Yearly Archives: 2009
Sri Lanka regulator, asleep at the switch for years, becomes belligerent upon waking up
Finally the TRC has woken up and started paying attention to broadband QoSE. Unfortunately, like many people and animals who are prodded awake from deep sleep, it is grumpy. It is talking about guilt and “taking action” rather than sitting down with the operators and finding a solution. “The Telecom Regulatory Commission is conducting its [...]
Abhayagiriya: The centre of Knowledge Economy in 5-11th century?
Observed few things fresh on my day at the Abhayagiri monastery complex. One was a rock inscription in ancient devanagari. It was not about a donation made by a king or a minister, as usual, or even a notification of a new regulation. The Sanskrit stanza was meant for Buddhist monks. Not a rule; but [...]
Rural BPO at Mahavilachchiya: Still taxiing…
December 25 was just another working day at OnTime Technologies at Mahavilachchiya and things were going on at full throttle when I stepped-in to this rural BPO, arguably the first such initiative in Sri Lanka. Here is the good and bad news. Good news: The wheels are still in motion. Unlike most of the ICT4D [...]
5th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
The tsunami occurred within three months of LIRNEasia’s founding. We were lucky. No one in LIRNEasia was directly affected, though there were several “what ifs”. It changed our research program for sure. We did three projects directly connected to the tsunami: NEWS:SL which was a study on how Sri Lanka could establish a robust, effective [...]
Agricultural price information through mobiles: Harsha’s dream closer to realization
LIRNEasia’s Lead Economist Harsha de Silva had a dream. It was that information would reduce price volatility and waste in agricultural markets and that both consumers and producers would benefit from better functioning markets. Unlike Jensen who studied the effects of price information communicated through mobiles on the market for “wild” fish and Akers who [...]
Tsunami coverage that includes mentions of LIRNEasia
The pictures that keep coming up on the right-hand side of the blog are for the most part those of the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. So we are not allowed to forget. Not that we want to. But anyway, Newsweek was the first to publish something with a quote from LIRNEasia. I [...]
Reliance mulls selling family glassware
India’s Reliance Communications is planning to sell its Fibre Link Around the Globe (FLAG) submarine optical fibre network, which it bought in 2003 for US$207 million. It is the world’s largest private undersea cable system, spanning 65,000 kilometers. It is integrated with Reliance’s 190,000 kilometers of domestic optic fiber and provides a delivery platform connecting 37 [...]
Sri Lanka: Service sector cushions job losses in agriculture & manufacturing
More food for thought for discussions on whether the emphasis should be on agriculture, which is said to employ the most people, or on services, which has the most potential. Sri Lanka has generated 234,000 service sector jobs in the third quarter of 2009 from a year earlier, though 89,000 jobs were lost in industry, [...]
Statistical data mining talk at University of Peradeniya
Carnegie Mellon University’s Auton Lab, Professor Artur Dubrawski (RTBP research partner), was invited to a speak at the University of Peradeniya Computer Engineering Department. Doctrine on data mining and applications were presented focusing on the work related to the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) to an audience of faculty and students. Faculty members from the department [...]
KF Lai and Ashok Jhunjhunwala seed entrepreneurship in Colombo
When e Sri Lanka was designed, we thought that lots of jobs would be created, some through conventional firms in the IT and IT enabled service industries, but more in entrepreneurial startups. The first hope was realized more or less, but not the latter. Since two people with direct experience, LIRNEasia international advisory board members [...]
LIRNEasia@5 coverage and pictures in Sunday Leader
The live blogging at the LIRNEasia@5 conference has yielded MSM coverage in the Sunday Leader’s Kottu supplement. There is also a story on the live blogging itself. The conference was mainly about ICT policy research. But this meant that a myriad of subjects were discussed from various angles. There was politics, economics, business and marketing. [...]
Stuart Weinstein at government early warning offices
Lakshaman Bandaranayake of Vanguard Management, who worked with LIRNEasia closely in the post-tsunami period, was kind enough to arrange meetings for Stuart Weinstein of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center who attended the LIRNEasia@5 conference. For those who may not know, Stuart was at the controls on December 26, 2004 when the great earthquake that caused [...]
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