Rohan Samarajiva of LIRNEasia suggests in a recent paper that explores the success of
the ‘budget telecom network model’ in South Asia that ‘the idea of making universal
service transparent by creating universal service funds …was a good idea in its time
..but experience suggests that it is an idea that has run its course’. He identifies two
problems:
Billions of dollars of universal levies lie unspent in government accounts.
Where money has been disbursed it has generally gone to fixed network
operators, mostly incumbents. All the while, people in un- and underserviced
areas are being connected, not by the subsidized fixed line operators but by
the mobile operators, whose poor customers are paying to support the
inefficiencies of the incumbents.

Always nice to be quoted, but even nicer if at least one of these monsters is phased out. Hope the UNGIS carries some weight.

LIRNEasia was invited and is represented by Ayesha Zainudeen, with a cameo role played by Rohan Samarajiva. The first prsentation by LIRNEasia was on the subject of what civil society can do in ICT policy and regulation. The basic thesis was that attention should be paid to industry fundamentals, rather than the easier topics of simply keeping prices low and increasing connectivity by subsidizing more. The short talk of less than 10 minutes was based on an illustration of an intervention by LIRNEasia in the policy debate in the host country on making good use of the submarine cable that is currently connecting a cable station in Cox’s Bazaar to the world, while the questions of connecting Bangladesh to Cox’s Bazaar and connecting multiple operators to the cable remain unresolved.