Politicians are not known for strict adherence to truth, but I personally thought the Minister of Science and Technology Tissa Vitarana being a man of science was cut from different cloth. The first time he stated that the original telecenters set up under e Sri Lanka (Vishva Gnana Kendra or VGKs) were in urban areas and that after the government changed in 2004, the decision was taken to take them to rural areas (renamed as Nenasala), I blamed not him, but the flunkies at the ICT Agency who did not give him the true facts. None of the VGKs were in major urban centers, while some Nenasalas are in the centers of major cities (e.g., one inside the Dalada Maligawa premises and another inside the Natha…

It appears that the India-Sri Lanka joint venture in business process outsourcing is having a hard time because Sri Lankans are difficult to train. The LBO article is worth a read, but here is a key quote.

Revenues had fallen as the US recession took its toll on the auto and restaurant businesses which comprised the bulk of its customers but that the number of clients was growing, JKH said.

Roy also said it was important for Sri Lanka to expand higher education and technology training institutions to ensure the supply of trained people if the country wants to attract more BPO business.

He said Sri Lanka had the highest number of British-qualified accountants outside Britain and should capitalise on its own strengths instead of trying to compete with…

A recently released World Bank report states that mobile prices in Sri Lanka dropped by 43%, the world’s highest, in 2004-06. Next were Uzbekistan and Chad at -37% and -31% respectively.

In an informal interview with well-known journalist and blogger Frederick Noronha at the 3rd PAN ALL Partners’ Conference held in June, Rohan Samarajiva explains the importance of wireless technology, particularly for business-related purposes, based on T@BOP findings for 2008. He emphasizes that when comparing the effectiveness of different communication telephonies, one needs to go beyond measuring indicators of “volume” to that of “value”; furthermore, he emphasizes that within telephony itself, “one call is not the same as another call” (e.g. a call saying “I am here” cannot be compared to a call made to communicate an emergency).

LIRNEasia’s most recent colloquium, Mobile 2.0: m-money for the unbanked was held via Skype.  Erwin Alampay (PhD) , LIRNEasia research fellow, presented his working paper  mobile 2.0 on m-money, from Manila, Philippines, via Skype to participants in three separate locations: Colombo, Sri Lanka (at LIRNEasia’s office), Yunnan, China and Bangkok, Thailand.

Unlike previous virtual colloquia, where presenters (as well as participants) were abroad, this time, we were able to rely 100% on the Skype conference call. Just a few months ago for similar colloquia, we had to connect to the speaker through a (costly) overseas call on our fixed line phone.   Though Skype’s Call Conferencing facility was available at that time, call quality was poor and smooth connectivity was rare.

We connected to Erwin through Skype calling, and other…

In other countries, government are focusing on removing electronic equipment from the waste stream, basically requiring the equipment vendors to take the unwanted equipment back.

Since January, Washington State residents and small businesses have been allowed to drop off their televisions, computers and computer monitors free of charge to one of 200 collection points around the state. They have responded by dumping more than 15 million pounds of electronic waste, according to state collection data. If disposal continues at this rate, it will amount to more than five pounds for every man, woman and child per year.

In Sri Lanka, the Environment Ministry is collecting massive amounts of money from mobile usage, in the name of recycling mobile phones. There are more TV sets in the…

Findings on public phone use from the Teleuse@BOP3 study have been published in the Indian media. An excerpt of one, published by Yahoo, India follows:

A new study says public telephones are the most frequently used method of making calls by Indian women at the bottom of the social pyramid compared to other South Asian nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand.

Indian men at the bottom of the pyramid, on the other hand, rely more on their mobiles, the study said.

Women can walk into a phone booth at any time to connect to friends and families without the fear of being harassed, spied upon or discriminated against in terms of gender.

Home phones, said the study, exposed the women to being censured.

‘The respondents said children…

The Shining Path did it; the JVP in Sri Lanka did it; the Taliban have made it a habit, and now the Maoists are on the job. What is this telephone envy?

Concerned over frequent setback to telecommunication, hampering operations against the Naxals, the Home Ministry has offered that the towers could be located in the premises of para-military forces stationed in the troubled districts or in the campuses of police stations.

Home Ministry officials said the highest number of 20 towers were destroyed during the last three years in Chhattisgarh, where last year alone 14 mobile telephone towers of both private and government networks were attacked.

Full story.

AT Kearny has issued the 2009 Global Services Index.

The good news for South Asia is that Sri Lanka has moved up from 29 to 16 and Pakistan from 30 to 20. India, of course, sits at the top, no change from 2007. The advances of Sri Lanka and Pakistan have been at the expense of the Northern European countries (e.g., Lithuania and Latvia), Singapore and the UAE. Other than Singapore, the rest of SE Asia, including Vietnam are ahead of Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Ghana, Jordan, Egypt are still ahead.

And where is Bangladesh?

LIRNEasia Lead Economist Harsha de Silva was recently appointed to a five-member Scientific Advisory committee for a two-year multi-country African research project, eAgriculture Network for Africa (eARN Africa): Effectiveness of Electronic-Based Interventions in Linking African Farmers to Markets. The project aims study the effectiveness of ICT-based intervention in linking African farmers to markets so as to inform policy decisions of African governments and stakeholders aimed at improving livelihood of smallholder farmers.

The project is funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) of Canada; an inception meeting was recently held in Kampala, Uganda, which Harsha de Silva attended. The project will be conducted in six African countries: Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Ghana, Benin, and Madagascar.

The  Scientific Advisory Committee constitutes:

• Prof. Chris Ackello-Ogutu, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Nairobi, Kenya
• Prof. Julian…

Two years back China Mobile bought Paktel for US$460 million. That was a legitimate transaction.

Last week two Chinese nationals were arrested while the authorities busted a bypass den at Islamabad. They have been allegedly the partner of an “influential Pakistani” in this illegal venture. It claims to have caused an estimated six billion rupees (US$74 million) loss to the exchequer. The news followed by a lively debate is going on.

Meanwhile, the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (ISPAK) has rejected a regulatory decree to deploy necessary countermeasures to block the VoIP traffic. Their argument and a loud debate can be viewed here

Some governments shut down telecom networks including the Internet to control dissent. Others do not. What are the conditions that give rise to the former action? Why do others not do this? Israel never shuts down telecom networks but Sri Lanka does. Why?

And yet the Twittering goes on. As states such as Iran crack down on online speech and organizing, clever netizens find ways around the controls. In Iran as well as in China, Burma and parts of the former Soviet Union, there’s an on-again, off-again process of citizens speaking out and states pushing back.

Of course, governments always have the nuclear option when it comes to the Internet: They can shut it down and keep it down. It’s what Burma did when monks took…

To many people’s surprise, the UK has decided to tax every fixed line 6 pounds a year to build “next generation broadband” throughout the country.

But Virgin’s network is limited and fibre-optic cables are expensive. The two firms can profitably reach only around two-thirds of the population, reckons Matt Yardley of Analysys Mason, a consultancy that helped to prepare the report. Connecting the rest at high speed will cost around £3 billion. So Lord Carter surprised the broadband industry by proposing a £6 annual tax on telephone lines, raising around £150m. That will be used to bring “next generation broadband” (a term left undefined, but probably an expansion of the BT scheme) by 2017 to the third of the country the private sector will struggle…

Good news for the many outside and inside government who struggled to get this done, including our colleagues from Research ICT Africa. The necessary condition for cheap connectivity is about to the fulfilled.

Last week, in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, a regional communications revolution belatedly got under way when Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, plugged in the first of three fibre-optic submarine cables due to make landfall in Kenya in the next few months. They should speed up the connection of Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as bits of Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan, to the online world.

Of course, as the West African cable showed abundantly, and then the landing of SEA-ME-WE 4 in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh did, the cable by itself does not…

It’s not only in Finland and India that they are returning fixed line connections . . . .

At the University of Washington, the communications department faculty did away with their landlines. (“Phones were our biggest line item,” said David Domke, the department chairman. “We’ve still got landlines in common areas and for staff, but we’re saving about $1,100 a month by getting rid of faculty phones.”)

Story. And the punchline:

“We found a way of saving money that doesn’t hurt the student experience, and I think everybody’s happy,” said Mr. Domke of the University of Washington. “With cellphones and e-mail, everyone can get hold of us. People think it’s funny that we’re the communications department and we cut phones. But it’s just a symbol, an old technology.”

…