Yesterday, I gave a guest lecture at a Carleton University using the Rann Vijay Kumar video (constituting its official launch) and the attached slides. The focus was on agriculture. I was surprised the course was required. Guess this constitutes a significant achievement in terms of establishing ICT for development as a field of study.
A review of a book on the achievements of Bell Labs, the entity that made most of inventions that we now take for granted: Indeed, Bell Labs was behind many of the innovations that have come to define modern life, including the transistor (the building block of all digital products), the laser, the silicon solar cell and the computer operating system called Unix (which would serve as the basis for a host of other computer languages). Bell Labs developed the first communications satellites, the first cellular telephone systems and the first fiber-optic cable systems.
“From a global perspective, in our parts of the world people are vocal. We do business with voice. We don’t write big memos, we don’t write big e-mails, you just pick up the phone and you make a call, you talk to the person and you do your business. From that perspective Freedom Fone positions itself naturally in a very good way.” – on YOUTUBE
ICT infrastructure in the former conflict areas in the North and East of Sri Lanka is not far behind the rest of the country. One can get a mobile signal almost everywhere; 3G is available in parts of the Northern and Eastern province and even ADSL in Jaffna. But access differs. The latest 2009/10 household income and expenditure survey revealed that household access to basic amenities, including communication (TV, radio, phone) in these two provinces was the lowest in the country. Yet our Teleuse@BOP4 survey reveals that amongst the poor, usage is not very different.
I expected there’d be more techies in the room when we presented on mobile apps for “people not like us” at ICTD 2012 in Atlanta on March 15th. But still, we were gratified we had a full room for a parallel session on the last day. here is the slide I started the session with. To view the video, you need to click here.
In North America, Eli Noam is an agenda setter and has a knack for catchy titles. His article “Let them eat cellphones” set the agenda for a session at ICTD 2012 in Atlanta. The session was, unusually for a North American event, highly international. Judith Mariscal of Mexico (and our sister organization DIRSI) chaired. Carleen Maitland of the US National Science Foundation talked about the importance of fiber for national research and education networks in Africa.
First reports of the Indian census are coming in. Communication: A telephone, whether a land line or mobile, is used by 63 percent of total households – 82 percent in urban areas and 54 percent in rural areas, an increase of 54 percentage points from 2001. A mobile phone is owned by 59 percent of households. There has been a huge jump in television ownership – up from 15.6 percent to 43 percent in since 2001.
The second of the videos features Rann Vijay Kumar, an agricultural first handler from Samasthipur in Bihar, India. He regularly buys vegetables and cereals directly from farmers, which he then stores and sells to wholesalers. He relies heavily on his mobile phone: to stay in touch with both his supplier farmers and buyers, and to know the latest market prices. Prior to using a mobiles, he used public phones, or passed messages around. Today, he travels less and talks more.
In keeping with the objectives of the Teleuse@BOP4 study, a series of videos have been completed. The focus is predominantly on the productive use of mobile phones. The first in this series features Poonam Devi, a beautician from Bihar, India. Poonam’s life has been transformed since she started using a mobile phone in 2007. It helped her to develop a small business as a beautician.
Yesterday I heard a speaker at the ICTD 2012 conference in Atlanta say that 80% of the USD 4.2 billion spent by the World Bank on ICTs had been labelled as a failure by the Independent Evaluation Group. I had read the study in detail, and had blogged about it. I still wonder how language such as that below, taken from the report, can be interpreted thus: In other priority areas, including ICT applications, the Bank Group’s contributions have been limited. Targeted efforts to increase access beyond what was commercially viable have been largely unsuccessful.
The 2010 Annual Report issued by the Ministry of Finance and Planning is a comprehensive review of sector-wise economic development, economic reforms, foreign investment and financial statements (among others). It is an impressive document that highlights and compares core statistics from 2005 and 2010. The particular index I was looking at (computer literacy rate) seemed to have a typo – the number quoted in page 13 states 75% in 2010, however, it is quoted as 20.3% in page 22 with 75% being the projected rate for 2016. Also on page 22 access to telecommunication is reported to have surpassed the 2016 target of achieving 100%, as the percentage reported for 2010 is 100.
Not quite at the point of harvesting energy from passing em waves and making batteries obsolete, but still a major advance from the current nuisances of carrying a host of charging devices and looking for compatible plugs: WiTricity has signed a technology transfer and licensing agreement with MediaTek, a semiconductor company in Taiwan, to collaborate on systems for wireless charging of mobile handsets, tablet computers, game controllers and other devices, Mr. Giler said. WiTricity is also developing technology for wireless charging of electric vehicles and, later, for use in implanted medical devices like heart pumps, said Katie Hall, its chief technology officer. The technology is based on magnetic induction — the process used to recharge electric toothbrushes. In the toothbrush, the base has a magnetic coil that generates a magnetic field.
When the Indian 2G controversy blew up, I told several people who asked me about it was that there was no longer any point in debating auctions, but that we should put our energies into designing the kinds of auctions appropriate for the desired purpose. Most people (with the honorable exceptions of some of my friends and a recent commenter on this blog) accept that auctions are clean and that other methods are susceptible to manipulation. For good governance reasons alone I support auctions. That said, conducting an auction for valuable frequencies or for the right to operate a telecom business in conditions of restricted entry (and potential high profits and profile) is no simple matter. Auction design is an esoteric art.
We heard, back in 2005, that the Pakistan Telecom Authority and the Nigerian Communication Commission had calculated how much direct and indirect employment had been created by the telecom industries. Further inquiries revealed that the methods used were suspect and that the studies would not float under rigorous review. The difficulties are exemplified by the prepaid card value chain, where a whole series of resellers are involved in selling value and almost none are engaged solely with mobile. Now the NYT reports an attempt by Apple to quantify its job creation within the US. Apple has made its first attempt to quantify how many American jobs can be credited to the sale of its iPads and other products, a group that includes the Apple engineers who design the devices and the drivers who deliver them — even the people who build the trucks that get them there.
> Bhairti Airtel may revise low-cost strategy in Africa > > In Telecom.paper 29-02-2012 > > [Mobile World Congress 2012] > Bharti Airtel may devise a new strategy for the African market, following what it termed an unexpected response to its low-cost model developed in India. According to the Daily Nation, the mobile company told participants at the Mobile World Congress in Spain that it was surprised to find that the African market did not increase its talk-time, which was critical to supporting its low-cost model. MD Sunil Mittal said unlike India, they were surprised that in Africa, lower tariffs could not increase volumes. In Africa, subscribers use the money saved on lower calling rates to buy food and not to talk more.
Assailing the shutting off of mobile networks in Egypt and Libya and then allowing the same to be done by the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority was hypocritical. But American hypocrisy has limits. They have launched a public-comment process to define the terms. When will we see such actions in the developing world? The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing whether or when the police and other government officials can intentionally interrupt cellphone and Internet service to protect public safety.