Rohan Samarajiva, Author at LIRNEasia — Page 177 of 182


New Straits Times – Malaysia News Online Unlike other natural calamities, the worst effects of the tsunami are now mostly avoidable. So following the catastrophe, countries around the ocean’s rim, helped by the United Nations and other partners, went about putting an early warning system into place. None of the fancy equipment and good intentions made a difference last Monday when a 7.7-magnitude undersea quake south of Java triggered a tsunami that smashed into 200 kilometres of coastline around Pangandaran. What ensued was a scaled-down reprise of December 2004: communities caught by surprise, the death toll mounting as bodies are uncovered and, most regretfully, alarm bells lost in transmission.
What will it take? 2004 December 26th 2005 March 28th 2006 July 17th Three tsunamis within less than two years; and the clueless Indonesian government can’t still get its act together. And faraway India is supposed to have issued a warning when there was no chance of a tsunami hitting India. CYA bureaucrat, I guess. A different error.

Reforms reduce disparities

Posted on July 11, 2006  /  0 Comments

LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO The above column presents evidence to the effect that: “Given enough time and competition, reformed infrastructure does reduce disparities among regions. The reforms that started to have effect in the mid 1990s, with the licensing of the fourth mobile operator and the two fixed entrants in 1995-96, the partial privatization and managerial reform of Sri Lanka Telecom in 1997, and improvements in regulation starting from 1998, did result in allowing the rural people of this country greater access to telecom services. Of course, it must be noted that the dazzling growth in the Northern Province (Jaffna and Vavuniya districts) was only made possible by the cease fire agreement of 2002, the lifting of the nonsensical ban on mobile telephony in conflict areas, and the courageous decision by Dialog Telekom to provide service in that region within three weeks of the signing of the CFA.”
This is the text of a talk that I am giving on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka in Belihuloya on the 7th of July 2006. A excerpt is given below: The world economy is becoming more knowledge intensive and communication dependent. Leaving aside the question of cause and effect, clearly the Internet and the old things that can be done better through it and the new things that can be done for the first time through it are integrally connected to the effective functioning in the world economy. It is not that we need the Internet to mine the gems this province is famous for; but that it is likely that those gems will fetch a better price if we use the Internet to market them worldwide. So this is the essence of the age of the Internet: the lowering of time and space barriers to those who have access to its full potential; the further marginalization of those without that access.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka’s biggest mobile-phone operator Dialog Telekom Thursday slashed outgoing call charges by as much as 50 percent as the firm stepped up its expansion drive in the country. Call charges within the network from 11.00 pm to 6.00 am will go down by 50 percent to 2.00 rupees, while rates for outgoing peak calls have been cut by an average 30 percent, officials said.
BBC NEWS | Business | EU plans crackdown on mobile fees “A plan to regulate mobile phone charges for calls made abroad will shortly be published by the European Commission, despite intense opposition. The industry is concerned that the proposals go too far, and even within the commission itself there are doubts. At present, most users pay far more to make mobile calls when they are abroad than they do in their home country. This is because service providers have to pay large fees for access to one another’s networks.” Not the highest priority for regulators in emerging Asia.

FDI bad for developing countries?

Posted on July 4, 2006  /  0 Comments

Our colleagues from Latin America have drawn our attention to the following article, perhaps because they think that our TRE (telecom regulatory environment) work is premised on FDI being an unmitigated good. We welcome the opportunity for a debate. Kevin P. Gallagher and Lyuba Zarsky, “Rethinking Foreign Investment for Development”, Post-Autistic Economics Review, issue 37 Abstract “In the 1990s, foreign direct investment (FDI) came to be seen as a “miracle drug”—a jumpstart to economic growth and sustainable industrial development, especially in developing countries. Policies to attract FDI became the centerpiece of both national development strategies and supra-national investment agreements.
Internet Calling Pressures Bells to Lower Rates – New York Times “The Bells still control the bulk of the country’s 180 million landlines and are far from giving up on what has been a giant cash cow. When pushed, they are even offering their own Internet-based calling, but these services are rarely advertised. It is cheaper to cut prices to keep customers, they figure, than to try to win back customers later from a rival. During the first quarter of this year, the number of traditional telephone lines dropped by 150,000 a week, according to TeleGeography. At the same time, the number of subscribers to Internet telephone services has increased by 100,000 a week.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO ‘Sri Lanka’s cabinet has agreed clear up frequency spectrum on few bands, as the government looks to attract new operators to offer telephony services at affordable rates. “The cabinet has agreed to clear spectrum in 450 megahertz, 800-900 megahertz, 1800 megahertz and 2-gigahertz radio frequencies, which will be re-allocated for public telecommunications networks,” Media Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa told reporters Thursday.’ Spectrum refarming is one of the most important and difficult tasks facing regulatory agencies today. The quasi-property rights enjoyed by users requires that they be compensated for the losses they incur when they are compelled to move in the course of refarming. One of the groups most resistant to moving are the military.

Not enough demand for city WiFi?

Posted on June 27, 2006  /  4 Comments

What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It? – New York Times “Despite WiFly’s ubiquity — with 4,100 hot spot access points reaching 90 percent of the population — just 40,000 of Taipei’s 2.6 million residents have agreed to pay for the service since January. Q-Ware, the local Internet provider that built and runs the network, once expected to have 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but it has lowered that target to 200,000. That such a vast and reasonably priced wireless network has attracted so few users in an otherwise tech-hungry metropolis should give pause to civic leaders in Chicago, Philadelphia and dozens of other American cities that are building wireless networks of their own.

Open access for new African cable

Posted on June 25, 2006  /  0 Comments

allAfrica.com: East Africa: Countries Agree On EASSy Project Model It appears that considerable progress is being made on ensuring open access is the norm with the planned submarine cable for eastern Africa. One hopes that Asian regulators also start paying attention to access issues on the submarine cables that land in their countries. The change with the EASSy cable did not just happen; it took a lot of effort by regulators and stakeholders.
Using ICT for Effective Disaster Management A hotel that was hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Ahungalle, Sri Lanka is the location of a conference that examines all aspects of the relationship between ICTs and disasters. One of the guests at this hotel on the 26th of December 2004, Dr Chris Chapman, a theoretical seismologist, wrote one of the best analytical accounts of the experience, which is on this PDF  document. LIRNEasia’s Executive Director Rohan Samarajiva and HazInfo Project Manager Nuwan Waidyanatha are participating as are a number of our partners in disaster work.
According to this intriguing story, Sri Lanka may become the first country in the world to license WiMAX operators. Leaving aside the wisdom of licensing technologies (as opposed to services), any action to shake things up in the broadband market must be welcomed. Of course, our joy will be that much greater if the TRC ensures that the WiMAX operators are given non-discriminatory and cost-oriented access to the SLTL and Dialog backbones and that open access to the undersea cable is also assured. Without these regulatory actions, one may get connectivity to something, but not the Internet.
Foreign Affairs – The India Model – Gurcharan Das “But what is most remarkable is that rather than rising with the help of the state, India is in many ways rising despite the state. The entrepreneur is clearly at the center of India’s success story. India now boasts highly competitive private companies, a booming stock market, and a modern, well-disciplined financial sector. And since 1991 especially, the Indian state has been gradually moving out of the way — not graciously, but kicked and dragged into implementing economic reforms. It has lowered trade barriers and tax rates, broken state monopolies, unshackled industry, encouraged competition, and opened up to the rest of the world.
According to this report, SLTL is pressing ahead on offering more high speed data services within Colombo. I think the correct amount is USD 2 million. If only one could offer high-end data services for USD 20,000! This news item should be of significant interest to our readers who want these services offered in rural locations such as Mahavilachchiya. Lanka Business Online
Bhutan was perhaps the last remaining integrated government-owned monopoly in the world. It now looks like it’s ready to end that unique status by licensing a second mobile operator. One of the advantages of being late is that you can learn from the mistakes of others. Other SAARC countries introduced competition earlier but could not get the regulatory preconditions right. It seems that Bhutan has the right ideas.