Call for Papers: Infrastructure Regulation: What works, Why, and How do we know?
Deadline: 05 December 2008.
This episode of The Interview features an interview with Executive Director, Rohan Samarajiva on telecom regulations, disaster mitigation, preparedness and early warning, mobile phone usage at the BOP and a number of other technology related issues.
The Interview - Rohan Samarajiva from CPA on Vimeo.
LIRNEasia’s Executive Director, Rohan Samarajiva (Ph.D.) has been elected as a Board Member at Large in the International Communication Association (ICA) on a three year term, effective from the close of the 2009 conference of the ICA, due to take place on May 21-25 2009in Chicago (Announcement).
ICA is an academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching, and application of all aspects of human and mediated communication. The ICA is over 50 years old, begining as a small association of U.S. researchers and is now an international association with more than 4,300 members in 70 countries. The ICA includes 24 divisions and interest groups, each representing a special subfield of communication processes and phenomena.
ICA holds an annual conference at which several hundred research papers…
Rohan Samarajiva will make a presentation entitled, ‘Small Screen, Big Scream: How much has the mobile really delivered, how much more to come?’ at the International Institute of Communications Annual Conference to be held from 3-4 November 2008, in Hong Kong. The event is co-hosted by the Broadcasting Authority and the Office of the Telecommunications Authority, Hong Kong.
Themed, ‘Trends in Global Communications: Capturing the High Ground in an Uncertain World’, the conference seeks to examine the impact of current trends and twists in the telecom market, against the backdrop of developing regulatory policy and the inevitably huge demands of infrastructure investments.
Some of the questions the conference hopes to address are:
An article written by Rohan Samarajiva on Bangladesh’s proposed universal service taxes has been published in The Daily Star, Bangladesh; an excerpt follows.
Bangladesh currently has the lowest mobile prices in the world and perhaps the world’s highest mobile growth rate. Pretty good, by any measure. A universal service tax can ruin the business model that has given millions of Bangladesh citizens the opportunity to get connected to an electronic network for the first time and to use telecom services at affordable prices. Instead of solving a problem, it will create one.
…the same basket of calls, texts and apportioned connection charges (low-user basket, based on OECD methodology adapted for the region by LIRNEasia) that costs $5.25 in Nepal, costs only $2.46 in Bangladesh.
Yet, the low prices and…
Large corporations engage in acts of Corporate Social Responsibility. Non-profit organizations like ours sometimes engage in acts of Social Corporate Responsibility. SCR differs from CSR because the beneficiary here is a corporation. We recognize that large corporations can affect the course of events in countries and in some cases, the world. Therefore, when a large corporation with massive resources asked us to help educate their senior managers (especially those in charge of CSR) about key issues in telecom, we agreed.
Here are four one-pager briefs that were prepared for this purpose: the topics were Underserved areas; access and backbone networks, spectrum and ICT4D in South Asia (excluding India).
Rohan Samarajiva has been invited to speak at the 2008 Telecoms World South Asia Conference, to be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh from 7 - 9 October.
This event, designed for South Asia’s top telecommunication players interested in building and managing a business-focused telecommunciations organization, is intended to provide an important platform for information exchange through dialogue between serious players in the region. The event will feature keynotes, thought-leadership presentations, interactive discussion panels and real-world case studies on ‘hot topics’ pertinent to the South Asian industry.
Rohan will make a presentation entitled, ‘Introducing broadband: investment conditions, regulatory challenges and addressing QoS’ at a session entitled, ‘Exploiting technologies for future growth and development’. Rohan will also be among panelists at a discussion on ‘Leveraging on next generation technologies to extend the service offering’.
Other…
One local telco CEO recently whined about being viewed as a cigarette manufacturer. “Everybody wants to tax us, as if mobiles are a product more hazardous than cigarettes. Tobacco kills, mobiles don’t; communication facilitates better living conditions and saves environment because it reduces transport. It is gross unfair both are seen in the same light.”
As Wikipedia tells us, cigarettes are a significant source of tax revenue in many localities. This fact has historically been an impediment for health groups seeking to discourage cigarette smoking, since governments seek to maximize tax revenues. It is established that higher prices for cigarettes discourage smoking. Every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes reduced youth smoking by about seven percent and overall cigarette consumption by about four percent.
We…
The Aspen Institute has published a report entitled, ‘m-Powering India: Mobile Communications for Inclusive Growth’ co-authored by Mahesh Uppal and Richard P. Adler, which documents the discussions from the Aspen Institute India/ C & S Joint Roundtable on Communication Policy held in Kovalam, India in February, 2008. LIRNEasia’s Executive Director, Rohan Samarajiva, participated at the event, which brought together senior representatives from the telecommunications industry, government and academia.
The objective of the meeting was to develop policy proposals that would contribute to the development of low-cost and high-quality telecom infrastructure needed to facilitate seamless transactions of mobile commerce.
A summary of the main recommendation (as documented in the report) is given below. An online version of the report is also available HERE.
Key recommendations
Infrastructure
•All carriers should be granted easy access to essential infrastructure at a…
Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director, LIRNEasia argues mobiles (and other ICT tools) play a definite role in the climate change – or rather preventing it. That will decide whether the future generations will see Elephant Pass or not. Irrespective of the outcome of the war, it might be six foot under water soon unless global warming is stopped.
Extracts:
I will not get into the debate about who should cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, conceding that what little Sri Lanka does will not affect the outcome decisively. Instead, I will simply look at one small area that will help us to reduce our carbon footprint (a good thing to do in any case) and also improve the quality of our lives. Even if it makes no measurable…
Executive Director, Rohan Samarajiva will participate at the ITU Asia 2008 conference taking place in Bangkok, Thailand, from 2-5 September 2008. He will talk about universal service at the opening plenary with the Indian Minister at the Telecom Development Symposium on 4th September. He will also give the keynote talk at the Business and Finance Session of the ITU Asia Youth Forum on 2nd September, chaired by Bosco Eduagive a rdo Fernandes, Vice President (BU & IM Industry Relationship), Nokia Siemens Networks GmbH & Co. KG (Germany).
ITU TELECOM ASIA 2008 is a key networking platform for Asia’s top ICT names to come together and focus on core issues relating to ICT expansion across the region.
Responding to Rohan Samarajiva’s views on newly implemented Environmental levy in Lankadeepa last week, Central Environmental Authority Chairman Udaya Gammanpila calls it essential and the ‘first progressive tax’ in Sri Lanka. Assuring it does not burden public, he says any tax can be initially unpopular but the impact should be seen in long term. (Lankadeepa, August 19, 2008)
These are his points in brief:
1. If not for the Environmental levy, the government has to find money to address environmental issues by increasing either VAT or customs charges. That will raise prices in general. It is unfair. Why should villagers who have never seen a mobile phone contribute for its removal whenever they buy flour to make rotis? Instead we have introduced a tax only on pollutants.…
Central Environmental Authority Chairman Udaya Gammanpila calls the new ‘Environmental tax’ essential, pro-poor and progressive. Releasing used mobile phones and CFL bulbs to environment is dangerous, he warns, with a long list of hazardous chemicals that would perhaps put a chemistry professor to shame. He wants to collect them for recycling. The tax money will be used to build recycling plants.
Not everybody agrees.
Talking to Sunday Observer, Chartered Accountant cum Tax Consultant N.R. Gajendran, Partner, Gajma and Co. claims the Green levies have been introduced to cover the Government’s expenditure on the SAARC Summit and the Provincial Council elections. Revenue proposals, says he, should be made through the budget and not as interim proposals.
“A mobile phone is not a luxury item. A tax on the phone will…
“Without question, the book addresses an important and timely issue. The organization of the book around the four pillars of the business environment, the information infrastructure, the innovation system and human resources, is praiseworthy. The book must be commended for bringing up the topic of what should (and should not) be done, as the Sri Lankan economy moves from reliance on agriculture to reliance on services and valued-added agriculture and industry. It contributes to and adds credence to an ongoing discussion on this subject in Sinhala and English in the popular media”
This is the first paragraph of the review Rohan Samarajiva did on ‘Building the Sri Lankan knowledge economy’. The publication was launched sometime back.
Read the full review here.
Here are the presentations done by Rohan Samarajiva and…
LIRNEasia researchers participated at the International Telecommunications Society (ITS) 17th Biennial Conference in Montreal, Canada, from June 24-27 2008. The theme of the conference was on, ‘The Changing Structure of the Telecommunications Industry and the New Role of Regulation’.
The picture above shows Professor Sudharma Yoonaidharma, Commissioner, National Telecommunciations Commission of Thailand commenting on the presentations made at the second of the two LIRNE.NET sessions, watched by (from left) Rohan Samarajiva and Payal Malik from LIRNEasia, Roxana Barrentes from DIRSI and Anders Henten from LIRNE Europe. The session was chaired by Hank Intven, Partner at the leading Canadian firm of McCarthy Tetrault (not in the picture).
At a double LIRNE.NET panel, entitled, ‘New regulatory approaches in the face of rapidly changing demand: Research from four continents presented by LIRNE.NET’,…
Despite being a technical book that addresses complexity out of sheer necessity, the text remains readable, sometimes entertainingly so. Phrases such as ‘governance badlands of South and Southeast Asia’ sum up our grim reality, conjuring images that we are all too familiar with. The editors have also done an excellent job in cross-referencing across chapters, so that the book reads more than a mere amalgamation of chapters. I would have preferred the graphs to be larger and clearer, but then, this comes out from an academic publisher.
As the editors say, the book is an introduction, not a conclusion, “to a new way of governing, especially in areas that rest on specialised, yet incomplete, knowledge such as infrastructure.” It asks more questions than it answers, leaving…
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