Tag Archives: Afghanistan
Applications now open for LIRNEasia Young Scholar Tutorials, hosted by NUS, Singapore. Click here for info on how to apply.
Telecom access rankings in South Asia
According to the ITU ICTeye, which is now carrying 2008 data, Pakistan’s surge to overtake Sri Lanka has petered out, leaving the Maldives (143 active SIMs/100 people) as the undisputed leader in mobile connectivity (apparently all adult Maldivians carry two active SIMs; there are only two operators in the Maldives), and Sri Lanka second with [...]
Will you be virtual too?
LIRNEasia might not be as high tech as some of the big IT players but in our own way we have made a successful effort to make ourselves a virtual team. Not a choice – that was the only way we could operate in multiple countries (For example, in this cycle, TRE surveys will be in nine [...]
Latin American and Asian mobile prices and methodologies compared
Mobile Benchmark Studies in South Asia and Latin America | L I R N E . N E T
DIRSI’s study on mobile price and affordability also adapts the OECD price baskets to compare the monthly costs of using mobiles in six Latin American countries. The Latin American baskets take into consideration call and SMS volumes [...]
Findings from Mobile Benchmarks South Asia, March 2008 released
According to LIRNEasia’s latest comparative study of price and affordability indicators in eight South Asian countries, Bangladesh emerges as having the lowest average monthly cost of using a mobile at all levels of use (low, medium and high) for different tariff plans (prepaid and postpaid). Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka follow closely, while Bhutan, Maldives [...]
m-payments coming to Afghanistan via Roshan
Vodafone to launch mobile phone money transfer service in Afghanistan – Yahoo! News
“This is really the early days, but when you see the low banking penetration in emerging markets, compared to rapidly growing mobile penetration, the potential is very big,” said James Moberly, senior manager for payment solutions at Vodafone on the sidelines [...]
Afghan Wireless Launches Per-Second Billing
Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC) has launched per-second billing on its GSM network.
In a press briefing at its Kabul headquarters, AWCC Managing Director, Amin Ramin said: ” We have ensured Microwave connectivity, widest coverage in the country, simple call rates, amazing call quality, superb connectivity even on highways, and today we are announcing the [...]
Etisalat begins cellphone operation in Afghanistan
United Arab Emirates company Etisalat began operating in
Afghanistan on Wednesday becoming the fifth mobile phone service provider and one of the biggest foreign investors.
With an investment of $300 million, Etisalat’s mobile phone network will initially cover Afghanistan’s main cities. Etisalat, the third-largest Arab telecom firm by market value, joins four other telecommunication companies operating [...]
Afghan cell-phone use booming
About 150,000 people subscribe to cell phone service each month in Afghanistan and there’s “no end in sight” to the growth, the country’s communications minister said Tuesday.
Afghan economy is predominantly rural, and trade and industry are badly hampered by crumbling roads and chronic electricity shortages. Not including the illicit trade in opium, the nation’s few [...]
Making money and doing good in Afghanistan
The Aga Khan Foundation is the owner of Afghanistan’s first mobile operator, Roshan. It is surprising that this social investment has not received a quarter of the publicity received by Grameen Phone in Bangladesh.
Do Business and Islam Mix? Ask Him – New York Times
Roshan has 1.3 million subscribers and is adding 60,000 a [...]
Afghans glow with Roshan’s one million mobile users
Dhaka, Nov 13 (bdnews24.com) — Telecom Development Company Afghanistan reached the mark of one million mobile subscribers on October 30.
With the brand name “Roshan” or light, the second mobile operator rolled out services in June 2003.
“We are very excited and proud of reaching the million subscribers milestone,” said Karim Khoja, chief executive of Roshan.
In more [...]
Marking the Shift from Relief to Disaster Prevention and Mitigation
Developing countries have tended to focus on disaster relief and rehabilitation at the expense of strategies to prevent or mitigate effects of disasters in the first place. To a politician, the political payout from handing out relief materials to the disaster affected appears greater than investing in a national early warning system that may not [...]
Colloquium on “Bridging the Divide: Building Asia-Pacific Capacity for Effective Reforms”
Bridging the digital divide is important. It may not be as important as ensuring safe water for all, or adequate healthcare, in terms of meriting investment of scarce public resources, but it is definitely important enough to merit concerted action to remove the artificial barriers to private supply. One of the best ways this can [...]
Report on Workshop on ICT Indicators, New Delhi
A report on the Indicators Workshop held in New Delhi by LIRNEasia in collaboration with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is available here [PDF]. The report provides a review of international initiatives and best practices, examines some of the difficulties regarding standardising indicators across the region, the challenges of measurement and collection of [...]
Workshop on ICT Indicators for Benchmarking Performance in Network and Services Development
LIRNEasia and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), with the assitance of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, co-sponsored the “Workshop on ICT Indicators for Benchmarking Performance in Network and Services Development” in New Delhi from 1-3 March 2006. The workshop highlighted the need for accurate, standardized and comparable indicators for the [...]
What is LIRNEasia?
a speech by Executive Director Rohan Samarajiva
In one of my intemperate moments I’ve said that Asia is a category that is of use only to international bureaucrats. There is little that the entire region holds in common. This is the area that has the largest concentration of poor people in the world.
Asia is seen, however, [...]
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