Tag Archives: Rohan Samarajiva
Applications now open for LIRNEasia Young Scholar Tutorials, hosted by NUS, Singapore. Click here for info on how to apply.
Population as a growth engine
The snap shot age distribution in a population can take three basic shapes. Pyramid is the most common in animal world where reaching the ripe old age is rare. Advances in medicine and economy have changed that in human societies. The pot shape is the best (till is lasts) as the workforce is larger with respect to the number of dependents (old and children). An urn, with a wider top and a bottom is the worst.
Starting in around 2013, points Rohan Samarajiva, Bangladesh will enter the best period for realising the demographic dividend, with the lowest levels of combined child and adult dependency in its history. It will be the closest to the ‘pot’ shape. This golden period will last until around 2033 when the more burdensome adult dependency (ratio of adults over 65 years of age to the working population aged 15-65 years) reaches significant proportions.
What does this mean to Bangladesh? How can that be exploited?
It is here that information and communication technologies can make a difference. In the past, only agricultural and manufacturing goods could be exported. Now, thanks to telecom, even services can be exported. Bangladesh is currently said to have 30,000 persons working in ..read more
LIRNEasia CEO delivers lead talk at int’l ICTD workshop, New Delhi
Rohan Samarajiva, will deliver one of two invited lead talks at ICTs and Development: An International Workshop for Theory, Practice and Policy, to be held in New Delhi, India, 11 – 12 March 2010. Titled, “How the developing world may participate in the global “Internet Economy”, his presentation examines the potential mobile telephony has in enabling low-income earners first-time access to the Internet. He argues that a teleco business model similar to the Budget Telecom Network Model arguably responsible for dramatic reductions in mobile tariffs, could be similarly applied to the case of mobile internet. View the full presentation here.
Other notable speakers at the event include Dr. Jonathon Donner of Microsoft Research, India, and Prof. Tim Unwin of the University of London.
Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka: Quo Vadis?
Perhaps it is time for Sri Lanka Telecom Regulator to be renamed ‘Telecom Revenue Commission’ as it generates more revenue for the government than two state banks and Port and the Petroleum Corporation, suggests Rohan Samarajiva in his column to Lanka Business Online. The 3.5 billion rupee question: Does it regulate?
The answer may interest the new boss, Anusha Palpita, who took over the reins few days back. “There is no problem with the administrative aspects, but I will have to get a grip on the technical side of TRCSL’s functions and duties”, he said to The Island- Sunday Edition yesterday. “As financial management is my forte, I need to study the technical factors involved”.
The new Director General is going to run the TRC on a part-time basis, writes Samarajiva, in addition to running the government information department. He too does not appear to have any special expertise in telecommunication or in regulation. With the part-time, ex officio Chair being the most over-burdened official in the country, the Secretary to the President, one wonders who is actually going to run the TRC. Or perhaps the thinking is that it is beyond redemption. Is it that the Special Committee to ..read more
Executive training: Alternative Regulatory Strategies for Telecommunications
LIRNE.NET (through Research ICT Africa) together with University of Cape Town’s Infrastructure Management Programme, is organizing a five-day training course in telecom regulatory reform. The course is to be held from 12 – 16 April 2010, at the UCT GSB Breakwater Campus, V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa.
The course is designed to enhance the strategic thinking of a select group of decision-makers in telecom and related sectors in developing countries and emerging economies. The aim of the programme is to address the many challenges posed by the current stage of telecom and ICT reform to governments, regulatory agencies, operators and other stakeholders.
The faculty on this course includes the course convenor, Research ICT Africa Director, Alison Gillwald, also former broadcasting and telecommunications regulator in South Africa; CEO of LIRNEasia, Rohan Samarajiva, COO of LIRNEasia, Helani Galpaya and financial economist Christoph Stork, Research ICT Africa’s senior researcher. More information on scholarships available here.For more information on the course, click here.
Sri Lanka: President uses SMS to wish mobile users: Why not Cell Broadcasting?
At least some have first assumed it a practical joke, but Daily Mirror online confirmed President did send a New Year wish to all mobile users today. Using romanised Sinhala President wrote “Kiwu paridi obata NIDAHAS, NIVAHAL RATAK laba dunnemi. Idiri anagathaya sarwapparakarayenma Wasanawantha Wewa! SUBA NAWA WASARAK WEWA! Mahinda Rajapaksa” (As promised I delivered you an independent and free country. May your future be a success. Happy New Year!)
At the cost of LKR 1 per SMS message, this might have cost approximately USD 150,000 – equivalent to publishing roughly 75 full-page colour advertisements in national newspapers.
Sender’s number was hidden so the millions of mobile users, now constitute at least half of the population, could not return the greetings.
Had Cell Broadcasting (CB) been available in Sri Lanka, President would not have to use SMS – which is relatively too cumbersome for both the sender and receiver. CB would have been more economical too. Given that it uses a different band and sends messages together, it wouldn’t have congested the networks and the cost would have been certainly less than USD 150,000. As CB, unlike SMS differentiates users President could have even used a romanised Tamil message in ..read more
Tsunami coverage that includes mentions of LIRNEasia
The pictures that keep coming up on the right-hand side of the blog are for the most part those of the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. So we are not allowed to forget. Not that we want to.
But anyway, Newsweek was the first to publish something with a quote from LIRNEasia. I was hoping we’d get a decent Disaster Act, but we’ll settle for greater awareness. For now. But we’ll ask again.
Unfortunately, the hardest lessons to learn from Sri Lanka’s experience are incredibly difficult to implement. The most explicit reality is that the world’s most vulnerable—namely the poor who lack sturdy housing and good communication—are almost always the hardest hit. Work by the Centre for Research on the epidemiology of disasters reports that tragedy tends to kill more in the underdeveloped south than in the industrialized north. “The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami marked the starting point of a shift away from relief and recovery to risk reduction, which will give us disasters that are more like their ‘northern’ counterparts,” says Rohan Samarajiva, CEO of Lirneasia, a Sri Lankan nonprofit that has watched the tsunami recovery closely. However, ..read more
LIRNEasia contributes to rethinking on universal service funds
Some of our best friends are at in the Association for Progressive Communication (APC), but still warms our hearts when they quote our writing, especially when we go out of our way to wave the red flag before those who still believe in the benevolent state. In a submission to the UN Group on the Information Society, they frankly debate the wisdom of continuing with universal service funds, among other things, quoting us:
Rohan Samarajiva of LIRNEasia suggests in a recent paper that explores the success of the ‘budget telecom network model’ in South Asia that ‘the idea of making universal service transparent by creating universal service funds …was a good idea in its time ..but experience suggests that it is an idea that has run its course’. He identifies two problems: Billions of dollars of universal levies lie unspent in government accounts. Where money has been disbursed it has generally gone to fixed network operators, mostly incumbents. All the while, people in un- and underserviced areas are being connected, not by the subsidized fixed line operators but by the mobile operators, whose poor customers are paying to support the inefficiencies of the incumbents.
Always nice to be quoted, but even nicer if at least one of these ..read more
LIRNEasia CEO delivers keynote at South Asia Mobile Summit
Rohan Samarajiva, LIRNEasia’s CEO, delivered a keynote address at the recently concluded South Asia Mobile Summit, held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 21 – 22 October 2009. The two-day event was organized by the South Asia Mobile Forum, a consortium of telecom industry players in the SAARC region, with the aim of creating a platform for market, institutional and technological issues to be discussed and progress made.
Rohan made a presentation on South Asia’s Budget Telecom Network Model, that has been adopted by many regional telcos in providing voice services to the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), and how the same can be applied to broadband services as well. The presentation drew on findings from LIRNEasia’s Teleuse@BOP, telecom regulatory environment (TRE) and mobile benchmark studies. The full presentation can be downloaded here.
Other speakers at the event included Kristen Due Hauge from the GSMA, M. Aslam Hayat from Grameenphone, and Tandi Wangchuk from Bhutan Telecom.
JVP wants Face Book accounts for Sri Lanka’s IDPs; Why not mobiles?
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) once the political ally to ruling Peoples’ Alliance of Sri Lanka, has come up with an innovative idea to link 300,000 plus Internally Displaced Persons with their relatives. Why not create Face Book accounts? Daily Mirror story does not say so, but perhaps JVP wants it done by the government.
Rohan Samarajiva made a less complex and more effective suggestion: Why not give them mobile phones?
‘The technology that allows freedom to talk even without the freedom to walk is the phone.’ He wrote in his popular column Choices in Lanka Business Online on June 01, 2009, ‘We have plenty of phones. Why not use them, to help the IDPs recover?’
We publish extracts from Rohan’s column below, in case if JVP or Govt is interested in a more practical solution.
In an ideal world, I would simply invite well wishers, friends and family to donate mobiles and talktime to the IDPs and ask the operators to quickly add capacity to their base stations near the camps.
But I do not live in an ideal world. Many lives have been lost; many bad things have happened; and more may happen. Let us start modestly. Slow progress is better than none.
The technology ..read more
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