The presentation was well-received and a long discussion ensued on how South Asia has been able to successfully provide affordable mobile phone services at the BOP so that ICT can play an effective role in agriculture.  The presentation can be downloaded here.

The other papers presented at the symposium are below:

• Maumbe, Blessing  & Julius Okello: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Uses in Agriculture and Rural Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Experiences from South Africa and Kenya
• Aker, Jenny: The digital provide: The role of mobile phones in improving efficiency of grain marketing in Niger (presented by Muto Megumi)
• Okello, Julius,  Edith Ofwona-Adera and O.L.E Mbatia: Using ICT to integrate smallholder farmers into agricultural value chain: The case of DrumNet in Kenya
• Al Hassan, Ramatu and Julius Okello: The eARN project: Goals, status, and the way forward.

For the Sevilla meeting, in addition to CPRsouth (represented by Rohan Samarajiva), ACORN-Redecom (represented by Raul Katz) and the inchoate CPR africa (represented by Alison Gillwald) were invited separately, signifying rapid growth in the South in the past few months. Of course, both Alison and a representative of DIRSI, which is a key constituent of ACORN-Redecom, were present in Beijing as well.

Each of the representatives shared their views on how they set about their missions. More important than the formal discussion were the preceding substantive presentations made by those from outside Europe, which highlighted the value of cross-fertilization of ideas. Each agreed that it would be a good idea to keep the cross-fertilization going and committed to come up with workable plans on how to operationalize it.

About 6.6 million people signed up for China Mobile’s services last month, compared with its previous high of 6.1 million in September, the Beijing-based company said. China Telecom’s total phone subscribers fell by 880,000, it said in a statement today.

China will accelerate the process of granting licenses for providing third-generation mobile-phone services to fixed-line operators to help them compete in the nation’s telecommunications market, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Nov. 19, citing Xi Guohua, a vice minister at the Beijing-based Ministry of Information Industry.

Read the full story in ‘Bloomberg’

Not everyone is convinced that Indian telecom market is developing fast. “In Beijing I see everybody having a mobile in hand, male or female, old or young and rich or poor..”. says one Chinese participant at WWRF, “…I do not see Indians using mobiles like that” (He is surprised to learn in South Asia not every user owns a mobile phone!)

What else do we know about the Indian telecom users? How far broadband penetrated the Indian markets? What are the future opportunities? R. Balaji of Midas communication perhaps answers some of these questions in his presentation titled Scenario Description and Business Opportunity Analysis – The Indian Broadband Scenario. He also explains some of Midas communications own initiatives to open broadband to the bottom of the pyramid.

Responding to the Asian challenge

ARE consumers in India and China too poor to afford high-quality Western goods? That used to be the old idea of doing business in these countries as firms offered watered-down versions of their products at reduced prices. Mr van Houten, of chipmaker NXP, says Indian and Chinese consumers are forcing multinationals to design sophisticated products that more closely meet their needs, and this is making firms operating in Asia better innovators.

By recruiting ingenious local engineers and designers in places like Bangalore and Beijing, and paying close attention to trends and practices in the market, firms are coming up with products and services that can be sold in other parts of the world too. Nokia’s engineers are finding that many Chinese and Indians access the internet mainly through their mobile handsets. Such customers’ requirements of their handsets may therefore be quite different to those of Western users, many of whom have computers at home and at work.

GE’s research lab in China has come up with a simplified magnetic-resonance imaging machine that costs a fraction of the one it sells in rich countries. The firm now plans to sell it worldwide. Wenda, a question-and-answer “knowledge community” product developed by Google in China to help overcome a lack of local content, was launched in Russia in June.

Unilever has long had a strong distribution network in India, but it has expanded its efforts with a division called Shakti, which provides Indian women’s self-help groups with business education and the chance to earn a living selling cheap sachets of Unilever products. The effort has proved so successful that Unilever introduced a high-tech element: the Shakti entrepreneurs now run kiosks with personal computers which villagers can rent to send e-mails and browse the web for things that can make a big difference to their lives, like market prices.

Alan Lafley, who ran some of Procter & Gamble’s Asian businesses before getting the top job at the American company, says many Asian firms began imitating what foreign ones did but are now “very innovative, especially with business models”.

Mr Lafley sees Indian firms shaking up the way foreign companies operate, and not only with back-office services where many began. Hours after he uttered those words, Wipro, an Indian pioneer of software services said it would open a new development centre in Atlanta, Georgia, that will report to its headquarters in Bangalore.

This is forcing P&G to innovate in other ways too. Mr Lafley uses the example of detergents in China, where the company is using a low-cost manufacturing method which he likens to Coca-Cola’s “syrup” model, which supplies a concentrate to local bottlers. P&G provides secret, high-value “performance chemicals” to Chinese partners, who add basic ingredients and packaging before distributing the products.

BANGALORE, India (AFP) — India remains the favoured technology outsourcing destination, an industry report said Sunday, amid concerns a rising rupee and soaring wages would blunt the country’s competitive edge.

A study by industry publication Global Services and investment advisory firm Tholons put the Indian cities of Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune at the top of a list of 15 emerging outsourcing destinations for global companies.

Kolkata at number five and Chandigarh at number nine were the other two Indian locations on the list, which contained three Chinese and two Vietnamese cities as well.The three hot cities for outsourcing from China were Shanghai at number eight, Beijing at 10 and Shenzhen at 13. Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi were put at number six and number 12.

Cebu in the Philippines came in at number four, the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo at seven, Cairo at 11, Buenos Aires at 14 and Sao Paulo at 15, the study’s sponsors said in a statement released in Bangalore.

The list is based on criteria such as scale and quality of workforce, financial infrastructure, risk environment and quality of life.

But it does not include established outsourcing locations such as Bangalore, the New Delhi capital region, Manila, Mumbai and Dublin that have had a decade’s headstart.

Costs are surging in the prime cities in India, which has earned a reputation as the world’s back office, as property values and rentals rise and wages increase at an annual pace of more than 15 percent amid a shortage of skilled employees.

Indian outsourcing firms are also feeling the pinch from an appreciating rupee, which dents dollar-billed earnings, forcing them to cut costs by expanding to less expensive locations.

“With the demand-supply gap widening, newer tier II cities will play a critical role in re-engineered globalisation models,” said Tholons chairman Avinash Vashistha.

“Destinations will need to provide greater level of cost effectiveness and operational efficiency.”

India’s outsourcing companies have thrived by winning work from companies in the US and Europe that sought to tap the country’s low costs and large employee pool by handing over jobs ranging from answering customers’ calls to risk management and financial analysis.

Pure-play outsourcing firms account for about 10 percent of the 50 billion dollars in revenue logged in the year ended March by the entire information technology industry, which also includes software giants such as Tata Consultancy and Infosys.

In 2006, handsets produced in China totaled 480 million units, accounting for a 47% share of global production. During Q1 of this year, handset production had totaled 134 million units – a rise of 34.5% on the same quarter the previous year.

The report states that the primary production areas in China are Tianjin, Beijing and Shenzhen – each capable of producing over 100 million handsets per annum each. Production of network infrastructure is also reported to have jumped by over 16% in the quarter.