Tag Archives: Telecom
Positive externalities of telecom: Enabling innovation
I’ve written about this earlier, but a more fleshed out argument is in my LBO column. The story was about an award. But what I noticed was the role of telephones in the story. The award winning innovation is not just one new thing; it is a collection of process improvements. Critical elements involve phones [...]
Ideas to save the postal service
For those who believe in bringing the dead back to life: Even better, imagine if you could email a letter to the post office, pay for the stamp online, and never set foot outside of your door? You could send mail digitally, with minimal fuss. People still like receiving letters, if it wasn’t such a [...]
Sri Lanka and India: The substance of agreement
It has been an unfortunate fact that Sri Lanka and India have signed many agreements that have not been implemented. This caused me to write a column some years back entitled “An MOU to implement MOUs.”. The one difference that I see in the short LBO report on cooperation between India and Sri Lanka on [...]
Surprise: Earnings from Sri Lanka Telecom Revenue Commission decline
For several years, the Telecom Regulatory Commission has been the biggest contributor to government revenues. It continues to be biggest in 2011, though it has come down considerably in 2011 from the massive yield in 2010, according to the 2012 Fiscal Management Report. In 2010, TRC contributed LKR 13,800 million, 44% of total revenues from [...]
Sri Lanka: What people spend on telecom, in relation to total communication and recreation expenditures
The 2009-10 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) is a representative sample survey based on responses from 22,000 households from all across Sri Lanka, except Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Mannar districts that were considered too dangerous because of uncleared mines. It is a veritable treasure trove of data on how Sri Lankans live, what the differences [...]
Sri Lanka post: The sickly child atrophies further
When one only reforms only a part of an interconnected sector, the unreformed parts start to atrophy. Because of union resistance and the perception that the post was not that much of a money maker to start with, the hitherto conjoined posts and telecom were bifurcated and reform efforts focused on telecom. So 30 years [...]
An antidote to development fatigue
We work with data, so we see the evidence: more people have phones, more houses have permanent roofs, more homes have refrigerators, and so on. Yet, the everyday conversations harp on the failures. We too talk about them, because we must, but we do so in the form of “what could have been better” rather [...]
Toure supports Gyanendra’s Law
The Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union is elected every four years by governments who have paid their dues to the Union (or have had it paid on their behalf). This does not make him a natural advocate of anything revolutionary. Yet, this is what he says: There is no alternative, suggests the secretary [...]
Sri Lanka’s telecom sector to be a smaller part of overall FDI flows
Part of what Boards of Investment do is spin. According to the Chairman of the Sri Lanka BOI, telecom and power sector contributions will go down because tourism investments will increase, not because they are going down in absolute terms. “In the past telecoms and power sector contributed around 60 percent of FDI, while 40 [...]
Iran: Controlling telecom to control people
In the old days, you’d just take over the newspapers and the TV channels. Now you have to take over the phone company too. It is implanting 6,000 Basij militia centers in elementary schools across Iran to promote the ideals of the Islamic Revolution, and it has created a new police unit to sweep the [...]
India Telecom: The ringtone is loud and clear
Everyone is betting big on the telecom growth story as it is steadily gaining traction amidst the global financial turmoil. This sector has emerged as a big contributor to the GDP and has recorded a 42.2% growth in the quarter ended Sep ‘08. Telecom is being seen as a significant contributor to the country’s foreign [...]
Most of Siemens bribes were for telecom
Of the 4,283 bribery payments documented by the investigators, 2,505 (more than half) were made in relation to telecom contracts. Of the total of USD 1,400.7 million disbursed, USD 813.9 million (more than half) were for telecom. However, the complaint documents only three specific cases of large bribes paid in Vietnam, Bangladesh and Nigeria, all [...]
Why Indonesian telecom experts feel their regulatory environment so miserable?
Results for Indonesia in LIRNEasia’s Telecom Regulatory Environment survey show an interesting trend. Unlike their counterparts in other countries (Bangladesh, India, Maldives Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand) Indonesia telecom experts have given marks so low for different aspects of their regulatory environment that none of the categories, in any three sectors, meet the average of 3. [...]
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