I was of the view that all the innovations in regulation were occurring in the developing world (or by scholars working on developing country regulation). I was wrong. It appears that very interesting work is going on at Harvard, possibly in response to the US crisis in regulation: “Weak capture” (defined as special-interest influence compromising “the capacity of regulation to enhance the public interest, but the public interest is still being served by regulation”) may be nearly ubiquitous. But where some net social benefit remains, so does the case for regulation—perhaps modified, but not abandoned. Resorting to analogy again, Carpenter and Moss suggest consulting the history of medicine: Just as physicians once believed that the only effective way to treat infection was to cut it out surgically, it is commonplace today to believe that capture can only be treated by “amputating” the offending regulation.
The IDRC Asia Office was kind enough to permit publication of a part of a concept paper I wrote for them. Here is an excerpt: At present, the principal methods for understanding users or demand are quantitative research (representative-sample surveys) and qualitative research. The former is used primarily for understanding “what” questions and the latter for “why” questions. Quantitative research is very costly. Its limitations include problems of recall and different forms of bias.
I saw first hand the futility of the Mullahs’ efforts to prevent Internet access by Iranian youth when I was in Tehran at the height of the Arab Spring. But what is new is that it’s the Minister of Culture who is highlighting the hypocrisy and futility. According to “The Iran Primer,” a website and publication of the United States Institute of Peace, “Iran is one of the most tech-savvy societies in the developing world, with an estimated 28 million Internet users, led by youth,” the site says. “Iran boasts between 60,000 and 110,000 active blogs, one of the highest numbers in the Middle East, led by youth.” The Iranian authorities admit, reluctantly, that it is almost impossible to rein in Iranians who are eager to know about the outside world and know how to use alternative means to gain access to the web.
In all network industries,the core problem is the peak. Peak is what drives investment and costs. But in Sri Lanka, even the valley is becoming a problem. The laws of physics require every electron that is produced and distributed over the grid to be also consumed. We lack adequate demand in the middle of the night.
Carson Wolfer, head of business development, partnerships and CSR at Ooredoo Myanmar, has described how they are progressing at CommunicAsia. The lack of roads, electricity and fibre is well-documented, but even the mundane aspects of setting up a company, such as setting up bank accounts and trying to pay employees are more difficult in Myanmar, Wolfer said. “It is still early days for the government,” he said. Ooredoo plans to launch its HSPA+ network in the cities of Mandalay, Naypyitaw and Yangon in the third quarter. The terms of its licence dictate that its network must cover 97% of the population within five years.
The 2014 LIRNEasia Disaster Risk Reduction Lecture focused on all aspects of the early warning ‘chain’ and what advances have been made in the ten years since the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. On the whole the message that was conveyed was very positive. Tremendous progress has been made both in the science of understanding when a tsunami has been generated and in the deployment of instruments throughout the world’s oceans, including the Indian Ocean. The purpose of all this effort and investment is getting people out of harm’s way. That means that warnings, including evacuation orders, have to be effectively communicated to all those in harm’s way; that evacuation must be orderly; and most importantly, that the evacuees take the appropriate action willingly and with knowledge.
Nine and a half years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, I was asked to speak on the role of ICTs in disaster management at the PTC conference in Honolulu. The title says it all: Why it won’t be so bad next time. It was an emotional time and I half-wondered whether I was making claims that were over-ambitious, especially for organizations that were outside government. Today’s LIRNEasia Disaster Risk Reduction Lecture and Discussion at 3:30 PM at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute will provide the answer. It will not be perfect; but it will never be as bad as it was in 2004.
The research conducted by Rajat Kathuria and Sugandha Srivastav continues to generate more publicity. Indians are falling in love with mobile apps. The average smartphone user in the country has 17 apps, says a recent study released by Google Mobile Planet. The number is close to the global average of 25 (South Korea leads with 41 apps—mostly games—per smartphone). India’s app economy is estimated to be worth Rs 974 crore in 2014, and is expected to grow 66 percent to Rs 1,621 crore in 2015.
From today’s Financial Times: When asked to explain the importance of CAP, I find it helpful to contrast today’s media and disaster-management environments with those that existed at the time of the 1978 east coast cyclone where around 250,000 people were displaced (about the same as by the 2004 tsunami), but only around 900 died (as against over 30,000 in 2004). Then, there was only one electronic media organisation, the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. It had six channels, but the news and information on all six channels originated from one news room (I worked there in 1978). We easily coordinated with the Department of Meteorology, the sole entity responsible for cyclone warnings. On the ground there were far fewer electronic media devices than now, but people like the late GA Mr Anthonymuttu were able to effectively move people out of harm’s way.
Guess you are not taken seriously these days unless you lose a few billion on smartphones. When it comes to smartphone profits, Apple and Samsung divide them up, leaving crumbs for every other manufacturer. At least in the United States, phones are a mature market, with 120 million sold last year. Now Amazon is giving this brutal business a shot. On the one hand, analysts say, it has no choice.
This is disaster risk reduction week in Sri Lanka. Nothing official, but we decided some time back that tsunami commemoration is better done in the middle of the year, than in the last week of December when everything, including our brains, shuts down. I learned this from my children’s schools where they celebrate half-birthdays for kids whose birthdays are inconveniently situated. We have been running the disaster risk-reduction lecture and discussion event since 2010. This year, thanks to the hard work and initiative of Nuwan Waidyanatha, we have a whole week of activities.
OECD has done a good analysis of the wrong-headedness of raising international voice call termination rates, and indeed of having international termination rates. Outside the OECD countries, the price has been dropping too, accompanied by a huge increase in traffic. Calls from the United States to India increased eight fold over 2003-2011 for example. But not everybody has benefited. Despite a massive increase in the number of telephones in Africa, international calls to that continent from the United States remained stagnant during this same period.
It is important that the government-owned telcos modernize their management in the face of competition by well-endowed modern companies such as Ooredoo and Telenor. If they do not, their fate will be the same as those of BTCL in Bangladesh and BSNL in India. Cash negative, if not for propping up by government using tax payer money. But it appears that KDDI is not willing to absorb all the MPT staff. For a big country like Myanmar, 11,000 does not seem too high a number.
As we prepare for the IOTX events that start on the 16th of June in Negombo, I was reminded of the first expert consultation we conducted, exactly one month after the tsunami. That was a productive meeting, catalyzing, among other things, the USD 71 million plus dam safety project that has made large swaths of our country safe from inland tsunamis. Thank you to all who worked with us along the way.
Since we run the DRR lecture on a shoestring, there will be no paid media ads. We are grateful for publicity. If forewarned is forearmed and you are in the NGO sector specifically in DRR (Disaster Risk Reduction) there’s a lecture on Disaster Risk Reduction Public Lecture: Regional Readiness. Disaster risk reduction is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyse and reduce the causal factors of disasters. Reducing exposure to hazards, lessening vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment and improving preparedness and early warning for adverse events are all examples of disaster risk reduction.
So it’s not just the companies that actually purchase capacity from cloud service companies. Everyone. Google has a big cloud, too. You’re on it if you use any sort of Google service like email and photo editing. Seventy million Nigerians recently registered for local elections on Google’s cloud and millions more people study on Google’s cloud through the online educational service Khan Academy.