A colleague from IDRC has written about: CellBazaar (https://www.cellbazaar.com/) . . a community-centric, mobile phone based market to connect buyers and sellers, especially in rural & mofussil (semi urban/rural) Bangladesh.
Interesting parallel to Sri Lanka’s Mahavilachchiya experiment. The only worrisome aspect is the fact that it is a fully subsidized project. I guess that they’ll spend more on evaluation only than the total spent on Mahavilachchiya including the hardware. The important thing is that all these projects need to be monitored, to see how they do after the subsidies end. Asia: Telecom’s Rural Revolution The project in Lao Cai illustrates the trends of joint cooperation between vendors, operators and governments to tap new opportunities for economic development.
Smith Dharmasarojana is a hero to those in the disaster risk-reduction field. He was the Met Chief who raised the flag re a tsunami hitting Thailand well before 2004 December. He lost his job as a result. When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami did hit, he was recalled and made the disaster-preparedness czar. Because of his drive, Thailand is among the best prepared for a tsunami or similar disaster today.
Smartphones are the PCs of the developing world – tech – 01 August 2007 – New Scientist Tech Being able to communicate in real time via speech and text using basic cellphones has already proved invaluable for communities that were never connected by landlines. Ajedi-ka, an organisation that works to promote human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, distributes phones to local teachers, elders and business leaders so that they can report incidents of children being drafted as soldiers. The phones make reporting faster and easier. Meanwhile, health workers across the developing world have started using cellphones to monitor disease outbreaks in real time. In Kenya phones are being turned into mini-ATM machines via Vodafone’s M-PESA program, which allows users to load money onto their phones in shops and then send it via a text message to someone else, in their village say.
There has been much speculation about the strategy that will be adopted by the Indian juggernaut Bharti when it enters the Sri Lankan mobile market as the fifth player. Bharti is offering food for thought, though of course, reality may not always match what is told at news conferences. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Bharti Airtel will offer value added services, especially music which has been a big hit in the Indian market. “We do more music in India than some of the music companies,” Kapoor said. With broadband and 3G services telecom firms can offer more applications for customers, Kapoor said, adding that they would be “aiming for share of wallet rather than share of telecom.
The ITU’s World Information Society Report 2007 contains the following discussion of one of LIRNEasia’s flagship products, the Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) assessment, in Chapter 2, Bridging the digital divide (p. 32). “One innovative approach adopted recently in the Asian market is to try to quantify the extent of sector reform. LIRNEAsia has conducted research into the regulatory environment in six Asian economies (India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand). Their research is based on interviews rating performance in market entry, scarce resources, interconnection, prices, anticompetitive practices and universal service.
The Sunday Lankadeepa of 12 August 2007 reports that the government has decided to raise the tax on mobile bills from 2.5% to 7.5% and also institute a LKR 50 monthly tax on all SIMs. These are special taxes that are levied over and above the standard VAT of 15%. The recommendation was first made by the extremist Jatika Hela Urumaya party that is part of the governing coalition.
The story below describes the second forced removal of a Chairman of the Philippines telecom regulatory agency since November 2006. They are approaching the Sri Lankan benchmark of three Directors General of Telecom in one year (achieved in 2005). What is interesting is what impact this activity will have on the generally satisfactory Philippines TRE performance recorded in mid 2006 (before the firing habit caught on). Fixed terms for NTC commissioners proposed – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos An ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the House of Representatives said on Tuesday commissioners and deputy commissioners of the National Telecommunications Commission must be given fixed terms of office to insulate the quasi-judicial body from political influence.
LIRNEasia is privileged to be associated with Professor Ashok Jhunjunwala, who is featured in this special interview by Rediff. Ashok serves as Chair of CPRsouth, LIRNEasia’s principal capacity building initiative, and on LIRNEasia’s International Advisory Board. He will visit Sri Lanka for the first time to deliver a keynote address at the South Asia Broadband Congess and Expo in Colombo, 4-6 September, 2007. He is truly an inspiring public intellectual. rediff.
According to a Maldives online news publication, always on Internet is now available in 27 more islands. News In Brief 5 August 2007 Dhiraagu has extended its internet service to twenty seven additional islands, meaning 70% of Maldivians can now access broadband internet. Dhiraagu, which was given permission to extend internet coverage to the atolls in August 2006, now provides a service to forty two islands. The company plans to extend its network to cover all islands with more than nine hundred residents. Is it possible for a knowledgeable person to tell us what “broadband internet” means in the Maldives?
The article also contains interesting data on minutes of use by age group. What’s Good for a Business Can Be Hard on Friends – New York Times Unlike traditional landline telephones, which once made callers distinguish between local and long distance, cellphone carriers divide the world into in-network and outside. And because basic plans from the three major cellphone carriers, Verizon, Sprint and AT&T, are all about the same price — under $60 a month — the deciding factor for young people, in particular, is what network friends are on. Carriers are giving customers more options to stay connected with people outside their network. This year, T-Mobile introduced a plan that allows customers to choose five telephone numbers outside its network that they can call free at any time.
Sales in Emerging Markets Help Nokia Add to Its Cellphone Lead – New York Times Nokia sold 100 million mobile devices in the period, an increase of 29 percent over 2006, while the overall industry growth was about 14 percent, with 262 million mobile devices sold globally, Nokia said. But the group again warned about the performance of its troubled network operations, describing market conditions as challenging because of heavy competition. “We shall have to increase the amount and speed of cost cutting,” the chief executive, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, said, giving no details. The greatest growth in Nokia’s handset sales, 37 percent, was in the Middle East and Africa, it said. But at 36 percent growth, sales were also strong in the Asia-Pacific region and in China.
A partial victory for those making the case for open wireless networks (Carterfone 2). F.C.C. Hands Google a Partial Victory – New York Times The Federal Communications Commission moved cautiously Tuesday toward creating a more open national wireless broadband network, handing a partial victory to Google, which was pushing for more competition in cellphone services.
Privatization is a controversial subject. Proponents claim it will increase efficiency; reduce the stuffing of firms with excess employees, etc. The reduction of political victimization is not a benefit that usually gets addressed. This study also helps explain the opposition of unions in state-owned firms to privatization. They are not unions in the classic sense, but intermediaries of political victimization and corruption.
The telecom sector in Sri Lanka is expected to attract the bulk of the record USD 600 million in foreign direct investment expected in 2007: LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Nor has violence deterred the 530 million dollars in foreign direct investment so far this year which is projected to exceed the 600 million dollars in 2006, according to bank figures. Most of the money from overseas has gone into telecom and IT-related services, distantly followed by garments and building of high-rise properties. Powered by ScribeFire.
Thailand continues with its program of tsunami evacuation drills. This website has reported on the evacuation drills organized by Sarvodaya and LIRNEasia as part of the pilot project. We will be pleased to disseminate information about the government’s drills as well. ThaisNews On Thursday 26 July, we had our Special report at the Tsunami evacuation drill in Patong. Later we had an interview with the Director General of the Sri Lanka Disaster Management Center and a representative from Maldives, who were observing the drill.