Rohan Samarajiva made a presentation entitled, “Improving transport and transportation policy: lessons from telecom” at the recently concluded Seminar on the Draft National Transport Policy of the Ministry of Transport. Held on 23rd of July, the seminar was organized by the Pathfinder Foundation in collaboration with The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. Drawing on the similarities between the telecom and transport sector, including opportunities for private sector participation and availability of new technologies for market structure transformation in both sectors, he stated that while telecom sector has flourished under market reforms, the transport sector may, in fact, have worsened. As cited in The Island and Lanka Business Online, Rohan argued that “the draft policy appeared to perpetuate existing inefficiencies, poor service and waste of public funds”, as well as that “the national transport policy does not allow for adequate private participation, and where there was, such as in bus services, regulation was lacking”. Click here to download slides.
An interesting article in the Times of India, documents the varied use of missed calls among mobile phone users in India, based on LIRNEasia’s T@BOP3 findings for 2008. Although the title of the article is slightly misleading (missed call use was, in fact, prevalent in all the countries studied; see here for more information), it nevertheless brings home the point that missed calls are being regularly used to communicate messages of various kinds in different contexts.
LIRNEasia lead economist Harsha de Silva presented a paper on “ICT Policy for Agriculture in Sri Lanka: An Economic Perspective” at the first ever information technology in agriculture conference jointly organized by the IT Department of the University of Moratuwa and the Agriculture Department of the University of Ruhuna. Harsha argued for mobile-centric, demand-driven, value-chain based, accurate and timely two-way information exchange systems that could lower transaction costs leading to increased efficiencies in agricultural markets to move farmers from subsistence to commercial agriculture. His slides are here. LIRNEasia lead economist Harsha de Silva presented a paper on “ICT Policy for Agriculture in Sri Lanka: An Economic Perspective” at the first ever information technology in agriculture conference jointly organized by the IT Department of the University of Moratuwa and the Agriculture Department of the University of Ruhuna. Harsha argued for mobile-centric, demand-driven, value-chain based, accurate and timely two-way information exchange systems that could lower transaction costs leading to increased efficiencies in agricultural markets to move farmers from subsistence to commercial agriculture.
An article in the Sunday Times, Sri Lanka features the 3R (reduce-reuse-recycle) work done by the Girl Guides Association of Sri Lanka, administratively/logistically supported by LIRNEasia and funded by IDRC. More information on LIRNEasia’s 3R project is available here. In recent years they have designed projects such as 3R which stands for the three-fold environmental concept of reduce, reuse and recycle, and several other environment related projects. Their current focus is on the environment to be in tow with the United Nation’s (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDG). A 3R Community Programme was launched recently, organised by the Project Executive Hemamali Rajapaksa, which is a scheme that undertakes environmental conservation related activity on religious holidays.
This colloquium was conducted by Puree Sirasoonthorn. The objective of this paper is to examine the business model that BuzzCity operationalizes in Thailand. BuzzCity is a developer of global wireless communities and consumer services. Established in 1999 in Singapore, BuzzCity today operates the world’s leading wireless community – for two distinct audiences: the newly connected emerging middle class in developing markets and the blue collar sector in developed regions. These “unwired” consumers are accessing the mobile Internet on their phones due to widespread and affordable wireless access The number of myGamma users in Thailand is 110, 000.
Namibian Communications Commission (NCC) has ordered the convergence of interconnection rates between operators (Cell One, Telecom Namibia and MTC) through the introduction of a standard charges structure; rates will be reduced bi-annually over a two-year period. Symmetry between mobile and fixed termination rates supports fixed-mobile convergence and removes distortions caused by previously higher mobile-to-mobile rates. A benchmarking study conducted by Research ICT Africa, LIRNEasia’s sister organization, on behalf of the NCC indicates that the cost of termination of an efficient operator in Namibia is NAD 0.24 (USD 0.03).
An interesting article on MIT’s website discusses how several business ventured started by its students spawned by class projects or independent work are exploring news ways of using the mobile phones for improving the day-to-day lives of people, particularly in the developing world. Applications range from mobile health-care services to agricultural and mobile payment services as well. Many were developed as entries for business competitions, or as part of the MIT Media Lab’s NextLab program to develop mobile phone applications geared toward the developing world. Read the full article here. *** LIRNEasia’s Mobile 2.
In an informal interview with well-known journalist and blogger Frederick Noronha at the 3rd PAN ALL Partners’ Conference held in June, Rohan Samarajiva explains the importance of wireless technology, particularly for business-related purposes, based on T@BOP findings for 2008. He emphasizes that when comparing the effectiveness of different communication telephonies, one needs to go beyond measuring indicators of “volume” to that of “value”; furthermore, he emphasizes that within telephony itself, “one call is not the same as another call” (e.g. a call saying “I am here” cannot be compared to a call made to communicate an emergency).
Findings on public phone use from the Teleuse@BOP3 study have been published in the Indian media. An excerpt of one, published by Yahoo, India follows: A new study says public telephones are the most frequently used method of making calls by Indian women at the bottom of the social pyramid compared to other South Asian nations like Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand. Indian men at the bottom of the pyramid, on the other hand, rely more on their mobiles, the study said. Women can walk into a phone booth at any time to connect to friends and families without the fear of being harassed, spied upon or discriminated against in terms of gender. Home phones, said the study, exposed the women to being censured.
Payal Malik, Senior Research Fellow, will speak on universal service policies based on LIRNEasia research to the participants of the 3rd Annual Connecting Rural Communities Asia Forum to be held from 23-25 June 2009 in New Delhi, India. The event is expected to attract stakeholders, policy makers and executives from across the ICT sector with the shared goal of shaping future of rural connectivity. The organizers hope to be discuss: How can governments best support the creation of self-sustaining rural connectivity initiatives that benefit local people? Step-by-step practical guidance on overcoming the most pressing technical challenges Developing a world-class telecentre rural development programme Progress on delivering the promise of the United Services Obligation Fund Realising the benefits of greater rural connectivity though the delivery of E-services Mapping the future need for connectivity: Identifying choke points in the delivery network Training and empowering rural populations to make full use of the potential inherent in greater connectivity More information is available on the official website: http://www.events.
An article published in the Himal Southasian and authored by Rohan Samarajiva, explores the feasibility of regional economic integration among the SAARC region, given among factors, high telecommunication costs between such countries. Entitled, ‘Roaming dystopia’, the article opines that in the same way that poor transportation facilities can stifle international trade between countries, so can high communication costs such as leased line prices act as a deterrent to effective economic integration. Based on roaming tariffs collated and published in LIRNEasia’s International Voice Benchmarks report, the article states that “unless telephone calls within the region are cheaper than calls to locations outside, it is reasonable to dismiss declarations on economic integration as little more than hot air”. The full article is available here: Part 1 | Part 2| Part 3
An article, co-authored by Rohan Samarajiva and Payal Malik, has been published in India’s Financial Express. The article discusses findings from LIRNEasia’s Teleuse@BOP3 project. Read the full article here. Just five years ago, the Indian telecom industry=barely included the poor. The country had a teledensity of 7/100 people, but in rural India 100 people were served by only 1.
Findings from LIRNEasia’s Broadband Quality of Service Experience (QoSE) study have been published in The Economic Times, India. Broadband quality of service offered by fixed wireline operators in non-metro areas of Tamil Nadu is three times better than in the metro circles of Chennai and Bangalore, a study conducted by IIT-Madras has shown…telecommunications and computer Netwroks group of IIT-M, has conducted tests on broadband quality of service in Chennai and RoTN circles as part of a project by Asian telecom policy thinktank LIRNEasia. Read the full article here.
Research papers and presentations made at the “Mobile2.0: Beyond Voice?” pre-conference workshop at the 2009 ICA Conference, 20 – 21 May 2009, Chicago, are now available for download below; the pre-conference is being organized by LIRNEasia (www.lirneasia.net).
TVEAP (on behalf of LIRNEasia) videoed a series of interviews with teleusers to explore their usage patterns at the BOP. These videos are part of a larger study conducted by LIRNEasia on the use of ICTs at the BOP in six Asian countries. Below is one of seven interviews; more will be uploaded in the next few days.
Rohan Samarajiva will present the next SA Connect Public Seminar Series, entitled, ‘The path to the information society: Does it lie through the mobile? Evidence from Asia and thoughts for Africa’, on the 14th of April, at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, South Africa. “A people centered, inclusive, and development-oriented information society where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge enabling individuals and communities to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life,” was the common objective agreed upon during the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) process. This lecture will examine the evidence from representative surveys of teleusers at the Bottom of the Pyramid in six Asian countries, including within them the Indo-Gangetic Plain that is home to the world’s largest concentration of poor people, on whether the path to the information society is likely to be the conventional computer at the end of a broadband connection or a mobile. The possible contributions of the budget telecom network business model, pioneered in South Asia, will be discussed.