LIRNEasia hasn’t worked extensively on the topic since our 2008-20010 research cycle, when our Research Fellow, Eriwin Alampay explored mMoney applications in the Philippines as well as the overall issues with respect to regulation (Financial and Telco) of such services. We even did some rapid response work, when Sri Lanka’s Central Bank expressed  their intentions to come up with new rules regarding financial transactions using mobiles. Chanuka subsequently critiqued the less-than-ideal regulations that eventually came out.

Two years on, what I saw at the event was that the breadth and depth of applications for financial transactions through mobiles had increased, yet the regulations that have come up still leave much to be desired by way of financial inclusion for the unbanked. The same arguments that took place then about whether it should be a bank led or mobile led model still seem to be in play. Disappointing indeed. But there is hope. Pakistan seems to have come up with collaborative model, using a third party switch(es) that would connect multiple telecos and multiple banks. Since this happend only last month, I still don’t have all the details, but what I appreciated was the apparent lean regulatory approach with clearly bifurcated responsibilities for the State Bank (Pakistan’s Central Bank) and PTA (the regulator) in terms of oversight and dispute resolution. One hopes our Central Bank is keeping an eye on the developments there.

The other issue that goes to the heart of the financial inclusion debate vis-a-vie mobiles, i.e. KYC [Know You Customer] requirements, still seems to be an issue, with different countries taking different approaches. I hope they can converge on a multi-pronged approach to KYC, with different levels of KYC for different transaction limits, so that the poor who will transact with lesser amounts don’t have the same burden of paperwork that prevents them from having bank accounts in the first place.

What we think is that the basic information collection (for example market prices) should be collected by government or an agent of government and made available as a public good. The private sector can then be free to process it, add value and disseminate, potentially for a few to ensure sustainability.

But the heart of the problem that we are concerned with is whether a one way transmission of generic crop “advice” to Farmer X will solve his problems or aggravate them. Diagnosis of farmer’s agriculture problems is no different from me going to the doctor to understand why I was having a fever that wouldn’t go away (when this happened earlier this year it turned out it was because of dengue which was only confirmed by a test).  We do not as yet have a well defined solution. But the answer may be a two-track solution. The first can be the standard one way dissemination of generic “low value” generalizable advice. The second is where farmers have to enter various important information (soil quality, past cultivation in the land) that may be needed for a diagnosis. This could help build a database of information that can be utilized to provide much more targeted and per pertinent advice to a farmer in the future. The tricky part is that this is a costly exercise if we depend on the organization will provide the  advice to do the data collection. So an investment in creating incentives and designing user-friendly interfaces for the farmers themselves to provide such information will go a long way in reducing the cost. Some of the required information will be hard for farmers to obtain (e.g. soil quality), but its interesting to note from review of existing applications of ICTs in Thai agriculture by Deunden Nikomborirak of TDRI (a long time collaborator on our research activities)  that relatively lower cost kits do exist.

The presentation slides can be found HERE.

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Punctually, at 8 o’clock every evening, the cellphone signals disappear in this provincial capital. Under pressure from the Taliban, the major carriers turn off their signal towers, effectively severing most of the connections to the rest of the world.

Read the article HERE

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 Service” has since 2003, been collecting and dissemination wholesale agricultural produce trade information.

An evaluation of this new service by LIRNEasia found that farmers were able to get livelihood benefits by using this system. With timely access to accurate and actionable market price information, farmers are able to choose the right time to harvest and take their crops to the market. This enables them to get a premium on price they get for their crops by selling their produce in the markets when supply is low. Furthermore the service has created demand for agricultural extension services, as farmers armed with an increased understanding of market price dynamics decide to be more flexible in their crop choice decisions. Hence this services has been aiding in coordinating market demand and supply in a country, well know for its high intra, inter and season price volatilities in agricultural produce.

In this video, two such farmers talk of their experiences with this new services and how it has benefited their livelihoods.

This research was funded by ENRAP, a joint initiative of  IDRC and IFAD.

An online gallery has been created to as a companion to the actual exhibition and can be viewed HERE.

We always spoken about infrastructure sharing for last mile. The most important infrastructures that can be shared is backhaul infrastructure. BSNL and other operators should be encouraged by the government and the regulator to share the backhaul infrastructure like optical fibre cable, backhaul spectrum etc. Virtual Private Networks are a way of life for medium to large enterprises all over the world and should be propagated for use in villages. Of 6.5 lakh villages in India, the majority are in the interiors. These villages need connectivity for various institutions like primary schools, panchayats, primary health centres, and so on. Most often there are different schemes working in parallel to provide connectivity to each of these institutions. However, the easier solution is to merge all existing project into one project and resources supporting each of them can be shared. This will bring down cost as well as increase penetration.

Read the complete article in the Business Standard HERE

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 limited amount of radio frequencies should be used to beam data from the Internet to mobile devices and back the other way, a decision that generally is left to national governments.

Read the rest of the International Herald Tribune article HERE

A Baseline Sector Analysis of the Business Process Outsourcing Industry of Sri Lanka

The prduence of using beauty pagents needs to be questioned. The failures of 3G auctions in Europe in 2000 has been mentioned as one of the reasons for opting for a beauty pagent. However the failures of those auctions stemmed from operators’ over-estimating the potential of a new and untested service. It is unlikely that operators would make the same mistake again – my argument being once-bitten, twice shy.

Economists would argue that auctions, with sufficent safe guards to eliminate (or at the very least minimize) collusion/signalling and to enforce rollout is the best method of allocating scare resources. I am not an economist but the arguement makes sense and the process can occur in a transparent and efficient manner. License allocation by beauty pagents don’t have a reputation for transparency. Recent auctions, such the recently concluded USD 13.9 billion license auction in the US (Washington Post article), have learnt from past mistakes (The FCC included some provisions in the current auction to take care of problems that emerged in the big 1990s auctions when one winning company filed for bankruptcy and succesfully took FCC to the courts to prevent them from repossessing their licenses- see the related IHT article ).

Lets see what TRAI’s final decision is, but at the very least I hope they provide sufficent justifications for their choice.

Read the entire article HERE

Given that the BPO industry is in its infant stages in Sri Lanka, there is a dearth of quantitative and qualitative information regarding the sector. LIRNEasia was commissioned by the Information and Communication Technology Association (ICTA) of Sri Lanka to conduct a baseline sector analysis of the BPO industry in Sri Lanka.

The study identifies factors that attract BPO-related investments into Sri Lanka and also potential constraints to such investment growth. Although not designed to be a policy document but a nuts-and-bolts study of an emerging industry, the findings are useful to understand the broad requirements of BPO service providers and facilities necessary to create an enabling environment for the further growth of this sector.

Specific objectives of the study include:

• Obtaining information on the range of BPO services offered in Sri Lanka
• Identifying factors that have made BPO companies locate in Sri Lanka
• Identifying the requirements and constraints posed by infrastructure and human resources to expand business prospects
• Identifying direct and indirect impacts on employment generation in Sri Lanka
• Identifying potential legislative and regulatory changes that are needed to promote the sector.

A draft report is now available for comment here:

Baseline sector analysis of the BPO industry of Sri Lanka ver 3.1

The final report is now available for download HERE

(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 the rest of the article on CNN