Recent Quality of Service Experience (QoSE) tests carried out by LIRNEasia show that BSNL’s 256Kbps package (offered in Chennai) delivers more than promised in download speeds when compared to a 512Kbps package offered by the same operator in Bangalore. It also performs better in comparison to similar offerings by Airtel and MTNL in Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, including 512 Kbps and 2Mbps packages. Although most Indian packages we tested offer better value for money than similar offerings in neighboring Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan, there are significant quality differences among the eight Indian packages that were subject to this year’s QoSE testing. The majority of the packages tested within India failed to deliver even 80% of the advertised speeds, with Airtel’s 2Mbps package (tested in Mumbai) coming in last, being able to deliver a mere 20% of what was advertised. Access the QoSE and price benchmark reports here.
To learn about the state of broadband in Sri Lanka, one has to rely on the media and on company releases, not the normal source which is the Ministry or regulatory agency. Today LBO carried the following story: Sri Lanka Telecom, the island’s largest fixed access operator said it had added 80,000 new broadband customers in 2010 and its base of 200,000 customers was 70 percent of the market. About 20 percent of the operator’s wireline customers were now using its ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) services, the telco said in a statement. From the above we can conclude that Sri Lanka has roughly 286,000 broadband subscriptions. We have no idea whether this number includes those using dongles, or simply those who subscribed to the “fixed wireless” options provided by LankaCom, Dialog etc.
Tahani Iqbal, LIRNEasia Research Fellow, has been invited to make a presentation on the “Wants and needs of women in developing markets” at a mWomen Working Group Meeting organized by the GSM Association on 9 – 11 November 2010 in Chennai, India. She is the only non-industry speaker at the event, and will present findings from LIRNEasia‘s studies on telecom use at the bottom of the pyramid. Click here to view presentation slides.
We have been talking about the Budget Telecom Network Model for sometime. But as the Economist points out, the story is bigger than just telecom. South Asian innovation, driven by the need to sell to poor people, may remake the economic landscape in rich countries too. Most strikingly, Indian companies have produced a new type of innovation, variously dubbed “frugal”, “reverse” and “Gandhian”. The essence is to reduce the price of a product or service by a breathtaking amount—80% rather than 10%—by removing unnecessary bells and whistles.
LIRNEasia’s Senior Research Manager, Sriganesh Lokanathan, was invited to share LIRNEasia‘s work in increasing price transparencies in agricultural markets, at the Annual Portfolio Review (APR) for the Asia-Pacific division of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) which was held in Nanning, China from Nov 1-3, 2010. In addition he also led a discussion for around 30 IFAD practitioners and regional partners on ways to reduce information asymmetry in agricultural value chains. Given the large share of value chain projects in IFAD’s current portfolio, Sriganesh stressed the potential benefits (from connecting stakeholders as well as reducing information asymmetries) of incorporating Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into IFAD’s poverty alleviation strategies. LIRNEasia’s own research has revealed considerable livelihood benefits for farmers from just the provision of real-time market price information to farmers via mobile phones. The presentation slides can be found HERE.
The IEEE-RIVF – Research, Innovation, and Vision for the Future – International Conference on Computing and Communication Technology took place in Hanoi, Vietnam at the Vietnam National University, Nov 02-04, 2010. The plannery sessions were on applied operations research, software engineering, human machine interface & imaging technology, computational Intelligence, information & knowledge management, communication & networking, and modeling & computer simulations. I presented out paper titled: T-Cube Web Interface as a Tool for detecting disease outbreaks in real-time: a pilot in India and Sri Lanka. This paper discusses the results from the pilot in India and Sri Lanka, namely the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP). While may discussed the science behind their solutions, we had surpassed that and were able to discuss the challenges in practically working the solutions in the real world.
While voice revenues are declining, it appears that broadband will save the day. But only the day. The theoretical maximum of ADSL connections is 869,190 at this time in Sri Lanka. Many of the fixed lines cannot be used to supply ADSL or are connected to government departments, pensioner’s homes, etc. which may not want broadband, so the actual market size is lower.
Call it the funeral of MNP or whatever. But it’s truly ingenious by any standard. Spreadtrum Communications, a Shanghai-based and NASDAQ-listed company, has unveiled the world’s first “Single Chip Quad-SIM Standby Solution.” That means – you can run up to four different GSM connections in one mobile phone. Caroline Gabriel of Rethink Wireless explains furthermore.
LIRNEasia‘s recent Broadband QoSE tests report Dialog Telekom’s 1Mbps postpaid broadband package (HSPA) delivers higher download speeds than what was promised in comparison to similar offerings by Mobitel and SLT. However, it does not maintain this trend in measures for latency and jitter. Although there is a difference in underlying technology which most certainly impacts performance, the focus here is on the comparison between what is promised (advertised) versus the actual speeds delivered by the operator, among other important quality indicators. The latest QoSE report compares three similar broadband packages in Sri Lanka: Dialog Telekom’s postpaid broadband (1Mbps); Mobitel’s Zoom890 (1Mbps); and SLT’s Office (2 Mbps). The results can also be used for regional comparison as these tests were carried out across 11 location in 7 countries.
Improving the efficiency and inclusiveness of agricultural value chains is central to LIRNEasia’s current research. NYT reports on Nokia’s efforts in this area. Unfortunately for little countries, they are focusing only on big markets. On Saturday at dawn, hundreds of farmers near Jhansi, an agricultural center in central India, received a succinct but potent text message on their cellphones: the current average wholesale price for 100 kilograms of tomatoes was 600 rupees ($13.26).
LIRNEasia‘s m-health research pilot project has been featured in the October 2010 issue of FutureGov Asia Pacific magazine. Led by Nuwan Waidyanatha, the project explores the use of mobile phones for early detection of communicable diseases in selected cities in India and Sri Lanka. The full article can be downloaded here or read below: Sri Lanka has completed the trial of a mobile phone project which helps early detection of communicable diseases. The ‘Real-time Bio-surveillance Programme’ allows data on patients and symptoms of illnesses to be sent directly from hospital wards to the epidemiological centre through a web interface installed on mobile phones. Under the present manual system, set up in the 19th century, it can take more than two weeks for information of outbreaks to reach the epidemiological centre in the capital.
Verizon will pay the U.S. Treasury $25 million on top of more than $52 million in refunds to consumers for overcharging them. This penalty and refund are due to the operator “erroneously” overcharging the customers for mobile Internet use. The FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement the $25 million settlement was the largest in the FCC’s history.
We’d be lucky to be able get wireguided communications to 10 percent of homes in the countries we work in. But we can reach 75 percent plus homes with wireless even now. So we’re all for getting fiber to neighborhoods and are quite agnostic about the access network as long as it’s wireless. In places where they got money, life is not that simple. The bills to pay for those who get the answer wrong are quite high.
Intriguing idea reported by the Economist about breaking down work into small chunks and getting people to send it back using their mobiles. The polling feature developed for LIRNEasia by Respere could fit into this easily, though Eagle may have done that in his application. Mr Eagle hopes txteagle will do its bit by mobile “crowdsourcing”—breaking down jobs into small tasks and sending them to lots of individuals. These jobs often involve local knowledge and range from things like checking what street signs say in rural Sudan for a satellite-navigation service to translating words into a Kenyan dialect for companies trying to spread their marketing. A woman living in rural Brazil or India may have limited access to work, adds Mr Eagle, “but she can still use her mobile phone to collect local price and product data or even complete market-research surveys.
“We told you so.” We said that the last mile was the key to saving lives; that focus had to placed on getting the warnings out to the potentially affected people; that they had to be trained to react appropriately; that all the fancy technology in and under the sea would come to nought if these key actions were not taken. Our collaborator Nalaka Gunawardene says it again in a SciDev piece worth reading: “What failed was the education process only some of the people fled to higher ground and one of the boats put to sea immediately after they felt the earthquake the right thing to do in these circumstances. Why wasn’t everyone well prepared to respond given the recent history of earthquakes and tsunamis in the region?” Nalaka Gunawardene, director of TVE Asia Pacific, a not-for-profit media group, hinted at underlying problems with the system’s suitability for its environment.
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