Click here for more information on the event and how to apply.

Since two people with direct experience, LIRNEasia international advisory board members Ashok Jhunjhunwala and KF Lai, were in town for the LIRNEasia@5 conference, I offered them as speakers to SLASSCOM. A well attended meeting that included local entrepreneurs such as Dinesh Saparamadu (hSenid) and Mifaan Careem (Respere) and a significant number of U of Moratuwa engineering students saw a fruitful exchange of views that has already led to the establishment of an entrepreneurs society at U of Moratuwa.

KF Lai talked about how he had been encouraged to start his own business while a government scientist, by the Government of Singapore. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, talked about how he has created a conducive environment for the incubation of start ups at IIT Madras. In the course of discussion we found that the Lanka Software Foundation had also created such an environment, albeit on a smaller scale in Sri Lanka. They both emphasized the need to have the burning desire for starting something new as an essential precondition for success.

LIRNEasia normally spends its CSR money in the disaster space. But we are happy that this little deviation is already beginning to yield results.

We pointed out that LIRNEasia’s recommendation about imposing contention ratios of 1:20 (Business) and 1:50 (Residential) had been adopted by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), with minor changes.  TRAI mandates contention ratios of 1:30 for Business and 1:50 for Residential.

The advertisement also presented “models to emulate”:  India and Singapore.  Even though the two countries have set different parameters, they exemplify good regulatory practice.

We also compared value for money in Sri Lankan broadband in relation to Canada and the USA.  This clearly demonstrated that Sri Lankan users get less value for their money than the North American users, in contrast to the situation with regards to mobile telephony.

The advertisement also invited users to download the free AT tester software from www.broadbandasia.info.

The advertisement.

Anybody could have guessed this. It is unimaginable that entire world will go through a recession simultaneously. Not everyone can be losers for too long. There should be winners somewhere. For example, what would the US firms that find their human resources costs, logically do? They outsource to Bangalore. So the BPO industry in India grows. Peter’s loss becomes Patel’s gain.

The Economist today presented the evidence.

MOODY’S Economy.com has mapped the geographic spread of the worst global downturn since the Depression. All of North America is in recession now. In Europe only Norway, Slovenia and Slovakia have avoided a similar fate, although Moody’s reckons these countries are on the brink of a downturn. Emerging Asia looks cheerier, although the small export-led economies of Singapore and Hong Kong are shrinking, as are Malaysia and Thailand. Even the BRICs are looking a bit diminished, with downturns in both Brazil and Russia. At least India and China are growing (the latter at a pace that is causing worries about overheating). Data for Africa are spotty but the continent’s biggest economy, South Africa, is in recession. The IMF expects global GDP to shrink by 1.4% this year, with rich countries’ economies contracting by around 3.8%.

Sakwithi ‘I-was-born-to-teach’ Ranasinghe knew the power of media. Few full page advertisements in Lankadeepa, the largest selling weekly in the island were all necessary to convert the virtually unknown English teacher to a national level businessman. That, with the endorsement from a self-proclaimed media guru was adequate to attract thousands of gullible individuals who deposited their hard earned money with him for attractive interest rates, way above the market. When Ranasinghe disappeared, media conveniently washed their hands. Content of paid advertisement, we were reminded, is not their responsibility. Buyers beware. Ironically Lankadeepa became the newspaper that hit their former client the hardest!

Moral of the story: Rely on media any time to promote your business – don’t worry it is legal or otherwise.

Others too have learnt. A full page advertisement (parts shown) on Hit-Ad – a supplement of The Sunday Times , a national weekly from the same group that published Lankadeepa invites the attention of mobile phone vendors who buy their stocks in Singapore. Among many things the advertiser promises are the visit arrangements and ‘facilities’ and ‘advices’ to hand carry these stocks to the island.

Why one hand carries the very brands sold in local market thru authorized agents?

A customs duty applies to any item imported thru formal channels but not necessarily for hand carry items – assumed for personal use. Figure the rest. Our lips are sealed.

“…not withstanding the technical language, the question the book poses and the arguments it puts forward will be of interest not just to telecoms policymakers, regulators and policymakers, but also a wider readership that is interested in the policy-making process, the effects of technology, and the roles of institutions in shaping outcomes…this makes for an interesting reading, as it is not often that policymakers are given this type of “fresh” data.”

The full article can be purchased here.

With hard times at our doorsteps, all we can say is a remittance mechanism that employs mobile communications would be an excellent idea. By the way, that is one area our research on Mobile2.0@BoP will focus.

This is what ITU’s Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Report for the Asia-Pacific region 2008 says. It was released at ITU TELECOM ASIA 2008, Bangkok, Thailand yesterday (Sept 2, 2008).

The Report finds evidence that ICTs and broadband uptake foster growth and development, but the question remains as to the optimal speed that should be targeted in view of limited resources.

The area in which the region really stands out is the uptake of advanced Internet technologies, especially broadband Internet access. The Asia-Pacific region is the world’s largest broadband market with a 39 per cent share of the world’s total at the end of 2007. In terms of broadband access, Asia-Pacific has made remarkable progress in the past few years, with subscriber numbers growing almost five-fold in five years: from 27 million at the beginning of 2003 to 133 million at the start of 2008.

In the region’s high-income economies, ubiquitous access is progressing through a competitive race to provide ever faster fixed broadband access. Operators in Hong Kong (China) and Japan have launched one-Gigabits per second (Gbps) broadband and triple-play services aimed at the residential market, featuring applications such as Internet telephony and television. The Republic of Korea leads the world in terms of the percentage of households with fixed broadband access, and no less than five economies in the top ten are from Asia-Pacific. The Republic of Korea, Hong Kong (China), and Japan also lead the world in terms of the proportion of households with fibre optic connections, essential for supporting the next generation of ultra-high speed Internet applications.

These high-income economies are also leaders in terms of third generation (3G) mobile cellular deployment. Fixed and mobile broadband technologies complement each other and users enjoy continuous high-speed Internet access. In Singapore, a ubiquitous Internet access plan combining unlimited 8 Megabits per second (Mbps) fixed broadband, 2 Mbps mobile broadband and access at some 800 Wi-Fi hotspots is available for just USD 35 per month.

At the other extreme, in most of the region’s low and lower-middle income economies, high-speed Internet access is limited to urban areas at best, typically expensive, and often not available at all. The regional broadband divide is striking, with poor economies having a close-to-zero broadband penetration, compared to that of rich economies where one in four persons is a broadband subscriber (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Fixed broadband Internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants, 2007

The gap in available broadband speeds between rich and poor countries is as wide as broadband penetration. In Japan, the Republic of Korea and Hong Kong (China), the minimum advertised broadband speed is faster than the maximum broadband speed in Cambodia, Tonga, Laos and Bangladesh.

While in low and lower-middle income economies mobile phones have become a substitute for the shortage of fixed lines, they are not yet fulfilling the potential of broadband access. By the end of 2007, only Indonesia, the Maldives, the Philippines and Sri Lanka had commercially deployed WCDMA networks. The region’s two largest mobile markets, China and India, have yet to launch mobile broadband. By the end of 2007, there were over 120 million mobile broadband subscribers in the region (Figure 2), but almost all (97 per cent) were in high income economies.

Figure 2: Mobile cellular broadband subscribers in Asia-Pacific

While the region’s high-income economies are pushing the frontier of broadband bandwidth to a point where applications have yet to catch up, many Asia-Pacific developing economies are bandwidth starved, inhibiting the development of their information societies.

The ITU Report argues that broadband uptake enables a range of socially desirable and valuable online services in areas such as government, education and health. The use of broadband technologies can help overcome many of the basic development challenges faced by poor countries. The Report provides a number of examples where broadband connectivity has acted as a catalyst for development. These include the provision of education through distance learning in the Solomon Islands, the creation of jobs through business incubators for women in China, and the supply of communication services for disaster management in Myanmar.

Read the press release here. Full report is not yet available in the public domain.

(Please click on the images for a better view)

This may require changes in LIRNEasia’s (and Singapore’s) efforts to improve broadband quality of service experience through benchmark regulation or otherwise, using as one of the measures, Round Trip Time to the Internet cloud, defined as first point of landing in the US.  An alternative will not be easy to come by, but we have faith in the wisdom of the many.   Please contribute.

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. So only the culprits pay for remedial measures.

2. Mobile phone usage has drastically increased during the last few years. Now there are about 8 million mobile phones in Sri Lanka. (sic) The cost of a mobile phone was reduced from Rs. 75,000 in 1994 to Rs. 3,500. These have made the lifetime of a mobile phone shorter and more mobile phones are being released to the environment. (sic) Our intention is to build a recycling plant for e-waste. Such plants can be seen in India and Singapore.

3. Why we tax mobile usage? Because it is one commodity the prices have fallen during the last 15 years. In 1994 an incoming call was charged at Rs. 20 and outgoing at Rs. 30 per minute. Today incoming is free while outgoing is Rs. 4-5 per minute. How can one allege us insensitive to Cost of Living?

4. Before complaining about these taxes one should note their actual impact. 90% of Sri Lankan mobile subscribers are pre-paid. The average revenue per unit of a prepaid account is Rs. 360. Let us assume it to be Rs. 500. Two percent of that is Rs. 10 per month. That is all we ask to protect environment. Is this adequate even for a cup of tea?

5. Atmospheric pollution in Sri Lanka is too high. The tax on motor vehicles is meant to control this. Vehicles are taxed only if they pollute. If they run on electricity or water (sic) no levy is applicable. The levy is proportionate to the level of pollution. Vehicles such as buses, lorries and three-wheelers are exempted on Cost of Living considerations.

6. CFL bulbs solve one environmental problem, but their release to environment causes another. So we need to collect the used CFL batteries for recycling. A Denmark company has agreed to setup a recycling plant if we ensure enough input. We believe taxing 3% on non-CFL bulbs will make CFL bulbs more popular.

7. Tower tax is meant to encourage telecom operators to share towers. That has no effect on Cost of Living.

8. The money collected will be credited to a special environmental fund. Ministers of Finance and Environment have to annually report on this to the parliament. This ensures tax money will be used solely for environmental protection purposes.

(We open the discussion to our readers.)

Tahani (second left) with some of her LIRNEasia colleagues. (Library photo)

Upon being awarded a full scholarship, LIRNEasia researcher Tahani Iqbal has moved to Singapore to commence her graduate studies in public policy at the LKY School at the National University of Singapore.  She joins Senior Researcher Sriganesh Lokanathan who is in his second year at the Lee Kuan Yew School.   He was also awarded a full scholarship.

Sending our researchers to high-quality graduate programs is one way in which we operationalize our commitment to being a learning organization.

In South Asia Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) scored highest (80%) but Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of India (TRAI) was not too behind (75%). PTA site which scored highest marks in the previous survey in 2005 this time lost marks due to the lack of some features like the non availability of local language version. 

More information in paper format and Presentation Slides

An Expert Forum on ICT Sector Indicators and Benchmark Regulation for SAARC Regulatory Authorities will be held in Changi Village Hotel, Singapore on 14 – 15 June 2008 following the 12th LIRNE.net course on Telecom Reform.

Photo by: olduvai

As Jonathon Donner mentions , there is a distinct value to discussing related papers among a group of like-minded researchers for a day and a half. Discussion at ICA conferences proper is choppy and disjointed, and in some cases, there are more people who are presenting than in the audience. At a pre-conference, the conversation flows without distraction among a group of committed researchers.

Harsha and I thought it would not be a bad idea to respond to Rich Ling’s request that someone volunteer to organize the next event because we expect to have a whole lot of research findings related to mobile in hand by mid 2009, both from the Teleuse @ BOP 3 research and from the Mobile 2.0 research. But obviously, we cannot flood the sessions with our own research. What we want to do is to form a panel of reviewers to do double-blind review of extended abstracts, somewhat on the same lines as we do in CPRsouth . Obvious candidates are Rich Ling , Jim Katz (who gave the keynote in Montreal) and Francois Bar, who is leading an interesting research effort on mobile at U of Southern California. In addition I hope to invite some colleagues from DIRSI and RIA . We will ensure that developed-country topics as well as developing-country topics will be featured. The Chicago meeting should be of interest to IDRC as well. Once the advisory committee is formed, we hope to disseminate the call for abstracts through all the above networks

In the case of Singapore, we will try to get some of the regional operators and equipment manufacturers to participate, in addition those working on mobile issues within CPRsouth.

Some participants at the preconference had expressed interest in forming a Special Interest Group and laying claim to time inside the conference program. Having been too immersed in the political economy of scholarly communication in my previous life, I indicated to Rich that we have no interest. Of course we would have absolutely no objection to anyone else taking the lead on forming a Special Interest Group.

Suggestions are welcome.