It’s always nice when someone whose work has been used in LIRNEasia wins a big award. Robert Shiller greatly influenced our thinking on risk-reduction in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It’s true that he did not get the 2013 Nobel for that work, but still we are happy that an economist who always found the time to engage with contemporary economic policy issues has been so recognized. Report.
From India to Myanmar, debate has been engaged on what regulators should/should not do regarding mobile apps. Are telecom regulators the right people to promote innovation? Should mobile apps have to be licensed? Should mobile operators be prohibited from providing apps and value-added services, as was proposed in Bangladesh? These questions were discussed in the session that I presented at today at the 13th Asia Pacific Telecommunity Policy and Regulatory Forum.
These comparisons are, of course, problematic. But still engaging especially in the context of the launch of the Alliance for an Affordable Internet. Thailand yields no data. And I assume they work off advertised speeds rather than real . The Economist provides a nice interactive map.
Two journalists attended our five-day course on regulation in Taungoo, Myanmar last week. Both interviewed me on the sidelines. Below is the first, from Internet Journal. I can’t read it (cute pictures though); hope you can. Interview in Bamar
The headline suggests the focus is on the capture of regulatory agencies by retired IAS officers. But it is more, a wide-ranging discourse on problems of regulatory governance. It is a pity that the arguments are harmed by sloppy blame attribution: how can TRAI be blamed for spectrum auctions, when the article itself recognizes that is in the province of the Department of Telecommunications? So how do we reverse this capture of important decision-making bodies by the bureaucracy? In 2006, the Planning Commission published a report (Approach to Regulations: Issues and Options) with some suggestions.
Alexa ain’t perfect (how could S Korea’s most popular site be Baidu?), but fascinating nevertheless. What’s with South Asia? India is Google country while all its neighbors are Facebookers. We used to talk about Facebook being a synonym for Internet in Indonesia, but not to Alexa.
While teaching a course on policy and regulation at a very nice, generator-equipped hotel in Taungoo, I was struck by how bad the Internet was and how unstable the electricity supply was. We are used to working closely with the office while on the road, but this proved too difficult in Taungoo and one of us had to advance the departure by one day to ensure projects did not get disrupted. The importance of electricity has been picked up by this analyst, as reported. The costs of Internet subscriptions are expected to decline gradually, particularly for equipment and administrative fees. Announcements that a high-speed Internet cable network is being built this year, and more hydropower dams over the next few years, will have excited the market, it said.
We have been working with the Pakistan Telecom Authority, the Pakistan Universal Service Fund and operators to achieve universal service in that country. Universal service means a phone for everyone. But according to this report there are people in Pakistan who will kill barbarically to prevent this goal from being achieved. A young mother of two has been put to death in Pakistan for possessing a cell phone, Opposing Views reported on Thursday. Arifa Bibi was executed three months ago, on July 11, after a Pakistani tribal court sentenced her to death by stoning.
Several years ago, I was in Chennai learning about what Ashok Jhunjhunwala’s teams were working on. One idea Ashok had was that of basing agricultural extension advice tailored to micro-climatic and soil data. So when a farmer calls/texts, the advice he would get would be specifically for his land and the climatic conditions relevant to that land at that time. I’ve talked about this with many people since, but only as a theoretical construct. I was skeptical the enormous data base that it required could ever be constructed (and maintained, since the soil and climate conditions changed all the time).
For those who worry about their privacy being harmed by transaction generated data, here’s more to worry about: sensors in the sky. These systems generate so much data that they do require big-data analysis. Just as important, he shepherded research and development of new kinds of satellites that made digital pictures of objects on the ground as small as five inches across and then transmitted the images to earth for analysis almost instantly. The aerial reconnaissance programs, most done in conjunction with the Air Force, were highly classified, and many remain so. In a 1967 speech that he asked not be quoted, President Lyndon B.
The Team Leader of LIRNEasia’s Human Capital Research Unit has published an analysis of a policy draft presented by the Ministry of Education. The proposed policy may be downloaded from here.
LIRNEasia, in partnership with the Myanmar ICT Development Organization (MIDO), is conducting a training course on ICT regulation in Taungoo, Myanmar from September 28 to October 2, 2013. The information on this course will be posted under capacity building shortly. Taungoo is 3.5 to 4 hours away from Yangon. Yet I considered it a good use of my time to take a break from teaching to travel to Yangon yesterday because our anchor funder IDRC had convened a roundtable of Myanmar researchers and wanted my presence.
Senior Policy Fellow Abu Saeed Khan and I participated in the ESCAP consultation that sought input on three documents: a report on the state of optical-fiber-based connectivity in the ASEAN region, a new interactive map of international and domestic fiber cables in Asia and a report by LIRNEasia on resilience of ICT infrastructures. The agenda and links to presentations are here. Following revisions, our report too should be published.
The Economist has a piece on mobiles and banking in Myanmar. This is the world’s leading popular publication on economics, but in this case, it appears the hype has overtaken logic. What is banking? It is the business activity of accepting and safeguarding money owned by other individuals and entities, and then lending out this money in order to earn a profit. Mobile can play a role in this, but does the Economist really believe that phone companies will actually do well as deposit-taking and credit-extending entities?
It is easy for Filipino researchers to care about 1 GB of IP transit costing eight times more in Manila than in Singapore. But it not so easy to understand why working to establish a mesh network that includes multiple cables across the continental Asian landmass has any relevance to this archipelagic country. This is the discussion we had today during a presentation organized by the Phil ICT Research Network at University of the Philippines Diliman Campus. The slideset is here.
The Packet Clearing House is a great repository of knowledge about the way the Internet is developing. Being a decentralized network there is no central entity that decides on things or even collects data about what is happening. So entities such as PCH play an important role. The recent UN General Assembly speech by President Rouseff was perhaps the strongest response to spying by the NSA. The commentary by Bill Woodcock of PCH provides an excellent framework to understand the issues.