Standard Chartered Bank and MasterCard have developed a solution that will allow people in the East African nation to make online purchases with their cellphones, obviating the need for a credit or debit card.

The service, called PayOnline, will soon be expanded to other African markets. It allows Airtel Money customers to make online purchases via a 16-digit code, much like using a credit card. Merchants have to accept MasterCard as a payment mechanism.

The service allows customers to make online purchases by requesting a single-use card number from a menu of options on their phones. Airtel Money then generates a 16-digit number that is valid for 24 hours and a single purchase.

Report.

I have not looked at the Kenyan legislation in detail, but I’d be surprised if the legislation permits review by a Prime Minister’s Task Force, let alone the President acting after a meeting with a few of the stakeholders behind closed doors. With its “independence” in tatters, the regulatory agency did the one thing it can do to recover: it ratified the President’s unlawful act. A mass resignation would have been the more appropriate response, methinks.

This is after Safaricom and Telkom Kenya got backing from the country’s top offices — that of the President and of the Prime Minister to suspend implementation of new termination rates.

After intense lobbying from the pair, President Kibaki a week ago directed industry regulator Communications Commission of Kenya to suspend implementation of the mobile termination rates (MTRs) — the fee that operators levy calls to their networks from outside.

The directive that has since been ratified by CCK board required that rates be shelved pending a detailed evaluation of the economic impact of the current MTRs on the country’s economy.

Not knowing how the mobile termination rates were arrived at, I cannot venture an opinion on them. If they were done wrong, the place to challenge them is the court room, not the President’s office.

Why did the incumbent Safaricom fear the lower termination rates? It would have benefited from them, given lots of calls would have gone from its network to those of its competitors, perhaps more than the traffic that came to its network.

The fear was not of lower termination rates, but of lower retail prices.

But lower retail prices are the key to implementing the Budget Telecom Network (BTN) business model. Low prices bring more users on to the system and they induce greater use. This is how India managed to connect more than 10 million new users a month.

According to Nokia’s 2011 Total Cost of Ownership Study, six countries offer the same bundle of services for less than Kenya does, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, Pakistan and India. The sky has not fallen in those countries. President Kibeki should stop illegally interfering in a regulatory process that would have brought his people lower-cost voice telephony.

The full news report is here.

What is interesting is that the trigger for getting the USD 80 solar generator in the story below was the phone:

For Sara Ruto, the desperate yearning for electricity began last year with the purchase of her first cellphone, a lifeline for receiving small money transfers, contacting relatives in the city or checking chicken prices at the nearest market.

Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far from Kenya’s electric grid.

Every week, Ms. Ruto walked two miles to hire a motorcycle taxi for the three-hour ride to Mogotio, the nearest town with electricity. There, she dropped off her cellphone at a store that recharges phones for 30 cents. Yet the service was in such demand that she had to leave it behind for three full days before returning.

That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80. Now balanced precariously atop their tin roof, a lone solar panel provides enough electricity to charge the phone and run four bright overhead lights with switches.

Mr Eagle hopes txteagle will do its bit by mobile “crowdsourcing”—breaking down jobs into small tasks and sending them to lots of individuals. These jobs often involve local knowledge and range from things like checking what street signs say in rural Sudan for a satellite-navigation service to translating words into a Kenyan dialect for companies trying to spread their marketing. A woman living in rural Brazil or India may have limited access to work, adds Mr Eagle, “but she can still use her mobile phone to collect local price and product data or even complete market-research surveys.” Payments are transferred to a user’s phone by a mobile money service, such as the M-PESA system run by Safaricom in Africa, or by providing additional calling credit.

Working with over 220 mobile operators, txteagle is able to reach 2 billion subscribers in 80 countries. It already has the largest contract-labour force in Kenya and new ways of using it are being found all the time. Recently a large media firm asked Mr Eagle for help in monitoring its television commercials across Africa. The company was concerned that, although it had paid for broadcasting rights, its ads could be replaced with others by local television companies. So txteagle pays locals to watch and then text notes about which ads are shown. “I would never think of that myself,” says Mr Eagle. Which is why he is not sure just how big all these small text jobs could become.

The latest issue features an e-interview with LIRNEasia’s CEO Rohan Samarajiva, but it is not the only reason why we thought of highlighting the issue. The content is interesting and very readable. We publish two e-interviews from July 2010 issue here fully, as they are not available on public domain.

Apart from Samarajiva, This issue carried e-interviews with Alison Gillwald, Indra de Lanerolle, Christoph Stork and Muriuki Mureithi.

If you are interested in future issues please register at http://lists.apc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chakula

The need for competitive research for policy influence
e-interview with Alison Gillwald

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“High quality, rigorous research…is required to compete and complement with each other for policy influence… In mature economies researchers from multiple universities would be debating and refining the positions governments should be taking on everything from regulating next generation networks to demand stimulation for broadband.”
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Alison Gillwald is Executive Director of RIA. She is also Adjunct Professor at the UCT Graduate School of Business, Management of Infrastructure Reform and Regulation, and a member of CPRafrica’s organisation and selection committee.

CHAKULA: You have just held the CPRafrica conference in Cape Town. What are you hoping to achieve through the conference?

ALISON GILLWALD [AG]: There is almost no scholarly research being undertaken in the field of ICT policy and regulation on the continent. A Google scholar search on the subjects throws up around five scholars on the continent who are published in peer reviewed or accredited journals. It is this kind of high quality, rigorous research that is required to compete and complement with each other for policy influence. In mature economies researchers from multiple universities would be debating and refining the positions governments should be taking on everything from regulating next generation networks to demand stimulation for broadband. Although there are pockets of applied research being undertaken there is no tradition of critical intellectual engagement in this area on the continent. The purpose of CPRafrica is to provide a forum for nurturing and showcasing research in the area of ICT policy and regulation on the continent and enhancing its quality through rigorous academic review and debate. The conference is complemented by a young scholars programme to expose young scholars who may be excluded from such peer-review, paper-acceptance-only style conferences without such a category. Some of these are part of the IDRC- [International Development Research Centre] funded PhD programme to encourage doctoral research in ICT policy and regulation. The idea here is to build a cadre of policy intellectuals on the continent able to critically engage government on the basis of relevant research and contribute meaningfully to research and policy excellence. This will further enhance Africa’s standing in international research and governance fora, in which its participation has historically been suboptimal.

CHAKULA: Reviewing some of the papers presented at the conference, it strikes me that there are a couple of threads that are emerging. Two in particular stand out: the notion of “innovation” in the telecommunications space, and the challenges around convergence and policy when two distinct sectors with different ways of doing things are brought into conflict with each other. I also went back to Research ICT Africa’s 2008 M-banking policy paper, which raises similar themes, and I would like to use that as a starting point. First, on the issue of ‘innovation’. In the M-banking paper, the following assertion is made: “Policy-makers and regulators need to ensure that evolving systems serve the broader objectives of economic growth and development as well as protect consumer interests, while creating an environment that encourages and rewards innovation”. In what ways can policy inhibit or encourage innovation in the telecommunication’s sector?

AG: Indeed, providing certainty to investors and operators while retaining the levels of flexibility to enable innovation in a fast-changing environment is one of the most difficult balancing acts that policy-makers and regulators have to perform. I think the linkages and catalysts between technology, market and regulatory innovation are becoming clearer all the time. New technologies and service offerings have prized open markets and the entry into less policy and regulatory constrained markets has made taking certain technologies to market more viable. This has triggered further possibilities across historically distinct platforms, not only between broadcasting and telecommunications, but between fixed and mobile services and even entirely separate sectors such as telecommunications and banking. The challenges to the expansion of such services are really regulatory now rather than technological – and that is not to say that one does not want or need public interest regulation either in the telecommunications or banking sector, but it has to be done in new, innovative ways that enable to extension of these services to those who currently don’t enjoy them. Once these various forces are unleashed they are able to intersect and create new opportunities and innovative ways of doing things that have not been done before.

CHAKULA: Innovation here seems necessarily to be tied to market gain – the objective is to increase or capture market share. In both your M-banking paper, and the case study of the mobile operator One Network in Kenya, preconditions exists that facilitate innovation. With M-banking there are low-income earners who are ‘unbanked’ and who could benefit from some kind of low-cost transactional instrument, and with One Network, there is a significant level of cross-border traffic that makes a seamless network attractive.
AG: It is true that innovation is often driven by market forces and pursuit of profits, and, traditionally, with new technologies have focused on high-end markets. But much of the ICT innovation we are witnessing in developing markets is focused on what has been referred to as the ‘gold at the bottom of the pyramid’ – very profitable turn-over of high volumes of sometimes minuscule margins on products that, by breaking them up or making them available at cost, the masses at the bottom of the economic and social pyramid can enjoy things like pre-paid phone vouchers, or transferable airtime vouchers. And many of these products have been commercialised innovative practices by the poor in order to access and affordably use communications services – such as missed calls, multiple sim card usage that allows for same net rates, or ‘plastic roaming’.

CHAKULA: If we consider Indra de Lanerolle’s fascinating case study on the South African convergence scenario, we see two sectors (broadcast and telecommunications) in conflict with each other because policy decisions are made according to different frameworks: simply put, economic versus public interest. In fact, Indra does seem to suggest that these are in competition with each other, and resolves this in an interesting way. It feels hard to believe that ‘consumer interest’ is the same as ‘public interest’?

AG: I think with the shift from public utilities to competitive markets many of the public interest objectives of delivery and service are met through serving the consumer interest. Nevertheless there is public interest regulation that is required to improve wider and collective consumer welfare – to provide access to ‘uneconomic areas’ for example – though with new more cost-effective, rapidly deployable wireless services, this concept in markets that enable competitive entry is regularly not proving to be the case. But as long as we have the large number of poor that we do, we will need some level of social regulation – even though a lot of the current pent-up demand could be met with greater market efficiency (more competitive markets offering better prices). And then there are the more traditional content regulation issues either to restrict certain ‘harmful’ content or activities or to enable it, such as local content regulation. That too may be found to be highly profitable, but may need either protection or encouragement.

CHAKULA: Indra’s paper, like your M-banking policy paper, shows that regulating convergence is tricky because of the ‘convergence’ of two or even more sectors; whether broadcast/telecommunications or telecommunications/banking etc. What are some of the key challenges that policy-makers can expect to face in Africa?

AG: The key challenge for African regulators is that they are still trying to deal with legacy regulation around first and second-generation infrastructure and access. At the same time, if they do not want the agenda to be set for them in international fora, they need to deal with next-generation issues, not only of converged IP [internet protocol] networks and services and the next-generation regulation issues of network and service-neutral regimes, but of cross-cutting issues of electronic commerce frameworks, intellectual copyright rights, security and privacy issues, and so on. And you have to do it all or be left behind…

CHAKULA: One frustration is that when one reads a good paper that seems to offer a solution to a problem, one is also met with the feeling that those with decision-making powers are probably not going to read that paper, or seriously consider its arguments. Do you feel the same? If so, how do you think CPRafrica picks up on this challenge? Is it just a case of repeating issues until policy-makers take them on board?

AG: No. CPRafrica is one of several strategic strands towards having evidence-based ICT policy on the continent. This is about organic and indigenous knowledge creation and contribution, at the national level, at the level of regional association and continentally, and also about global engagement and influence. For too long have the solutions come from the developed world. Of course, there are lessons to be learnt and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we also have different challenges and Africa has demonstrated remarkably innovative responses to these when they are informed by sound policy, effective regulation or thorough and appropriate business plans. The indicator research done by RIA and its analysis in order to assess policy and regulatory outcomes is fed into several initiatives, globally and locally. RIA provides the only comprehensive public domain demand-side data on ICT access and usage on the continent. This is used in national, regional and continental meetings on ICTs, and in the database and reports of multilateral agencies such as the OECD and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to better inform their understanding of developments in Africa. It is true that sometime decision-makers do not like to hear of the widespread policy and institutional failure on the continent, but many do – especially those that are rapidly improving and beginning to see the rewards of their reforms. This research is also used to develop training curricula that address the needs of policy and regulators in a developing country context. So, for example, as part of the global research and training collaborative LIRNE.net we conduct a professional development course on alternative regulatory strategies at the UCT Graduate School of Business Infrastructure Reform and Regulation Programme to build institutional capacity on the continent. So CPRafrica is just one arm of a multi-pronged strategy of research and education, institutional capacity building and technical assistance and dissemination and advocacy, through our website database, policy papers and workshop and public presentations.

CHAKULA: What is the way forward for the conference? Will there be more?

AG: Yes, in order to build and sustain this much-needed capacity we will have to find a way for CPRafrica to become an annual institution.

Related links:

M-Banking the Unbanked: RIA Policy Paper No. 4:

http://www.researchictafrica.net/new/images/uploads/RIA_Mobile-banking.pdf

CPRafrica conference details: http://www.researchictafrica.net/index.php/news/38-cprafrica-looking-back-at-a-decade-of-communications-reform-looking-forward-to-2020
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Innovation through competition: the budget telecom network model
e-interview with Rohan Samarajiva

Paper link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1564529

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“The status quo must be unbearable.”
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Rohan Samarajiva is the Chair and CEO of Lirnasia. His paper, “How the developing world may participate in the global Internet Economy: Innovation driven by competition” was presented at a workshop organised by the OECD and InfoDev in Paris, 10-11 September 2009.

CHAKULA: In your paper, you talk about the Budget Telecom Network Model (BTNM), which is brought about by competition allowing operators to reduce the transaction costs of low-end clients. This, as you point out, is different to the standard Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) model. How does it make the ARPU model redundant?

Rohan Samarajiva [RS]: ARPU is a short-hand that outside observers use to see if the firm is doing well, whether its prospects are good, etc. It is, like any indicator, imperfect. You get it by taking total revenue (preferably without extras like roaming) and dividing by number of subscribers. Of course no one really knows what a subscriber is any more, with even poor people holding up to five SIMs, foreigners having SIMs, no agreement on what an active SIM is and so on. You can get better results by looking at revenue per minute. Take total revenue (less roaming and other stuff) and divide by Average Minutes of Usage per User per Month (MOU). This is a better indicator. But investment analysts are still not used to this and it would require disclosing MOUs to calculate.

CHAKULA: Can ARPU be used as a business model?

[RS]: Operators do not actually do much with the ARPU. It is not a business model as such, just an indicator. But getting more from each subscriber (if this is known) is not a bad idea. Just that it does not predict whether the company will make money or not. The best indicator for that is EBITDA [Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization] margin. Sri Lanka in 2007 had an operator with LKR311 (approximately USD3 at the time) ARPU making close to 50% EBITDA margin. In the end, the success of a business model lies in whether it generates profit.

CHAKULA: What is your understanding of ‘innovation’ in the telecommunications space? You talk of “business innovation”, rather than, say, technological innovation?

[RS]: Tech innovation is important, but it is not the only thing. Pure tech innovation is done by manufacturers of network equipment and handsets. That is good. Business process innovations (e.g. lowering the costs of base stations through software) are done by operators. These include technical aspects, but are not limited to them. Shifting from one business model to another (discovering the latter) is also innovation, but it may or may not not have a tech aspect at all.

CHAKULA: What are the preconditions for innovation, do you think?

[RS]: The status quo must be unbearable. The BTNM innovation occurred when competition got so intense that there was no way to gain market share or even survive without doing something new.

CHAKULA: Does BTNM have implications for increased access to broadband internet for the majority of people on a continent like Africa?

[RS]: Yes. The latter part of the paper is entirely on the extension of BTNM to broadband. Some headlines are that operators must have enough money from voice that can be invested in the 3G plus networks. Once the overlay network is built out the operators have to offer low prices. Prepaid sachet pricing is best, where one buys packages of connectivity in minutes or in capacity. Here, because of lower transaction costs and prices there should be an influx of new customers. This is already on offer in Asia. Africa has to lower prices. Access will be over mobile networks, using dongles or built in modems, for laptops and other devices, including phones. ADSL will be a niche product. Wireless access is the future.

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There are many elements to a successful mobile-money scheme: the right technology, simple marketing, partnerships with banks, support from regulators. But keeping it all going are people like Gaudencia, moving bundles of cash around, on buses and in vans, behind the scenes.

M. Somasekhar’s piece on Hindu Business Line on mobile payments says:

Experts from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Kenya, Thailand, the Philippines, Bhutan and Bangladesh among other nations met in Islamabad recently to discuss their experiences in providing mobile phone services for the BoP segment in their respective countries. They agreed that a beginning has been made and the road ahead appeared daunting, but technological progress promised quick results.

Don Sambandaraksa’s  piece “Mobile phones offer hope to ‘bottom of the pyramid” to Bangkok Post focuses on mobile use in farming, transport and banking. Says he:

“ICTs cannot solve all problems, chief of which is land reform, but when it comes to making decisions, lowering transaction costs and going to market and selling, information can make a big difference.

The researched categorised the decision-making process and information value in each from decisions to seed, planting, growing to harvesting and selling.

Information search costs are highest at the beginning of the cycle. Information on deciding what to grow are three times all other costs, and this is where ICTs have a potential role to play.

Sriganesh Lokanathan said that ideally he wanted to change the decision-making chain into a cycle where the decision on what the farmer wants to grow is based on the price when he expects to harvest. For this to happen, prices and supply and demand needed to be predicted and farmers need to get into forward sales contracts which does not often happen in this part of the world.”

Meanwhile we see Pakistan Telecom Authority, the co-organiser takes the message forward. ‘PTA Focuses on Value-Added Services Including E-Commerce, E-Agriculture & E-Education’ was the title of a report from Pakistan Telecom News Bulletin. It says:

Chairman, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Dr. Mohammed Yaseen has said that PTA’s focus is on value added services and with a high penetration level of mobile and low penetration of internet we have to explore the available possibilities which could be gained via mobile 2.0 theories. I very much foresee the further development of presently available technologies and those coming ahead through value added services and content. He was addressing to Connect 2010 ICT Forum – Telecom Session at Expo Centre Karachi and talking to media men on the occasion. He said that our emphasis is on e-commerce, e-agriculture and e-education, it is the time to open doors of opportunities to our young innovative minds and to bridge the unseen gaps between all potentials players of ICT proliferation.

For the full media coverage and presentations,  please see here.

Zain has fared badly in Africa along with other Middle Eastern operators perhaps because their home turf has been heavily regulated. Most acted as comfortable monopolists until only recently. Bharti on the other hand has a good deal of experience in wringing out profits in a poor country where competition is growing. Africa merely adds more diversity and the potential for political instability to the challenge. It helps, too, that Bharti brings expertise of running low-cost operations in markets where consumers have very low incomes. It does this by sharing infrastructure and outsourcing most operations such as IT and running networks, leaving the risk of expanding to meet the needs of subscribers to others while it concentrates on marketing and strategy. And Bharti’s size and clout should allow it to pay much less than Zain for network towers and the like in Africa.

Bharti’s ability to concentrate on its customers should yield rewards in Africa, where innovations to bring down costs to customers have already helped to boost profits of other firms. MTN, for example, pioneered dynamic tariffs that charge users to make calls according to how many other callers are using a network at a given time. And Zain’s own scheme of “borderless roaming” lets customers move between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and make calls without incurring disproportionate charges.

Innovation can travel the other way too. We hope that Bharti will import to South Asia the borderless roaming that Zain introduced to the world.

Nathan Eagle, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, believes that mobile phones offer more than a way to communicate. In his hands, they can provide windows on the social structure of communities, information that can lead to better public-policy decisions, and unexpected sources of income for people in poor countries.

For years, Eagle has been mining cell-phone data captured by service providers around the world. Using algorithms he developed as a graduate student at MIT, he strips all identifying information from call logs and looks for patterns in where people go and how they use their phones–patterns that can reveal how social networks are affected by outside forces. For instance, he is working with city planners in Kenya and Rwanda to understand how slums grow and change in response to events such as natural disasters and declines in crop prices. And earlier this year, Eagle began using phone-derived data to build a more accurate model of the spread of malaria in Africa. Previous models had relied on spotty information about people’s movements, collected in sporadic surveys. With a better picture of how the disease spreads, governments can improve the policies designed to fight it.

Full report is here.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/08/discerning-teleuse-from-mobile-transaction-generated-information/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2009/06/colloquium-mobile-20-m-money-for-the-unbanked/ http://lirneasia.net/2009/06/colloquium-mobile-20-m-money-for-the-unbanked/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:43:36 +0000 Nilusha Kapugama http://lirneasia.net/?p=4689 Colloquium conducted by Dr. Erwin Alampay of NCPAG, Philippines.

Presentation began by looking at the potential for M-money.

Why should we use m-money?

Improving efficiency: Improve services, financial services. BOP a target.

BOP (migrants) relies on various forms of remittances

Looking at Filipinos, 9% of BOP had a relative living abroad, and 13% in another part of the country, so there is a vested interest in m-money.

At present about 5% is going through informal channels according to the Filipino central bank. According to respondents about 80% sent through banks.

Workers need access to bank accounts in both the remitting and remitted country for remittances through banks. This is a limitation. M-money may not necessarily need an account in the remitting country.

Filipino workers generally prefere formal channels. Todays presentation will focus on m-money channels such as smart money of g-cash.

ADB: Transaction costs about 2.5%-3.5% of remittances.

For local remittances: Pawn shops used. Roughly remits around Php 500-1000. These are potential targets for m-money.

RS: How does the Pawn shops work? Pawn shops have a wide network, usually works through a call or SMS. A transaction number will be given to the person sending the money. The number will be given to the person who is due to receive the money. Identification is required for acquiring the cash. This is with regards to local remittances.

HG: Do the pawn shops work together, or is there a network that belong to one company. There is one network which has about 12,000 pawn shops.

Vasana: Are they licenced? EA: They are regulated by the central bank to a certain extend.

Central bank regulation is due to Anti Terrorism laws. Pawn shops charge a higher rate of interest. Technology is a catalyst for changing remittance landscape.

M-banking is one component of electronic money according to Circular 649 of Filipino Central Bank. M-Money is E-money stored in a mobile.

Electronic money defined as stored value or pre-paid payment mechanisms.

RS: can money loaded to the a pre-paid mobile account be refunded? EA: It is one of the issues which is going through regulatory process now.

3 modes of e-money issuers in Philippines: Bank (Smart money), Non bank financial institution recognised by BSP (Central Bank), Non bank registered with BSP as a money transfer agent (Example, GLOBE)

Registration is easier with Globe. Can do through SMS.

Looking at potential of M-money at the BOP the following method was used:
Method of access, Material access, skills access, Usage access

Method of access
Using LIRNEasia survey data, re-method of access, 566% of those who didnt use it said didnt know how to use it. According to focus group discussions, even though they were aware, they needed proof of efficiency, price.

With e-loading, familiarity with the Roman script is an advantage. If a person is familiar with transferring e-loads then using m-money will be easier.

Trust issues, Central bank looking at some of the issues. Security mechanisms such as PIN codes. At present Php 100,000 is the limit for any type of e-money. Same for M-money. Even if you have four m-money accounts, the total should be 100,000.

Material Access:
Only 13% of BOP have access to Bank accounts

On avearge there were 1.36 mobiles per household. More access to a mobile phones so there fore more potential for m-money.

Identification documents and physical access to cash in are seen as barriers to M-banking.

Individuals can get there m-money (Gcash) out from ATMs and cash in cash out venues. Therefore accessibility is an issue. There are already some Pawn shops being used as cash in cash out venues.

Can register from a distance but need to go to the bank to cash in. No identification cards in Philippines. Propoer identification is a problem in the Philippines.

Skills Access
40% of those surveyed in the LINREasia survey are familiar with e-loading.

99% of surveyed mobile users use SMS.

Filipinos top up small values at shorter time frames. Use to exchanging mobile top ups. This is consistent with remittance patterns.  Comparatively, Filipinos send money often in smaller amounts

GCASH and Smart are accepted as forms of payment in Philippines, but this maybe more common among the more affluent users.

GLOBE (2006): Transacting USD 117 Million on average.

SMART (2006) Transacting USD 257,200 average daily transactions.

HG: How much is charged for Transactions? EA: Basic of SMS cost, plus 1% of transaction cost or minimum of Php 10.

HG: Transmission takes one or multiple SMS? EA: Have to confirm but it maybe a minimum of 2 SMSs.

Challenges and Policy issues:

1) Developing mental access: Increasing awareness, better financial advantages.

2) Developing Material access: Making services that work with the kinds of phones used by BOP, making cash in/cash out more accessible.
Regulating GCASH and SMART:

100% reserve requirement

HG: 100% reserve requirement for just e-money or any transfer? EA: Thats for e-money.

HG: Is there a time limit on the money put in the e-money account? a 100% RR is very high. EA: They do not work as banks. Money is earned through transactions.

Policy Issues:
Security of the systems

prevention of fraud

Interoperability

Tracking users

Increasing access

RS: Comparisson with M-Pesa in Kenya will be useful.

HG: Comaprison with the regular banking transactions will also be useful.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/06/colloquium-mobile-20-m-money-for-the-unbanked/feed/ 2 http://lirneasia.net/2009/06/cheap-connectivity-to-east-africa-hopefully/ http://lirneasia.net/2009/06/cheap-connectivity-to-east-africa-hopefully/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:00:11 +0000 Rohan Samarajiva http://lirneasia.net/?p=4597 Good news for the many outside and inside government who struggled to get this done, including our colleagues from Research ICT Africa. The necessary condition for cheap connectivity is about to the fulfilled.

Last week, in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, a regional communications revolution belatedly got under way when Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, plugged in the first of three fibre-optic submarine cables due to make landfall in Kenya in the next few months. They should speed up the connection of Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as bits of Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan, to the online world.

Of course, as the West African cable showed abundantly, and then the landing of SEA-ME-WE 4 in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh did, the cable by itself does not make things better. The link from the cable station must be well maintained (the one in Bangladesh used to get cut every few weeks at one point) and regulatory action is needed to ensure that no one is allowed to exploit the various bottlenecks to extract rents.

Rwanda may emerge as a winner. Its president, Paul Kagame, has long identified the internet as a key to his country’s development, offering concessions to software companies setting up there. But Kenya also wants to cash in. It has abolished sales tax on computers and in last week’s budget ended the sales tax on new mobile phones. It has also let businesses write off bandwidth purchases in the hope of dominating the regional internet market. That may make other countries push companies to drop their prices.

Now this is good news of another kind. Finally, governments getting the point that they can make more money by cutting, rather than raising mobile taxes.

The full story in the Economist.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/06/cheap-connectivity-to-east-africa-hopefully/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2009/02/another-telecenter-story-or-will-the-ending-be-different-because-its-googles/ http://lirneasia.net/2009/02/another-telecenter-story-or-will-the-ending-be-different-because-its-googles/#comments Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:40:52 +0000 Rohan Samarajiva http://lirneasia.net/?p=3644 The world is awash in telecenter pilots.  I thought all the lessons that could be learned, have been learned.  Apparently not.  Google is bankrolling another pilot in Kenya, including a USD 700/month broadband bill.  So, for sustainability we’d need around 700 users spending a tad more than USD 2 per visit?  And that would be a little more than what they make in a month?  Never mind.

Google paid for the final design of the stations and is covering the monthly fees for satellite bandwidth. The company has also invested in O3b, a start-up that hopes to deploy a constellation of satellites over Africa by the end of next year.

“Building infrastructure is not necessarily Google’s objective, but if you look at all the areas that Google has gone into, in many cases it has been to fill a gap,” said Joseph Mucheru, who heads Google’s East Africa office. “The market should see the opportunity.”

Just how much opportunity there is remains unclear. Google is uncertain whether such satellite stations can pay for themselves in rural areas, given the cost of equipment and bandwidth. Communities may well benefit from the connection, but they do not all have the means to afford it.

Bandwidth fees for stations like the one in Entasopia could cost as much as $700 a month, though slower ones cost less, said Wayan Vota, a senior director at Inveneo, a nonprofit that works to disseminate Internet technology throughout Africa and the developing world. As these connections are introduced more widely, which is O3b’s goal, the price could fall, Mr. Vota said.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/02/another-telecenter-story-or-will-the-ending-be-different-because-its-googles/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2008/11/gsma-urges-bangladesh-to-licence-3g-to-expand-broadband/ http://lirneasia.net/2008/11/gsma-urges-bangladesh-to-licence-3g-to-expand-broadband/#comments Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:09:39 +0000 Chanuka Wattegama http://lirneasia.net/?p=2856 GSMA, the global trade body representing the mobile industry, called on Bangladesh to issue 3G licences soon to make broadband services more widely available.

Licensing the 2100 MHz spectrum band for 3G services would enable Bangladeshi operators to launch mobile broadband services, which their customers can use to gain fast and easy access to the Internet and online services, it said on Wednesday.

Bangladesh’s mobile sector has grown rapidly, with user numbers reaching more than 45 million at end-September from 200,000 in 2001, while the country has only 1.32 million fixed-line phones.

“Laying new fixed-line connections is expensive and inefficient, so high-speed mobile networks are Bangladesh’s best bet to realise the many social and economic benefits that arise from widespread access to broadband services,” said Ricardo Tavares, senior vice president for public policy at the GSMA.

Analysts predict the number of subscribers could top 70 million by 2011, nearly half the country’s population of more than 140 million people.

Many developing countries, including Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Kenya and South Africa, have already deployed mobile broadband services enabling their people to get easy access to information on health, education, job opportunities and agriculture.

There are six cellphone carriers in Bangladesh, including five foreign operators.

Read the full story in Reuters here.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2008/11/gsma-urges-bangladesh-to-licence-3g-to-expand-broadband/feed/ 1 http://lirneasia.net/2008/04/kenya-launches-one-of-the-worlds-first-cellphone-to-cellphone-cash-transfer-systems/ http://lirneasia.net/2008/04/kenya-launches-one-of-the-worlds-first-cellphone-to-cellphone-cash-transfer-systems/#comments Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:51:59 +0000 Nirmali Sivapragasam http://www.lirneasia.net/2008/04/kenya-launches-one-of-the-worlds-first-cellphone-to-cellphone-cash-transfer-systems/ Unserved by Banks, Poor Kenyans Now Just Use a Cellphone, The Christian Science Moniter

One of the world’s first cellphone-to-cellphone cash-transfer systems has been launched in Kenya. The system, called M-PESA, allows customers to transfer cash via their mobile phone, through an agent or store which supplies the cash. Launched by Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile service provider, the numbers of customers using this system has exceeded previous expectations, with over 450, 000 customers making use of this service, as of October 2007. However, despite its promising outlook, there are concerns regarding the regulation in place – or rather lack thereof – which could serve as a hindrance to future growth of this system.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2008/04/kenya-launches-one-of-the-worlds-first-cellphone-to-cellphone-cash-transfer-systems/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2008/01/kenyan-mobile-pays-toll-for-unrest/ http://lirneasia.net/2008/01/kenyan-mobile-pays-toll-for-unrest/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:06:59 +0000 Abu Saeed Khan http://www.lirneasia.net/2008/01/kenyan-mobile-pays-toll-for-unrest/ Kenya’s Safaricom has lost US$6.2 million revenues due to the violence following the recent election. The company has also faced increased costs, especially after it had to hire helicopters to ship prepay airtime vouchers to rural areas where road transport is unsafe. Many independent airtime resellers have also closed their stores during the unrest, further hampering sales. Read more.

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