LIRNEasia conducted a media workshop to present findings from the Teleuse@BOP project in Singapore on Feb 28, 2007. Teleuse@BOP (Shoestrings 2) is a large sample study undertaken by LIRNEasia on how low-income groups benefit from telecom and how the access pattern differs in five Asian countries, namely India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand. The research looks at the use and ownership of telephones, what kinds of phones people use and why, the perceived benefits, expenditure on telephones and the barriers to telecom use in the five countries. The study, Teleuse@BOP, is the second study of this nature that LIRNEasia has conducted. It has brought out several interesting findings, which would provide valuable insights into the telecom user space in these Asian countries.
At the invitation of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), LIRNEasia’s teleuse@BOP research of relevance to the question of increasing services provided to users in rural areas was presented at a session chaired by Mr Shantanu Consul, Administrator of India’s USO Fund. In response to audience questions Executive Director Samarajiva stated that the higher-than-other-countries percentage of non-owner teleusers at the Bottom of the Pyramid in India showed that there was a real problem these people faced in getting connected. They could afford USD 5 per month for the services (and in some cases paid even more), but the difficulty was with the cost of getting connected (and coverage, of course). The presentation can be downloaded here.
Thailand’s Information and Communications Technology minister says he wants to fully restore the state-enterprise status of TOT and CAT Telecom to allow better use of their assets to serve the public.”These two companies can become the country’s backbone. Unfortunately, they were turned into private companies. I’ll try to bring their state-enterprise status back,” ICT minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom said at a forum. Read more.
Malaysian regulator has ignored the claims of incumbent fixed and mobile operators and instead has elected to award four WiMax franchises to players new to the market. The decision to exclude existing operators was a setback for Digi. The company also failed to gain 3G spectrum and is now a saddled with an EDGE network that it will have to promote against potential HSDPA and WiMax alternatives. Read more.
In the old days, telecom operators gouged each other’s customers through excessive termination charges (settlements) for international calls. That went the way of the dodo with bypass and calling cards. Then they came up with the idea of gouging the customers of other operators foolish enough to use roaming facilities. Now the EU is trying to tamp it down, at least for its own citizens: “The price of using a mobile phone in another EU country could be capped at 50 cents ($0.66; 34p) a minute.
Report on the 11th LIRNE.NET Executive Training Course on Regulation, 25 February – 3 March 2007, conducted by LIRNEasia and CONNECTasia Forum Pte.Ltd.
LIRNEasia in partnership with Sarvodaya, is organizing the concluding events of “Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination Research Project” in Moratuwa, Sri Lanka on 28-29 March 2007. This “Last-Mile” project reflects Sarvodaya and LIRNEasia’s shared objective of evaluating the suitability of information communication technology (ICT) in the last mile of a national disaster warning system for Sri Lanka and possible extension to other developing countries. A major part of the concluding events is the forum entitled, “Sharing knowledge on disaster warning, with a focus on community-based last-mile warning systems”, which will be held on 28-29 March 2007 at the Sarvodaya Damsak Mandiraya (Sarvodaya Main Campus) in Moratuwa. The conference intends to bring together knowledge from the South Asia Region to Sarvodaya for a forum on practical solutions for communicating risk information to rural communities. The events also include a Media Conference on 30 March 2007.
Our colleague who was a member of the six-country research study, Deunden Nikomborirak, has been appointed secretary to the new Minister of Finance in the interim Thai government. The news coverage of the appointment of the new Minister also mentions Deunden as one of his other pro-market colleagues. The new Minister, for example, had criticized the government’s December 2006 actions that led to capital flight. We wish her the very best in her new responsibilities. Knowing her abilities and intellect, we are confident that Thailand will be well served, even if the research community loses in the short term.
Most Indonesians access the Internet primarily using fixed wireline infrastructure, mostly dialup. Because of lack of competition in the fixed line sector due to various reasons fixed line growth has been stagnant which has also affected Internet growth in the country. Not only are no new lines being added to bring more homes online, the inadequate backbone infrastructure in large swathe of the country makes deployment of broadband services unviable even if incumbent’s local loop bottleneck could be bypassed. However, yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (March 15, 2007) seems to suggest that high speed 3G wireless technology like HSDPA can bring broadband on a large scale to Indonesians. It (misleadingly) implies that since HSDPA is merely a software upgrade to 3G networks it will not require any new major telecom infrastructure investment in Indonesia.
The Indonesian government imposed unreasonable burdens on the new entrant for international service in a recently issued White Paper 140. LIRNEasia highlighted the unfairness of burdening new entrants with obligations that the two existing incumbents (Telkom & Indosat) were not subjected too in comments it submitted to DGPOSTEL (one of the two regulatory bodies): 4.4 The Indonesian policymakers may have misunderstood the concept of asymmetric regulation. Asymmetric rules place additional burdens on dominant group of providers that other operators are not subjected to. In the current White Paper, many additional burdens are imposed on the new entrant that are not imposed on the two incumbents, PT Telkom & PT Indosat.
Rohan Samarajiva’s presentation slides presented at a CFA seminar on ‘Emerging Trends in Telecom’ in August 2006 are now available here.
Friend of LIRNEasia, Sherille Ismail (Senior Counsel, Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis of the FCC) has written an excellent review of theWorld Bank’s “Information and Communications for Development 2006: Global Trends and Policies,” concluding with: “The telecommunications sector has performed in a spectacular fashion over the past two decades, bringing modern technologies at affordable prices to consumers throughout the world. The future holds the promise of even greater gains, as ICT ripples through economies, increasing productivity and generating efficiencies. To achieve the desired results, governments, scholars, investors, and the international community must successfully negotiate many challenges. Not the least of these is the particular challenge of dealing with issues in developing countries, where “there are often fundamental differences between what is proposed by technological visionaries, many of whom have never seen a village, and what is actually needed by end users, many of whom have never used a telephone.” This book is filled with reliable data, thoughtful analysis, and time-tested policy prescriptions.
A number of Indian mobile operators have been pilot-testing transferring money using mobile handsets. There are 160 million mobile subscribers in India far outnumbering the bank branches in the country (70,000). The service could potentially allow mobile users to transfer money electronically via the handset directly and instantaneously to another mobile subscriber in the country without having to use bank accounts. However, this service cannot be rolled out until the operators are given regulatory approval both from the banking regulators and telecom regulators. But a more restricted service which would still keep banks in the loop may have a higher chance of getting a quicker approval.
By Rohan Samarajiva LBO >> Choices : Priceless Link 08 March 2007 08:26:29 http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?newsID=2020236857&no_view=1&SEARCH_TERM=24 March 08 (LBO) – Indonesia, like Sri Lanka, sends its women to foreign lands to work as housemaids.
BBC News, Bangalore Long known for its outsourcing, India is now increasingly marketing itself as a destination for affordable education. From his bedroom in Bangalore, biology teacher Vishal Bhatnagar uses an electronic pen to highlight the main parts of the human endocrine system on the laptop screen in front of him. “What I’m trying to show you,” he says, speaking into a headset, “is that most of the chemicals in the body are poured into the blood to be effective.” One-on-one tuition Eight thousand kilometres (5,000 miles) away in London, student Veenesh Halai follows along, making notes and asking questions. They’ve been brought together by a high-speed internet connection and a growing global appetite for cheap, one-on-one tuition.
The results of LIRNEasia‘s Teleuse on a Shoestring:2 – A study of teleuse at the bottom of the pyramid were officially released in Singapore at a media workshop on 28 February 2007. The release took place at the Changi Village Hotel, with the presence of media from four countries. The research findings were presented to and then discussed with the journalists by Dr. Harsha de Silva and Ayesha Zainudeen of LIRNEasia and Dr. Lorraine Carlos Salazar of ISEAS, Singapore.