A somewhat broader topic, but still quite an interesting one. I worked this up at the invitation of Caritas, a major charitable organization in Sri Lanka. It shows, among other things, that seven out of nine Provinces in Sri Lanka are no longer seriously deficient with regard to household access to ICTs. Even the two laggards, the Northern and Eastern Provinces that took the brunt of the war, are not too far behind. The slideset also shows how much is spent on transport and communication by households.
I found it interesting how much space Helani Galpaya had given to the demand side in her study of Broadband in Sri Lanka. Looks like the problem is common to us and to the US, according to this NYT report. Only 68 percent of Americans with access to high-speed broadband Internet are using it, while in places like South Korea the rate is 90 percent. More than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies — including Wal-Mart and Target — require job applicants to apply online. Various studies have shown that the major reasons people do not have broadband are: the cost of Internet services and the cost of computers; not knowing how to use a computer; and not understanding why the Internet is relevant.
We’ve been saying the new, new thing is big data. According to the NYT, the US government is getting behind big data in a big way. The question we have is how to mobilize this momentum for the BOP in our countries. So far there have been only scattered examples of the potential of mining social media. Last year HP Labs researchers used Twitter data to accurately predict box office revenues of Hollywood movies.
We said this would happen. With smartphones, which seem to be surgically attached to the hand of every teenager and many an adult, tablets have opened up a new dimension to mobile computing that is seducing consumers. Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, believes that in 2011 combined shipments of smartphones and tablets will overtake those of personal computers (PCs). The revolution is mobile This marks a turning-point in the world of personal technology. For around 30 years PCs in various forms have been people’s main computing devices.
A fascinating overview of where ubiquitous computing is headed in the Economist: In their book Messrs Bell and Gemmell predict that people with chronic ailments will one day have sensors embedded directly in their bodies that can transmit data about their vital signs wirelessly to other devices such as their phones. This forecast, which would give a new spin to the slogan “Intel Inside”, may seem far-fetched, yet some cardiac devices are already equipped with wireless connectivity that allows them to send data to doctors. And gadgets such as a bathroom scale made by Withings, a French company, can transmit a person’s weight to a digital health-log on a computer or smartphone. Rather than have sensors lodged inside their bodies, many people may prefer to have them woven into their clothing, or placed next to rather than under their skin. Some venture capitalists such as Mr Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz believe that “wearable computing” will be the next big thing in personal technology, though the companies that have set their sights on this area face a difficult task.
The government’s 2009-10 Household Income and Expenditure Survey results, based on nationwide representative sample, are just out. I wrote about them in LBO. The ICT related results are: As expected, only 14 percent of Western Province households are without some kind of telephone and only 12 percent are without a TV. The Eastern and Northern Provinces are the laggards, with around 35 percent households without telephones. The other provinces are clustered in the middle, with over 70 percent households having a telephone, TV and radio.
We’ve been talking about the data tsunami for more than a year. Here, the Economist has a number: As mobile, web-connected devices become ubiquitous, the volume of data they produce will soar. Cisco, a technology company, reckons that by 2015 some 6.3 exabytes of mobile data will be flowing each month, or the equivalent of 63 billion copies of The Economist.
Several of our Latin American colleagues have written about an increasing and dynamic digital divide. With all respect, much of what they write is wishful thinking. They have some kind of ideal picture of broadband and keep talking about it without mapping out the path from where we are to there. The reason I saw this book is because they had cited what I had written, based on synthesizing the research from the Mobile More than Voice work we did in 2008-10. But our work is cited, not engaged with.
Two years after our research was cited in a presentation by Scott Wallsten to Congress to support his argument that the US should adopt least-cost-subsidy auctions and I condemned the inefficient ways of US universal service fund disbursements at an event attended by senior FCC staff, the change is done: The US will use auctions. Can we claim direct causal responsibility? No. But did we do what catalysts do? Yes.
When I was visiting Afghanistan in early 2009, operators complained to me that the military and the NATO force would, from time to time, shut down their towers in some remote areas to restrict communications doing a military operation. Now its seems the Taliban themselves have learned the trick. LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Punctually, at 8 o’clock every evening, the cellphone signals disappear in this provincial capital. Under pressure from the Taliban, the major carriers turn off their signal towers, effectively severing most of the connections to the rest of the world. Read the article HERE
Stanford, one of the world’ great universities, is poised as the test bed for a disruptive innovation to beat them all. Bringing the costs down to one percent surely qualifies as disruptive. Thrun’s ultimate mission is a virtual university in which the best professors broadcast their lectures to tens of thousands of students. Testing, peer interaction and grading would happen online; a cadre of teaching assistants would provide some human supervision; and the price would be within reach of almost anyone. “Literally, we can probably get the same quality of education I teach in class for about 1 to 2 percent of the cost,” Thrun told me.
The right analogy is key to a decision to subsidize. When the main thing USPS does is distribute coupons, what rationale is there for subsidy? The Internet can’t be used to tele-transport packages, of course, and our use of package delivery services, including the Postal Service’s, has grown with e-commerce. But the Postal Service is running large deficits, bumping up against the $15 billion limit it is permitted to borrow, and is on the brink of default unless Congress comes to the rescue. Is this where the Postal Service wants to make its stand, as a package delivery service, one among several providers?
So, this NYT opinion piece more or less establishes that the iPhone (or smartphone) is a boyfriend/girlfriend substitute among the rich. That’s not what is relevant for us. Does this love exist only at the TOP? What parts of the brain would be activated if fMRIs were run on the BOP? We wouldn’t know an fMRI if it hit us on the face.
infoDev has released the Sri Lanka broadband study authored by Helani Galpaya. The introduction: Sri Lanka, an island nation located in the Indian Ocean just south of India, has lately experienced an explosion in the use of broadband services. This report, part of the Broadband Strategies Toolkit, explores the various factors that have contributed to Sri Lanka’s broadband success, ranging from innovative business models to government investment in e-development services.