Minister Milinda Moragoda opened the discussion with some thought provoking questions about China. Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Center For Policy Research, India): The quick reaction I had was it’s precisely these kinds of questions that make the best case for evidence based policy making. I would contest most of these dichotomies. There are interesting contrasts, but I think his diagnosis is a bit misapplied. On this question of infrastructure and roads, but I think the character of this debate will be very different five years from now.
The second conference of CPRsouth2: ‘Empowering rural communities through ICT policy and research’, commenced on December 15, 2007 in Chennai, India. The three-day conference is being held in association with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras‘s (IIT-M) Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI). The events also include pre- and post-conference tutorials on December 14 and 18, 2007 and the second meeting of the CPRsouth Board. More Information
LIRNEasia Research Fellow and Associate Professor of Law at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) , Joseph Wilson, Ph.D., has been nominated to be a member of the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP). For more information, see news item in Daily Times, Pakistan
Please continue discussion from Village with a mesh network, but not a single telephone, on this thread. Previous discussion is archived in the following thread: Village with a mesh network, but not a single telephone
BY VERONICA S. CUSI, Businessworld THE PHILIPPINES was the second fastest-growing market for broadband worldwide in 2006, according to a study by UK-based research and consultancy firm Ovum. This was primarily due, however, to the fact that broadband is just taking off in the country, and Ovum said growth could be significantly higher if regulators allow more competition that would lead to cheaper services. Greece took the top spot in the study, and the other countries in the top ten list were Indonesia, India, Ukraine, Ireland, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia and Turkey. Total broadband growth in the Philippines from 2005 to 2006 was at 157% while Greece’s was 168%, Datamonitor affiliate Ovum said.
…in the Philippines: The Manila Times REGULATORS are unlikely to support mobile- phone number portability, as the proposal to allow consumers to maintain their existing numbers when shifting from one service provider to another is too costly. “At this time, based on our study the number portability is costly and it’s not financially viable, but technically feasible,” Edgardo Cabarrios, National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) chief for common carriers authorization, told reporters. Under the proposed number portability plan, a subscriber can switch among different service providers while retaining his existing mobile-phone number. This means the subscriber no longer has to buy a new SIM (subscriber identification module) card for every switch. Powered by ScribeFire.
Nuwan Waidyanatha, project manager of the HazInfo program, has been invited to present a paper at the Second China Workshop on Information System of Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM-CHINA 2007) to be held on August 26-27, 2007 in Harbin, China. The paper entitled “‘Common Alerting Protocol Message Broker’ for Last-Mile Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka: An Essential Component” will focus on proving the need for a CAP Broker for a Last-Mile Hazard Warning System. The general objective of the research was to evaluate the suitability of 5 ICTs deployed in varied conditions for their suitability in the Last-Mile of a national disaster warning system for Sri Lanka and possibly by extension to other developing countries. The Live Exercises conducted between November 2006 and May 2007 showed that the Hazard Information Hub (HIH) had a reliability of only 78% on average – a poor result, as the reliability of the HIH performing her set of functions was not meant to be any less than 95%. High reliability from the HIH was a necessity in order to provide as much time for the Community First-Responders to activate and complete the Last-Mile Community Emergency Response Plans.
LIRNEasia decided to use a blog as its website rather than a conventional website. Website has done well so far; about 3,000 comments so far. Some issues of importance: Front page changes every two days, due to number of posts. Scrolling nature means that sometimes the most important topics do not remain at the top for long. Weaknesses concerning retrieval of documents (unless you know exactly where it is).
Rohan Samarajiva and Divakar Goswami from LIRNEasia chaired back-to-back Forum sessions at the ITU World 2006 in Hong Kong on December 7. The Building Digital Communities session, chaired by Divakar, covered a wide-swathe of topics. In his opening remarks [PDF], he outlined on some of the issues that would be covered in the presentations and discussion to follow. In his Keynote address, the Indonesian Minister of Communication & IT, Sofyan Djalil proposed that global equipment manufacturers should adopt a new business model where they share some of the investment risk with operators while deploying infrastructure in financially unviable areas in developing countries. He suggested that the current model where developing countries are only purchasers of high cost equipment and services, breeds dependency and is unsustainable in the long run.
Please continue discussion from Software Issues in Sri Lanka Part 5, on this thread. This thread is devoted to diverse software issues discussed in the context of Sri Lanka. Please stick to the topic and keep the discussion civil. Previous discussion is archived in the following threads: Standardizing Sinhala for IT Part 4 Standardizing Sinhala for IT Part 3 Standardizing Sinhala for IT Part 2 Questioning ICT Myths
Please continue discussion from the thread Dharmashala meeting on Wi-Fi here. This thread is dedicated to ICT infrastructure issues in Sri Lanka that include mesh networks in Mahavilachchiya, backbone infrastructure, Wi-Fi and Wimax licensing etc. Please keep discussion civil.
Please continue discussion from Standardizing Sinhala for IT Part 4, on this thread. The change in the title reflects the diverse software issues discussed in the context of Sri Lanka that have gone beyond the initial Unicode vs Donalcode debate. Please keep the discussion civil. Previous discussion is archived in the following threads: Standardizing Sinhala for IT Part 3 Standardizing Sinhala for IT Part 2 Questioning ICT Myths
Please continue your discussions on the above topic here. The previous thread is archived here.
Since the last thread was getting unwieldy in size it has been shut. Please continue the discussion here.
Rohan Samarajiva represented LIRNEasia at the Research ICT Africa (RIA!), Annual Meeting held recently in Dakar, Senegal with a view to contribute to the discussion on Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) assessment that RIA! is planning to undertake. The five-day workshop held from May 26-June 2, 2006, focused on three areas: the 2006 RIA! research agenda, outcomes mapping and RIA!