June, Lanka Bell and Suntel have been asked to pay up for around 180,000 units sold todate.
Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), which is partially owned by the government and Japan’s NTT and pays taxes regularly, however has got away, despite selling around 100,000 CDMA connections, according to the telecom watchdog.
“We are going on the premise that both operators (Lanka Bell and Suntel) sell the equipment to the ultimate user, hence they have to pay,” BOI chief Lakshman Watawala explained.
Sounds ..read more
Usable Knowledge for Growing the Sector, New Delhi
ICT Policy and Regulation Research from LIRNEasia
LIRNEasia showcased its research from 2005 on 6 March, 2006 at the Park Hotel, New Delhi. Indian operators as well as media were in attendance.
The highlights of LIRNEasia’s first year of Research are available HERE. The presentations are available below:
Introduction to LIRNEasia and its 2005 research program, Rohan Samarajiva. More information on LIRNEasia can be found HERE.
Telecom use on a shoestring: Findings from a survey of Indian & Sri Lankan users on < USD 100 a month, Ayesha Zainudeen. The final report for this study can be downloaded from the project page.
WiFi innovation and backbone deficiencies, Divakar Goswami. More information can be found at the project page.
Universal service funds: How to do it right, Payal Malik. The final report can be found at the project page.
The importance of backbone, Rohan Samarajiva. More information can be found on the project page.
Least cost subsidy auctions: Getting the conditions right, Harsha de Silva. The final report can be found at the project page.
Nigerian License Unification
Licensing Framework for Unified Access Service in Nigeria In February 2005, the Commission issued a notice on the introduction of a unified licensing regime in Nigeria. It stated that:
The market shall be opened up by adopting a unified licensing regime which shall allow existing fixed wireless and mobile licensees to provide both services subject to geographical/regional limitations contained in their licence
For the post exclusivity period all wireless licences shall not be segmented in terms of mobile and fixed service categories. Once a spectrum is allocated, licensees shall be free to offer voice, data or multimedia services as they deem fit.
All active wireless licences issued prior to the expiration of the exclusivity period shall be amended accordingly.
Nigerian Communications Commission – REGULATORY FRAMEWORK Home Page
Indian policy since 2003 aims ..read more
Fiber network in Jaffna?
From the Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka) of 10 March 2006:
“Minister Bogollagama also noted that the government was planning to construct a fibre optic network in Jaffna to introduce the Business Process Outsourcing industry to the area.”
Jaffna is currently connected to the rest of Sri Lanka and the world by satellite. It is intriguing to speculate how the Minister’s fiber optic network will function and who will manage it.
One assumes that for it to be of use for the BPO industry, the Minister’s fiber will have to connect to another fiber somewhere. Will this be overland, along the A9 and through LTTE controlled territory or undersea?
Workshop on ICT Indicators for Benchmarking Performance in Network and Services Development
LIRNEasia and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), with the assitance of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, co-sponsored the “Workshop on ICT Indicators for Benchmarking Performance in Network and Services Development” in New Delhi from 1-3 March 2006. The workshop highlighted the need for accurate, standardized and comparable indicators for the region and was intended to initate action to develop such indicators.
The workshop brought together representatives of National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs), National Statistical Organizations (NSOs) and operators from Afghanistan, Bangaldesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka along with the foremost authorities on the subject from the ITU, OECD, and the US National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI). With nearly 60 participants from 16 countries, the Workshop was also attended by telecom researchers from the Asian region.
The three day workshop was intended to elicit the cooperation of representatives from NRAs, NSOs and industry associations from the regional countries in establishing a sustainable system for measuring and benchmarking ICT sector input and output indicators for South Asia that can be extended to developing Asia.
Download the workshop materials HERE
..read more
A GSM Payphone on a Motorbike
Read this article on the web at: www.cellular-news.com/story/16423.php
MTN Uganda has unveiled a modified bicycle payphone concept, the publiCom Quad Bike. The publiCom Quad Bike is a payphone concept where a payphone is mounted on a four-wheel bicycle. MTN publiCom also has existing tricycle payphones operational in the Kampala area.
While addressing a press conference at MTN publiCom headquarters in Bukoto, the Chief Executive Officer, Francois du Plessis, explained that the publiCom Quad Bike is an example of convergence which is a vital ingredient of socioeconomic activities today. With the publiCom Quad Bike, the payphone attendants are able to move from one place to another, making telephony services even more accessible.
“People require communication that is accessible and this is achieved with the publiCom Quad Bike. The publiCom Quad Bike essentially brings communication to your doorstep, for no extra cost. This publiCom Quad Bike is mainly aimed at operating in the under served upcountry regions,” he explained.
The publiCom Quad Bike is a new innovation from MTN publiCom to complement the existing Payphone systems which continue to provide convenience, confidentiality and longer call duration per unit.
Where is talk cheap in South Asia?
This preliminary study to compare mobile tariffs in the Asian region, has been undertaken in keeping with the proposed 2006 theme of the World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies (WDR), ‘Sector and Regulatory Performance Indicators.’ The definition of standardized benchmark indicators with their respective viable methodologies in the Asian context is required for an accurate comparative analysis of the regulatory and sector performance in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)
The preliminary study has produced surprising findings with regards to the relative costs between prepaid and postpaid mobile tariff packages. It is hoped that the release of the preliminary results will engage disucssion with stakeholders, especially operators in the formulation of an accurate and standardized methodology to reflect the holistic costs associated with the use of mobile communications and which can yield meaningful comparisons across the region.
The study can be found HERE
The authors welcome comments and disucssion.
Regulation and investment
In the coming year, LIRNEasia intends to launch a number of activities intended to support the work of young scholars working on telecom reform issues of relevance to emerging Asia. As part of this effort we intend to provide self-archiving facilities for conference papers and journal articles, and provide a degree of exposure and commentary for a subset. This is the first effort in this regard.
Regulation and FDI: Sri Lankan Telecommunications Industry
By
Ms Asoka Fernando, PhD Candidate, Dept. of Management, Monash University
Abstract
This paper examines the role of the telecommunications regulator in Sri Lanka and assesses the effectiveness of its interventions in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) into the telecommunications sector from a management point of view. The study finds that despite Sri Lanka has responded to globalization by liberalizing the telecommunications sector and timely establishing a regulator to monitor the industry, the interventions of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) have been only partially successful particularly in terms of meeting its full potential of FDI into the sector. Interventions of TRC have been reviewed in terms of creating environment for market entry and competition, management of scarce resources, tariff regulation and independence of the regulator, and ..read more
No half-way house to unified licensing?
Suntel to invest Rs. 8 b for countrywide CDMA push Plans to roll out low cost telephone service in Jaffna soon
By Poornima Weerasekara (Daily Mirror, 1 March 2006)
Suntel yesterday unveiling its roadmap for the next three years announced their plans to invest Rs. 8 billion to expand the CDMA network island wide. “The coverage of our 155 base stations is better and wider than most of the mobile operators today,” Suntel Managing Director Jerry ..read more
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