Tag Archives: regulation
Regulation is an infrastructure too
Yury Sokolov is the vice-president of Rusatom Overseas, a state-owned Russian nuclear energy outfit. Bangladesh has planned for a nuclear reactor to produce commercial power with Rusatom’s help. Mr. Sokolov underscores the development of skilled manpower, management system and relevant laws prior to building the reactor. His emphasize on building proper infrastructure is striking. By [...]
Critical infrastructure hardening: Who should pay and how much?
LIRNEasia works on infrastructure policy and regulation. It also has expertise in disaster risk reduction. That means that we have a natural interest in critical infrastructure issues. This is an area I had published in, even before LIRNEasia came into being. The subject was on assigning responsibility for risk reduction by regulators. When Hurricane Sandy [...]
Regulation as a remedy for political failure
At LIRNEasia we study and teach about regulation. In March-April we spent some effort seeking to contribute to what we saw as an effort to remedy some long-standing political failures through transparent, consultative processes set in motion by Sri Lanka’s Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL). Our recommendations were not accepted, but we still [...]
Appreciation: Radley Dissanayake, Telecom reformer
I recall a Sinhala poem from my time at Peradeniya University. It asked who had actually built Sigiriya and the great irrigation works: The kings who routinely get the credit or the unnamed many who did the actual building? The telecom reforms in Sri Lanka are now seen as an unqualified success. The reforms did [...]
The good that comes from public hearings
Today, the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka, held the oral-presentation component of the 2013 tariff hearing. In their effort to accommodate 70 or so persons/organizations among the 200+ that had made written submissions, they limited speaking time to 5-10 mts depending on how many issues had been covered and did not ask any questions [...]
Laying the foundation for disseminating Inclusive Information Society messages
LIRNEasia’s current cycle of research focuses on how mobile platforms can help improve customer relationship management in utilities. I have been contributing to the current debate on rationalizing the electricity tariffs in Sri Lanka based on the work Partha Mukhopadhyay and I did in relation to the recently concluded SAFIR core course and laying the [...]
Dissemination begins on “Inclusion in the Information Society” project
As part of the “Inclusion in the Information Society” project commenced September last year we have been studying how electricity utilities can use the almost universal mobile devices to improve the services provided to consumers. The research is ongoing, but we have not let that stop us from making use of the policy windows that [...]
Can we provide satisfactory infrastructure services to our people without satisfactory regulation?
Having just finished teaching a course for regulators from five South Asian nations, this para from Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s column on state capacity in India resonated with me. The second black hole of the state is regulatory certainty. The biggest regression over UPA 2 was that it continued to multiply regulators, while at the same [...]
Regulatory legitimacy lecture at 12th SAFIR core course
I have given versions of this lecture in many forms at SAFIR over the years. The difference this time was that it was the foundation for a series of units based on the research on customer-relations management conducted across Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka by LIRNEasia and presented by Helani Galpaya and Rajkiran Bilolikar. Their [...]
Policy & regulatory actions to help achieve Digital Bangladesh
Today I delivered the keynote at well attended workshop on how the Telecom Sector could contribute to Digital Bangladesh. It was organized by the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute. Attendees included the Ministers of Post and Telecom, ICT and Information. The Chair of BTRC and the Secretary of the Ministry of ICT, a key actor in Bangladesh’s [...]
ITU officially declares war against Internet
Now it’s official. ITU’s Secretary-General, Hamadoun I. Touré, explicitly supports the governments’ plan to hijack the Internet. His article titled “U.N. Must Lead Internet Regulation Effort” in WIRED says it all. Amending the ITR and creating a lever for the governments to confiscate the control of Internet is a major objective. Governments are looking for [...]
What a government should not do: License renewal in Bangladesh
Sitting at a session in TPRC40 listening to LIRNEasia Research Fellow Faheem Hussain presenting his paper. Impressed that this kind of study, analyzing an issue that is not of great relevance to US telecom policy scholars, is accommodated at TPRC. The challenge, of course, is to pull back from the temptation to give too much [...]
Adventures in behavioral economics
Universal acclaim rarely comes to a theorist who tries to implement his ideas. As administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, he reviewed the rules implementing President Obama’s health care act and the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law. He backed major environmental initiatives, including higher fuel efficiency standards for cars and [...]
Reflecting on regulatory independence 13 years after I left the job
Among the PiRRC contributions to the Pacific Broadband Forum just concluded in Nadi, Fiji, was a panel discussion on regulatory independence. In addition to the practicing regulators of Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu, they invited some observers to participate. Preparing for the panel, I looked through some old slidesets and came up with this [...]
The courts become key players in Bangladesh telecom regulation
For the longest time, I could not understand why there were no legal challenges to the regulator in Bangladesh. No one went to court, however arbitrary the decisions were. Looks like that has changed. Grameenphone has won a crucial legal battle with regulators BTRC as High Court has rejected claim for an extra Tk 236 [...]
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