WS208: Net Neutrality, Zero-Rating & Development: What’s the Data? – Wednesday, September 3 • 9:00am – 10:30am
A roundtable to explore the arguments for and against “zero-rating,” which refers to the practice of offering free access to certain popular online services for customers of particular mobile networks. Several major service providers have entered into arrangements with mobile network operators in a variety of countries to deliver low-data-usage, “zero-rated” versions of their services. In some cases, this means using those sites does not count against a subscriber’s data caps, while in other arrangements, users can access the service even if they do not have a data plan
LIRNEasia will be represented by Helani Galpaya. She will bring data points LIRNEasia‘s surveys which show that at times users who claim not to use the internet are still claiming to use Facebook.
WS66: Content4D: Diversifying the global content and apps market – Wednesday, September 3 • 12:45pm – 2:15pm
This workshop intends to identify innovative policies and programmes that truly foster the development of content and applications in emerging and developing economies and that promote a local content ecosystem in these countries. Entrepreneurs producing local content in emerging economies will connect remotely from different continents to integrate their views on needs of developers in these economies.
LIRNEasia will be represented by Helani Galpaya. She will touch upon the evidence of low internet use and the reasons for the same based on LIRNEasia research. She will discuss action taking in Asia (specially in India and Sri Lanka) by very different actors stimulate App development.
WS163: Building alliances to enhance Internet affordability – Thursday, September 4 • 3:45pm – 4:45pm
‘The Alliance for Affordable Internet’s Affordability Index of 2013 shows that the UN Broadband Commission target of entry-level broadband services priced at less than 5 percent of average monthly income is far from attainable at present. In the 46 developing countries A4AI studied, the cost of entry-level broadband exceeds on average 40 percent of monthly income for people living on $2/day, and in many countries exceeds 80 percent or even 100 percent of monthly income.
Technological solutions to this challenge are progressing apace, but the best technologies in the world will be rendered useless if policies and regulations governing access keep prices artificially high. Drawing upon the expertise of A4AI’s 55+ diverse members, this proposed workshop will explore and debate concrete policy examples that are designed to enhance affordability in emerging and developing countries and invite perspectives from diverse actors. What is working, what isn’t and how do we adapt some universal lessons and apply these to unique jurisdictions?’
LIRNEasia will be represented at this workshop by Helani Galpaya. She will discuss different policies and implementation models adopted by India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia to set up national broadband networks aimed at increasing broadband penetration.
WS194: New Economics for the New Networked World [CB] – Friday, September 5 • 11:00am – 12:30pm
When making decisions, policy makers, business leaders, and others often depend heavily upon economic assessments and models. But traditional economics is often unable to reflect the dynamic innovation enabled by the Internet. For example, old economic models assume that individuals and companies are motivated primarily by profit and can’t adequately explain innovation by collaborative, non-profit efforts such as open source software communities or the volunteer effort that created and maintains Wikipedia. The “sharing economy” and other, new economic paradigms are emerging fast and economists need new techniques and better data in order to track and understand them. New innovations such as the iPhone, which was launched in 2007, has enabled benefits that no economic model could have predicted. While new Internet and smartphone apps can be adopted by tens of millions of users in a few months, it often takes governments many years to adapt economic models and policies to new realities. New paradigms for economics and governance that can collect and analyze data in real time are called for. How can economists help develop new governance mechanisms that leverage Big Data and analytics?
LIRNEasia will be represented at this workshop by Helani Galpaya. She will draw upon LIRNEasia’s Big Data and other relevant research.
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