In the old days, you’d just take over the newspapers and the TV channels. Now you have to take over the phone company too. It is implanting 6,000 Basij militia centers in elementary schools across Iran to promote the ideals of the Islamic Revolution, and it has created a new police unit to sweep the Internet for dissident voices. A company affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards acquired a majority share in the nation’s telecommunications monopoly this year, giving the Guards de facto control of Iran’s land lines, Internet providers and two cellphone companies. And in the spring, the Revolutionary Guards plan to open a news agency with print, photo and television elements.
Helani Galpaya, COO of LIRNEasia, was invited by the Strategic Affairs Directorate to speak at a seminar on Alternatives for Infrastructure Development and Broadband Access. Brazil is embarking on an ambitious program to increase broadband penetration, and is currently discussing various options – one of the more interesting being the provision of a government-owned backbone, using the dark fibre that is currently owned by the electricity and petroleum companies. The pros and cons of this, and other options were discussed at the seminar, and a the full day of closed-door discussions that followed between the speakers and the Strategic Affairs Directorate staff. Helani focused on the importance of thinking about the market structure (whether or not there was sufficient competition at all points in the network) and demand stimulation. For example, Nokia’s TCO study shows that Brazil has the highest cost for mobile users among all the countries studied (possibly driven by highly asymmetric interconnection rates and lack of sufficient competition, among other things).
TRAI Chair Dr J.S. Sarma, Principal Advisor Mr N. Parameswaran and Advisor (Convergence) Mr S.K.
I wish the question mark was not necessary, but the record so far does not allow me exclude it. We started this process in the weeks before the 2008 SAARC Summit. When the issue was mentioned in the SAARC Chair’s speech and included in the Declaration, we were, naturally, pleased. I recall telling a journalist that at most it would take a few months to get this implemented. We raised the issue with the then Chair of the South Asian Telecom Regulator’s Council, Mr Nripendra Misra of India.
We reproduce fully below, Carlos A. Afonso’s post to a thread on Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility responding to discussions at the IGF workshop “Expanding broadband access for a global Internet economy: development dimensions”, in which Rohan Samarajiva, Chair/CEO LIRNEasia was the keynote speaker. We retain the original title. As neither we nor most of our readers do not have access to the thread it was posted, we like to continue the discussion here. __________________________________________________________________ Hi people, I come from one of the ten largest economies in the world, with nearly 200 million people, 8.
“When a business model, rather than direct government action, is delivering the goods the most appropriate government action is that which supports the business model. Policy and regulatory actions must be derived more from analysis of the requirements of the business model and less from public administration theory.” How it applies to Internet and broadband is what Rohan Samarajiva, Chair and CEO, LIRNEasia explained in his keynote speech at the workshop ‘Expanding access to the Internet and broadband for development’ on November 16, 2009, at the Internet Governance forum 2009. His presentation entitled, ‘How the developing world may participate in the global Internet Economy: Innovation driven by competition’, can be downloaded here. The session was chaired by Dimitri Ypsilanti, Head of Information, Communication and Consumer Policy Division, OECD.
The Second India Disaster Management Congress (IDMC 2009) took place from 4-6 November at the Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. It was organized by the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) to assemble, synthesize and further disseminate knowledge on disaster management in diverse sectors. Natasha Udu-gama, former HazInfo Dissemination Manager and Researcher, presented “Implementing Inclusive ICTs: Mobile Cell Broadcasting for Public Warning and Commercial Use” based on the LIRNEasia study in the Maldives” completed in May 2009. Her presentation was made during the Early Warning and Disaster Communications session on Friday, 6 November. The session was chaired by Mr.
I am writing this sitting at an IGF session dealing with the twin themes of access and diversity. Learning new and useful things about making websites accessible to differently abled people which should have important implications for the design of mobile terminals that will make more-than-voice services more accessible to those lacking knowledge capital. The danger of course is the money question. When the many well meaning people who work on disabled access issues look around for money to advance their causes, they first look to government. And where in government?
In addition to giving the keynote at the OECD/infoDev workshop on the Budget Telecom Network Mode at the IGF in Sharm el Sheikh, I attended several sessions, one being that on reducing interconnection costs. The key recommendations seemed to cluster around two actions, creating Internet Exchanges in each country and reducing leased line costs by introducing competition and breaking incumbent control on essential facilities such as cable stations. Our findings from countries that have had working Internet Exchanges at various times such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka show that their effects fluctuate (there is an unfortunate tendency of internal dissension in these things) and that getting leased line prices (both domestic and international) down is, on balance, more important. That unless the leased-line problem is not solved, the good work done on Internet Exchanges will be washed out. There is an assumption that every country should have an IX.
The Directorate of Environment, European Commission organises the conference ‘The Civil Protection Forum – Towards a more resilient society’ that aims to explore the concept of resilience. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and impact of disasters, and Europe has to be prepared for this challenge. The Forum will start a debate on a comprehensive European disaster management strategy to enhance resilience. Around 500 delegates, speakers and exhibitors from politics, academia, the civil protection services and international organisations are expected to participate. Chanuka Wattegama, Senior Research Manager, LIRNEasia will be one of the speakers in the six practice-oriented seminars will look more closely at how European civil protection works in the field – how does it integrate with other international actors, three major phases of an emergency (prevention, preparedness, and response) and the roles of different stakeholders (institutions, civil protection professionals and civil society).
The 2nd South Asia Broadband Communications Conference and Workshop will be held at the Taj Samudra, Colombo, 26-27 November 2009. We participated in the 1st conference in 2007 and found it to be quite useful. Our work on broadband benchmarking started as a result.
When we asked the people of Jaffna what good came of the ceasefire of 2002-05, they said phones and the opening of the road connecting them to the rest of Sri Lanka. Looks like the Iraqis are similar. I love my mobile like a baby, says on Iraqi mother. De facto m-payments are also significant, though there are some problems, according to the Economist. Criminal rings are among the parallel currency’s busiest users.
LIRNEasia’s future work will focus on knowledge-based economies, which makes us very interested in stories like this, which place innovation at the center. China’s productivity has been lifted by a massive expansion of private enterprise, and a shift of labour out of agricultural work and into more productive jobs in industry. China’s average return on physical capital is now well above the global average, according to Goldman Sachs. A decade ago it was less than half the world average. Why have the Asian economies led the pack?
Call it “The Phantom of the Operators” or whatever. It is fraud. Your long distance carrier, possibly, uses False Answer Supervision (FAS) and charges for the calls you could not make. Carriers can earn minimum 21 per cent extra profit through such fraudulent act. And organized criminals are there to help.
The last time LIRNEasia was associated with the ITU’s annual Global Symposium on Regulation was the year they picked the lighthouse logo, 2001. It is good to see our work being used, interestingly by an author from the private sector. In the second half of 2008, LIRNEasia, a non profit research organization, conducted a survey in eight emerging Asian economies: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The study scored stakeholder perceptions regarding investing and operating in the markets in question based on the regulatory framework for mobile, fixed and broadband networks. The regulatory framework was defined by seven major dimensions namely: market entry, access to scarce resources, interconnection, tariff regulation, anti-competitive practices, universal service obligations and quality of service.
“The government is spending a lot on e-governance by putting up kiosks in villages. These kiosks cost a lot and need electricity, which is not always available in rural areas. An internet kiosk costs the government about Rs 1.5 lakh, while this would cost Rs 22,000.” Financial Chronicle (New Delhi edition) quoted Subhash Bhatnagar, adjunct professor, IIM-A who did a Mobile 2.