Findings of the research carried out in South Asian countries by regional ICT policy and regulation think tank LIRNEasia maintain cheaper on-net call is the main reason for multiple-SIM ownership. The research was conducted among bottom of the pyramid (BOP) in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Unveiling the findings of the report in Bangkok, CEO of LIRNEasia Rohan Samarajiva said that the research showed that the network coverage of mobile operators in this region was getting better and most subscribers said cheaper on-net calls are the major reason. The previous research conducted in 2008 had shown a better network coverage as the major reason for multiple-SIM ownership.

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.

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.

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.

Fueled by an insatiable demand for new Internet services and a shift to so-called cloud computing services that are largely hosted in commercial data centers and in the large data farms operated by companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, there has been an increasing discussion about the growing percentage of the nation’s electricity that will be consumed by vast data centers being constructed at a record pace.

But the new report indicates that electricity used by global data centers in 2010 remained relatively modest. “Electricity used in global data centers likely accounted for between 1.1 percent and 1.5 percent of total electricity use, respectively. For the U.S. that number was between 1.7 percent and 2.2 percent,” according to the report.

In an earlier paper, Mr. Koomey reported that the power used by servers in data centers represented about 0.5 percent of world electricity consumption in 2005. When cooling and auxiliary infrastructure were included, that figure was about 1 percent, he wrote.

Full report.

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.

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.

Now Muammar Qaddafi has decided to the test the law.

Libya’s main Internet service provider, General Post and Telecommunications Company, began to cut Internet access on Friday, said Earl Zmijewski, general manager with Internet monitoring company Renesys. “They started pulling the plug around 23:18 UTC today and are currently largely off the air,” he said via e-mail. That was 1:18 a.m. Saturday, local time.

Named for the last King of Nepal. Could have been called Jaruselzki’s Law, but Nepal could do with some visibility one thinks. And it is a toss-up which tyrant’s name is harder to pronounce.

The act of pulling the kill switch could be named in dishonor of Mubarak, as in doing a Mubarak; a partial Mubarak; a short Mubarak and so on.

Reflections on the Egyptian shut down should be read in this historical context. The key difference is that Egypt was perhaps at a qualitatively higher level of ICT use when they hit the kill switch. It is also worth considering what happened to General Jaruzelski and King Gyanendra.

During initial wave of Tunisian protests, expressions of solidarity were made via social networking sites such as Facebook, but it was in the organisation of the first Egyptian protests that the powerful role that social media would play in these events truly became apparent.
The protests themselves are believed to have been instigated by a Youtube video calling for action; this spread via social media and resulted in a spate of protests being organised nationwide, largely via Facebook and other social networking sites, with Twitter proving particularly popular for posting up-to-the-minute information as the protests progressed.
Coordinated protests began on January 25th, with thousands gathering in cities across Egypt, including Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Ismaïlia. Three days later, ahead of large-scale planned protests, the government took action apparently aimed at preventing long-distance communication: internet services were shut down, and mobile operators were obliged to suspend services following a government order.
Although Saturday 29th January marked the day on which 80% of Egypt’s Internet access went dark, this was not the first move made by the government against telecommunications services. Shortly after the insurgency began, Mubarak had ordered that access to various social networking sites be suspended, directly acknowledging the role that such sites had played in the organisation of protests.
The government’s attempt to block access to telecommunications speaks volumes about how these services have become a part of everyday existence over recent years. After Egyptian state television and newspapers notoriously attempted to play down the initial wave of protests, any pretence of impartiality was shattered, dealing a blow to the credibility of state media and underlining the role of telecommunications in providing reliable information.
More than this though, the reaction indicated that Mubarak’s government was attempting to prevent the spread of information about the protests in a desperate bid to limit their impact – essentially a tacit acknowledgement of how powerful social media have become in their ability to connect and unify people.
Speaking about the situation in Egypt, Microsoft’s Bill Gates said: “Whenever you do something extraordinary like [shutting down the internet] you’re sort of showing people you’re afraid of the truth getting out, so it’s a very difficult tactic.”

Abhayagiriya before restoration, 19th century. Photographer unknown

Observed few things fresh on my day at the Abhayagiri monastery complex. One was a rock inscription in ancient devanagari. It was not about a donation made by a king or a minister, as usual, or even a notification of a new regulation. The Sanskrit stanza was meant for Buddhist monks. Not a rule; but more a guide.

Why in Sanskrit? The local language could have been more appropriate if not for the sizable foreign student population at this ancient university. An academy as famous as Takshila, Vikramashila and Nalanda in the ancient Buddhist world, the Abhyagiriya University was said to have hosted 5,000 student monks in its hey days according to Fa Xian, a Chinese Buddhist monk who traveled to Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka to acquire Buddhist scriptures in 5th CAD. The complex would have been larger than any of the present Sri Lankan university premises and of the same size of the ancient Anuradhapura city centre.

The cost of construction and maintenance couldn’t have come only from the government. No matter how pious the kings and the subjects were, they couldn’t have made such colossal allocations from the treasury for no return. The only modes of survival were by levying tuition fees or producing outcomes of not religious, but true economic value. Probably the institution did both. Unlike Theravada, Mahayana doctrine did not prevent monks from studying non-religious ‘lay’ subjects. Couldn’t it be here they designed the sophisticated irrigation system in ancient Lanka? Couldn’t this be the place where they did Ayurvedic medical research?

Couldn’t this have been the independent economic centre for knowledge in the latter Anuradhapura period?

Not a surprise if we have no records, because all chronicles were done by the Theravada monks at Mahavihara, the arch rivals of Abhayagiri.

On the fixed side, assisted by CDMA phones that are counted as fixed, Sri Lanka is the leader (17 connection per 100 people), followed by Maldives (15 per 100).

Like in cricket, the middle of the rankings are the most interesting. Both Pakistan (50/100) and Bhutan (37/100) are ahead of India (29/100) in mobile. This shows that India cannot afford to let up the pace of 10 million connections a month for some time. If it does, it might be overtaken by Afghanistan (29/100) and even Bangladesh (28/100).

Of course, the fact that Afghanistan is ahead of Bangladesh in mobile penetration should cause all sorts of palpitations in government offices in Dhaka. Bangladesh was one of the earliest in South Asia to adopt mobile and is the most densely populated country in the world. How they were overtaken by Afghanistan, a war-torn country with difficult terrain, should cause serious re-examination of policies such as the BDT 800 SIM tax. The fact that Afghanistan’s CAGR for 2003-08 is 109%, higher than Bangladesh’s 2003-08 CAGR of 101%, suggests that the gap between the two countries is more likely to increase than decrease.

In the fixed rankings, we find Afghanistan occupying the cellar (0.37/100 people) behind Bangladesh (0.84/100). Pakistan (2.5/100) is behind Nepal (2.8/100). This is very surprising given the apparent superiority of the Pakistan policy and regulatory framework. Both use CDMA on the fixed access side, so that cannot be the explanation. Comments from Pakistani colleagues would be most welcome.

India is the only country showing negative growth in fixed over the 2003-08 period (-2%), but this simply because India is more honest in its reporting, counting CDMA on the mobile side instead of on the fixed side. For example Sri Lanka is experiencing negative growth in wireline, that is masked by CDMA growth.

From 2003 to 2008, the number of active SIMs has increased by over 12 times, while the number of fixed connections has decreased marginally, the negative growth in India wiping out all the gains in the rest of South Asia. South Asia is clearly the territory of the mobile.

India is the first within the region, ranked 54th (down from 50th in 2007-08). Sri Lanka has made considerable progress from 79th place in 2007-08 to 70th place in a straight comparison (72nd among the 2008-09 countries). Congratulations to the industry, ICTA and all who contributed to this gain.

Pakistan has slipped to 95th in a straight comparison from its 89th position in 2007-08. Nepal has slipped to 121st from 119th, and Bangladesh holds at 124th when compared with the 2007-08 set, but is 130th out of 134 in the 2008-09 set.

An update.

But it still makes us wonder why the World Bank is funding rural payphones, when the evidence is abundant that cheap mobiles are what will connect poor people, not payphones?

Poor families in four of the poorer provinces of northern and northwestern Cambodia – Banteay Meanchey, Otdar Meanchey, Preah Vihear, and Pursat – will benefit from a US$2.6 million grant to increase access to telecommunications services signed by the World Bank, acting as administrator for the Global Partnership on Output-Based Aid (GPOBA), and the Royal Government of Cambodia.
Up to 52,000 poor households or 260,000 Cambodians are expected to benefit from the scheme, through improved telecommunications network coverage and the installation of public access points where people will be able to make and receive telephone calls on a regular and reliable basis.

Full news release.