LIRNEasia » Indonesia

A possible solution to the mobile price comparison problem

Rohan Samarajiva — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 02:25:59 +0000

LIRNEasia was unhappy with the ITU’s practice of reporting the prices of telecom services on the basis of a three-minute call. From 2006, we worked on popularizing the OECD basket methodology. We started becoming increasingly unhappy about the accuracy of the method because of the widespread use of discounts. At the same time, the ITU adopted the basket method and started reporting prices on that basis. We declared victory and stopped price benchmarking for voice calls.

Scientific Advisory Council member Johannes Bauer had developed a method to allow customers figure out the mobile packages best suited their use patterns. In 2010-11 we worked with him to convert his method to an online tool that could be used to compare broadband prices. This is now available to customers in Bhutan at the BICMA site.

Now LIRNEasia Research Fellow Christoph Stork and CPRsouth member Ibrahim Kholilul Rahman have come up with a new method to compare mobile voice prices:

Trying to apply the price basket following OECD framework to Indonesia is, unfortunately, not suitable, as the discounts and specials are mostly on a daily basis.

Therefore, a new daily basket is required to compare prices in Indonesia. Given the complexities, an alternative framework to assess prices has been constructed in this simulation. All prepaid products are being priced for a basket constituting six calls each for every hour of the day and night (24 hours) – three calls of the length 35 seconds, 75 seconds and 200 seconds to the same network (on-net) and to another network (off-net). The daily basket also includes one off-net and one on-net SMS per hour.

It is fully worth consideration, especially if it is offered as an online tool by the regulatory agency. The problem of ensuring that the fast-changing discounts are continually updated in the database remains. If that problem cannot be solved (involved commitment of resources by regulatory agency), we’ll just have declare that mobile is an FMCG (fast moving consumer good) and engage in forbearance ourselves.

Vietnam stars in 2010 IDI rankings, South Asia so so

Rohan Samarajiva — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:09:11 +0000

The ICT Development Index (IDI) rankings by the ITU are out.

Vietnam, a high performer on all composite ICT rankings, has leaped forward from 91st place to 81st place, in a rare 10-place advance.

In South Asia, Bhutan advanced four places to 119th; Nepal by three places to 134th; and India and Sri Lanka advance by one place to 116th and 105th respectively. Pakistan and Bangladesh drop two places each to 123rd and 137th, respectively. Maldives, the leader among the South Asian countries, drops one place to settle at 67th place.

Thailand drops nine places to 89th, something that should cause concern. Philippines advances by 3 places to 92nd rank and Indonesia by one place to 101st.

The overall winner remains Korea (no change from 2008). Hong Kong SAR is at 6th place (same as in 2008). The gap with Singapore has widened, with Singapore falling back to 19th place from 15th in 2008.

The general lesson is that one must run fast even to maintain one’s rank. Singapore’s score improved from 6.71 to 7.08, but it still fell back four places.

Crowdsourcing the identification of the poor

Rohan Samarajiva — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:42:06 +0000

We know, from our experience with teleuse@BOP surveys, that getting an accurate fix on levels of income and assets (poverty) is not easy. An experiment in Indonesia suggests that asking the village to decide is superior, because it is almost as accurate as the standard method which uses household assets and generates greater buy-in (less complaints).

One thing I did not get from the writeup was relative cost. Convening a community meeting is not costless. Neither is the asset-based method. Also, the account refers to villages. Will this work as well in cities?

The field experiment, conducted in collaboration with the Indonesian government and the World Bank, offered a small amount of cash to households deemed below the poverty line. In one-third of the villages, the government used a proxy means test involving household assets to create an objective measure of wealth. Another third of the villages used the “community method,” as the researchers call it: With the assistance of facilitators from the research project, citizens from certain neighborhoods would gather at meetings and subjectively rank the wealth of the local inhabitants. The final third of the villages employed a hybrid of both methods.

The economists also used a research firm to survey all the citizens about their spending habits. Using this spending data as a baseline for wealth, the results show that the proxy means test is the best method for estimating wealth — but only by a slim margin.

On the other hand, the community method led to 60 percent fewer complaints among villagers about the results of the programs, compared to the proxy means test.

The report.

Network Readiness Index 2010-11: Indonesia, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh advance

Rohan Samarajiva — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 04:00:27 +0000

The World Economic Forum has issued its Global Information Technology Report which includes the NRI rankings. I find the sub indices always more instructive but for now, only the top line aggregate rankings are discussed.

The big winner, among the countries LIRNEasia works in and the WEF covers, is Indonesia, advancing from 67th place in 2009-10 to 53rd place in 2010-11, a massive jump of 14 places. Sri Lanka has advanced six places from 72nd to 66th. Bangladesh advances three places to 115th, from 118th.

Thailand, sadly, drops 12 places to 47th (still ahead of India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka). Nepal drops seven places down to 131th in rank. India drops five places to 48th rank (but is still ranked high among the lower middle income countries). Both Philippines and Pakistan drop one place each to 86th and 88th ranks respectively.

There is much work to be done in emerging Asia, it seems.

The full report can be downloaded here.

Sri Lanka and Pakistan slide in BPO rankings; Bangladesh still not on the radar

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:33:25 +0000

The AT Kearney Global Services Location Index for 2011 is out. I seem to have missed the 2010 report, so comparing with 2009, which I did do a post on.

India is still number 1 and China is number 2. No change.

Thailand has slipped to 7 from 4, overtaken by Indonesia.

Sri Lanka is at 21, slipping from 16 in 2009. Pakistan has slipped to 28 from 20th place in 2009.

And Bangladesh? Not in the list, again. That’s what comes from restrictive BPO policies and refusing to admit captive BPOs. I hope the Digital Bangladesh folk are paying attention.

Indonesia leaps 14 places in NRI rankings; India drops five

Rohan Samarajiva — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:46:21 +0000

We are not the greatest fans of the Network Readiness Index, but we do believe it matters. Many of these composite indices are built upon questionable data such as the problematic “Internet users/100″ indicator. No time at this moment to probe the details, but here are some key takeaways:

The study showed the rapid progress of the so-called Asian Tigers, whose governments have invested heavily in technology. Besides Singapore, Taiwan was ranked 6th, South Korea 10th and Hong Kong 12th. Japan was 19th.

China ranked 36th and India 48th, falling five places from 2009. Rounding out the large developing BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — Brazil was 56th and Russia 77th.

The country making the most progress in 2010 was Indonesia, which jumped 14 places to 53rd — in part because of high educational standards and in part because of the importance the government has placed on information and communications technology.

That was the New York Times summary

In 2009 we summarized the S Asian standings.

India is now 48th v 54th in 2009
Sri Lanka is 66th now v 72nd then
Pakistan is 88th v 95th then
Bangladesh is 115th v 130th then
Nepal is 131st v 121st then.

These comparisons must be looked at carefully because we comparing 2009 to 2011 (missing 2010 in the middle) and the total number being assessed may not be the same in the different years. Big picture is an advance in the large South Asian countries, other than Nepal.

Post mortem on the tsunami dead of Pagai

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 06:02:29 +0000

“We told you so.”

We said that the last mile was the key to saving lives; that focus had to placed on getting the warnings out to the potentially affected people; that they had to be trained to react appropriately; that all the fancy technology in and under the sea would come to nought if these key actions were not taken.

Our collaborator Nalaka Gunawardene says it again in a SciDev piece worth reading:

“What failed was the education process only some of the people fled to higher ground and one of the boats put to sea immediately after they felt the earthquake the right thing to do in these circumstances. Why wasn’t everyone well prepared to respond given the recent history of earthquakes and tsunamis in the region?”

Nalaka Gunawardene, director of TVE Asia Pacific, a not-for-profit media group, hinted at underlying problems with the system’s suitability for its environment.

Gunawardene told SciDev.Net that tsunami early warning systems installed after the 2004 tsunami “focused on the technology and overlooked the institutional arrangements and local capacity”.

He added: “The elaborate and expensive early warning systems installed after the 2004 tsunami have run into various problems of maintenance. Some were too sophisticated or too fragile for the rustic tropical Asian conditions. As a result, some of these systems are not in a state of readiness to swiftly and decisively handle a tsunami warning on a 24/7 basis.”

LIRNEasia CEO at APT Policy and Regulatory Forum (PRF), Indonesia

Ranjula Senaratna Perera — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:10:47 +0000

Rohan Samarajiva, PhD. CEO of LIRNEasia will be making two presentations at APT Policy and Regulatory Forum (PRF) to be held from 14-16 July 2010 at Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He will be making a presentation, Lessons from the mobile-voice success for policymakers, regulators, operators, applications providers & manufacturers at the Business Dialogue Innovative Regulation: what industry needs session and another presentation titled Roaming: Regulate or not? at the International Connectivity session.

An online version of the agenda can be viewed here.

The tentative program can be found here.

Making access to the Internet possible: Competition versus Internet exchanges

Rohan Samarajiva — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:20:37 +0000

In addition to giving the keynote at the OECD/infoDev workshop on the Budget Telecom Network Mode at the IGF in Sharm el Sheikh, I attended several sessions, one being that on reducing interconnection costs. The key recommendations seemed to cluster around two actions, creating Internet Exchanges in each country and reducing leased line costs by introducing competition and breaking incumbent control on essential facilities such as cable stations. Our findings from countries that have had working Internet Exchanges at various times such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka show that their effects fluctuate (there is an unfortunate tendency of internal dissension in these things) and that getting leased line prices (both domestic and international) down is, on balance, more important. That unless the leased-line problem is not solved, the good work done on Internet Exchanges will be washed out.

There is an assumption that every country should have an IX. Why? Does it not make more sense, for example for the Maldives (pop. 325,000), Sri Lanka (pop. 20 million) and Southern India (maybe around 500 million) why should there not be a common Internet Exchange?

And is there a solution to the unfortunate tendency of IXs to implode?

Lessons of 2004 tsunami used in Samoa

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:16:23 +0000

A report on the response to the tsunami that hit Samoa shows that preparedness and evacuation planning saved lives even though they had barely eight minutes after the warning from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Countries like India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have enough distance from the unstable Sunda Trench and therefore are likely to have more time to organize evacuations. For Indonesia and Thailand, unfortunately, the time will be less.

The Pacific islands were so close to the epicentre of the earthquake that a wall of water hit Samoa within eight minutes after the Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii sent its first bulletin Tuesday.

Several Samoans said they heard no sirens or warnings, but fled as soon as they were woken up by the earthquake.

Nevertheless, the fact that scores left for safety underlined that lessons from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunamis have not been forgotten.

World Bank gives USD 1.9m to Indonesia for Internet access

Rohan Samarajiva — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:00:21 +0000

The government of Indonesia has announced that

World Bank, as administrator for Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA) , in April 2009 has signed a grant agreement for US$1.9 million with the Republic of Indonesia to facilitate access to Internet and associated telecommunication services for people living in remote areas in Java dan Sumatra. Access development and provision are fully financed by GPOBA and supervised by Ministry of Communications and Information’s Directorate General of Applied Telematics (Ditjen Aptel). Minister of Communications and Information, Mohammad Nuh, said that witnessing Indonesia’s development and progress in becoming a knowledge-based society driven by existence and free flow of information is mutually beneficial. Furthermore, targets to be reached with this grant is in line with government efforts in making information more accessible to communities in remote areas. With access to information, economic activities in remote areas will have equal opportunities in developing business potential and access.

This is described as a pilot project so I guess everyone is looking for lessons. We will follow this with interest.

So what?

Rohan Samarajiva — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:06:21 +0000

Our primary funder IDRC is having a big gathering of all its Asian fundees in Penang. As one of the main plenary events, they conducted a “talk show” with representatives of three of their leading projects in the region. Helani Galpaya participated in this talk show from LIRNEasia. At the conclusion, she was asked the following question: “we do not just fund good research, we ask what it will yield for development; we ask so what?”

She answered, saying that the good use made of resources entrusted to LIRNEasia could be illustrated through three examples:
1. The 2007 intervention that resulted in the rolling back of the regressive LKR 50 tax that was to be imposed by the government of Sri Lanka on all SIMs, resulting in all mobile users paying below LKR 1800 keeping more money in their pockets and not being blocked from teleuse.
2. The multi-year effort to remove distortions from the Indian Universal Service funding mechanism that collected money from those at the bottom at the pyramid and did not spend it as intended, directing most of it to an inefficient government-owned incumbent.
3. The protracted effort to convince the government of Indonesia that leased line prices that were 48 times that of India were harmful to the ICT sector and the economy, resulting in the halving of these prices.

Internet through mobile networks (not really mobile Internet)

Rohan Samarajiva — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:26:09 +0000

BBC should have checked the numbers for Indonesia and Sri Lanka (corrected for overall population/subscriber numbers) and they would have found that these countries are ahead of Europe on the use if mobile dongles on computers to connect to the Internet.

Customers’ appetite for mobile data shows no sign of abating, if you look at figures supplied by network operator Orange.

It now has 3.8 million users on 3G phones or with 3G dongles that plug into your computer and give you broadband access over the cellular data networks.

According to Orange, 12,877 gigabytes of data travel over its network to 3G phones and dongles each day. That sounds a lot – but it’s actually only about 3.3 megabyes per user.

It’s why Paul Jevons, director of products, portals and services, told me: “The 3G dongle market is in the early stages of development; it only kicked off last year.”

Broadband Quality: Think before you complain

Chanuka Wattegama — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:12:33 +0000

Unsatisfied broadband users added flavor to both our Public Seminar and Mobile Broadband QoSE workshop. That included university students prevented access during the residential peak to Wi-Max subscribers experiencing 20% of the promised speed – even with perfect LoS (Line of Sight).

Such complaints are common and not limited to Sri Lanka. From Indonesia to India and from Bangladesh to Philippines we find broadband users rant not receiving the promised. We empathise with them, but this hardly an Asian or a developing world issue. The conditions elsewhere can be worse.

The weird arrangement above is an attempt by a Guest House in Johannesburg, South Africa to provide me Internet access. They still failed. It was in a way good, because I was told the quality was poor and even a simple task like accessing e-mails a nightmare sometimes.

According to CIA’s World Fact Book, South Africa is a middle-income, emerging market with an abundant supply of natural resources; well-developed financial, legal, communications, energy, and transport sectors; a stock exchange that is 17th largest in the world; and modern infrastructure supporting an efficient distribution of goods to major urban centers throughout the region. Either broadband quality does not stand to its other achievements or this is an isolated issue.

LIRNEasia, with the assistance of its research partners there, intends to extend its broadband benchmarking to Africa. More stories are in pipeline, when we have test results in few months.

Advances in modeling of long waves to help predict tsunami hazards

Rohan Samarajiva — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 11:57:19 +0000

Impressive science is being produced as a result of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The focus now must be on creating systems within national governments that will allow the best use of science. Modeling data on projected tsunami arrival times (if any) were available to all on September 12, 2007. There is no evidence that the government’s hasty evacuation order took into account any of this information.

A new mathematical formula that could be used to give advance warning of where a tsunami is likely to hit and how destructive it will be has been worked out by scientists at Newcastle University.

The research, led by Newcastle University’s Professor Robin Johnson, was prompted by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami disaster which devastated coastal communities in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

In this instance, an earthquake in the depths of the ocean triggered a long surface wave which resulted in six massive wave fronts, one after the other.

Of these waves it was the third and largest one that caused the most devastation, hitting the beaches with terrifying speed. Reaching a height of 20m, it is this wave that lifted a train from its tracks as it travelled along the Sri Lankan coastline, killing almost 1,000 people.

The full story.