France Télécom, led by Stéphane Richard, is shedding assets in Europe, where phone companies are vying for a shrinking pool of new customers amid tightening regulation, to embrace faster-growing markets in Africa and the Middle East.

“It makes sense to exit the difficult Swiss market and may give them more flexibility on the cash-flow side,” said Giovanni Montalti, an analyst in London at Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux. The deal will leave France Télécom with European operations in countries including Spain, Poland and Britain, along with its home market, while its emerging-market footprint includes Kenya, Cameroon and Tunisia.

This could be the beginning of a good brawl, so let me first thank Steve for starting the debate right, with some facts wrong and slightly in rant territory. Without these elements one would not get a lively debate. I specialize in rants, but hopefully my evidence is better.

What development?

I am not going to take on the confusions inherent in Steve’s title. But it seems that there are (at least) two contending conceptions of development (broad) out there.

In the first, the “activist/scholar” knows what development is and engages in various 4D actions. I have, for the most part, kept away from saying I am doing x or y 4D, because that posits that I know what development is, and that my x or y actions will yield the development that is pictured in my head. Activists who thought community radio would yield development for the First Nations in the northern parts of Canada found that the first community broadcasting station played country and western music, more or less non-stop. Wasn’t what was in their heads, but it made the actual developees, the people of the First Nations, happy.

The second conception of development (one that I subscribe to) is minimalistic. It is about the creation of opportunities (more accurately, the removal of barriers) for people to do things for themselves. I recall being asked whether we approved of people using mobiles for relationship maintenance, as documented by Teleuse@BOP research. My answer was in two parts: the question was misguided, focusing on quantity of calls (because one call is not equal to another); what people choose to do with their hard-earned money is their business, not mine. I would answer differently if subsidies were involved, but I am generally not a fan of subsidies (except when I get them for LIRNEasia!).

Whatever one may say about prices, etc., one has to accept that mobile operators have given billions of people their first form of electronic connectivity. From my conception of development this is a great thing: it expands their opportunity space. Could be for good or ill, I agree. What I try to do is to further expand the opportunity space by catalyzing new applications that I and my funders think are good. Emphasize catalyzing, versus providing. Whether the applications will be taken up or not; whether the connectivity will be used to facilitate murders instead; that we cannot control, but using the tools of paternalistic libertarianism, we will try to make more difficult.

Bashee selection

It’s fun to have someone to bash. I know; I have the same weakness. For me it’s governments who have created the conditions under which operators function, as tax collectors, or oligopolists, or whatever. It’s operators for Steve. To each his own, but to have real effect, one must pick the right bashee.

First let us look at evidence on prices. The best indicators we know are the basket comparisons done by Nokia (but might be easier to use Nokia as a search term on LIRNEasia.net since the Nokia search is wonky). In 2007, of the 77 emerging economies, only four were under USD 5 per standard basket a month: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In 2008, the club had expanded to include, in addition, Honduras, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, MADAGASCAR, China, GUINEA, Mongolia and Malaysia (African countries in caps). By 2010, KENYA and EGYPT were in the under-five club. SUDAN and ETHIOPIA were under 10. So it is incorrect to claim that Kenya is the only exception to high prices in Africa. Prices have come down, even in Africa. If I was Steve, I’d be cautious about linking them to the prospects my death.

When one looks at the tax data, one sees a partial answer as why price are high. Governments that have trouble collecting taxes on their own are increasingly using mobile operators as tax collectors. But even with that (a condition that exists in South Asia, but at lower levels), adequate levels of competition can trigger a shift to the Budget Telecom Network model. This is what started happening in E Africa with the entry of Bharti Airtel. Guess who slowed down the process: governments. So the evidence supports my choice of bashee, rather than Steve’s.

The governments that created the conditions for the BTN model did not do it intentionally. They were out for the money that came from new licenses, some to government some to personal accounts. But the end result was a good thing, except now we have operators bleeding red ink and an imperative need to create clear conditions for market exit by those who cannot continue to play in the hard markets.

BTW, I do not believe that low prices are the alpha and the omega. Some upward movement from the levels found in S Asia may be justified. Currently, only 2.4 percent of household expenditure goes to telecom and Internet in Sri Lanka though of course the percentage would be higher in the lower deciles.

Operators are not do-gooders. If they were, they could implement the BTN model on their own. Their managers have the same kinds of incentives we have, as documented by Kahneman, Thaler, et al.: they fear downside risk more. So they are cautious, until the status quo becomes untenable.

They would like to maintain end-to-end control. But increasingly, it’s slipping out of their grasp. Skype is being advertised by Sri Lankan operators these days. The smartphone basically rips out a large area from the operators’ control. These are good things, but they were not done either by governments or by do-gooders. They were the results of the actions of other capitalists out to make a buck and other managers trying to keep their jobs.

So we are talking really about wireless platforms provided by competing operators, not integrated mobile networks as such or mobile handsets of the present (what are they anyway?). So when Steve talks of the big lesson of “the future is going to be a surprise and tying the notion of development to a particular mode of technology is as bad an idea now as it was in 1999,” he is bashing a straw horse. The networks are changing, the devices are changing, who controls them is changing, none of it with a central plan. Steve may know people who are tying their plans to some particular static technology, but I do not. He must have made a special effort.

Mobile industry subsidies

Observer bias is at play here. In the larger scheme of things, the subsidies offered by the GSMA and their members are peanuts. If you place those numbers in the context of what these companies invest and their turnover, you’ll be looking at several zeros after the decimal. They don’t really matter much. It is only those who live in the world of pilot projects who think these are significant.

LIRNEasia was founded on the premise that lowering leased line prices (which we have successfully catalyzed throughout S Asia, and part of SE Asia) was more important than 10,000 subsidized telecenters. So I cannot but agree with Steve that reducing prices is the key. But not only of voice and SMS, but of data as well. Why get hung up on specific services (the straw horse again?)? The BTN model is not for voice, or SMS. It can work with data as well.

Standard Chartered Bank and MasterCard have developed a solution that will allow people in the East African nation to make online purchases with their cellphones, obviating the need for a credit or debit card.

The service, called PayOnline, will soon be expanded to other African markets. It allows Airtel Money customers to make online purchases via a 16-digit code, much like using a credit card. Merchants have to accept MasterCard as a payment mechanism.

The service allows customers to make online purchases by requesting a single-use card number from a menu of options on their phones. Airtel Money then generates a 16-digit number that is valid for 24 hours and a single purchase.

Report.

To register, a farmer must provide exhaustive details about his farm, household and income, as well as the things he needs most to improve his livelihood. Many in the area still wonder why Grameen isn’t providing them with physical aid, but Simon tells me he is working to change that mindset. “Let someone give you knowledge, then you are rich. That’s what I say to my farmers.”

Is the knowledge he receives from Grameen actually making a difference? Simon nods. “Especially this year. We were warned there was going to be a long drought so many of our farmers took their time before putting down their seeds. That was what happened and our farmers were able to save their seeds.”

Simon has also founded a farming collective and now, with Grameen’s help, they are bulking their produce and selling it at a good price to the World Food Programme, which will use it for relief work in the region. The CKW programme has had a rocky start in Gulu, and challenges lie ahead, but in the fields that Simon Obwoya monitors with his treasured smartphone, it is beginning to yield tangible results.

Two ideas that came up:

Most people who think about m apps are still stuck on the Apple App Store. Great model but requires two things LIRNEasia’s people (BOP in emerging Asia) do not have at the present time: smartphones and credit cards to make payments from. I told some people I talked to about the solution that has been developed in Sri Lanka by hSenid.

People who develop apps are, stereotypically, 19 year old male geeks. They will, naturally, develop apps for people like them. Unless someone intervenes, nothing much will be developed for people at the BOP. Not because of bad intention, but because of ignorance. How can this problem be addressed.

I suggested to the people running the mLab (a World Bank funded initiative to encourage m applications) that they talk to our sister organization, Research ICT Africa, and commission them to do prepare innovator briefs, based on their extensive knowledge of what people in Africa actually do with their mobiles.

If innovators in Asia want this kind of information, they can always look at our Teleuse@BOP research, or ask us to do innovator briefs.

I.B.M. will supply the computing technology and services for an upgraded cellphone network across 16 nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Its customer is India’s largest cellphone operator, Bharti Airtel, which paid $9 billion a few months ago for most of the African assets of Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Company, or Zain.

Under the 10-year agreement, I.B.M. will handle customer service for Bharti and provide the hardware, software and services to run everything from billing and call-traffic management to delivering new services like music and video. The deal takes the broad partnership between Bharti and I.B.M., begun in 2004, beyond India. I.B.M. is not disclosing the dollar size of the deal, but analysts estimate it at more than $1.5 billion over the decade-long span.

The latest issue features an e-interview with LIRNEasia’s CEO Rohan Samarajiva, but it is not the only reason why we thought of highlighting the issue. The content is interesting and very readable. We publish two e-interviews from July 2010 issue here fully, as they are not available on public domain.

Apart from Samarajiva, This issue carried e-interviews with Alison Gillwald, Indra de Lanerolle, Christoph Stork and Muriuki Mureithi.

If you are interested in future issues please register at http://lists.apc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chakula

The need for competitive research for policy influence
e-interview with Alison Gillwald

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“High quality, rigorous research…is required to compete and complement with each other for policy influence… In mature economies researchers from multiple universities would be debating and refining the positions governments should be taking on everything from regulating next generation networks to demand stimulation for broadband.”
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Alison Gillwald is Executive Director of RIA. She is also Adjunct Professor at the UCT Graduate School of Business, Management of Infrastructure Reform and Regulation, and a member of CPRafrica’s organisation and selection committee.

CHAKULA: You have just held the CPRafrica conference in Cape Town. What are you hoping to achieve through the conference?

ALISON GILLWALD [AG]: There is almost no scholarly research being undertaken in the field of ICT policy and regulation on the continent. A Google scholar search on the subjects throws up around five scholars on the continent who are published in peer reviewed or accredited journals. It is this kind of high quality, rigorous research that is required to compete and complement with each other for policy influence. In mature economies researchers from multiple universities would be debating and refining the positions governments should be taking on everything from regulating next generation networks to demand stimulation for broadband. Although there are pockets of applied research being undertaken there is no tradition of critical intellectual engagement in this area on the continent. The purpose of CPRafrica is to provide a forum for nurturing and showcasing research in the area of ICT policy and regulation on the continent and enhancing its quality through rigorous academic review and debate. The conference is complemented by a young scholars programme to expose young scholars who may be excluded from such peer-review, paper-acceptance-only style conferences without such a category. Some of these are part of the IDRC- [International Development Research Centre] funded PhD programme to encourage doctoral research in ICT policy and regulation. The idea here is to build a cadre of policy intellectuals on the continent able to critically engage government on the basis of relevant research and contribute meaningfully to research and policy excellence. This will further enhance Africa’s standing in international research and governance fora, in which its participation has historically been suboptimal.

CHAKULA: Reviewing some of the papers presented at the conference, it strikes me that there are a couple of threads that are emerging. Two in particular stand out: the notion of “innovation” in the telecommunications space, and the challenges around convergence and policy when two distinct sectors with different ways of doing things are brought into conflict with each other. I also went back to Research ICT Africa’s 2008 M-banking policy paper, which raises similar themes, and I would like to use that as a starting point. First, on the issue of ‘innovation’. In the M-banking paper, the following assertion is made: “Policy-makers and regulators need to ensure that evolving systems serve the broader objectives of economic growth and development as well as protect consumer interests, while creating an environment that encourages and rewards innovation”. In what ways can policy inhibit or encourage innovation in the telecommunication’s sector?

AG: Indeed, providing certainty to investors and operators while retaining the levels of flexibility to enable innovation in a fast-changing environment is one of the most difficult balancing acts that policy-makers and regulators have to perform. I think the linkages and catalysts between technology, market and regulatory innovation are becoming clearer all the time. New technologies and service offerings have prized open markets and the entry into less policy and regulatory constrained markets has made taking certain technologies to market more viable. This has triggered further possibilities across historically distinct platforms, not only between broadcasting and telecommunications, but between fixed and mobile services and even entirely separate sectors such as telecommunications and banking. The challenges to the expansion of such services are really regulatory now rather than technological – and that is not to say that one does not want or need public interest regulation either in the telecommunications or banking sector, but it has to be done in new, innovative ways that enable to extension of these services to those who currently don’t enjoy them. Once these various forces are unleashed they are able to intersect and create new opportunities and innovative ways of doing things that have not been done before.

CHAKULA: Innovation here seems necessarily to be tied to market gain – the objective is to increase or capture market share. In both your M-banking paper, and the case study of the mobile operator One Network in Kenya, preconditions exists that facilitate innovation. With M-banking there are low-income earners who are ‘unbanked’ and who could benefit from some kind of low-cost transactional instrument, and with One Network, there is a significant level of cross-border traffic that makes a seamless network attractive.
AG: It is true that innovation is often driven by market forces and pursuit of profits, and, traditionally, with new technologies have focused on high-end markets. But much of the ICT innovation we are witnessing in developing markets is focused on what has been referred to as the ‘gold at the bottom of the pyramid’ – very profitable turn-over of high volumes of sometimes minuscule margins on products that, by breaking them up or making them available at cost, the masses at the bottom of the economic and social pyramid can enjoy things like pre-paid phone vouchers, or transferable airtime vouchers. And many of these products have been commercialised innovative practices by the poor in order to access and affordably use communications services – such as missed calls, multiple sim card usage that allows for same net rates, or ‘plastic roaming’.

CHAKULA: If we consider Indra de Lanerolle’s fascinating case study on the South African convergence scenario, we see two sectors (broadcast and telecommunications) in conflict with each other because policy decisions are made according to different frameworks: simply put, economic versus public interest. In fact, Indra does seem to suggest that these are in competition with each other, and resolves this in an interesting way. It feels hard to believe that ‘consumer interest’ is the same as ‘public interest’?

AG: I think with the shift from public utilities to competitive markets many of the public interest objectives of delivery and service are met through serving the consumer interest. Nevertheless there is public interest regulation that is required to improve wider and collective consumer welfare – to provide access to ‘uneconomic areas’ for example – though with new more cost-effective, rapidly deployable wireless services, this concept in markets that enable competitive entry is regularly not proving to be the case. But as long as we have the large number of poor that we do, we will need some level of social regulation – even though a lot of the current pent-up demand could be met with greater market efficiency (more competitive markets offering better prices). And then there are the more traditional content regulation issues either to restrict certain ‘harmful’ content or activities or to enable it, such as local content regulation. That too may be found to be highly profitable, but may need either protection or encouragement.

CHAKULA: Indra’s paper, like your M-banking policy paper, shows that regulating convergence is tricky because of the ‘convergence’ of two or even more sectors; whether broadcast/telecommunications or telecommunications/banking etc. What are some of the key challenges that policy-makers can expect to face in Africa?

AG: The key challenge for African regulators is that they are still trying to deal with legacy regulation around first and second-generation infrastructure and access. At the same time, if they do not want the agenda to be set for them in international fora, they need to deal with next-generation issues, not only of converged IP [internet protocol] networks and services and the next-generation regulation issues of network and service-neutral regimes, but of cross-cutting issues of electronic commerce frameworks, intellectual copyright rights, security and privacy issues, and so on. And you have to do it all or be left behind…

CHAKULA: One frustration is that when one reads a good paper that seems to offer a solution to a problem, one is also met with the feeling that those with decision-making powers are probably not going to read that paper, or seriously consider its arguments. Do you feel the same? If so, how do you think CPRafrica picks up on this challenge? Is it just a case of repeating issues until policy-makers take them on board?

AG: No. CPRafrica is one of several strategic strands towards having evidence-based ICT policy on the continent. This is about organic and indigenous knowledge creation and contribution, at the national level, at the level of regional association and continentally, and also about global engagement and influence. For too long have the solutions come from the developed world. Of course, there are lessons to be learnt and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we also have different challenges and Africa has demonstrated remarkably innovative responses to these when they are informed by sound policy, effective regulation or thorough and appropriate business plans. The indicator research done by RIA and its analysis in order to assess policy and regulatory outcomes is fed into several initiatives, globally and locally. RIA provides the only comprehensive public domain demand-side data on ICT access and usage on the continent. This is used in national, regional and continental meetings on ICTs, and in the database and reports of multilateral agencies such as the OECD and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to better inform their understanding of developments in Africa. It is true that sometime decision-makers do not like to hear of the widespread policy and institutional failure on the continent, but many do – especially those that are rapidly improving and beginning to see the rewards of their reforms. This research is also used to develop training curricula that address the needs of policy and regulators in a developing country context. So, for example, as part of the global research and training collaborative LIRNE.net we conduct a professional development course on alternative regulatory strategies at the UCT Graduate School of Business Infrastructure Reform and Regulation Programme to build institutional capacity on the continent. So CPRafrica is just one arm of a multi-pronged strategy of research and education, institutional capacity building and technical assistance and dissemination and advocacy, through our website database, policy papers and workshop and public presentations.

CHAKULA: What is the way forward for the conference? Will there be more?

AG: Yes, in order to build and sustain this much-needed capacity we will have to find a way for CPRafrica to become an annual institution.

Related links:

M-Banking the Unbanked: RIA Policy Paper No. 4:

http://www.researchictafrica.net/new/images/uploads/RIA_Mobile-banking.pdf

CPRafrica conference details: http://www.researchictafrica.net/index.php/news/38-cprafrica-looking-back-at-a-decade-of-communications-reform-looking-forward-to-2020
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Innovation through competition: the budget telecom network model
e-interview with Rohan Samarajiva

Paper link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1564529

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“The status quo must be unbearable.”
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Rohan Samarajiva is the Chair and CEO of Lirnasia. His paper, “How the developing world may participate in the global Internet Economy: Innovation driven by competition” was presented at a workshop organised by the OECD and InfoDev in Paris, 10-11 September 2009.

CHAKULA: In your paper, you talk about the Budget Telecom Network Model (BTNM), which is brought about by competition allowing operators to reduce the transaction costs of low-end clients. This, as you point out, is different to the standard Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) model. How does it make the ARPU model redundant?

Rohan Samarajiva [RS]: ARPU is a short-hand that outside observers use to see if the firm is doing well, whether its prospects are good, etc. It is, like any indicator, imperfect. You get it by taking total revenue (preferably without extras like roaming) and dividing by number of subscribers. Of course no one really knows what a subscriber is any more, with even poor people holding up to five SIMs, foreigners having SIMs, no agreement on what an active SIM is and so on. You can get better results by looking at revenue per minute. Take total revenue (less roaming and other stuff) and divide by Average Minutes of Usage per User per Month (MOU). This is a better indicator. But investment analysts are still not used to this and it would require disclosing MOUs to calculate.

CHAKULA: Can ARPU be used as a business model?

[RS]: Operators do not actually do much with the ARPU. It is not a business model as such, just an indicator. But getting more from each subscriber (if this is known) is not a bad idea. Just that it does not predict whether the company will make money or not. The best indicator for that is EBITDA [Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization] margin. Sri Lanka in 2007 had an operator with LKR311 (approximately USD3 at the time) ARPU making close to 50% EBITDA margin. In the end, the success of a business model lies in whether it generates profit.

CHAKULA: What is your understanding of ‘innovation’ in the telecommunications space? You talk of “business innovation”, rather than, say, technological innovation?

[RS]: Tech innovation is important, but it is not the only thing. Pure tech innovation is done by manufacturers of network equipment and handsets. That is good. Business process innovations (e.g. lowering the costs of base stations through software) are done by operators. These include technical aspects, but are not limited to them. Shifting from one business model to another (discovering the latter) is also innovation, but it may or may not not have a tech aspect at all.

CHAKULA: What are the preconditions for innovation, do you think?

[RS]: The status quo must be unbearable. The BTNM innovation occurred when competition got so intense that there was no way to gain market share or even survive without doing something new.

CHAKULA: Does BTNM have implications for increased access to broadband internet for the majority of people on a continent like Africa?

[RS]: Yes. The latter part of the paper is entirely on the extension of BTNM to broadband. Some headlines are that operators must have enough money from voice that can be invested in the 3G plus networks. Once the overlay network is built out the operators have to offer low prices. Prepaid sachet pricing is best, where one buys packages of connectivity in minutes or in capacity. Here, because of lower transaction costs and prices there should be an influx of new customers. This is already on offer in Asia. Africa has to lower prices. Access will be over mobile networks, using dongles or built in modems, for laptops and other devices, including phones. ADSL will be a niche product. Wireless access is the future.

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The trick for Bharti, which pioneered low-cost telecoms in India, will be to bring down Zain’s high cost base and win subscribers, say analysts — and to get subscribers to talk more using lower tariffs.

Bharti is famous for its so-called “minutes factory” business plan — the low-cost, high-volume model that has made it India’s leading mobile company.

Mittal said Bharti expects to be able to “substantially increase usage” and sign up more callers that would boost call traffic and improve margins.

Bharti’s strength is “bringing down costs of operations and prices”, said Romal Shetty, head of Indian telecom at global consultancy KPMG.

Zain has fared badly in Africa along with other Middle Eastern operators perhaps because their home turf has been heavily regulated. Most acted as comfortable monopolists until only recently. Bharti on the other hand has a good deal of experience in wringing out profits in a poor country where competition is growing. Africa merely adds more diversity and the potential for political instability to the challenge. It helps, too, that Bharti brings expertise of running low-cost operations in markets where consumers have very low incomes. It does this by sharing infrastructure and outsourcing most operations such as IT and running networks, leaving the risk of expanding to meet the needs of subscribers to others while it concentrates on marketing and strategy. And Bharti’s size and clout should allow it to pay much less than Zain for network towers and the like in Africa.

Bharti’s ability to concentrate on its customers should yield rewards in Africa, where innovations to bring down costs to customers have already helped to boost profits of other firms. MTN, for example, pioneered dynamic tariffs that charge users to make calls according to how many other callers are using a network at a given time. And Zain’s own scheme of “borderless roaming” lets customers move between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and make calls without incurring disproportionate charges.

Innovation can travel the other way too. We hope that Bharti will import to South Asia the borderless roaming that Zain introduced to the world.

The course is designed to enhance the strategic thinking of a select group of decision-makers in telecom and related sectors in developing countries and emerging economies. The aim of the programme is to address the many challenges posed by the current stage of telecom and ICT reform to governments, regulatory agencies, operators and other stakeholders.

For more information on the course, click here.

I am skeptic how they would take my presentation – all Asian experiences to an almost hundred percent European audience except for two gentlemen from Botswana. Developed vs. Developing world. Connected vs. Unconnected. Are the issues similar? Or is it a different scenario?

I am glad we find some common ground. Bridging last mile isn’t an issue as serious as in Asia, but ‘Cell Broadcasting’ generates an interest. A DRR professional from audience talks about their efforts to introduce the same in France, with some success. One gentleman from Botswana asks why not in Africa. He is also interested in SMS based solutions. I introduce the Sahana SMS module to him.

Other than that, the discussion focuses more on the issues technology creates, rather than ones it solves. They talk about ‘over dependence’ on technology and the problems old find using technology. “Technology is fine, but KISS” (Keep It Simple and Stupid) says one speaker.

One pleasant surprise was to find the Director General, Civil Protection, Netherlands highlighting the benefits of Cell Broadcasting in the closing session. I am not sure whether he attended Seminar F.

Download my presentation slides from here.

Nathan Eagle, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, believes that mobile phones offer more than a way to communicate. In his hands, they can provide windows on the social structure of communities, information that can lead to better public-policy decisions, and unexpected sources of income for people in poor countries.

For years, Eagle has been mining cell-phone data captured by service providers around the world. Using algorithms he developed as a graduate student at MIT, he strips all identifying information from call logs and looks for patterns in where people go and how they use their phones–patterns that can reveal how social networks are affected by outside forces. For instance, he is working with city planners in Kenya and Rwanda to understand how slums grow and change in response to events such as natural disasters and declines in crop prices. And earlier this year, Eagle began using phone-derived data to build a more accurate model of the spread of malaria in Africa. Previous models had relied on spotty information about people’s movements, collected in sporadic surveys. With a better picture of how the disease spreads, governments can improve the policies designed to fight it.

Full report is here.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/08/discerning-teleuse-from-mobile-transaction-generated-information/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2009/08/lirneasias-coo-presents-at-its-africa-asia-australasia-regional-conference/ http://lirneasia.net/2009/08/lirneasias-coo-presents-at-its-africa-asia-australasia-regional-conference/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:40:36 +0000 Nirmali Sivapragasam http://lirneasia.net/?p=5180 Helani Galpaya represented LIRNEasia at the 4th International Telecommunications Society (ITS) Africa-Asia-Australasia Regional conference, held on 16 – 18 August, 2009, in Perth, Australia. The theme of the conference was on”Mobile Technology and Broadband Application Developments – The Search for Corporate Value Chains.” More information on the conference is available here.

Measuring the Effectiveness of

the Telecom Regulatory and

Policy Environment:

Methodology and Results from

8 Emerging Asian Countries

Helani presented a paper on “Measuring the Effectiveness of the Telecom Regulatory and Policy Environment: Methodology and Results from 8 Emerging Asian Countries” based on findings from LIRNEasia’s TRE study in 2008. She was also a panel member at a policy roundtable on “Investing in African and Asian telecommunications infrastructure during a global financial crisis”. Her presentation entitled at the panel, “Universal Service Policy in Africa, Asia: Investments in a financial crisis”, can be downloaded here.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/08/lirneasias-coo-presents-at-its-africa-asia-australasia-regional-conference/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2009/07/recession-in-north-but-emerging-asia-is-expanding-%e2%80%93-the-economist/ http://lirneasia.net/2009/07/recession-in-north-but-emerging-asia-is-expanding-%e2%80%93-the-economist/#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:35:16 +0000 Chanuka Wattegama http://lirneasia.net/?p=5061   Anybody could have guessed this. It is unimaginable that entire world will go through a recession simultaneously. Not everyone can be losers for too long. There should be winners somewhere. For example, what would the US firms that find their human resources costs, logically do? They outsource to Bangalore. So the BPO industry in [...]]]>  

Anybody could have guessed this. It is unimaginable that entire world will go through a recession simultaneously. Not everyone can be losers for too long. There should be winners somewhere. For example, what would the US firms that find their human resources costs, logically do? They outsource to Bangalore. So the BPO industry in India grows. Peter’s loss becomes Patel’s gain.

The Economist today presented the evidence.

MOODY’S Economy.com has mapped the geographic spread of the worst global downturn since the Depression. All of North America is in recession now. In Europe only Norway, Slovenia and Slovakia have avoided a similar fate, although Moody’s reckons these countries are on the brink of a downturn. Emerging Asia looks cheerier, although the small export-led economies of Singapore and Hong Kong are shrinking, as are Malaysia and Thailand. Even the BRICs are looking a bit diminished, with downturns in both Brazil and Russia. At least India and China are growing (the latter at a pace that is causing worries about overheating). Data for Africa are spotty but the continent’s biggest economy, South Africa, is in recession. The IMF expects global GDP to shrink by 1.4% this year, with rich countries’ economies contracting by around 3.8%.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/07/recession-in-north-but-emerging-asia-is-expanding-%e2%80%93-the-economist/feed/ 1