Call for Papers: Infrastructure Regulation: What works, Why, and How do we know?
Deadline: 05 December 2008.
According to this report, they are not. It will be appreciated if those with first-hand knowledge report on whether this report is correct and whether the mobile network in the North is operational.
The entire mobile telephone network has even been shut down to stop the rebels using phones for communications or detonating one of their favoured weapons — huge roadside bombs packed with ball bearings.
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This colloquium will be on a new paper that is being developed on tools for intelligent benchmark regulation, based on Harsha de Silva and Tahani Iqbal’s presentation on Price & Affordability Indicators at the WDR Expert Forum in Singapore. The tools under consideration are price baskets and price elasticity of demand.
LIRNEasia’s Director of Organizational Development has been awarded a competitive scholarship for the International Program for Development Evaluation Training offered every Summer by Carleton University (Canada) and the World Bank.
This signifies LIRNEasia’s continued commitment to the values of a learning organization. Last year, LIRNEasia’s Lead Economist Dr Harsha de Silva was awarded a scholarship at the MIT Poverty Research Lab.
Lots to think about in newest developments on more flexible uses of spectrum. This goes way beyond imposing private property rights on frequencies; this is a completely new way of thinking about spectrum.
Silicon Valley Moneymen Make a Play for Airwaves - New York Times
Mr. Bose, son of the audio designer Amar G. Bose, is pursuing an advanced radio technology known as software-defined radio, which controls frequencies through software rather than hardware.
In principle, this would permit much more efficient use of radio spectrum, allowing the sharing of frequencies through a variety of techniques .
Frontline proposes to create a large spectrum block that could be sold wholesale to companies that are building services for new portable Internet devices for receiving and transmitting voice, video and data. In…
Sri Lanka: Cutting it
FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT
In the world’s poorer countries, the purchase of a mobile phone has become increasingly affordable. Using it, however, can still be a struggle. Low-income mobile phone owners in Sri Lanka are getting around this problem with a novel method for keeping costs down.
Known as ring cutting, mobile phone subscribers rely on ring tones to communicate with others, rather than actually staying on the line to talk. By a pre-arranged signal that will convey the desired message – “two rings means I’m home” – callers negate the need for a conversation. They simply hang up as soon as the…
Universities are wonderful places, in some respects. Every few years (originally 6, but now there are variations) they give the people who teach in them a few months or a year to think and write. They usually go to other universities (the idea being that the company of people who think well is a good thing for one who wishes to think and write). Within the first two years of our existence, we were honored to have someone come and spend his sabbatical with us. Below is a report in his own words, written for a different purpose, but informative about his time with us nevertheless.
Peter Anderson’s letter — Richard Smith
In order to begin, I think it’s important to describe briefly what it is that…
Hutch’s entry into Indonesia’s mobile market as the 5th significant operator has started putting downward pressure on mobile calling prices, as I had predicted in my Oped piece Lower mobile prices: Through competition or profit regulation? in January of 2007. It is too early to call it a “price war” as the article below does, but the signs that prices are coming down is evident. Indonesia’s mobile retail prices are some of the highest in Asia and there is enough room for the prices to drop further. Currently, Hutch’s competitors are reacting by issuing promotions to match the new entrant’s offering, but this does not per se signify a permanent cut in prices. At the end of the promotion period the operators have a choice of reverting back…
A tsunami has swept ashore in the Solomon Islands after a strong undersea earthquake in the South Pacific. Initial reports from outlying, remote areas say at least eight people have been killed, but local officials fear the death toll could rise further.
The National Disaster Council chairman told reporters that some villages had been “completely wiped out”.
Tsunami warnings have also been issued for Papua New Guinea, north-east Australia, and other nearby islands.
LIRNEasia’s Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid study has been widely cited in an excellent piece by Thomas K. Thomas of the Hindu Businessline on Indian telecom operators push to go to rural areas where they were reluctant to do so before. Currently, a village with as little as 1000 persons is considered commercially viable for connecting to the network.
Call of the Village Thomas K. Thomas, Hindu Businessline, April 2, 2007
[..] Affordability is key
According to a new study done by LIRNEasia and AC Nielson, close to 100 million new cellular subscribers are expected to come from the rural areas over the next two years and the prospective subscribers are reasonably heavy users, making an average of 40 calls a month.
However, analysts caution that while operators…
The findings of a pilot project on learning how information-communication technologies and community-based training can help in responding to disasters such as tsunamis were discussed by community leaders and international experts at a workshop on “SHARING KNOWLEDGE ON DISASTER WARNING, WITH A FOCUS ON COMMUNITY-BASED LAST–MILE WARNING SYSTEMS” held on March 28th and 29th, 2007 at the Sarvodaya headquarters in Moratuwa.
These finding ranged from the difficulties experienced in communicating disaster warnings to villages when mobile GSM and fixed CDMA telecom networks were not functional due to conflict conditions to the importance of not leaving newspapers on top of sensitive electronic equipment which can overheat and shut down as a result. In terms of the five communication technologies that were evaluated across multiple criteria, the addressable…
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