Who’s got the phone? Gender and the use of the telephone at the bottom of the pyramid Ayesha Zainudeen, Tahani Iqbal and Rohan Samarajiva Many studies conclude that a significant gender divide in access to the telephone exists, particularly in developing countries. Furthermore, women are also said to use telephones in a different manner from men — making and receiving more calls, spending more time on calls and using telephones primarily for ‘relationship maintenance’ purposes. Much of this research is based on small-sample studies in affluent developed countries. This article shows that a significant gender divide in access to telephones exists in Pakistan and India, to a lesser extent in Sri Lanka, but is absent in the Philippines and Thailand.
Spectrum allocation and pricing in Pakistan and India have differed considerably, one following market-based price discovery mechanisms through auctions, and the other, arbitrary pricing. Two articles, one by Mr. Muhammad Aslam Hayat, a regulatory consultant at Grameenphone, Bangladesh, and the other, by Payal Malik, LIRNEasia Senior Research Fellow, examines the past and present spectrum policy in Pakistan and India, respectively. Hayat writes: Pakistan introduced mobile cellular telephony early, in 1990. Although there was no clear spectrum management policy or roadmap available prior to 2004, the issuance of four mobile cellular licenses and the assignment of spectrum to those licensees were remarkably well thought out.
Myanmar’s telecommunication authorities are planning to expand GSM coverage to the border areas next to its Southeast neighbours, aimed at providing better GSM phone line services to link the region, Cellular News reported quoting the local Myanmar Newsweek. The pilot project to link Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore as well as China is underway. Meanwhile, the authorities has also planned to add 33 more GSM radio stations in the biggest city of Yangon to expand GSM coverage which will be launched by local private companies on competitive tender system, an earlier report said.
Two years back Frost & Sullivan predicted the abysmal future of WiMax. And it has been absolutely right all the way. China has never granted visa to WiMax while the Chinese vendors have been happily exporting the hardware. Deng Xiaoping’s disciples have also pioneered TD-LTE, a civilized alternative of WiMax. It has been consistently writing the epitaph of WiMax in the USA, Japan and Russia.
Was Sri Lanka’s reaction to tsunami alert today early morning effective enough? Did we observe the dos and don’ts? We do not jump to conclusions. The information is inadequate and contradictory at times. We will try reconstructing from what we heard, from mass media and other sources.
Much has been written about Kenya’s m-money system. Here the Economist highlights a Gates Foundation paper that highlights an aspect that has not been much written about, the need to balance e money and real money in the hands of the retailers. There are many elements to a successful mobile-money scheme: the right technology, simple marketing, partnerships with banks, support from regulators. But keeping it all going are people like Gaudencia, moving bundles of cash around, on buses and in vans, behind the scenes.
Fifteen Young Scholars from the Asia-Pacific region will be selected to participate in the tutorials taught by recognized scholars and practitioners scheduled to be held before CPRsouth5 (4-5 December 2010). Who qualifies? Entry level officers of government/regulatory agencies Entry/mid- level officers of private companies in the communication industries Masters/PhD students in Economics, Public policy, Communications and Journalism disciplines Entry/mid- level officers working in NGOs/INGOs. Researchers from think tanks and policy institutes Journalists interested in regulation and public policy. With am emphasis in communication.
LIRNEasia regularly surveys SEC group D and E (the bottom of the pyramid) teleuse in emerging Asian countries. In the study it was found that less than one percent of the Sri Lankan BOP phone users who are aware of mobile 2.0 services regularly use it. Highlighting this fact we ran an advertisement in the Daily Mirror today. The advertisement’s objective was to show what the policy makers and regulators can do and thereby what the service providers could do to boost up Mobile 2.
TeleGeography has revealed the transpacific bandwidth costs five times more than the transatlantic price. The prices of a 10Gbps wavelength between London-New York (transatlantic) costs only US$9,000 to $20,000 per month. The same product, however, varies from $65,000 to $80,000 per month in Tokyo and Los Angeles (transpacific) route although this price has fallen at a compounded annual rate of 21% during last two years. Worst part of the story is – the same 10Gbps wavelength between Tokyo and Hong Kong is marginally less than the Tokyo-LA price (See the chart). The transpacific bandwidth costs are expected to slide furthermore once the new cables get commissioned.
We were happy to note that the Telecom Regulatory Commission has pulled the plug on a senseless project that we criticized when first announced and once again, for emphasis. It will be interesting to see how much Surrey Satellite Technology, a firm fronted by the son of an English Lord of some kind, cleared in fees in the past year. I met the man in Colombo. Obviously he would not have paid his way here. The TRC will not proceed with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, the British firm which was commissioned to set up the Sri Lanka Space Communications Company last year, due to the high costs involved.
We have had occasion to tangle with the Luddites, especially the critics of the mobile phone. It was somewhat comforting and definitely educative to see a nice summary of historical and current facts related to the topic in this review of a techphobic book by Nicholas Carr, the head priest of Internet criticism these days: Socrates started what may have been the first technology scare. In the “Phaedrus,” he lamented the invention of books, which “create forgetfulness” in the soul. Instead of remembering for themselves, Socrates warned, new readers were blindly trusting in “external written characters.” The library was ruining the mind.
The Colloquim was conducted by Nuwan Waidyanatha from China while Chamindu Sampath projected the slides at LIRNEasia. Introduction to research The project is taking place in Kurunagala and Tamil Nadu. In 24 health sub centres and 4 public Helath Centres in Tamil Nadu and in Sri Lanka in 12 Hostpitals Disease infomation The system architecture Determinants of Morbidity in India Determinants of notifiable diseases in Sri Lanka RTBP Communication Technology mHealthSurvey mobile application T-Cube Web Interface Sahana Messaging/Alerting Module mhealthSurvey Shortcomings Certification exercises Signal to Noise Ratio Real-Time vs Off-time Semantics and syntax Cost benefits Objective of the Research The basic objective was to see if we can collect data and detect and report the outbreaks. Specific Objectives: Evaluating the effectiveness of the m-Health RTBP for detecting and reporting outbreaks Evaluating the benefits and efficiencies of communicating disease information Contribution of community organization and gender participation Develop a Toolkit for assessing m-Health RTBPs The Data collection is done by Health workers and goes through the mHealthSurvey mobile phone software to the Epidemiologist for spatial and temporal analysis done using T-Cube Web Interface before going to the Sahana Alerting Module Interface and then agian to the health workers. A sequence analysis of the functions […]
Nokia’a latest move will make MNP further irrelevant while it’s a great news for consumers at the BOP. The Finnish mobile behemoth will release four new cheap phones ranging between €30 and €45 and the cheapest one supports dual connection. The operators would better start pampering the BOP. Nokia introduced also its first bicycle charger, targeting especially consumers with limited access to electricity, and it will go on sale for roughly 15 euros price, depending on market, later this year, said the company’s press release.
We said all you can eat pricing for users at the BOP will not work. Looks like it will not work for others as well if the move described in the NYT story holds. On Wednesday, AT&T pulled away the trough. And other wireless carriers could do the same. AT&T said it would no longer offer an unlimited data plan to new users of iPhones and other smartphones.
As a result of our work on Mobile 2.0 we are very interested in the future ways in which people connect to the Internet. Here are the thoughts of one of the great visionaries of our time: Mr. Jobs also predicted that the ongoing shift in technology away from the PC and toward mobile devices will continue. But rather than disappear, the PC will become a niche product, he said.
The closest we got to location-based marketing was when we looked at commercial applications of cell broadcasting in the course of the public early warning work in the Maldives. Our constituents do not have fancy phones, but no harm keeping an eye: For retailers, these games and apps offer a new form of mobile marketing that goes well beyond a minibanner ad by rewarding consumers, individually, for their loyalty. And unlike paper cards, stores can use the data they collect from people’s cellphones to learn more about who their customers are and how they behave. No one in advertising has ever been able to figure out how to do “one-to-one, real-time marketing,” said Drew Sievers, a former advertising executive who is now co-founder and chief executive of mFoundry. “The mobile phone is where that will actually probably happen.