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Mobile Payments and Immobile Regulators
I am borrowing the title from a presentation by Chanuka Wattegama, from the Distance Learning Center and who is also a Research Fellow with LIRNEasia. The presentation in question was made at an industry workshop on mPayments and mBanking in South Asia in Colombo, which I attended as well giving a presentation on the potential for mPayments in agriculture. [...]
Talk at FAO on the role of mobiles in rural development
Yesterday, I was in an FAO panel at the Global South-South Development Expo 2011, speaking on the role of mobiles in rural development using case studies from Sri Lanka and India. When I mentioned that one should have some concerns about the quality of information and the lack of accountability in the plethora of mobile [...]
Afghanistan auctions first 3G license
Afghanistan has received 3 bids for the first 3G license. The new license for 10MHz of 3G spectrum was intended to have been awarded by November 2011, but has gotten delayed and the bids are being assessed only now. The existing GSM operators (Roshan, Etisalat, MTN, AWCC ) would be allowed to obtain a license [...]
New Taliban tactics of switching off phone towers
When I was visiting Afghanistan in early 2009, operators complained to me that the military and the NATO force would, from time to time, shut down their towers in some remote areas to restrict communications doing a military operation. Now its seems the Taliban themselves have learned the trick. LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Punctually, at [...]
Video: Farmers’ perspectives of the livelihood benefits of reduced information asymmetry in agricultural market price information
Since 2009, farmers in Sri Lanka, have been able to benefit from a new service called Tradenet which provides agricultural market price information through mobile phones. The service is a joint initiative between Sri Lanka’s largest mobile phone operator (Dialog Axiata PLC.) and a not-for-profit called Govi Gnana Seva (GGS). GGS which means “Farmer Knowledge [...]
Photo exhibition at LIRNEasia@5
As part of LIRNEasia’s 5th year anniversary conference, “research -> policy -> knowledge based economies“, a photo exhibition was commissioned at the event to capture different aspects of the use of mobile phones by those at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The images which were sourced from Flickr from both budding as well as [...]
Pradip Baijal: No lessons learnt from telecom
Despite the phenomenal growth of India’s mobile sector, broadband growth has severely lagged behind. Pradip Baijal, the former Chairman of TRAI comments on some of the reasons for this sluggish growth. We always spoken about infrastructure sharing for last mile. The most important infrastructures that can be shared is backhaul infrastructure. BSNL and other operators [...]
India woos West with education
BBC News, Bangalore Long known for its outsourcing, India is now increasingly marketing itself as a destination for affordable education. From his bedroom in Bangalore, biology teacher Vishal Bhatnagar uses an electronic pen to highlight the main parts of the human endocrine system on the laptop screen in front of him. “What I’m trying to [...]
Wireless: Seeking a voice in future of WiMax
By Eric Sylvers International Herald Tribune Published: October 9, 2006 MILAN A battle is brewing that may well decide how Europeans connect to the Internet using cellphones, laptops and other portable devices in the coming decade. Mobile phone companies, chip makers and manufacturers of wireless networks are pushing their sometimes conflicting cases for how the [...]
Baseline Sector Analysis of the BPO industry in Sri Lanka
The final report of the study that was conducted on Sri Lanka’s BPO sector is available for download below as a PDF file (931kb) A Baseline Sector Analysis of the Business Process Outsourcing Industry of Sri Lanka
Mobiles break bones as Africa aims high
BBC Story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5344654.stm Does anyone here suffer from Nebrols (Network Broken Limbs Syndrome) :-)
Beauty parade likely for 3G licenses in India
According to this article that appeared today in India’s Business Standard, TRAI seems to be considering using a base price + beauty pagent mechanism to award 5 licenses (of 5MHz each) for companies to introduce 3G services. The prduence of using beauty pagents needs to be questioned. The failures of 3G auctions in Europe in [...]
Why the Indian telecom regulator embraced competition
Sept 12: Pradip Baijal, the former chairman of the TRAI, puts forth his comments on TRAI’s experiences with competition regulation in this article on Rediff. Read the entire article HERE
Baseline Sector Analysis of Sri Lanka’s BPO industry
The current potential global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market of USD 11.5 billion is expected to grow ten-fold to around USD 120-150 billion in the near future. However, Sri Lanka only recently started emerging as a potential destination for outsourced work. Given that the BPO industry is in its infant stages in Sri Lanka, there [...]
$100 laptops to debut with Thai kids
Thursday, August 17, 2006 Posted: 1431 GMT (2231 HKT) (AP) — The ambitious project to provide low-cost laptop computers to poor children around the world is about to take a small step forward. More than 500 children in Thailand are expected to receive the machines in October and November for quality testing and debugging. Read [...]
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