The survey found that Thai users spent more than any other nationality on mobile phones, $93 on average compared to $50 or less elsewhere.

Most of the phones they bought had radio connections, while 14 per cent had a Web browser and 5 per cent had touch-screens.

Ninety-one per cent of the Thais said they’d used a mobile phone in the previous three months, up from 77 per cent in 2008.

More than 90 per cent of the urban users made regular calls, compared to 80 per cent in the rural areas. Interestingly, 90 per cent of Thai females had a mobile phone but only 80 per cent of the males, a proportion reversed in the other countries.

Presentation slides can be found here.

Some of the media coverage received from Thailand, India,  Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

The Financial Express (Phones a bare essential for bottom of pyramid: Study)

The Daily Star (Talk business on mobile)

The Hindu Business Line (More poor people own mobile phones, but productive use still a far cry)

Lanka Business Online (Mobile momentum)

The Bottom Line (Productive use of mobiles needed – LIRNEasia survey)

Republica (Low call charges within each network major reason for owning multiple-SIM)

But alongside the remembrance events, a report by the German news agency dpa caused concern, when respected meteorologist Smith Dharmasaroja warned that the tsunami warning system was essentially broken, and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra agreed that disaster prevention needed a lot of work.

Another tsunami would be hard to detect in southern Thailand now, said Mr Smith.

“There was a regional tsunami warning system in place six years ago but now it doesn’t work,” dpa quoted Mr Smith, who warned the government about the risk of a tsunami striking the country years before.

Mr Smith, who was appointed chairman of the National Disaster Warning Administration in 2005 and assigned to put a warning system in place, said the system was no longer functioning properly. Warning buoys placed off Phuket in 2005 have not functioned reliably from a lack of replacement parts, he said.

“Even some of the warning towers don’t work,” said Mr Smith, who was attending a memorial service in Phuket when he talked to the dpa reporter.

“Just (Sunday) big waves hit the eastern coast of Thailand, flooding many houses, and there were no warnings of that storm,” Mr Smith said.

The cause of a tsunami is an earthquake or an underwater landslide. Earthquakes cause most tsunamis, though the pile of silt accumulated in the Bay of Bengal from the Ganga is a cause for concern. The science of detecting an underwater landslide/mudslide is not fully developed, so let us leave that aside for now. The science of detecting earthquakes as they occur (not predicting them) and calculating their tsunamigenic potential has advanced greatly since 2004.

In the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami earlier this year, both the Japanese and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) broke their previous best records. The distance between Japan and Hawai’i did not matter.

1. PTWC issued its preliminary earthquake message 4min 8s after origin (when the Earthquake started). This had a magnitude of 7.5.

2. Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued two warning bulletins, one in its capacity as the local tsunami warning center for Japan, and another in its capacity as the NWPTAC (Northwest Pacific Tsunami Advisory Center). The warning JMA issued as the NWPTAC was sent about 9mins after origin. By international agreement, since the earthquake fell in the NWPTAC’s area of responsibility PTWC waited until JMA issued the bulletin and used JMA’s parameters in its own bulletin to avoid confusion (at least for the first bulletin).

3. JMA, in its capacity as the national warning agency issued the warning in 4 minutes, at most, 8 seconds ahead of PTWC.

4. A better indication of how far tsunami detection and monitoring has come since 2004 is indicated by PTWC’s response to the Mentawai earthquake on Oct 25, 2010. PTWC issued a local watch/warning for Sumatra 6m 35s after the earthquake. BMG (Indonesia’s national warning agency) also issued a warning about 5m 30s after origin.

Other than for the “comfort” factor of having your own national capability, there is no real scientific rationale for national centers. All resources should be concentrated in two or three regional centers. We should focus our efforts on national systems for converting regional alerts into authoritative warnings and to ensure that the warnings actually reach the people in the path of the tsunami.

“Creativity takes place very much in the private sector, so regulations must be friendly for them,” said Vejjajiva, in his keynote speech at the inaugural session of a two-day conference on Communication Policy Research south 6 (CPRsouth6) in Bangkok on Friday.

Vejjajiva, now the leader of the opposition in the House of Representatives of Thailand, also emphasised independence of the regulatory body, but not without accountability.

I found it quite a contrast to a long article in the New York Times about how the Chinese state is treating innovation by the private sector, ripping it off and bringing it under the control of the state:

The usurping of private enterprise has become so evident that the Chinese have given it a nickname: guojin mintui. That roughly translates as “while the state advances, the privates retreat.”

Some prominent Chinese economists are warning that the potentially corrosive effects of an approach that favors government companies at the expense of the private sector could eventually stifle innovation, saying it could stunt China’s long-term growth and quash the rising aspirations of the nation’s 1.3 billion people.

“If China doesn’t deal with this problem and strengthen the private sector, this country’s growth is not sustainable,” said Xu Chenggang, a professor of economics at the University of Hong Kong.

So, which way will Asia go?

As some of Thailand’s worst flooding in half a century bears down on Bangkok — submerging cities, industrial parks and ancient temples as it comes — experts in water management are blaming human activity for turning an unusually heavy monsoon season into a disaster.

The main factors, they say, are deforestation, overbuilding in catchment areas, the damming and diversion of natural waterways, urban sprawl, and the filling-in of canals, combined with bad planning. Warnings to the authorities, they say, have been in vain.

“I have tried to inform them many times, but they tell me I am a crazy man,” said Smith Dharmasaroja, former director general of the Thai Meteorological Department, who is famous here for predicting a major tsunami years before the one that devastated coastal towns in 2004.

Full report.

Vietnam, a high performer on all composite ICT rankings, has leaped forward from 91st place to 81st place, in a rare 10-place advance.

In South Asia, Bhutan advanced four places to 119th; Nepal by three places to 134th; and India and Sri Lanka advance by one place to 116th and 105th respectively. Pakistan and Bangladesh drop two places each to 123rd and 137th, respectively. Maldives, the leader among the South Asian countries, drops one place to settle at 67th place.

Thailand drops nine places to 89th, something that should cause concern. Philippines advances by 3 places to 92nd rank and Indonesia by one place to 101st.

The overall winner remains Korea (no change from 2008). Hong Kong SAR is at 6th place (same as in 2008). The gap with Singapore has widened, with Singapore falling back to 19th place from 15th in 2008.

The general lesson is that one must run fast even to maintain one’s rank. Singapore’s score improved from 6.71 to 7.08, but it still fell back four places.

A survey of Thailand’s telecom regulatory and policy environment (TRE) has given the country a score of only 2.7 out of five points, with implementation of interconnection singled out with a low ranking of 2.59 points.

In the wake of the survey, criticism has been levelled at the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

The survey, conducted by the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), was part of a TRE survey also covering other countries in South and Southeast Asia. It covered seven aspects of telecom operations: implementation of interconnection, universal service obligation, market entry, access to scarce resources, tariffs, anti-competitive practices and quality of service. Each category was given a score out of a possible five points.

More coverage on the study (in Thai) click here

The big winner, among the countries LIRNEasia works in and the WEF covers, is Indonesia, advancing from 67th place in 2009-10 to 53rd place in 2010-11, a massive jump of 14 places. Sri Lanka has advanced six places from 72nd to 66th. Bangladesh advances three places to 115th, from 118th.

Thailand, sadly, drops 12 places to 47th (still ahead of India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka). Nepal drops seven places down to 131th in rank. India drops five places to 48th rank (but is still ranked high among the lower middle income countries). Both Philippines and Pakistan drop one place each to 86th and 88th ranks respectively.

There is much work to be done in emerging Asia, it seems.

The full report can be downloaded here.

India is still number 1 and China is number 2. No change.

Thailand has slipped to 7 from 4, overtaken by Indonesia.

Sri Lanka is at 21, slipping from 16 in 2009. Pakistan has slipped to 28 from 20th place in 2009.

And Bangladesh? Not in the list, again. That’s what comes from restrictive BPO policies and refusing to admit captive BPOs. I hope the Digital Bangladesh folk are paying attention.

Click here to view presentation slides. More information on the event is available here.

M. Somasekhar’s piece on Hindu Business Line on mobile payments says:

Experts from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Kenya, Thailand, the Philippines, Bhutan and Bangladesh among other nations met in Islamabad recently to discuss their experiences in providing mobile phone services for the BoP segment in their respective countries. They agreed that a beginning has been made and the road ahead appeared daunting, but technological progress promised quick results.

Don Sambandaraksa’s  piece “Mobile phones offer hope to ‘bottom of the pyramid” to Bangkok Post focuses on mobile use in farming, transport and banking. Says he:

“ICTs cannot solve all problems, chief of which is land reform, but when it comes to making decisions, lowering transaction costs and going to market and selling, information can make a big difference.

The researched categorised the decision-making process and information value in each from decisions to seed, planting, growing to harvesting and selling.

Information search costs are highest at the beginning of the cycle. Information on deciding what to grow are three times all other costs, and this is where ICTs have a potential role to play.

Sriganesh Lokanathan said that ideally he wanted to change the decision-making chain into a cycle where the decision on what the farmer wants to grow is based on the price when he expects to harvest. For this to happen, prices and supply and demand needed to be predicted and farmers need to get into forward sales contracts which does not often happen in this part of the world.”

Meanwhile we see Pakistan Telecom Authority, the co-organiser takes the message forward. ‘PTA Focuses on Value-Added Services Including E-Commerce, E-Agriculture & E-Education’ was the title of a report from Pakistan Telecom News Bulletin. It says:

Chairman, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Dr. Mohammed Yaseen has said that PTA’s focus is on value added services and with a high penetration level of mobile and low penetration of internet we have to explore the available possibilities which could be gained via mobile 2.0 theories. I very much foresee the further development of presently available technologies and those coming ahead through value added services and content. He was addressing to Connect 2010 ICT Forum – Telecom Session at Expo Centre Karachi and talking to media men on the occasion. He said that our emphasis is on e-commerce, e-agriculture and e-education, it is the time to open doors of opportunities to our young innovative minds and to bridge the unseen gaps between all potentials players of ICT proliferation.

For the full media coverage and presentations,  please see here.

Mobile 2.0 describes the use of mobiles for “more‐than‐voice”. Mobiles are increasingly becoming payment devices which can also send/process/receive voice, text and images; it is envisaged that in the next few years, they will also be fully capable of information‐retrieval and publishing functions, normally associated with the Internet.

Mobile 2.0@BOP has been researched from two aspects: vertical and horizontal issues. Horizontal issues are the basic competitive and regulatory conditions that affect the emergence of Mobile 2.0@BOP. The vertical components explore how particular aspects such as micro‐payments and remittances, agriculture applications, voting applications, e‐government services, disaster warning, etc are taking shape and form.

The research findings will be disseminated by the respective researchers as follows.

New Delhi, India on March 4 and 5, 2010

Payal Malik – Issues in licensing and Spectrum allocation
Tahani Iqbal – Mobile Number Portability

Dhaka, Bangladesh on March 28-29, 2010

Erwin Alampay, PhD – Mobile payments
Tahani Iqbal – Mobile Number Portability

Nirmali Sivapragasam – Mobiles, payment and logistics, based on a case of study of CellBazaar, Bangladesh

Bangkok, Thailand on March 30, 2010

Erwin Alampay, PhD – Mobile payments
Puree Sirasoontorn, PhD – Mobile value-added services, based on Buzzcity case study

Media coverage will be added here as they happen.

Sri Lanka’s high regulatory risk score reflects insufficient transparency in the regulatory process combined with the regulator’s strong connection with the political framework.

The total regulatory risk score for each market is derived based on three major sub-categories:

1. Political & Social Policy Risk.
2. Industrial Policy Risk.
3. Inability of Ownership/Management to Offset Regulatory Risk.

Excerpt on Sri Lanka, as stated in the report, is noted bellow:

As in most developing markets, Sri Lanka’s telecom regulator has supported government policy in making telecom services more accessible and affordable. However, without a credible long term road map in place, the TRCSL has allowed far too much competition in the market, especially in the mobile space. Its rationale is still unclear for allowing a fifth mobile operator in an already intensely price‐competitive market with a total population of 20 million people.

Profitability of the operators has seen a marked deterioration over the last two years. For example, in October 2009, Millicom International Cellular SA sold its operations in Sri Lanka (Tigo, the third‐largest mobile operator) to Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat, ‘A+’/Stable). Dialog, a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Axiata, which was among the most profitable corporates in Sri Lanka, reported losses in FY08.

Major concerns are a lack of transparency in licensing; allocation of scare resources; and certain regulatory decisions. For example:

1. The non‐transparent process under which the fifth mobile operator licence was issued in 2007.
2. A further non‐transparent process for the award of WiMax licences in 2007. SLT was not awarded a licence while some other established telecom operators and applicants were licensed; no reasons have been identified for the omission of SLT.
3. A directive was issued in 2008 prohibiting telecom operators from charging interconnection fees for a year until November 2009. The timing of this directive is highly questionable.
4. Reaction to anti‐competitive/predatory pricing has not always been equitable.
5. Transparency relating to the universal service obligation (USO) fund managed by the TRCSL has been very weak. No refunds have been made to operators on account of eligible capex.

Furthermore, the telecom sector has been specifically targeted to augment tax revenues. A levy of 10% has applied to usage charges on mobile and fixed‐telephony services since 2007/08. The TRCSL substantially increased spectrum charges in 2008, when operators were struggling with a rapid deterioration in profitability.

The Fitch report has covered Sri Lanka, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, India, New Zealand, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. Since Bangladesh has not been studied in this survey, the lowest score to Sri Lanka may be questioned.

While there is no separate data on the number of female subscribers in the country, according to a recent Lirneasia Teleuse Survey (a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank), mobile phone ownership is far lower among females than males in South Asia.

Statistical analysis shows that gender has a significant impact on mobile phone adoption at the bottom of the pyramid in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. Consequently, in this segment, 12 males have access to mobile phones in comparison to five females.

Since the ownership of mobile phones is lower among females than males, women are less likely to have access to the phones unless the government intervenes through policies such as subsidies or free-phone programmes.

What puzzles us is the policy recommendation that handsets be subsidized or given free.

If anyone looks at our research they will find that the male-female gap has been closed in the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka, and that the gap has narrowed in the countries referred to. Does this not suggest that time will close the gap?

Why jump to the conclusion that subsidies are required? The normal lifetime of a mobile is 3 years. Even if mobiles were given free, will the government continue to provide free phones when the old ones die? Will the women sell the phones? And, most importantly, where will the money for subsidy come from? General taxation? Mobile levies?