Well, we didn’t know we were doing public policy in a Googley way, but we’ve been doing it for 2.5 years and we are happy to have such esteemed company join us! Google Public Policy Blog: Taking the Wraps Off Google’s Public Policy Blog We’re seeking to do public policy advocacy in a Googley way. Yes, we’re a multinational corporation that argues for our positions before officials, legislators, and opinion leaders. At the same time, we want our users to be part of the effort, to know what we’re saying and why, and to help us refine and improve our policy positions and advocacy strategies.
At the Pakistan Telecom Authority-LIRNEasia workshop held in Islamabad on June 14, 2007, the Chairman of the PTA announced the most recent data on the telecom sector in Pakistan. Given the lack of a definition of a mobile subscriber and evidence that multiple SIMs are being used by individuals, it is LIRNEasia’s practice to refer to mobile SIMs rather than subscribers. That does not take away from the tremendous achievement of the Pakistan operators and the regulatory agency in increasing connectivity to levels above Sri Lanka and India. Pakistan exceeds in Telecom Regulatory Environment – PakTribune Chairman PTA said that PTA had provided level playing field in different areas of tele use in the country. He appreciated the research activities in communication sector as they motivated to perform even better.
The following column on LBO.LK discusses an issue that has involved one of the discussion threads in the website. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Recently, the blog has become controversial. Since April 2006, one thread has been used by various persons to discuss Sri Lankan ICT policy issues, with emphasis on the appropriate standards for using Sinhala in computing. Not all the comments on this thread have been rational and civilized and some commenters have engaged in personal vilification.
For World Telecom and Information Society Day, I wrote a column on the wrong-headed telecenter policy being implemented by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka with World Bank funds, where I referred to lessons from South Africa that were taken into account in the design, but ignored in the implementation. Here are some more lessons from Africa: Creative destruction: izi killed the public phones « abaporu project on technology appropriation All of a sudden, users don’t need the ‘public phones’ any more. In Senegal most of these télécentres have gone out of business. Bassirou Cissé, the general secretary of Unetts(*) says that “In 2000, there were 18,000 télécentres in Sénégal, accounting for 33% of the Senegalese operators’ revenues and 30,000 jobs. Today, most of them have closed down.
LIRNEasia is beginning its planning for the next research cycle on mobile multiple play, or how the mobile handset is beginning to emerge as the access point for a plethora of services, of which synchronous voice communication will be only one. Sports news, which Dialog introduced in Sri Lanka around 1998-99, will be an important product. Yes, the Screen Is Tiny, but the Plans Are Big – New York Times ESPN is clearly onto something. More than nine million people visit its cellphone Web site each month, a following that surpasses the audience of most computer-based Web sites. Some sports fans apparently cannot wait to reach their homes or offices to check the score of a Patriots game or to see if their favorite pitcher has tossed a no-hitter, so tens of thousands of them receive an average of 22 ESPN text messages on their phones each week.
14 June 2007) Rohan Samarajiva, Joseph Wilson, Harsha de Silva and Tahani Iqbal presented recent research conducted by LIRNEasia at a media and stakeholder event organized by the Pakistan Telecom Authority in Islamabad today. Following opening remarks by Chairman of PTA, Major General (R) Shahzada Alam Malik, Samarajiva and Wilson presented the new improved version of the six-country Telecom Regulatory Environment study, with emphasis on Pakistan. de Silva discussed the results of the Teleuse @ the Bottom of the Pyramid (T@BOP) survey conducted in five countries, including Pakistan. Among other things, he discussed the disparate access to ICTs between men and women at the BOP as well as the tremendous progress made in connecting large numbers of people at the BOP in the past few years. Iqbal presented comparative analysis of mobile prices in three countries of South Asia, using a basket methodology adapted from one used by the OECD since 1995.
We have generally tried to focus on the fundamental issues of access to ICT infrastructure, and not the esoteric issues of Internet governance. However, after two and half years, we are beginning to think of broadening the scope a little. The anti-competitive uses of intellectual property have so far been discussed on this blog only in relation to attempts to claim a patent on the way the Sinhala language is standardized for the computer. Here is another aspect. A Patent Lie – New York Times Vonage developed one of the first Internet telephone services and has attracted more than two million customers.
European Parliament – News – Headlines – Article – Post Tsunami reconstruction – triumph or tragedy? Mr Jayantha Samarasinghe of the Sri Lanka reconstruction agency told MEPs of how reconstruction efforts were proceeding. Among the figures he cited were that 134 of the 183 damaged schools were back in action, 80 railway bridges had been rebuilt and 75% of the fishing sector had been restored.In terms of early warning he said that the Dutch government had donated 50 Tsunami early warning towers. He also said that villages in coastal regions in danger of flooding had all worked out “escape routes” to higher ground.
For those who believed that privacy issues will take a long time come up in South Asia . . . The relevant definition is “the ability to control the boundary conditions of social interactions.” BBC NEWS | South Asia | India cell phone curbs welcomed Indian cellular phone companies and phone users have welcomed a government move to curb unsolicited calls and text messages from tele-marketers.
Readers of this website will know that from 2005 we have been pushing hard for action to reduce the risks of disasters and to better prepare people to save their lives. Starting from an effort to get government to create a national early warning system, we shifted to community-based disaster preparedness work at the last mile in association with Sarvodaya. It is heartening to see the risk reduction focus gaining acceptance worldwide: News & Broadcast – Global Gathering Seeks to Reduce Disaster Risk Nations and institutions are looking for other ways to protect an estimated 3.4 billion people living in areas prone to at least one natural hazard, such as flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes. A Global Hotspots Analysis conducted by the World Bank and Columbia University estimates 105 million people are exposed to three or more natural hazards.
BBC NEWS | Technology | City wi-fi plans under scrutiny But as councils offer public wi-fi, questions are being asked about how much citizens will use them and how sustainable they are. City-wide wi-fi is the obvious next step from wi-fi hotspots, bringing them out of cafes and hotel lobbies to provide ubiquitous coverage in a town. But some analysts claim that few citizens are using public wi-fi while other call for more cautious rollouts. Companies such as BT and The Cloud are partnering with local governments in the UK to build city-wide wireless networks offering councils enhancements to public services and giving citizens the chance to connect to the web from wi-fi enabled devices. Powered by ScribeFire.
LIRNEasia and ISEAS organized an expert forum on ICT indicators in Singapore in March 2007. On the 26th of January, the Myanmar Ministry of Post and Telecom sent an e-mail to the ISEAS in Singapore, nominating an officer to attend. That e-mail reached ISEAS yesterday (4th June 2007; more than four months later). Does this not suggest a need to radically reform the Myanmar ICT infrastructure?
We have periodically carried stories on non-traditional uses of mobiles. Here is one about buying accident insurance that are bought and paid for through the mobiles. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO The accident insurance cover package premiums are priced between five and 20 rupees which can be paid at any Dialog reload centre in Sri Lanka that entitles the connection holder up to 50,000 rupees worth of claims. The accident cover targets the population who does not have comprehensive knowledge of insurance and low-income families. Customers can apply for the ‘eZ insurance’ cover at the time of a reload and the cover expires when the credit of the reload finishes.
The usually well-informed LBO.LK appears to have gotten confused in the “fog of war” created by interested parties seeking to extract rents from the sale of 25% of SLTL shares by NTT to GTH, both private companies, and by the unfortunate opacity of the transaction (something that is quite surprising because SLTL is a publicly traded company and the interests of thousands of shareholders are affected by the transaction). The source quoted by LBO below appears to have been quite familiar with the ORIGINAL shareholders agreement signed between the Government of Sri Lanka and NTT in 1997, but appears to have been comatose since then. Provisions regarding no universal service obligations (USO) and international exclusivities were in that agreement and did bind the Government of Sri Lanka. The no-USO provision continues to date, though the international exclusivity ended with the issuance of external gateway licenses in March 2003.
The title of the article “Sri Lanka to de-regulate payphone business,” is a little deceptive, but then that is probably not the fault of the Director General, but of the editor of LBO. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka plans to allow third parties to operate payphone booths in an attempt to popularise them in far flung areas outside the city of Colombo, a top official said.The island’s eight public switched telephone network (PSTN) operators will now be allowed to appoint a third party to operate and maintain a public phone booth on a revenue sharing model. “Its a scheme similar to selling lottery tickets, where the lottery operator does not undertake the burden of running, maintaining and collecting the money,” the head of Sri Lanka’s telecom watchdog, Kanchana Ratwatte said.
It is learned that a fiber optic cable has been laid to connect Thimphu, the capital with the Indian backbone network, that an IT park is being established in Thimphu, and that Bhutan will soon be undertaking BPO work. If any of our Bhutanese readers (or other knowledgeable persons) can shed additional light on this subject it will be much appreciated.