Starting in around 2013, points Rohan Samarajiva, Bangladesh will enter the best period for realising the demographic dividend, with the lowest levels of combined child and adult dependency in its history. It will be the closest to the ‘pot’ shape. This golden period will last until around 2033 when the more burdensome adult dependency (ratio of adults over 65 years of age to the working population aged 15-65 years) reaches significant proportions.

What does this mean to Bangladesh? How can that be exploited?

It is here that information and communication technologies can make a difference. In the past, only agricultural and manufacturing goods could be exported. Now, thanks to telecom, even services can be exported. Bangladesh is currently said to have 30,000 persons working in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.

In 2005-06, it was estimated that India created 1.3 million direct jobs in the IT and IT enabled services sector, with another 3 million jobs created indirectly, to serve the industry. The proportionate numbers for Bangladesh, which has one-seventh the Indian population will be 182,000 direct jobs and 421,000 indirect jobs.

Read the full article in The Daily Star.

At Sri Lanka’s largest agricultural market a large projection screen overlooks 12 acres of stalls brimming with produce.

Traders at the Dambulla market consult the screen to receive up-to-the-minute pricing information on produce being sold in the market.

This information helps them negotiate fair prices at any of the market’s 144 booths, says Harsha de Silva, head economist at Sri Lanka-based LIRNEasia, a non-profit organization and IDRC partner that aims to use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the lives of Asia’s people.

In the case of the Dambulla market traders, de Silva says farmers can negotiate from a stronger position because information is accessible.

Such information is vital to ensuring agricultural markets work efficiently because it helps farmers reduce their transaction costs, according to de Silva.

But most research in developing countries has focused on helping farmers access information at the end of the production cycle — like the Dambulla market price screen, says de Silva. “We always focus on the selling stage… prices are important, but what about the information that comes before the point of selling?”

He says farmers can use information available at the market to negotiate a better price for eggplant, but if there was more information available before planting crops, they might decide that onions would be a more profitable choice. This type of price projection information — common in developed countries via the Internet — is not readily available to rural farmers in developing countries, says de Silva.

Read the full story by Angela Pereira at IDRC.ca here.

Exactly seven years from yesterday (still today to some), early in the morning on September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers took control of four commercial airliners en route to San Francisco and Los Angeles from Boston, Newark, and Washington, D.C. The hijackers flew two of the airliners, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. Another group of hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. A fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, whose ultimate target was either the United States Capitol or White House, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The rest, as we say, is history.

What 9/11 was to the West, ‘the’ tsunami was to the South. Caught unaware, more than 225,000 lives in eleven countries were lost on that fateful Boxing Day of 2004 by a tsunami caused as a result of an earthquake with that reached 9.1 in the Richter scale, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand were the hardest hit.

The two were different. The tsunami was a natural disaster and 9/11 was man-made. 9/11 events took 3,000 lives – and tsunami nearly 75 times of that. The tsunami did not create a recession as in the aftermath of 9/11 though the misery that it caused to millions of families and individuals in Asia was immeasurable.

They were similar. Both were universal tragedies that had an impact far beyond national boundaries. Both were turning points of modern human history. Both made the entire world stand still with utter shock and grief.

Then the inevitable questions: Can we let these repeat? Can Homo sapiens think of their common future in the blue planet if they are not ready to face the increasing threat from disasters – be they natural or man-made? What can WE do? What can I do?

What LIRNEasia did can be best presented in the words of International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in one of their electronic newsletters entitled ‘Research that matters’:

IDRC’s lead research partner was LIRNEasia, a non-profit organization that aims to improve the lives of Asia’s people by using information and communication technologies (ICTs). LIRNEasia has had considerable experience on the use of ICTs in disaster situations. The project also drew upon the extensive networking resources of Sarvodaya, a large village-based self-help movement in Sri Lanka, and upon the disaster communication expertise of Buddhi Weerasinghe of TVE Asia Pacific, Peter Anderson of Simon Fraser University, and Gordon Gow of the University of Alberta, among other partners.

The pilot study had two broad objectives. First, it sought to evaluate the suitability of various configurations of five technical systems, each with unique capabilities, for reaching Sri Lankan local leaders in an emergency: (a) a stand-alone “remote alarm device” incorporating a radio, siren, and flashing lights; (b) versatile Java-enabled mobile phones set up to receive text alerts in English, Sinhala, and Tamil; (c) “addressable” satellite radio sets capable of remote activation and of issuing targeted messages to vulnerable areas; (d) a warning system based on Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) satellite technology that delivers pop-up screen alerts to personal computers; and (e) conventional fixed wireless telephones linked to the public network.

These options were tested for reliability under varying conditions, reaction time, bidirectionality (so that alerts can be confirmed and false warnings minimized), and degree of integration into daily life.

This last-mile system aims to complement and “amplify” the Sri Lankan government’s national alerting function, rather than to issue official public warnings. Project leaders hope that if they can demonstrate an efficient lastmile mechanism, the government will adopt it.

This goal may be advanced by pressure from Sri Lanka’s coastal villagers themselves. The project’s training exercises heightened their awareness of the importance of disaster preparedness, and many communities have demanded that such programs be continued and expanded. Many of the Sarvodaya villages have started emergency response committees to strengthen local disaster resilience.

Meanwhile, the technology and the training have been tested in an actual emergency situation. In September 2007 an earthquake triggered a government order for coastal areas to evacuate ahead of a possible tsunami. Most villages did so, but at least one community — thanks to links with the Colombo hub by satellite radio and Java-enabled phones — decided instead to monitor the situation. The emergency response coordinators observed the ocean before mobilizing the people to flee. In the end, the tsunami did not happen. The government order had been an overreaction, and so the system served to avoid a costly and needless evacuation.

This multi-faceted research endeavour has drawn attention to the many technical and people-centred problems that must be confronted if such hazard alert systems are to work.

(Full document can be downloaded from here or available at the IDRC site here.)

We know that research per se will not prevent the recurrence of 9/11 or a tsunami disaster. Still, we believe will help by allowing us to be more prepared. We are happy that we completed this research. And we are happy that our efforts have been recognized.

This is what ITU’s Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Report for the Asia-Pacific region 2008 says. It was released at ITU TELECOM ASIA 2008, Bangkok, Thailand yesterday (Sept 2, 2008).

The Report finds evidence that ICTs and broadband uptake foster growth and development, but the question remains as to the optimal speed that should be targeted in view of limited resources.

The area in which the region really stands out is the uptake of advanced Internet technologies, especially broadband Internet access. The Asia-Pacific region is the world’s largest broadband market with a 39 per cent share of the world’s total at the end of 2007. In terms of broadband access, Asia-Pacific has made remarkable progress in the past few years, with subscriber numbers growing almost five-fold in five years: from 27 million at the beginning of 2003 to 133 million at the start of 2008.

In the region’s high-income economies, ubiquitous access is progressing through a competitive race to provide ever faster fixed broadband access. Operators in Hong Kong (China) and Japan have launched one-Gigabits per second (Gbps) broadband and triple-play services aimed at the residential market, featuring applications such as Internet telephony and television. The Republic of Korea leads the world in terms of the percentage of households with fixed broadband access, and no less than five economies in the top ten are from Asia-Pacific. The Republic of Korea, Hong Kong (China), and Japan also lead the world in terms of the proportion of households with fibre optic connections, essential for supporting the next generation of ultra-high speed Internet applications.

These high-income economies are also leaders in terms of third generation (3G) mobile cellular deployment. Fixed and mobile broadband technologies complement each other and users enjoy continuous high-speed Internet access. In Singapore, a ubiquitous Internet access plan combining unlimited 8 Megabits per second (Mbps) fixed broadband, 2 Mbps mobile broadband and access at some 800 Wi-Fi hotspots is available for just USD 35 per month.

At the other extreme, in most of the region’s low and lower-middle income economies, high-speed Internet access is limited to urban areas at best, typically expensive, and often not available at all. The regional broadband divide is striking, with poor economies having a close-to-zero broadband penetration, compared to that of rich economies where one in four persons is a broadband subscriber (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Fixed broadband Internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants, 2007

The gap in available broadband speeds between rich and poor countries is as wide as broadband penetration. In Japan, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong (China), the minimum advertised broadband speed is faster than the maximum broadband speed in Cambodia, Tonga, Laos and Bangladesh.

While in low and lower-middle income economies mobile phones have become a substitute for the shortage of fixed lines, they are not yet fulfilling the potential of broadband access. By the end of 2007, only Indonesia, the Maldives, the Philippines and Sri Lanka had commercially deployed WCDMA networks. The region’s two largest mobile markets, China and India, have yet to launch mobile broadband. By the end of 2007, there were over 120 million mobile broadband subscribers in the region (Figure 2), but almost all (97 per cent) were in high income economies.

Figure 2: Mobile cellular broadband subscribers in Asia-Pacific

While the region’s high-income economies are pushing the frontier of broadband bandwidth to a point where applications have yet to catch up, many Asia-Pacific developing economies are bandwidth starved, inhibiting the development of their information societies.

The ITU Report argues that broadband uptake enables a range of socially desirable and valuable online services in areas such as government, education and health. The use of broadband technologies can help overcome many of the basic development challenges faced by poor countries. The Report provides a number of examples where broadband connectivity has acted as a catalyst for development. These include the provision of education through distance learning in the Solomon Islands, the creation of jobs through business incubators for women in China, and the supply of communication services for disaster management in Myanmar.

Read the press release here. Full report is not yet available in the public domain.

(Please click on the images for a better view)

Rohan Samarajiva

Government is about the sustenance of hope. Yet in too many places, government is about killing hope: “you can’t make it because you’re poor/ your ethnicity is wrong / you aren’t from the right school.” When hope is dead, when the pie looks like it’s not expanding, and the game is zero-sum, the path that remains is hatred.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) shake things up. Not necessarily for the better; but with prodding of the right kind and possibly some luck and happenstance, the equilibrium can be broken in a positive way. So, I work with ICTs, not as ends but as means. Opportunity anywhere rests on connectivity: the ability to obtain credit/capital/knowledge/a job; and so on. Those who already have connectivity, and, thereby, access to various forms of supportive networks have more opportunity and, therefore, have more hope.

Young people in the villages of Sri Lanka (and possibly other countries) have a strong sense of being cut off from opportunity and, in many cases, see little hope. With ICTs, I see the possibility of changing that sense of exclusion; not necessarily of leveling the playing field, but giving them a fighting chance. Because I know the limitations of government, both from studying it and being in it, I have little faith in centralized solutions, except perhaps with regard to war and peace and big infrastructure (but highly qualified, even in these cases). I therefore tend to think less in terms of specific ICT4D products and services and more in terms of creating the conditions for decentralized actors innovating with ICTs.
This leads to a focus on infrastructure, primarily the hard infrastructure necessary to move bits around effectively and at low cost. Even here, I think the need is to create the conditions for more actors to get involved, not rely on monolithic suppliers.

With ICT infrastructure, one has no alternative but to deal with policy and regulation. So I work in multiple ways to reform policy and regulation affecting ICT infrastructure:

• When invited, I work inside government (Samarajiva, 2000; 2004);

• At other times, I contribute as a public intellectual; and

• Since 2004, I have been working on creating the conditions for more public intellectuals to contribute to reform of ICT infrastructure in the Asia Pacific through LIRNEasia (www.lirneasia.net), a new organization supported primarily by the International Development Research Centre of Canada (2006).

I believe that the innovative work being undertaken by LIRNEasia researchers across the region will create a greater appreciation of the value of decentralized decision making with regard to ICTs; as well as more effective engagement with the policy and regulatory processes. The results we have seen in a short time (http://www.regulateonline.org/content/view/810/40/) suggest that we will be able to demonstrate the efficacy of policy-relevant research and capacity building with concrete evidence.

Courtesy of Nuwan on the humanitarian-ict mailing list, I just watched “The Long Last Mile” on YouTube. Produced by Television for Education – Asia Pacific, it describes the project by LIRNEasia to evaluate Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination. Some useful points in an accessible format – redundancy in communication technologies, identification of key responders, community engagement in the process, the importance of simulation exercises for learning, and so on. Only 12 minutes long, it’s definitely worth watching. Plus, YouTube! Web2.0! Etc, etc.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Two publications, with chapters by LIRNEasia researcher Chanuka Wattegama, were launched during the GK3, third global Knowledge conferences held in Kuala Lumpur in December, 2007.

The biennial Digital Review of Asia Pacific is a comprehensive guide to the state-of-practice and trends in information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) in Asia Pacific. The third edition (2007/2008) covers 31 countries and economies, including North Korea for the first time. Each country chapter presents key ICT policies, applications and initiatives for national development. In addition, five thematic chapters provide a synthesis of some of the key issues in ICT4D in the region, including mobile and wireless technologies, risk communication, intellectual property regimes and localization.

Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book,  co-published by TVE Asia Pacific and the UNDP, brings together 21 authors – most of them from Asia – who share their experiences and insights on effective communication before, during and after disasters. Coming out in time for the third anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, it takes stock of communication lessons of the mega-disaster. Its core message: adequate planning can help avoid communications disasters when communicating about disasters. Edited by two leading Asian journalists – Nalaka Gunawardene and Frederick Noronha – the book carries a foreword by Sir Arthur C Clarke.

Pre-publication version available for download. The paper was presented at the Centre for Poverty Analysis Annual Symposium on Poverty Research in Sri Lanka (6-7 December 2007, Colombo)

Introduction:
Much has been said of the benefits of access to telecommunication especially at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’. The economic as well as social benefits from such access can, in theory enable people to graduate from poverty and also contribute more widely to development. Thus it can be argued that inequality in access to telecom services can lead to limitations in fighting poverty.

Many in the ‘ICT for development’ movement highlight the benefits that telecommunication, the Internet and other information and communication technologies (broadly put, ICTs) can bring to the table in the fight against poverty. A number of studies have attempted to demonstrate the impacts of access on income at the macro-level. However supporting evidence for these arguments at the household level is limited at best.

This paper takes a unique look at telecom access and studies the perceived impacts of direct access to telecom services, that is, telephone ownership at a household level at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ in five developing Asian countries. It focuses on the perceived economic impact (positive or negative) of telecom ownership in terms of the potential to increase indirect income generation capacity or save on expenditure or transactions costs. The findings reveal that some telecom users do perceive the economic benefits of direct access to be high, but this finding is not seen across the board for a number of reasons explained.

The paper is based on a large sample survey of telecom users at the BOP in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Thailand. Section 2 reviews the existing literature on the impacts of telecommunication. Section 3 explains the study design and methodology, and examines the difficulties faced in conducting a study of this nature and the methodological innovations undertaken. Section 4 explores in detail the impacts of telecom services at the BOP in the five countries. Section 5 concludes, looking at the policy implications from the study.

USC Annenberg | Annenberg Research Network on International Communication Speaker Series: Helani Galpaya

Join students and faculty for a presentation by LIRNEasia’s Director of Strategic Development, Helani Galpaya. Her topic: “Mobile Kills the Telecenter Star.” From Ms. Galpaya: “Much attention goes towards using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the lives of citizens in developing countries. Although telecenters (community internet access centers), which have become the bright “stars” in many e-development programs in Asian countries, do have a role to play in providing ‘higher’-end citizen services to people at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand, telephones are the cheaper, immediate and ubiquitous tool for Asian governments to inform, transact and interact with almost 400 million of their most needy citizens.”

Powered by ScribeFire.

The ‘original’ Mission Statement is:

“To improve the lives of the people of Asia by facilitating their use of information and communication technologies; by catalyzing the reform of the laws, policies and regulations to enable those uses; by building Asia-based human capacity through research, training, consulting and advocacy”

After the Kandalama discussions, two options are currently on the table for comment and discussion. Some kind of closure on this is required by the 23 July 2007, so LIRNEasians are invited to provide feedback by such time. The two options are as follows (but please do see the summary of the discussion here, plus the previous discussion on the Mission from November 2004):

Option 1:

“To improve the lives of the people of the Asia Pacific by facilitating their use of information, communication and related technologies; by catalyzing the reform of the laws, policies and regulations to enable those uses; , by conducting high quality policy-relevant research, by building capacity of current and potential policy actors and by proactively intervening in the policy process”

Option 2:

“To improve the lives of the people of the Asia Pacific by facilitating their use of ICTs and related infrastructure; by catalyzing the reform of the laws, policies and regulations to enable those uses, by conducting high quality policy-relevant research, by building capacity of current and potential policy actors and by proactively intervening in the policy process”

In addition, LIRNEasia is considering adopting a Vision Statement; the Kandalama discussion can be summed up as follows:

We should develop a Vision statement for internal purposes; it should be an internal distillation of LIRNEasia’s values, a ‘timeless beacon’ which gives us a future identity (versus the Mission, which tells us why the Vision will be achieved). Our vision should emphasize commitment to the public interest: example: “to become the foremost public interest research and capacity building organization in the region.” Feedback is invited on the to

The findings of a pilot project on learning how information-communication technologies and community-based training can help in responding to disasters such as tsunamis were discussed by community leaders and international experts at a workshop on “SHARING KNOWLEDGE ON DISASTER WARNING, WITH A FOCUS ON COMMUNITY-BASED LAST–MILE WARNING SYSTEMS” held on March 28^th and 29^th, 2007 at the Sarvodaya headquarters in Moratuwa.

These finding ranged from the difficulties experienced in communicating disaster warnings to villages when mobile GSM and fixed CDMA telecom networks were not functional due to conflict conditions to the importance of not leaving newspapers on top of sensitive electronic equipment which can overheat and shut down as a result. In terms of the five communication technologies that were evaluated across multiple criteria, the addressable satellite radio sets and the java-enabled mobile phones performed the best, with the GSM-based community warning device developed locally by Dialog Telekom, MicroImage and University of Moratuwa following closely. The VSAT based warning system did not perform too well in the tests.

The objective was not to declare a winner among the technologies, but to find out how they could be improved to perform reliably in the difficult conditions of Sri Lankan villages. In disaster warning, great emphasis is placed on redundancy and multiple pathways, so more than one of the technologies will be used when the project moves to the implementation stage. In any case, the findings of the field trials are now in the hands of the developers who are already making improvements to the equipment so that they will perform better not only in Sri Lanka, but in the other countries that are interested in these applications.

Among the significant institutional shortcomings that were identified were the inability of the project to retain all the trainers who were trained last March and the delays in establishing a 24/7 helpdesk function at the Sarvodaya Community Disaster Management Center. As the purpose of a pilot project is to find out what works, what does not work and how things can be made to work better, even the “negative” findings are considered extremely valuable.

The fact that simulations were conducted in all the project districts, except one, was in itself a great success in light of the conflict conditions in the East. A great surprise was how an advanced Sarvodaya village, Mirissa, which was designated as a control village (and therefore not given any equipment) managed to respond extremely quickly to the simulated warning by coordinating with an adjacent village. This was an example of organization and determination trumping technology.

The workshop was attended by experts from South Asia and North America, Last Mile pilot project participants from various villages, Sarvodaya district offices and LIRNEasia; representatives from the telecommunications, satellite and software industries, media professionals, and many people representing groups interested in early warning systems.

Conceptualized in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that claimed the lives of one out of 500 citizens of Sri Lanka, the Project was generated through the partnership of LIRNEasia and Sarvodaya with their shared objective of evaluating the suitability of information communication technology (ICT) in the last mile of a national disaster warning system for Sri Lanka and with its possible extension to other developing countries. It is funded by the International Development Research Centre of Canada (IDRC) and launched in January 2006.

The pilot project included outfitting and field-testing an initial 32 villages with various kinds of communications equipment which could provide features such as: early warning wake-up, addressability and provision of information in three languages (English, Sinhalese and Tamil). The field-testing actively engaged the 32 villages in assessing and reporting on the effectiveness of the system and equipment being employed. A number of the key hardware and software components were designed and developed in Sri Lanka or specifically for the project.

While effective, economical and appropriate methods of communication and their corresponding ICTs were investigated and employed, the emphasis of the Project was on community involvement with an accent on contingency planning including evacuation preparedness. Part of this process has included training young people from Sarvodaya Shantisena as trainers.

Sarvodaya and LIRNEasia intend to work with their multiple partners to further analyze the finding of the pilot project research and implement them in a broad program to make 1,000 Grama Swarajya villages of the Sarvodaya Movement exemplars of disaster resilience. It is of course hoped that these lessons will be of benefit beyond Sarvodaya villages and indeed beyond the shores of Sri Lanka.

- Implementing CAP in Sri Lanka

- Evaluation of Last-Mile Hazard Warning Information and Communication Technology Hardware and Software System

- Content Standard for Last-Mile Alert and Notification

http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?newsID=2020236857&no_view=1&SEARCH_TERM=24 
 
March 08 (LBO) – Indonesia, like Sri Lanka, sends its women to foreign lands to work as housemaids. The numbers may be larger, though the proportion is smaller. 
 
Telecom networks are expanding fast in both countries, Indonesia faster. The telecom sector is attracting massive investments in both countries as operators scramble to meet the burgeoning demand.

Generally, politicians and officials responsible for a sector are happy when it grows. Therefore, I was surprised to hear several senior telecom officials in Indonesia express concern about lowered gold sales supposedly caused by excessive use of calling cards by expatriate housemaids.

I could understand concern from those in charge of gold sales, but this was telecom.

I thought this was an Indonesian peculiarity, until I heard it in a different form from a Sri Lankan journalist. “The westerners had given us phones,” he said, “but not taught us how to use them: our people are wasting their money on phone calls.”

“What is waste,” I asked. I did not receive an answer.

Beneath both statements lay a concern about “wrong” uses of technology by people lacking the good judgment that the speaker was endowed with. But let us see what the evidence is on how poor people use phones.

How do people actually use telephones?

LIRNEasia recently conducted a five-country sample survey, involving almost 9,000 respondents, of how people at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) use information and communication technologies (ICTs). AC Nielsen affiliates in the five countries conducted the field research in July-August 2006.

This study, which used quantitative methods including a diary in which people recorded each call made in a two-week period including purpose, duration, and cost, provides unique insights on teleuse at the bottom of the pyramid, defined as the two lowest (D and E) socio-economic classification (SEC) groups in each of the five countries.

In Sri Lanka, the study accurately represents teleuse by 4 million Sri Lankans, ages 18-60 in SEC D and E, with a margin of error less than 3 percent.

Ninety two percent of those approached had used a telephone in the past three months. Of the users at the BOP in Sri Lanka, 41 percent owned the phone they had used. The others relied on friends, relatives, neighbors, and communication bureaus.

Both numbers are unexpectedly high. An overwhelming majority of people in these countries (that include a substantial part of South Asia, the largest concentration of poor people in the world), are familiar with the telephone. This allows one to infer that many of the world’s people are indeed familiar with, and have used, telephones.

This is a sea change from the claim made just eight years ago that half the world’s people have never made or received a phone call by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in a speech at an International Telecommunication Union event. (Read Speech)

The number that owned mobile phones or had a fixed phone within the house in Sri Lanka (41 per cent) was also high; in India, the comparable number was 19 per cent.

As recently as in 2004, the Central Bank’s consumer finance survey showed that 25 percent of the households had some kind of phone, fixed or mobile. The LIRNEasia survey shows that, just two years later, 41 per cent of the poorest households had some kind of phone in the house, indicating that the percentage of households with phones overall has to be even higher.

Sixty five percent of those at the BOP in Sri Lanka could reach a telephone within five minutes. Over 95 percent could reach a phone within one hour.

These people used the phone sparingly: 13 outgoing calls a month on average and 10 incoming. Obviously, those who owned a phone made/received more calls than those who had to go to a neighbor’s house or a communication bureau for that purpose.

Their calls were of short duration, 80 percent being less than three minutes long.

The principal purpose of calls for 65 percent of users at the BOP was to keep in touch with friends and family. Except in Thailand (29 percent), very few at the bottom of the pyramid used the phone for explicit business or instrumental purposes. In Sri Lanka, only eight percent reported this as the principal purpose.

Of course, the task of differentiating a call to friends and family from a business call in a not-fully monetized economy is not an easy one. Unlike in developed countries where roles are clearly demarcated and the division of labor is sharply defined, in countries like Sri Lanka, especially at the bottom of the pyramid, the roles are intermixed.

For example, maintaining good relations with one’s brother-in-law may be no different at the BOP than making a call to one’s insurance agent, because in a society lacking insurance, the reliance has to be on friends and family.

Compared to other South Asian BOP teleusers, the Sri Lankans made more international calls, explainable both by the large number of expatriate workers and the low international call prices. Four percent of the calls made at the Sri Lankan BOP were international, just below the Philippines (six percent)

A 2005 study conducted during the window of opportunity created by the MOU in 2002-2004, showed that the inhabitants of Jaffna were the heaviest users of international calls among the four districts (Badulla, Colombo, Hambantota and Jaffna) surveyed.

Seventy five percent of Jaffna mobile users made calls to family and friends abroad. Fifty five percent of public-phone users in Jaffna called abroad.

Teleusers at the BOP used a variety of cost-saving techniques. Sixty percent use texting (SMS) though the levels of use are less than in the SMS capital of the world, the Philippines, where everyone texts and almost everyone texts at least once a day.

In 2006, calling off-peak and missed calls (ringcuts) were among the most popular cost-minimizing strategies at the Sri Lankan BOP, used by 40 percent and 35 percent users respectively.

When asked the reasons for owning a phone, the highest weight was given to its utility in an emergency, 4.58 on a scale of 5. The phone was seen as improving the efficiency of day-to-day lives, 3.98 on a scale of 5.

However, the value assigned to allowing one to make money or save was the lowest in Sri Lanka (3.19/5 as against 3.97/5 for India, for example), possibly an artifact of the RPP [Receiving Party Pays] regime that remains only in Sri Lanka among the countries surveyed.

Only one per cent at the BOP used the Internet. Seventy percent had heard of the Internet but never used it, a much higher number than India (28 percent).

So this is the portrait of teleuse at the BOP. These people appear to be using the phone most frugally and intelligently, though they do spend a higher proportion of their limited income on telecom services.

So what could be the concern about gold and waste?

Obviously, the rapid growth of telecom is pulling time (attention) and money away from other industries. But why do officials in one case and a journalist in the other think that money and time spent on telecom is misdirected?

It could be that the critics consider telephone calls, lacking tangibility, as ephemeral and lacking in value. But they should just look at the Stock Market and the entertainment industries: ephemeral products, but a great deal of value changing hands.

It may not be the phone that is drawing their ire, but the users. In the “bad old days” of government-owned integrated monopoly, one had to be somebody to get a phone; either you knew the right people or had a lot of money.

This is no longer the case with over 5 million mobiles in use and almost 2 million households connected; nobodies are using mobile phones think the self-appointed somebodies. The phone is no longer a factor that differentiates somebodies from nobodies.

The objection to phones could be a remnant of paternalistic thinking. Perhaps the thinking goes that a call from a mother in the Middle East to the children left behind is not the best use of limited Dirhams. Better to use that money to buy gold to bring home and bury in the garden for use in a time of need.

These people have obviously not heard of consumer sovereignty. The poor, as much as the rich, have a right to spend their money as they see fit.

The fact remains that the BOP in the Asia Pacific (South Asia in particular) is teaching the whole world about the value of connectivity. They are talking and texting more for less, forcing the adoption of new business models that allow profits to be made with very low average revenues per user.

In India, a mobile is used for over 400 minutes a month (incoming and outgoing) and generates around USD 7 in monthly revenue. In Sri Lanka the equivalent numbers are 200 minutes and USD 6.

In the rich countries represented in the OECD, the minutes of use per month is as low as 65, for a much higher payment. And yet, the companies in emerging Asia are investing massively and making more than respectable profits.

Globalization and mismanagement of national economies are making all people more mobile. Even those at the bottom of the pyramid have been compelled to abandon their settled ways and migrate to distant parts, within and outside their countries. Telecom provides an invaluable link with loved ones in this turbulent time. 

Relationships are more valuable than gold. They are built and sustained by talk, on the phone and in person. Talk of this kind is definitely not a waste. 
 
 
 

LIRNEasia has undertaken a number of initiatives in the area of ICTs disasters and early warning post the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster of 2004. However, this is by far the largest project undertaken LIRNEasia in this area to evaluate the suitability of a number of ICTs (information and communication technologies) deployed in varied conditions for their effectiveness in the last-mile of a hazard warning system.

This project is being conducted as a research project with the intention that the findings from this study will inform the future design of early warning systems in Sri Lanka and in the region. An experimental research design is being adopted to evaluate the role played by a number of factors that contribute to the design of an effective last mile hazard information dissemination system, they include the following factors:

1. Reliability of ICTs as warning technologies;
2. Effectiveness of ICTs as warning technologies;
3. Contribution of training to an effective warning response;
4. Contribution of the level of organizational development of a village to an effective warning response;
5. Gender-specific response to hazard mitigating action;
6. Degree of integration of ICTs in the daily life of villages;

The proposed research design, available as a PDF document, will allow one to compare the effectiveness of the various ICTs deployed in different village contexts and in the absence or presence of hazard response training. Different combinations of ICTs and community mobilization will be tested out in 32 participating villages from eastern, western, northern and southern coastal areas of Sri Lanka. Along with the deployment of ICTs in the villages, training will also be provided to the villagers: 1) to identify local hazards so that villagers can be source of hazard information for locally developing hazards and 2) training for undertaking, warning dissemination, evacuation and other relevant actions when a hazard is reported 3) as well as for coordinating post-disaster relief operations.

The first phase of the project was launched on April 3, 2006 with the training of trainers (ToT) program at Sarvodaya’s Development Educational Center in Bandaragama, Sri Lanka. The trainers who will be prepared at this workshop will be working with villagers in 32 tsunami affected villages along the coast of Sri Lanka to impart hazard identification, mitigation and evacuation training. 24 trainers from the Shanthi Sena Peace Brigade were selected from 6 coastal Districts: Trincomalee, Batticallo, Kalmunai, Ampara, Hambantota, Matara, Galle, Kalutara, and Colombo. TVEAP conducted the training sessions, Sarvodaya provided the facilities, and Vanguard Foundation recorded on video selected sections of the 7 day program.

The HazInfo Trainers spent 7 days at the Sarvodaya Development Center in Bandaragama learning the theory in a classroom, participating in group exercises, and engaging in outdoors activities in the spacious coconut land, which provided an ideal setting for the entire training program.

The last two days of the ToT program took the Trainers to the west coast village of Thalpitya, Wadduwa, a location that had been adversely affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, and approximately 16 kilometers south of the Sarvodaya’s Head Office in Moratuwa. On the first day in the field, the trainers spent time mapping the village, talking to people in the village to identify the most likely hazards, and building an emergency evacuation plan for the village of Thalpitiya.

The field activities were an educational experience for villagers as well as for the trainers. The public announcement instructing people to evacuate forgot to mention that “this is a drill …”. One part of the village panicked as a result. They were justifiably angry until the public announcement was corrected and until the public understood that it was a mock evacuation.

Thalpitiya Dalada Viharaya (Buddhist Temple), 1.6 km inland from the beach, was chosen by the Village and the HazInfo Trainers to be the common gathering place in the event of a disaster. After gathering at the temple the crowd spent time in a question and answer session with the HazInfo Trainers.

One of the Technology Partners – Dialog Telekom’s University of Moratuwa Mobile Communication Research Lab, demonstrated the Remote Alarm Device at the temple in Thalpitiya. People were thrilled to see a locally engineered GSM alerting device. The laboratory personnel also took the opportunity to get some feed-back from the HazInfo Trainers and Villages for improvements. Buddhi Weerasinghe (TVEAP) completed the ToT curriculum with a debriefing of the sessions that took place during the week.

Vanguard Foundation, the media partner for this project, has taken on the challenge of developing audio and video material as promotional and educational content in Sinhalese, Tamil, and English.

The exercises helped TVEAP and Vanguard to better define the role of the HazInfo Trainer. It was agreed that the role of the HazInfo trainer would be to promote their expertise in hazard mitigation to a community and enabling the community to self-develop a disaster preparedness plan for itself.

In the next phase of the project, HazInfo Trainers will provide training to 16 villages of the 32 selected villages as described in the research matrix in the project proposal: Evaluating a Last-Mile Hazard Dissemination: A Research Project.

Each HazInfo Trainer Team of 3 members will be training 2 villages in their district. The following villages have been selected for training: Samudragama, Thirukadalur, Kalmunei, Shithankudipuram, Saturakondan, Periyakallar, Mankarni, Kirinda, Modaragama, Urawatta, Brahamanawatta, Maddewatta, Kottegoda, Wadduwa, Panama-North, and Abeyasinghepura.

The training in these villages will be completed before the end of June 2006. The selected ICTs will be deployed thereafter and more simulated drills will be held to assess the relative effectiveness of the different last-mile hazard warning technologies. The project is scheduled to end in 2007.

In 2002, the-government of Sri Lanka embarked upon a broad development strategy, with a focus on services. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) were identified as one of the key drivers of national integration and economic growth. The eSri Lanka Initiative (eSL), which was designed in 2002-03, was intended to �take the dividends of ICT to every village, to every citizen, to every business and transform the way Government works � [to] develop Sri Lanka�s economy, alleviate poverty, and improve the quality of life and the opportunities for all of our people� .

R. Samarajiva & A. Zainudeen,
e-Government as part of Sri Lanka�s overall development strategy
e Gov (New Delhi), May-June 2005, 9-12