But I hope I am wrong and that there will be real implementation. A low-hanging fruit is bilateral lowering of roaming charges and termination charges for calls from Sri Lanka to India and vice versa. We have been waiting for SAARC to implement these things, much easier if India and Sri Lanka show how it can be done.

Sri Lanka and India have signed an agreement to set up a mechanism of technical and institutional cooperation in telecommunications. It aims to develop telecommunications in both the countries particularly in the areas of technology and access to telecommunication services, a statement from the Indian High Commission said.

The deal covers oversight of service provision, convergence, next generation networks, new technologies, spectrum issues, number portability, and economic regulation, it said.

In 2010, TRC contributed LKR 13,800 million, 44% of total revenues from government enterprises. In contrast, all the state banks combined contributed LKR 5,315 million, 17% of the total. The Port (26th largest container port in the world) yielded nothing, zero. The airport contributed LKR 300 million (1%).

For 2011, the Report gives estimated numbers: TRC LKR 8,000 million (31%); all state banks LKR 7,159 (28%). The surprise is that the TRC’s contribution has declined by over LKR 5 billion.

For those who wish to convert to USD, today’s exchange rate is USD 1 = LKR 113. So TRC gave the government USD 122 million in 2010 and 71 million in 2011. Not a bad return on the few million spent on reforming the telecom sector!

Why is there such a communication gap between persons with disabilities and the policy makers? Even in India, we come across projects where the government of India is spending precious funds developing technology which they feel is required for the blind, while the blind in fact are already using more advanced technology. For instance, there is a project of the government to develop a special browser for the blind, when the blind and visually impaired are already navigating the internet using screen readers like Jaws and NVDA. My meetings with the regulator and other agencies confirmed for me that persons with disabilities in Sri Lanka and India are facing similar problems. A severe challenge for persons with disabilities is to make policy makers and developers aware of their needs and new developments in technology so that appropriate initiatives are taken which are low cost, available in local languages, and scalable. Increasingly it seems important to involve the private sector as well in accessibility initiatives to increase variety, competition and solutions.

Full report.

I directed him to several government agencies, including the Telecom Regulatory Commission which was said to have launched a nationwide study on the subject.

That brings me to the subject of cancer. I have been getting inquiries about cancer as well. But here, there is plenty of research. Not only research but writing that explains the research in ways that most anyone can understand. The following excerpt comes from the New York Times. It is an exemplary piece of science writing.

Moreover, if cellphones caused brain tumors, we should have seen a worldwide increase in brain tumors pandemic as the phones became ubiquitous. That hasn’t happened.

“If you look at brain cancer around the world over 25 years that cellphones have been in use, there’s no suggestion at all of any increase in rates,” said Dr. Meir J. Stampfer, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and a consultant to the cellphone industry. “In science, unlike math, we can’t have absolute certainty, but in the scheme of things, this is not a health risk I would be concerned about at all.”

In this age of anxiety, there is a role for people who explain the science behind everyday phenomena. Only problem is that such people do not live in our part of the world (or are not paid to do their job, but entities such as the NYT).

While not unfamiliar to North America and Europe, Pakistan and India were the only South Asian countries to implement MNP. Pakistan maintains a central database with all its mobile user data. The investment as well as the maintenance of this comes from all operators and it is not small. This is in addition to the upgrades to be done by the operators. Each major mobile operator has spent approximately USD 3-4 mil (roughly LKR 350 – 450 mil) worth of software and hardware upgrades in their switches. While the initial cost of setting up the database was USD 2.3 mil (LKR 250 mil), each operator spends USD 50,000 (LKR 6 mil) towards its annual maintenance. As of January 2011, Pakistan, a country of 187 mil population and 796,000 sq km area had 104 mil SIMs issued by five mobile operators; Mobilink (32 mil SIMs), Ufone (20 mil), Zong (9 mil); Telenor (25 mil) and Warid (18 mil). This looks massive against Sri Lanka’s 20 mil SIMs, but as any systems designer can immediately work out, the costs will not be drastically slashed. A safe bet would be 40-50% of above costs are for MNP in Sri Lanka. It couldn’t be less.

Sri Lanka had 574,000 broadband customers by end December 2010, including 294,000 mobile broadband users.

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the country’s only wireline operator has been pushing ADSL (assymetrical digital subscriber line) aggressively since last year notching up 213,000 customers by end December.

Fitch said it was equal to 24 percent of the firm’s wireline base. Malaysia’s UT group is now the effective managing shareholders, being the second largest shareholder after the state in SLT.

Now, in the developed world, every part of a building must be accessible by wheelchair. Pedestrian crossing make a noise in addition to just the color signal. Not yet available in our part of the world, but the pressure is on.

When I was in charge of a graduate program at a US university, I admitted a blind student into the PhD program. It was a multi-year commitment on both sides, so I did a lot of asking questions before the final commitment was made. I was truly surprised how many resources had been developed for the blind using ICTs. That was 15 years ago. I am sure more is available now.

Capabilities in terminal devices must be matched by capabilities in the networks. That requires policy and regulatory involvement and action by operators. Ten years ago, we were struggling to get rid of massive waiting lists. Now we have 75 percent of Sri Lankan households connected, to illustrate from one country. It is time, it is beyond time, we address the needs of the differently abled.

Nirmita Narasimhan, a lawyer on the staff of the Center for Internet and Society, has been leading the charge. During her short visit to Sri Lanka at LIRNEasia’s invitation she will meet with the Telecom Regulatory Commission, the ICT Agency and the Jinasena Trust, in addition to giving a colloquium at LIRNEasia on the 8th of April. As we develop a new line of work tentatively entitled “Consumer rights in the connected society,” we will look to learn from Nirmita on how we can make the definition of consumer inclusive.

“Three months ago, most operators were provided services 70% less than the speed rate advertised in the package”, TRC Director General Anusha Palpita said. The speed-up move came after the TRC carried out an evaluation of the quality of service including speeds of fixed broadband services – ADSL and WiMAX.

Mr. Palpita said the study showed that the speeds of majority of broadband services fell short of the rate advertised and hovered within a range of 10 to 25 percent during busy hours.

The Sunday Times story says performance improved to 50% in past three months. Sorry, our tests did not catch that much of an improvement.

Sri Lanka Telecom, the island’s largest fixed access operator said it had added 80,000 new broadband customers in 2010 and its base of 200,000 customers was 70 percent of the market.

About 20 percent of the operator’s wireline customers were now using its ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) services, the telco said in a statement.

From the above we can conclude that Sri Lanka has roughly 286,000 broadband subscriptions. We have no idea whether this number includes those using dongles, or simply those who subscribed to the “fixed wireless” options provided by LankaCom, Dialog etc. Is it not time for the TRC to update its reporting of industry data? If they want models to emulate there are plenty. Just start with the TRAI (India) website.

With the intention of raising awareness among broadband subscribers, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission has issued a set of guidelines for broadband service providers. In this context TRCSL has directed all broadband operators in the country to make available the broadband Internet related information to the public in a dedicated web portal contained in the operator’s main website.

The decision to desist from imposing strict performance standards, and instead to focus on making customers aware of what they are getting is commendable. Again, the new Director General has shown a maturity not exhibited by his predecessor. We have not analyzed the guidelines in detail (we work in 12 countries, not only Sri Lanka; and broadband QOS is not the only thing we work on). While thanking the reader who brought the matter to our notice, we hereby request others to join in the discussion.

To get the discussion started, here is what I wrote on QoS regulation in the context of the Budget Telecom Network Model in a report to the OECD last year:

5.5 Quality-of-service regulation
In the same way that one cannot expect silver tea service on RyanAir, one cannot expect premium service from budget telecom networks. All operators are likely to offer sub-optimal quality because of the need to squeeze as much traffic as possible into the network. Strict and aggressive QOS regulation is inimical to the model. However, it is also naïve to expect competition to prevent the operators from letting QOS fall to unacceptable levels. Therefore, gentle supervision of QOS, focusing primarily on publishing QOS performance against benchmarks and ensuring that barriers to unhappy customers switching suppliers are kept low, would be the most appropriate.

We don’t. SAARC must be assessed by its fruits. On internal connectivity it fails. Here’s the evidence, carried in op-ed articles in Bangladesh’s Daily Star, Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror and also in a PTI dispatch:

It is always easier to do things within one’s own country than outside, or at least it should be. One does not need a passport or a visa to travel inside one’s country, but those formalities are required when one ventures out. Telephone calls within one’s own country are cheaper than to foreign countries. The same logic can be extended to a regional grouping such as SAARC which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

If none of these conditions are satisfied, one has to conclude that the regional grouping is not real; that it has been more an opportunity for mutual ego-stroking for the region’s leaders, than something yielding tangible benefits to South Asia’s people; that there is little to celebrate after 25 years.

Given the reality of cross-border terrorism and paranoid security policies, it will be some time before lines outside SAARC-country consular offices disappear. But cheaper telecom connectivity within SAARC is eminently achievable.

The PTI story, carried in MSN India starts thus:

Low and uniform telecom tariffs across SAARC nations will help improve trade relations between member countries, as well as bolster regional cooperation, says a study.
“The government must, through telecom operators, provide low and uniform telecom tariff across SAARC nations. As of now one is spending 64 times more if using the roaming phone within the SAARC nations,” Sri Lanka-based non-profit research organisation LIRNEasia said in a report on Information and Communication Technologies and Services Trade within the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

It would take 2.3 billion rupees coming from Bank of Ceylon, 1.8 billion from People’s Bank, 1.0 billion rupees from National Savings Bank and 40 million from State Mortgage and Investment Bank.

The telecommunications regulator would be charged a levy of 9.0 billion rupees, the National Insurance Trust Fund 5.0 billion rupees and the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau 300 million rupees.

Full story in LBO.

Clause 6 of the Reference Paper states:

Any procedures for the allocation and use of scarce resources, including frequencies, numbers and rights of way, will be carried out in an objective, timely, transparent and non-discriminatory manner. The current state of allocated frequency bands will be made publicly available, but detailed identification of frequencies allocated for specific government uses is not required.

This was the case in Sri Lanka until the new website for set up (inaugurated by a high official of the ITU which supports transparency and other good things). The Master Register of Frequencies that was on the website, is no longer accessible through a button; when one does a search the register that comes up is dated 2003. So now Sri Lanka is in violation of its WTO commitments. Can’t blame the ITU for not checking the progressiveness or otherwise of the websites they inaugurate can we?

This is not simply about WTO commitments (which are however influential in terms of attracting investment). Situations like the assignment of frequencies that were used by Shakti to a government/crony channel would be easier to document if the Master Register was accessible by the public.

Another step back by the Sri Lanka TRC. Another argument for a complete overhaul.

In a letter dated October 10, 2008 to TRC Director General Priyantha Kariyapperuma – copied to The Sunday Times – Mr. Nanayakkara states that ‘OPA’s experts in their presentation to the TRC, around March 2008, explained and established that the TRC’s tariff proposal recommended to the SC is flawed mathematically and technically and that it is in violation of the provisions in the Sri Lanka.

In particular, Mr. Nanayakkara writes that the TRC did not put up to the SC that the per-line operating costs of the SLT since its privatization in 1998 has been declining at around 15% per annum. The TRC also provided disinformation to the SC, to conceal the urgent need arising from above, to update the outdated X factor of price cap CPI – X. The X factor is not a one-time set value. Its regular revision is an essential requirement that underpins its core aim which is to sustain market competitiveness in the fact of advancing technology and declining costs, the letter said.

Further, Mr. Nanayakkara said the TRC also did not inform the SC of the abrupt suspension of this license condition in 1997, on the unjust insistence of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT), at the time it entered into a joint agreement with SLT, which stalled reduction of tariffs. The TRC also did inform the SC that it failed to revise X in 2002 when the suspension was terminated in 2002 and the Government took measures to revamp the market competitiveness.

Read the full report in ‘Sunday Times’ here.