At the invitation of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), LIRNEasia’s teleuse@BOP research of relevance to the question of increasing services provided to users in rural areas was presented at a session chaired by Mr Shantanu Consul, Administrator of India’s USO Fund. In response to audience questions Executive Director Samarajiva stated that the higher-than-other-countries percentage of non-owner teleusers at the Bottom of the Pyramid in India showed that there was a real problem these people faced in getting connected. They could afford USD 5 per month for the services (and in some cases paid even more), but the difficulty was with the cost of getting connected (and coverage, of course).
The presentation can be downloaded here.
2 Comments
Ekta Rohra Jafri
Professor Samrajiva’s presentation was one of the highlights of the ‘Mobile information society’ session. Stats that I had been looking for, for a long time, surfaced. I have many many questions…Is there an e-mail ID that I can use to converse with him?
samarajiva
I can be reached through the contact buttin on the home page. The slides from the Convergence talk are now loaded above.
Request for Proposals: Development of a website for the Asia AI4D Observatory
LIRNEasia is inviting proposals from qualified web development firms, service providers and consortia of individual professionals to design, develop and deploy a public-facing website for the Asia AI4D Observatory. The website is intended to serve as a searchable, interactive regional knowledge repository and engagement platform, making evidence and resources on responsible artificial intelligence easy to discover, use and share.
LIRNEasia is hiring: Intern – Data Annotation
LIRNEasia is looking for a talented individual to join the team as an Data Annotation Intern. The full job description is available below.
Sri Lanka at WAIC 2026: Aligning with a More Inclusive Vision for Global AI Governance
The World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2026 was held in Shanghai from 17–20 July and brought global attention to the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the increasingly important question of who gets to shape the rules governing it. This analysis examines the alignment between Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech and Sri Lanka’s Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eng.
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