Some people celebrate 25 years of anything: dead marriages, inert regional groupings, just occupying space.
We don’t. SAARC must be assessed by its fruits. On internal connectivity it fails. Here’s the evidence, carried in op-ed articles in Bangladesh’s Daily Star, Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror and also in a PTI dispatch:
It is always easier to do things within one’s own country than outside, or at least it should be. One does not need a passport or a visa to travel inside one’s country, but those formalities are required when one ventures out. Telephone calls within one’s own country are cheaper than to foreign countries. The same logic can be extended to a regional grouping such as SAARC which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
If none of these conditions are satisfied, one has to conclude that the regional grouping is not real; that it has been more an opportunity for mutual ego-stroking for the region’s leaders, than something yielding tangible benefits to South Asia’s people; that there is little to celebrate after 25 years.
Given the reality of cross-border terrorism and paranoid security policies, it will be some time before lines outside SAARC-country consular offices disappear. But cheaper telecom connectivity within SAARC is eminently achievable.
The PTI story, carried in MSN India starts thus:
Low and uniform telecom tariffs across SAARC nations will help improve trade relations between member countries, as well as bolster regional cooperation, says a study.
“The government must, through telecom operators, provide low and uniform telecom tariff across SAARC nations. As of now one is spending 64 times more if using the roaming phone within the SAARC nations,” Sri Lanka-based non-profit research organisation LIRNEasia said in a report on Information and Communication Technologies and Services Trade within the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
3 Comments
Niranjana V. Raveendranath
Dear Prof. Samarajiva,
What is your opinion about the TRCSL’s new broadband QoS monitoring program and its directive to the operators recently?
Rohan Samarajiva
This is not the right thread for this topic. Please see new post.
Niranjana V. Raveendranath
Prof. Samarajiva,
Thanks.
LIRNEasia at the IDRC EmpowerED Global Convening in Uruguay
On 13–16 October 2026, the EdTech Hub hosted the IDRC EmpowerED Global Convening in Montevideo, Uruguay, bringing together regional partners to share lessons on educational technology (EdTech) and AI in education. LIRNEasia CEO Helani Galpaya and Senior Research Manager Isuru Samaratunga participated in the convening, where Isuru shared emerging lessons from the EdTech Asia Hub, drawing on five regional country projects.
Nepal’s Bhotekoshi Disaster: Every Link Existed, Nothing Joined Them
On 26 August 2026, every component of Nepal's emergency communication system existed, including seismic monitoring, river gauges, a forecasting agency, a national SMS service, two mobile networks, volunteer mappers and a command post. What failed were the connections between them.
RECON-SL: A Sri Lanka Household Electricity Dataset for ML & AI Research
RECON-SL is an open dataset developed by LIRNEasia with funding support from the Lacuna Fund and in partnership with LECO. It combines electricity consumption records, smart meter readings, and household survey data from over 4,000 Sri Lankan homes to support energy policymaking, social research, and machine learning.
Links
User Login
Themes
Social
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feed
Contact
9A 1/1, Balcombe Place
Colombo 08
Sri Lanka
+94 (0)11 267 1160
+94 (0)11 267 5212
info [at] lirneasia [dot] net
Copyright © 2026 LIRNEasia
a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank active across the Asia Pacific