Lead Economist, Harsha de Silva and the AgInfo work that he has been leading at LIRNEasia has been featured in the International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) 2008-2009 Annual Report. Read the full feature here (page 16)
A search is on for the right metaphor. What is the new role for government — a platform? a vending machine, into which we put money to extract services? a facilitator? And what, indeed, is the new role for us — the ones we’ve been waiting for?
Rohan Samarajiva, LIRNEasia Chair and CEO, made the lead presentation on access to ICTs at an OECD/infoDev Workshop on the Internet Economy yesterday in Paris. The workshop, “Policy coherence in the application of information and communication technologies for development,” is currently underway. In his presentation, Dr Samarajiva described the new “Budget Telecom Network Model” developed in South Asia that is enabling mobile operators to serve low-income customers who yield very low ARPUs [Average Revenues per User] and discuss its extension to enable broadband use. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have offered the lowest total costs of mobile ownership since 2005-06 while still yielding adequate, though somewhat volatile, returns to ensure continued investment in network extension and new services. LIRNEasia research shows that this has been made possible by business process innovations to reduce operating expenses, and the minimizing of transaction costs made possible by widespread prepaid use.
Bird-band has outpaced Broadband when a South African technology outfit named Unlimited IT has proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country’s leading internet service provider, BBC reports. The 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km (50 miles) from Unlimited IT’s offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg. Whereas, including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds — the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using Telkom’s ADSL. Unlimited IT performed the stunt after becoming frustrated with slow internet transmission times. The company has 11 call-centers around the country and regularly sends data to its other branches.
The engineers are skeptic about mobile broadband because they think it’s hard to manage an all-IP network. The voice-centric good old TDM networks are lot easier to handle. The investors lack interest in mobile broadband because 3G licenses are quite expensive. They prefer to continue the legacy of GSM as the ROI is pretty good. Most of the governments are obsessed with auctioning the 3G licenses because of the guaranteed windfall.
Levels of trust between utility regulators and operators around the world are improving, claims a survey, though the report also warns that trust remains a fragile commodity which can easily be broken. The report, produced by KPMG and EIU, examines the level of trust between regulators and operators across five utility sectors – telecoms, power, water, transport and post. Few key findings of this survey include: 75 percent of regulators see themselves as strong performers regarding the consistency of their decisions and rulings. Only 30 percent of operators share that view. A net 32 percent of regulators feel that trust between the two parties has improved in the past year whereas a net 18 percent of operators share that view.
Farouk Abdul Aziz Al-Kasim, a migrant Iraqi geologist, and his Norwegian counterpart drafted Norway’s petroleum regulation during a fishing trip in 1970. Norway’s parliament wasted no time and unanimously approved it to govern the hydrocarbon sector. This created the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, the oil industry regulator, and Statoil, the national oil company (now known as StatoilHydro). The Norwegian regulatory model retained the private sector’s competitive drive and its expertise. It also ensured enough regulatory independence to rein in the state oil company as well as its private-sector peers.
We wrote a few weeks back that fixed-mobile substitution that was decreasing fixed subscriptions in India and Pakistan had arrived in Sri Lanka. Instead of waiting for more fixed phones to be disconnected, Sri Lanka Telecom is taking proactive steps to keep its customers. Shows that competition delivers what court cases and regulation cannot. Sri Lanka Telecom, the island’s dominant fixed line operator, said it was offering lower rates and discounts in new subscriber packages amid intensifying competition among phone companies. In its new post-paid tariff plans called ‘V talk’, call rates to fixed and mobile phones have been reduced up to 35 percent and monthly rental reduced up to 48 percent, the company said in a statement.
Broadband user testing is nothing new. Tools to measure the speed of a link were available even in pre-net days. Later, they became more user-friendly, more sophisticated and better looking. Today you can pick one from a gamut of tools to instantly find out the speed of your link. Then why AT-Tester?
Full participation in the global Internet Economy requires electronic connectivity of considerable complexity. Today, due to a worldwide wave of liberalization and technological and business innovations in the mobile space, much of the world is electronically connected, albeit not at the levels that would fully support participation in the global Internet Economy. Yet, many millions of poor people are engaging in tasks normally associated with the Internet such as information retrieval, payments and remote computing using relatively simple mobiles. Understanding the business model that enabled impressive gains in voice connectivity as well as the beginnings of more-than-voice applications over mobiles is important not only because widespread broadband access among the poor is likely to be achieved by extending this model but because it would be the basis of coherent and efficacious policy and regulatory responses… This is an excerpt from a background report by Rohan Samarajiva, to be presented at “Policy coherence in the application of information and communication technologies for development,” a joint workshop organized by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Information for Development Program (infoDev) / World Bank from 10-11 September 2009 in Paris. The report has been published in the OECD’s Development […]
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) once the political ally to ruling Peoples’ Alliance of Sri Lanka, has come up with an innovative idea to link 300,000 plus Internally Displaced Persons with their relatives. Why not create Face Book accounts? Daily Mirror story does not say so, but perhaps JVP wants it done by the government. Rohan Samarajiva made a less complex and more effective suggestion: Why not give them mobile phones? ‘The technology that allows freedom to talk even without the freedom to walk is the phone.
Mobile phones will be the key driver of Internet connectivity in Africa in coming years as there are more people with handsets than computers. “Mobile phones essentially have the ability to deliver the Internet into everybody’s hand. It is therefore going to be a huge driving factor for the demand for IP connectivity,” said Steven Van Der Linde, Tata Communications’ data sales director for Africa. Reuters reports.
LIRNEasia responded to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission’s (BTRC) Consultation Paper ‘Standardization of Quality of Service Parameters for Broadband Internet Services’ based on the broadband research and testing done in Dhaka, New Delhi, Chennai and Colombo. We said (a) broadband is above 256 kbps, not 128 kbps; (b) minimum bandwidth requirements should be valid beyond the ISP domain; (c) operators should maintain predetermined contention ratios; (d) bandwidth ultilisation should be above 75% on average; (e) latency < 85 ms for local and <300 ms for international and (f) user surveys are important but should be supplemented by user testing which gives a more objective measure. LIRNEasia also offered assistance if BTRC plans user testing. Downloads: Consultation Paper and LIRNEasia’s Response.
Few days back we heard that flat rate was the way forward. Here is the riposte, in words from experts (including LIRNEasia) and in new offerings from Reliance. Let the debate continue. The experts see business sense around sachet pricing, especially for a low income group subscriber in the villages of India, who is mostly a prepaid user and does not have a big budget to spend. They say sachet pricing can yield results not only for Inetrnet penetration, but other services other than voice.
We have written about this endless loop of reasoning before. But I guess someone thinks this perpetual motion exercise does some good. AVIATION has long been blamed for its share of anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, some travellers now ask themselves whether their flight is strictly necessary and, if they decide it is, salve their consciences by paying for the planting of trees. These, so they hope, will absorb the equivalent of their sinful emissions.
Rohan Samarajiva is among three finalists for the the first Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism. samarajiva was nominated for his Lanka Business Online column “Choices” The Bastiat Prize is awarded by the International Policy Network, a London-based think tank that seeks to improve public understanding of the role of the institutions of the free society. The Bastiat Prize (for journalism) was first awarded in 2002 and judges have included Lady Thatcher and Nobel-Prize-winners James Buchanan and Milton Friedman. The prize was developed to encourage and reward writers whose published works promote the institutions of a free society: limited government, rule of law brokered by an independent judiciary, protection of private property, free markets, free speech, and sound science. This is the first time that a seperate category for online journalism is being awarded.