IDRC interviewed me at GK3. The voice cut is below.
Rohan Samarajiva: International Development Research Centre
Rohan Samarajiva, executive director of LIRNEasia, describes how its pioneering research work is helping make communities more resilient in the face of disasters like tsunamis and cyclones.
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A thoughtful contribution by someone who is developing a voice interface for the mobile internet.
This is not to say that these billions of mobile phones do not have the potential to access content from the web - rather, the traditional browser-based paradigm of internet usage does not cater to them. The idea that the mobile web consists exclusively of mobile devices running web-browsers identical to the web experience we are used to with IE/Firefox is simply wrong. Throwing more and more resources towards creating devices for the developing world that can emulate the PC browsing experience is misguided. The 2 billion phones being used in…
LIRNEasia’s first book, ICT Infrastructure in Emerging Asia: Policy and Regulatory Roadblocks, edited by Rohan Samarajiva and Ayesha Zainudeen will be launched on December 16 2007.
The Chief guests at the event will be Shri K.Sridhara, Member (Technology) & Ex-Officio Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & IT, and Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Madras.
The book looks at the policy and regulatory barriers to the expansion of information and communication technology infrastructure in emerging markets, based on Asian experience and is co-published by SAGE Publications and the International Development Research Centre. More information available at http://www.lirneasia.net/projects/ict-infrastructure-in-emerging-asia/
The Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC2007) symposium was held in Jaipur, India, December 03 - 06, 2007. The paper by N. Waidyanatha, S. Rangarajan, G. Gow, and P. Anderson (December 2007), Last-Mile Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka: Performance of WorldSpace Addressable Satellite Radios for Emergency Alerts, IEEE Proceedings of the WPMC 10th International Symposium, pages 233 - 238, can be found here.
India’s Bharti Airtel, China Mobile and PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia are UBS’s top three telecom investment picks in Asia for 2008, as their home markets enjoy strong growth rates.
“Growth features such as rising consumption, elasticity of demand and economies of scale will continue to be the main themes for the growth markets, including China, India and Indonesia, which are still under-appreciated by investors, in our view,” UBS said in a report.
India and China, the world’s fastest-growing mobile markets, added around 8 million mobile phone subscribers in October, taking their user base to approximately 217 million and 531 million, respectively.
LIRNEasia researchers will be among panelists at the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference organized by Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP).
Two sessions will be based on the LIRNEasia’s study on Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP), which is to presented in the form of an interactive quiz show. The background paper is available here.
A session titled ‘Making Communities Disaster Resilient’, hopes to highlight issues related to developing a robust solution for strengthening community resilience in the face of natural disasters. The background paper is available here.
LIRNE researchers will also be among panelists at a session on regulatory transparency and effectiveness. The session, entitled ‘Hello Regulator’, hopes to explore how having easy access to regulatory information and processes can support community and public agendas, access to ICT and so forth.
Click here for further information available on the…
A new documentary film, titled Teleuse@BOP, recently produced by TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP) and based on LIRNEasia’s study on Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid, highlights a communication revolution happening in Asia’s emerging telecommunication markets.
When it comes to using phones, the film says, people at the bottom of the income pyramid are no different from anyone else; they value the enhanced personal security, including emergency communications, and social networking benefits. Increasingly, poor people are not content with just using public phones or shared access phones (belonging friends or family). They see a utility and social value of having their own phones.
Sri Lanka’s top celco Dialog Telekom wants to collect a million old phones and recycle them in the next two years in an initiative that will keep dangerous heavy metals from contaminating the environment, officials said.
Phone batteries for example have heavy metals such a lead, nickel and cadmium. Dialog is collecting old phones and accessories from today.
“In Sri Lanka there are about 10 million mobile phones, and mobile phones become obsolete in two to three years,” says Michael de Soyza from Dialog who heads the project.
“Though some are handed down to friends and siblings, eventually they are discarded and are disposed of through the garbage collection system.”
Starting today, at 14 Dialog offices, old phones would be collected. For every phone handed…
by Harsha de Silva & Ayesha Zainudeen
In Does inequality matter? Exploring the links between poverty and inequality (p. 135-167), Edited by Prashan Thalayasingam & Kannan Arunasalam. Published by CEPA, Colombo, 2007
Pre-publication version available for download. The paper was presented at the Centre for Poverty Analysis Annual Symposium on Poverty Research in Sri Lanka (6-7 December 2007, Colombo)
Introduction:
Much has been said of the benefits of access to telecommunication especially at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’.
BeePeeO Data Solutions: Translation, Transcription & Proofreading Services
BeePeeO Data Solutions is a socially motivated BPO service provider promoting a pro-nature, pro-poor, pro-women and pro-sustainable livelihood paradigm of technology development and dissemination by leveraging cutting-edge technology and flexible business process knowledge to set up delivery centers in rural areas.
We bridge the ‘Digital Divide’ by making local Sri Lankan talent accessible to international companies, offering highly competitive rates and fast turnaround. It is a ‘win-win’ proposition where companies obtain quick, cost-effective data and language services, while qualified talent in Sri Lanka finds employment without having to migrate to cities or overseas.
BeePeeO Data Solutions is a joint venture of a network of rural Telecentres (Nanasalas) in Sri Lanka led by Koslanda Nanasala and Glenanore Nanasala sponsored by the…
The 2006-08 focus of LIRNEasia’s research was indicators of sector and regulatory performance. Indicators should not be collected for the sake of collecting them. They should be collected based on a common standards and reported at standard intervals in a timely manner, so that regulation and policy can be improved. For example, we believe that good price information can allow a simplification of the tariff regulation process in a way that will make all stakeholders, including incumbents, happy.
We were thus gratified when the Chief Executive of the Telecom Authority of Maldives invited us to conduct a workhop on indicators and benchmarking. The workshop will be conducted on the 6th of December by LIRNEasia’s Rohan Samarajiva and Helani Galpaya. An almost final version of program is at:…
Asian National Statistical Offices should consider inserting a question on telephones into their household surveys that will capture this.
Telephony | Mobile homes | Economist.com
NEARLY half of Lithuanian households now use just a mobile phone rather than having a fixed line at home too, according to the European Union’s statistical office. The Finns, fast adopters of technology, are close behind with 47% of households ditching the home phone. People from Central and Eastern Europe are more likely to have only a mobile phone, perhaps because fewer households had a fixed line in the first place. But the home phone is not yet dead. The number of fixed lines per 100 people in the EU increased from 44 in 1996 to 48 in 2005.
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Yunnan-based Chinese companies are offering cheap phones and illegal mobile service in the North of Burma, according to a research report, prompting the military authorities to seize all Chinese mobile phones.
It says the Chinese providers are “taking advantage of the inability of the Myanmar military junta to provide satisfactory and affordable mobile phone services in the Shan
State and the Kachin State areas of North Myanmar.” Read more.
Telecoms in India | Full-spectrum dominance | Economist.com
The operators added more than 8m mobile-phone subscribers in October, bringing the total to over 217m. India has met its ambitious target, set two years ago, of 250m fixed and mobile-phone connections. But the government is sadly unprepared. It has not given India’s mobile operators enough space on the radio spectrum to carry calls crisply and reliably. India, the operators complain, faces a “spectrum crunch”.
In November Sunil Mittal, the chairman of Bharti Airtel, wrote to India’s telecoms secretary describing the “extreme anguish” caused by the “pitiful” amounts of spectrum granted to operators using GSM technology, the dominant standard that is used by three-quarters of Indian subscribers. The government had said it would provide extra spectrum to firms once…
All over the world, governments are freeing up and assigning more frequencies for mobile services. Is it not time that spectrum managers in the Asia Pacific start work on this? These things take time. Refarming is a lot more work than making a copy of a license.
Ottawa opens up wireless industry to more competition
The Conservative government on Wednesday paved the way for new cellphone companies by announcing new rules for an auction of radio airwaves designed to spur competition in the wireless industry.
About 40 per cent of the spectrum will be reserved for new entrants, with the remainder open to all bidders, including Canada’s big three providers — Rogers, Bell and Telus. The government will also mandate roaming agreements, which will force existing carriers…
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