Lara Alawattegama, Author at LIRNEasia


Colloquium: Bangladesh TRE Study 2008

Posted on September 23, 2008  /  12 Comments

Conducted by Miraj Khaled. Bangladesh has had a monopoly since 1989. The sector was opened in 1996. The Telecom Act was enacted in 2001. The regulator was established under this Act.

Colloquium: Maldives TRE Study 2008

Posted on September 19, 2008  /  1 Comments

The study was conducted by Ms. Helani Galpaya. She first went over the overview of the Maldives, both in general and telecommunications. Previous monopoly partially privatized, and Dhiraagu is established in 1988 and continues to dominate the market. 10% of GDP is attributed to communication services, of which telecom is dominant.
The study was undertaken by Payal Malik. The liberalization was done in 2000, and there has been a large increase in the total number of subscribers. Mobile increases expediently from 2004, this is partly due to the TRAI allocating CDMA subscribers into the mobile category as opposed to fixed. Year on year growth scores show that the mobile sector is growing as well. Rohan: It is useful to get the CAGR scores for comparison as well.

Colloquium: TRE Philippines Study

Posted on September 12, 2008  /  0 Comments

The study was conducted by Erwin Alampay. The number of mobile subscribers rose significantly since 1998, this is due to prepaid being introduced. This made access easier to potential subscribers. Also, after 1993 the number of fixed telephone lines that were installed increased significantly and have remained constant since. The number of mobile subscribers are very low from 1991 to 1998, this could be explained by the high cost of obtaining a handset amongst other factors.
The study was conducted by Deuden Nikomborirak and Saowalak Cheevasittiyananond. The total numbers of subscribers have increased significantly since 2001 with the entrance of the 3rd player into the telecom sector. This is the concept of the disruptive new entrant. Until 2001, a duopoly existed and there was a system of price fixing. This changed with the entrance of the new player.
The Colloquium hopes to assess how the project can be sustained within the Sarvodaya arena. Chaminda Rajakaruna opened the presentation with a brief introduction to Sarvodaya. Sarvodaya is a widely expanded grassroots levels organisation. He went on to present the vision of the Deshodaya as well. Purpose of the intervention was to take the mssge behind Sarvodaya and Deshodaya to the media through text, video and audio.
Nuwan noted that this leads on from the earlier coversation that were had in regard to Early Warning Systems (EWS) and explained why classification is importat for people in this field. This is important mainly for comparisons between countries, institutions and technologies. And so a ranking should be established. Four examples were identified, Community based last mile hazard warning system Traceability of agriculture markets- trying to maximize the profit of the produce. Dam failure EWS Financial EWS- Looks at currency and banking crisis within a country.
Nuwan Waidyanatha will conduct a colloquium on the topic of ‘My spring break in Kunming: Classification of Early Warning Systems on the 29th of July 2008. The Colloquium will focus on the question that came up during one of the LIRNEasia brain storming sessions which was “what can and what can’t the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System do?”; i.e. what are its capabilities and capacities?
The main theme of the presentation was that traceability increases the value of the produce. This makes the product more marketable. Farmers dealing with the EU market have to deal with increasingly more stringent levels but this has also allowed those engaged in the traceability process to use it as a tool to market their produce. Are their other users to the farmer? Elimination of the middle man and hence a rise in profit margins A degree of knowledge flow of the technical aspects of traceability Ability to market the product as a differentiated good.
Please find the concept note added : sustainability-first-concept-note-for-research-version-1.pdf  Please note that this Colloquium is being Skypecast at https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/search.html?
The Colloquium started off with Helani Galpaya giving a brief over view of the agriculture project. Harsha de Silva then went on to give a brief overview of the agriculture market as it is… today. The relevant market is limited to 2.3 million farmers. But even this is not the entire focud group as they have to be entreprenial farmers.
transaction-costs.pdf traceabilityv3.pdf Please note that a Colloquium will be held on Tuesday the 5th of February to review the presentations that will be delivered at the Agriculture Workshop from the 21st – 23rd of Feb The Colloquium will be conducted by Shamistra Soysa, Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara and Harsha de Silva. The Colloquium will be blogged in live time and I urge those who cannot attend to participate virtually. The Colloquium will commence at 4 p.
lirneasia_colloquium_jan_08.ppt A Colloquium will be conducted by Robin Mansell on the 19th of January 2008 at the LIRNEasia office in Colombo. Robin Mansell, Ph.D., joined the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) in 2001 where she is Professor in the Department of Media and Communications.
The Colloquium that was a follow-on from the discussion held in Kandalama regarding KPIs was conducted by Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara and Shamistra Soysa. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are those that help in measuring the success of the day to day activities of an organization. This means that the KPIs would lead to KRIs. First the mission statement was reviewed, with comment on the structure to highlight the important areas. Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara noted the critical success factor that would feed into the strategies and thereby facilitate the mission statement.
The colloquium which was conducted by Ms Natasha Udu-gama and Nuwan Waidyanatha was focused on the material to be presented at the Disaster management workshop to be held in Dhaka. The Colloquium started off with review of the sessions and programme of the workshop. Sujatha Gamage stated that the term ‘Last- Mile’ should be used in conjuction with the First Responder Action title for Session III to maintain consistancy. Nuwan argued that this is not the case as the term last- mile is more related to the concept of communication rather than the last respondent. Professor Rohan Samarajiva questioned if the message relay function can be seen to be as a seperate operation to ICT networks.
This colloquium was conducted by Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara on a forecasting methodology for mobile penetration for years up to 2012 for Sri Lanka and Pakistan that is being developed. This method employs a simple mathematical process with less computational consumption. The analysis was performed using historical teledensity figures together with T@BOP data and demographic data for each country. A logistic curve was fit for each country’s data after estimating an upper bound for the mobile teledensity. The question was raised as to whether it possible to assume that people at the BOP own more than 1 SIM?