Our colleagues from Latin America have drawn our attention to the following article, perhaps because they think that our TRE (telecom regulatory environment) work is premised on FDI being an unmitigated good. We welcome the opportunity for a debate. Kevin P. Gallagher and Lyuba Zarsky, “Rethinking Foreign Investment for Development”, Post-Autistic Economics Review, issue 37 Abstract “In the 1990s, foreign direct investment (FDI) came to be seen as a “miracle drug”—a jumpstart to economic growth and sustainable industrial development, especially in developing countries. Policies to attract FDI became the centerpiece of both national development strategies and supra-national investment agreements.
Internet Calling Pressures Bells to Lower Rates – New York Times “The Bells still control the bulk of the country’s 180 million landlines and are far from giving up on what has been a giant cash cow. When pushed, they are even offering their own Internet-based calling, but these services are rarely advertised. It is cheaper to cut prices to keep customers, they figure, than to try to win back customers later from a rival. During the first quarter of this year, the number of traditional telephone lines dropped by 150,000 a week, according to TeleGeography. At the same time, the number of subscribers to Internet telephone services has increased by 100,000 a week.
Title: Telecom Policy Research in Asia: A Framework for Assessing Knowledge Capacity Author: Dr. Sujata Gamage, Director of Knowledge Networks, LIRNEasia Date: July 3, 2006 Description: In this study we assess presence, quality and relevance of telecom policy researchers in Asia, and present the results in the form of a set of knowledge capacity score cards. These score cards will serve as the framework for assessing and building knowledge capacity in telecom reform in Asia in the IDRC funded project on the same. Link: Telecom Policy Research in Asia: A Framework for Assessing Knowledge Capacity [PDF download]
Qualcomm has come under some pressure recently when Reliance, with one of the fastest growing CDMA-based networks in the world based on Qualcomm’s patented technology, announced that it would provide mobile service using GSM technology and criticised Qualcomm’s high royalty and licensing fees. The inference was that Qualcomm’s fees were resulting in higher costs for handsets which is preventing Reliance from offering affordable service to low-income subscribers. Qualcomm claims that CDMA handset prices in India were already some of the lowest in the world and that royalty was only about $2 per handset. It further argues that Reliance’s move into GSM has to do with flawed spectrum policy of the Indian Telecom Ministry (DoT) that provides more than twice the spectrum to GSM operators compared to CDMA operators like Reliance. This is because according to Qualcomm, GSM technology allows only a finite number of subscribers in a cell whereas the CDMA technology on the other hand poses no such restrictions.
Full article available here New Delhi, July 2 (PTI): Even as the existing National Telecom Policy of 1999 lays down the roadmap of a review in every five years, the Department of Telecom has dropped the ill-fated draft of the proposed policy completely with no immediate plans to revive it. […] Permitting number portability, implementing carrier access code (CAC), setting up of ombudsman, and unbundling of last-mile access for broadband services were some of the draft recommendations of the core committee of DoT on NTP. DoT was never in favour of number portability, a facility which allows subscribers to retain their old number even if they change the service provider, carrier access code where the consumer could choose his/her long distance carrier and of course the unbundling of last mile of BSNL and MTNL for broadband. The draft had sought dilution in regulator’s role, saying a ‘Light Touch’ approach should be made at a later stage. The committee has also recommended M&A norms to be part of NTP.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO ‘Sri Lanka’s cabinet has agreed clear up frequency spectrum on few bands, as the government looks to attract new operators to offer telephony services at affordable rates. “The cabinet has agreed to clear spectrum in 450 megahertz, 800-900 megahertz, 1800 megahertz and 2-gigahertz radio frequencies, which will be re-allocated for public telecommunications networks,” Media Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa told reporters Thursday.’ Spectrum refarming is one of the most important and difficult tasks facing regulatory agencies today. The quasi-property rights enjoyed by users requires that they be compensated for the losses they incur when they are compelled to move in the course of refarming. One of the groups most resistant to moving are the military.
What if They Built an Urban Wireless Network and Hardly Anyone Used It? – New York Times “Despite WiFly’s ubiquity — with 4,100 hot spot access points reaching 90 percent of the population — just 40,000 of Taipei’s 2.6 million residents have agreed to pay for the service since January. Q-Ware, the local Internet provider that built and runs the network, once expected to have 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year, but it has lowered that target to 200,000. That such a vast and reasonably priced wireless network has attracted so few users in an otherwise tech-hungry metropolis should give pause to civic leaders in Chicago, Philadelphia and dozens of other American cities that are building wireless networks of their own.
allAfrica.com: East Africa: Countries Agree On EASSy Project Model It appears that considerable progress is being made on ensuring open access is the norm with the planned submarine cable for eastern Africa. One hopes that Asian regulators also start paying attention to access issues on the submarine cables that land in their countries. The change with the EASSy cable did not just happen; it took a lot of effort by regulators and stakeholders.
Using ICT for Effective Disaster Management A hotel that was hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Ahungalle, Sri Lanka is the location of a conference that examines all aspects of the relationship between ICTs and disasters. One of the guests at this hotel on the 26th of December 2004, Dr Chris Chapman, a theoretical seismologist, wrote one of the best analytical accounts of the experience, which is on this PDF document. LIRNEasia’s Executive Director Rohan Samarajiva and HazInfo Project Manager Nuwan Waidyanatha are participating as are a number of our partners in disaster work.
According to this intriguing story, Sri Lanka may become the first country in the world to license WiMAX operators. Leaving aside the wisdom of licensing technologies (as opposed to services), any action to shake things up in the broadband market must be welcomed. Of course, our joy will be that much greater if the TRC ensures that the WiMAX operators are given non-discriminatory and cost-oriented access to the SLTL and Dialog backbones and that open access to the undersea cable is also assured. Without these regulatory actions, one may get connectivity to something, but not the Internet.
Foreign Affairs – The India Model – Gurcharan Das “But what is most remarkable is that rather than rising with the help of the state, India is in many ways rising despite the state. The entrepreneur is clearly at the center of India’s success story. India now boasts highly competitive private companies, a booming stock market, and a modern, well-disciplined financial sector. And since 1991 especially, the Indian state has been gradually moving out of the way — not graciously, but kicked and dragged into implementing economic reforms. It has lowered trade barriers and tax rates, broken state monopolies, unshackled industry, encouraged competition, and opened up to the rest of the world.
According to this report, SLTL is pressing ahead on offering more high speed data services within Colombo. I think the correct amount is USD 2 million. If only one could offer high-end data services for USD 20,000! This news item should be of significant interest to our readers who want these services offered in rural locations such as Mahavilachchiya. Lanka Business Online
By Harsha Vardhana Singh (with assistance from Rohan Samarajiva and Ayesha Zainudeen), Version 1.7 The paper seeks to understand why adequate network backbone may not be available, or adequate access to it may not be provided. Based on this assessment, we identify policy actions that can be taken to create the conditions for adequate supply of, and reasonable access to, backbone in a country. A theoretical model is developed which is then applied to the case of India, to show the situations in which invesment in backbone is commercially viable for operators. Read Executive Summary on Project Page Download full report: Version 1.
Rohan Samarajiva represented LIRNEasia at the Research ICT Africa (RIA!), Annual Meeting held recently in Dakar, Senegal with a view to contribute to the discussion on Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) assessment that RIA! is planning to undertake. The five-day workshop held from May 26-June 2, 2006, focused on three areas: the 2006 RIA! research agenda, outcomes mapping and RIA!
Nuwan Waidyanatha – Project Manager, Last Mile Hazard Warning System The socioeconomic belief is that a CAP message relay is one way of effectively managing disasters, and that is what is envisioned in the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System (LM-HWS) Pilot Project. I will be talking about the current Workpackage of the LM-HWS project, which is developing the Hazard Information Hub (HIH). The general objective of the LM-HWS project is to evaluate the suitability of a selected set of ICT that can communicate CAP messages and alert the village first-responders. The Sarvodaya HIH was specifically built with the intension of providing structured risk information such as CAP messages to the local communities.
A Telecomasia article, Global operators face challenge on increasing backhaul capacities based on a recent study by ABI, argues that operators around the world are facing bandwidth constraints in their backhaul networks due to the growth of data traffic and bandwidth intensive services like multimedia content. Backhaul are the high-capacity pipes phone companies and Internet service providers use to haul traffic over large distances. Backhaul capacity in this context refers to the networks within a country or within a contiguous region. Backhaul is distinct from the under the ocean submarine cables which currently have excess, unused capacity thanks to the dot-com bubble driven investments into this high capacity links that connect continents. A number of technologies are proposed for the backhaul links that are suited for specific regions based on what kind of infrastructure already exists.