Monthly Archives: November, 2011
CPRafrica 2012/CPRsouth7: call for abstracts and young scholar applications. Click here for details.
Estimating the number of Internet users in Sri Lanka; Facebook accounts as data source
Helani Galpaya’s work and LIRNEasia’s research has been drawn upon for a newspaper column. The novel element we had never thought of is using Facebook as a data source: One other metric is available to anyone, just go to facebook.com/ads and create an ad. It will tell you how many people your ad can reach. [...]
Extending the reach of LIRNEasia research: Broadband QoSE results in a popular blog
A good value-added blogpost drawing from LIRNEasia research Helani Galpaya’s work: These are only a few graphs and download speeds are only one measure. What’s nice is that we can now quite confidently say Sri Lanka’s Internet and not be talking about a niche product. There are at least 280,000 fixed subscribers (including dial-up, ADSL [...]
Hardening critical infrastructure: Lessons from Florida
Done for Florida’s electricity utilities, but applicable to other infrastructure as well. A short summary by Mark Jamison, but I assume a longer report exists. In the aftermath of the 2004-2005 hurricane season, when eight named storms caused a total of $15.5 million in customer losses from power outages, Florida embarked on a comprehensive reform [...]
Travails of providing policy input: The case of India’s National Telecom Policy draft
India’s government culture is among the most open to consultation in the region. Consultation is a legal requirement for TRAI. There is no equivalent of the Administrative Procedures Act, but nevertheless the Department of Telecom has given a month for comments to be submitted on the National Telecom Policy 2011 draft. All good. The problem [...]
No walls can stop tsunamis
I recall a meeting within weeks of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, convened by the current President (then Prime Minister), to seek the views of intellectuals about rebuilding. The most memorable suggestion came from the late Arisen Ahubudu, who began with a reference to Madagascar once being part of Lanka and ended with a proposal [...]
Wanted: Counter narrative to beat back the International Internet Union
Some time back I wrote about the dangers of the emergence of an International Internet Union at the behest of Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao. They’ve held a conference in London to beat it back, but apparently were missing something really important: a counter narrative. In his closing message, he said: “State-sponsored attacks are not [...]
On mobiles and development: Three reasons why Steve Song is off the mark
First, you must read Steve Song’s self-described rant. He is a thought leader. Will do anyone good to read his thoughts. What follows is my response: This could be the beginning of a good brawl, so let me first thank Steve for starting the debate right, with some facts wrong and slightly in rant territory. [...]
Broadband: Does truth in advertising exist?
One aspect that we tend to use frequently is advertised vs. delivered performance of broadband packages. This year LIRNEasia tested broadband packages in 10 cities across 6 countries, out of which the worst three in terms of offering far less than promised were India’s Airtel 2 Mbps packages (tested in Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore) [...]
What are the most important challenges for communication scholarship
Many who engage with Communication Policy Research south (CPRsouth), our primary vehicle for capacity building, are associated with the field of communication. It is a wide, sprawling field, which has experienced significant growth in Asia in recent times. An enterprising graduate student took the trouble to poll senior scholars on what they believed to be [...]
Is there hope for government postal services?
In Sri Lanka, the window for saving the post has probably closed. According to the latest Household Survey, a Sri Lankan household spends LKR 4/month on postal services and LKR 750/month on telecom services. You cannot build a viable business on that kind of money. There will always be a need to deliver packages (until [...]
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