But I hope I am wrong and that there will be real implementation. A low-hanging fruit is bilateral lowering of roaming charges and termination charges for calls from Sri Lanka to India and vice versa. We have been waiting for SAARC to implement these things, much easier if India and Sri Lanka show how it can be done.

Sri Lanka and India have signed an agreement to set up a mechanism of technical and institutional cooperation in telecommunications. It aims to develop telecommunications in both the countries particularly in the areas of technology and access to telecommunication services, a statement from the Indian High Commission said.

The deal covers oversight of service provision, convergence, next generation networks, new technologies, spectrum issues, number portability, and economic regulation, it said.

Witnesses in Chennai and Pondicherry said trees had been toppled, there had been power outages throughout the night and disruption to phone and internet services in some areas.

Hundreds of people from fishing communities along north Tamil Nadu’s coast, and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh state, have moved to schools set up as relief centres until the weather system passes.

“Making relief efforts diffuclt, roads are blocked because of heavy rainfall, trains were canceled and international flights also canceled,” Al Jazeera’s Prerna Suri said.

“They had about 24 hours to prepare, unlike with other storms. So evacuation shelters are in place,” our correspondent said. “Eight teams from the disaster management force are deployed from New Delhi, with some 15,000 people put on high alert.”

The logic for substituting spectrum for civil works and vice versa depends on the price of spectrum. This is sort of like the perennial debate about energy scarcity. One group says we’re running out of oil. But other points out we will never run out of energy because as oil prices increase, more reserves will become visible, more energy sources will become viable. This is the story of shale, the new, new thing in energy. So it’s very difficult to define scarcity independently of price.

The alternative approach was tried by a consulting firm in India few years back. They changed their name a few years back and thus obliterated both names that were stored in my neurons. Their approach was to work some fancy benchmarks based on user numbers, terrain, etc. According to that study, India had a spectrum shortage. But the story is of course different in Lutyens Delhi (most likely there is a shortage) and remote Himachal (most likely not). So the unit of analysis is key to this approach.

So that is why I am skeptical about the statement below:

In a statement, AT&T said that the actions of the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice harmed customers. The cellular giant explained that the American wireless industry is suffering a spectrum shortage, which the merger would have mitigated.

“The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution to this spectrum shortage. In the absence of such steps, customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled,” the company said.

Irrespective of the fate of T Mobile, it would be good to find an answer to the question “what is spectrum shortage”?

Mobile Internet fastest growing vertical, says Google India MD.

Listing a set of next big trends in the overall technology sector, Google India says mobile Internet is set to lead the way for the industry. As against 14 per cent in the US, 11 per cent in Russia, and 6 per cent in the UK, Google India sees about 40 per cent search queries from mobile phones in the country.

“Mobile phones are the future. More smartphones and tablets are being shipped in India than desktops and laptops. In fact, about 40 per cent of search queries for Google India comes from mobile phones as against US (14), UK (6) and Russia (11),” said Rajan Anandan, managing director of Google India during a speaker session at ‘Confluence 2011′ on Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) campus.

In addition to language skills, the Philippines has better utility infrastructure than India — so companies spend little on generators and diesel fuel. Also, cities here are safer and have better public transportation, so employers do not have to bus employees to and from work as they do in India.

Full report.

Mr. Joseph told reporters here on Friday that the Centre should intervene immediately to save the life of 30 lakh people who lived under the threat of a dam breach. If the situation warrants it, he is willing to quit office to save the life of the people. He is willing to go on fast to invoke the conscience of the people of Tamil Nadu. Since leaders of the national parties in the two States have adopted different stance on the issue, their Central leaderships should clarify their position. It is not an issue affecting Kerala alone. It should be discussed in Parliament. The Dam Safety Authority should implead itself in the case pending before the Supreme Court. Political parties and MLAs in Tamil Nadu should reconsider their stance. He and Revenue Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan will go to New Delhi to apprise the Centre of the situation, Mr. Joseph said.

If the Mullaperiyar dam overflows, it will destroy the dams at Idukki, Cheruthoni, and Kulamavu and 30 lakh people will be wiped off. Any damage to the dam will also affect the farming activities in Theni, Madurai, Dindugal, Sivaganga, and Ramanathapuram districts in Tamil Nadu.

Here’s what the ADB website says about the project:

The Project is aimed at enhancing the benefits of ICT and regional cooperation for inclusive growth and poverty reduction by increasing the supply of affordable broadband, skilled ICT manpower, and local content and e-applications, with a special focus on the needs of the poor. It is also expected to help SASEC countries improve their productivity and efficiency and participate more fully in the global information economy. To this end, the Project will establish (i) a SASEC regional network with fiber-optic and data interchange capacity, directly connecting the four SASEC countries; (ii) a SASEC village network expanding broadband ICT access to 110 rural communities in the SASEC countries and providing direct connections among the communities for local networking and local information sourcing; and (iii) a SASEC research and training network to build technical and business skills in developing local ICT content and e-applications (e-government, e-learning, tele-medicine, e-remittance, e-commerce, etc.) that serve the needs of the poor in particular.

Bhutan Today said “Information Highway Project on Track” in the headline.

The ADB website said the project had been approved on 17 Dec 2007 (almost four years ago). Cumulative disbursements (upto November 2011; this month) were 2 percent. Cumulative contract awards were 7 percent.

Not bad for four years.

Analysts have estimated that up to 35 percent of Indian fruits and vegetables spoil before they get to market, largely as a result of an antiquated supply system that includes many wholesale markets and middlemen.

Partly as a result, Indian food prices often rise quickly when there are minor disruptions in the supply or harvest of staple crops like onions and potatoes. Food inflation in recent months has been hovering near 10 percent.

While some companies have begun building supply networks in parts of India, Mr. Singhal said it would take three to five years of investment to establish a more efficient supply chain. Companies will need to work from the ground up, setting up warehouses, buying trucks and establishing relationships with farmers and other suppliers.

Report.

“The proposal to set up South Asian Postal Union (SAPU) is scheduled for discussion in the Cabinet on Wednesday,” a source said.

The proposal includes setting up of SAPU’s secretariat in Delhi and Ghaziabad based postal training institute which would train postal department officials of South Asian countries, he said

Last week Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at 17th SAARC Summit, welcomed the proposal to establish the SAPU.

“I commend the Postal Administrations of SAARC countries for agreeing to establish a South Asian Postal Union. India is happy to host the ad hoc Secretariat for the Union, and to sponsor training courses at our Postal Staff College to train up to ten SAARC officials per year,” PM said last week.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has opened channels with its counterparts in other countries, including the UK, to address the issue of high tariffs for international roaming services. TRAI has suggested that regulators should ask local operators in their countries to enable bilateral roaming agreements aimed at bringing down the tariffs.

At present, international roaming services come at a premium even though the cost of offering this has come down drastically due to better routing technology. For example, an Indian consumer travelling in Europe has to pay over Rs 200 a minute for both incoming and outgoing calls. Similarly, foreign travellers coming into India have to pay a hefty amount for making and receiving calls. According to TRAI officials, it has been suggested that regulators should find a way to get operators in their respective country to offer cheaper roaming tariffs. TRAI is internally preparing a paper on this issue.

The IDI is a composite of three sub-indexes. South Asia has done well in access, with rankings increasing in all countries, except for the Maldives. India jumps seven places. The only countries that do well in the use sub-index are Sri Lanka (advance of 10 places) and Nepal (nine places). Pakistan and the Maldives fall back 13 places. Only Bhutan and the Maldives advance three and two places respectively in the skills sub-index. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh fall back one place, while all others hold their places.

What the above illustrates is that one cannot move ahead in the overall rankings simply by improving one dimension or one sub-index. For example, Bhutan advanced by four places in access, by three in use, and by three in skills. This translated into an overall advance of four places for Bhutan. Sri Lanka advanced by 10 places in use, but this appeared to be negated by a one-place retreat in the skills component and a lower-than-most advance of two places in access.

The Maldives increased by the most (0.51), yet dropped a rank position, indicating that the countries in the range where the Maldives is located is highly competitive. The least increase shown by Bangladesh (0.21) resulted in a slippage of one position in the rankings.

The problem is the online interface through which comments have to be submitted. It does not work. Our first hypothesis was that the problem was being caused by the fact that out comments came from an IP address outside India. Odd to exclude comments from outside the border (after all the objective is to get the best input). But anyway, we then tried to submit through an Indian IP address, that of our Senior Policy Fellow, located in New Delhi itself. Still no success: the requisite code was not being sent. (What is the point of codes? I recently ran an online consultation process for the city of Colombo, which used off-the-shelf technology and worked fine. I realize Colombo is not on the scale of India. But surely, there is no real danger of David Headley submitting comments. Even if he does, DoT can simply ignore them).

Anyway, here are the comments that may or may not reach the authorities at DoT. We will keep trying. IT is supposed to make life easier. Sometimes it does not. But we will persevere.

There are more hopeful studies, though. One of them, designed and run by dalit researchers including Chandra Bhan Prasad, who works for the University of Pennsylvania, suggests “huge” changes in dalit social life in UP. The researchers tracked stark new consumer, dietary, grooming and work habits among dalits in two districts. In one, where only 3% of dalits had used toothpaste in 1990, 82% did so by 2007. Those who ate tomatoes rose from 3% to 57%. In another area only 23% of dalits reported sitting with guests of other castes at weddings in 1990, but, by 2007, 91% did so. The studies are now being repeated in five more areas.

Seemingly trivial, such trends in fact describe a rapid weakening of caste identity, says Mr Prasad. He praises the arrival of “caste-neutral” jobs such as delivering pizzas, and says visible consumerism that shows wealth is quickly becoming more important as a sign of status than caste. “You can be any caste you like, but if you don’t have a mobile phone you are nobody”, he says. If so, pink elephants and bronze statues may prove less effective in getting out the dalit vote.

Mobiles are personal devices; toilets are generally a household amenity. Except in Mukesh Ambani’s house, the number of toilets is generally lower than the number of people living in the house. There is no way one can directly compare the number of mobile SIMs, which is what TRAI reports, with the numbers of toilets in a meaningful way.

If one wants a legitimate mobile/phone to toilet comparison, what one has to do is work with data from the demand side: census or representative-sample household surveys. I have been looking at the Sri Lanka Household Income and Expenditure Survey for 2009-10. It has data on whether households have mobiles, fixed phones or both, along with data on toilets for exclusive use of the household. Here is analysis.

It is only in the richest province, the Western Province that contributes around half the GDP, that the number of households with phones comes even close to the number of households with toilets for exclusive use. You could say this is Sri Lanka, and therefore the toilet numbers are high. My point is not to quibble about that. The issue is the error of comparing what cannot be compared. What can be compared are toilets in households and phones/mobiles in households. If that is done, India will not look too bad. But on the other hand, the UN University will not get media coverage.

Is this a problem for us in South Asia. Yes, for the TOP (top of the pyramid) customers who actually receive bills. But for our clients, the bottom of the pyramid teleusers, there will be no shock; just disconnect. Because 99.7 percent of Indian BOP customers are on prepaid plans and 94.6 percent of Sri Lankan BOP customers are on prepaid. How can we address their problems? Lower priced data plans would be a good start.

A 2010 study by the F.C.C. found that one in six mobile device users had experienced bill shock, with 23 percent of those users facing unexpected charges of $100 or more. A separate F.C.C. report noted that 20 percent of the bill shock complaints it received during the first half of 2010 were for $1,000 or more in overage charges. Expensive charges can also be incurred for roaming, when a user travels out of a company’s defined area of coverage or, as often occurs, when traveling overseas.

Even so-called unlimited data plans often have a cap limiting downloads each month to a certain number of megabytes — a technical measure that, unlike a number of calls or minutes, cannot easily be tracked by the uninitiated. Last October, the F.C.C. highlighted the case of a 66-year-old retiree in Dover, Mass., who received an $18,000 bill after a promotional no-limit data plan expired without warning.