Our work on online freelancing also served as a probe on the emerging platform economy. Contrary to many concerns in the developed market economies, we found that almost all those participating in online freelancing were staying with their parents and doing the work part time. Concerns with variable income, uncertainty and difficulty in establishing credit were present, but in attenuated form. Which got us thinking about insurance as a mechanism to address those problems. Of course, health is one of the biggest uncertainties.
Little over a year ago, I wrote about various infrastructure initiatives linking South Asia with Central Asia. Using the gas pipelines’, power grid’s and road networks’ right-of-way of for cross-border telecoms link was central to my arguments. Now the Indian Railways has planned to create a network, dubbed as ITI-DKD-Y corridor, to operate freight train service over a stretch of 6,000 kilometers. It will connect Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey through railway tracks, according to the Indian Express. Indian Railways has called South Asian railway heads involved in the project to work out the nitty-gritty at a high-level meeting on March 15-16.
The countries in mainland Asia are mostly interconnected through submarine cables. Public and private incumbents abuse their ownership of submarine cable systems followed by hindering competition in wholesale bandwidth sales. As a result, Asia remains impaired by the lack of cross-border Internet connectivity and exorbitant bandwidth prices. Hong Kong and Singapore are the only carrier-neutral wholesale capacity hubs in Asia. Yet, their prices are higher than the corresponding European and North American outlets.
The Times of India has many critics on account of its pursuit of moolah, but still, it is a serious newspaper. UNISDR is a serious organization that is part of the UN system. One assumes the Senior Communication Officer of UNSIDR is not a flake. But the story below causes me to rethink all those assumptions. Brigitte Leoni, senior communication officer of the UNISDR, writes about the importance of Maya’s hurricane early warning system that has not only helped in averting severe disaster casualties but also helped in development of modern tools.
The Global Commission on Internet Governance has just published a comprehensive analysis of the controversial zero rating practice and issues by Helani Galpaya. It includes findings from original research conducted in Myanmar and India and draws from secondary sources from Africa and Latin America. In developing countries where nearly all users pay for their Internet on a capped and metered basis (rather than having the “all you can eat” unlimited Internet data packages on offer in many developed countries), zero-rating — where data is offered that does not count toward the user’s data cap — is a subsidy that can be important to operators, content providers and users. Social media and text-messaging applications are among the content that is commonly zero-rated. For users, zero-rating provides an opportunity to save money because they bear no cost of the zero-rated data.
Preparing for a TV interview on spectrum, I checked the website of the Telecom Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka to see if I could see the National Frequency Allocation Table (NFAT) or the Master Register, which used to be publicly available from 2003. It was not available for perusal on the TRC website. This is a legal requirement deriving from Sri Lanka’s international commitments under the GATS, the relevant article being: Any procedures for the allocation and use of scarce resources, including frequencies, numbers and rights of way, will be carried out in an objective, timely, transparent and non-discriminatory manner. The current state of allocated frequency bands will be made publicly available, but detailed identification of frequencies allocated for specific government uses is not required. It appears the we are in violation of our WTO commitments.
There was a time when regulation had three priorities: interconnection, interconnection and interconnection. Was it Maeve Sullivan who came up with that line? Anyway, we fought those battles, and then we got beyond that. So anyway, looks like it’s coming back in the form of interconnection of mobile financial services. Mr Collymore agreed that the industry needs greater cross-platform interoperability even as he argued that the process should be driven by market forces rather than regulatory intervention.
I have been impatient with people who think that inform-and-consent is the end all of privacy. One of the actual greatest dangers is personally identifiable information being stolen from service providers by hackers. This is a real privacy harm. I have not gone into the details of the FCC’s decision and its competitive implications. But it’s worth knowing they were paying attention to real privacy harms.
I always thought that composite indexes were unfair to India. However much India tried and whatever were its ICT achievements, they would all be diluted by the sheer number of Indians. The e Readiness Index that used to be published by the Economist Intelligence Unit used to be one exception. But then they stopped publishing it. Now the EIU is back with the new index and unsurprisingly, India does well in it too: 36th out of 75.
In 1997, twenty years ago, I wrote an overview piece on what I thought would be the “horizon” issues telecom regulators should think about. It was a book chapter in a book edited by Bill Melody: Samarajiva, R, (1997). “Telecommunication regulation in the information age,” in Telecom reform: Principles, policies and regulatory practices, ed. W. H.
Jens Arnbak was a former Chairman of the Dutch telecom regulatory authority. Before and after his stint in regulation, he taught at Delft University of Technology. He taught at the early LIRNE.NET courses. I recall being with him in September 2001, when we were teaching together at the ANRT, the Moroccan Regulatory Authority.
They can lay cable under the sea, but over land seems to be difficult. Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL) is going to inaugurate its second undersea cable connection from Turkey to Kuakata in the country today, but its back link connectivity from the landing station to the main land is yet to be established. Parvez M Ashraf, project director of the second submarine cable landing station, said they are ready to launch the cable — SEA-ME-WE 5 — as its construction is complete. Md Monwar Hossain, managing director of BSCCL, who is now in Turkey to attend the management meeting of the consortium, will send data traffic to Bangladesh through this cable and inaugurate it, said Ashraf. However, internet users in the country will not be able to enjoy connectivity just yet, as the backhaul from Kuakata to Dhaka is not yet ready, which will take at least a few more weeks.
Sri Lanka has always been prone to natural disasters; more commonly droughts, floods and landslides. However, the 2004 Tsunami caused the most devastation we had witnessed in a very, very long time. LIRNEasia’s stance in the aftermath, apart from contributions in cash and kind for immediate relief, was a more longer term solution using our core strengths – research, getting the right people connected and facilitating initial efforts of implementation. The outcome was the design of a participatory concept of an all hazard-warning system. It was a joint effort getting the right people together – from government, to technology developers to communication network specialist who would then later go on to provide the platform required for the implementation of an early warning system.
A good friend of LIRNEasia, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, delivered a public lecture relevant to the ongoing discussions on a new Constitution for Sri Lanka. He also interacted with key actors in the process and gave interviews to the media. The event was organized by Advocata Institute, Sri Lanka’s newest think tank. LIRNEasia connections were many. Former Lead Consultant Economist, now Deputy Minister, Harsha de Silva participated in the panel discussion, which I moderated.
Much of what we work on involves information in markets. Transaction costs, information asymmetries feature large in our work. We hope to address insurance in our future work. In all these areas, Kenneth Arrow’s influence is immense. We mourn his passing.
Informed writing on highly technical subjects is not easy to do. That is one reason we encourage journalists to participate in our courses. Here is a piece on the Loon trials in Sri Lanka by one who attended the Ford Foundation supported broadband policy and regulation course in Marawila in 2015. Appears his time was well spent, as were our resources. Sri Lanka has signed the APT spectrum plan which means the government is committed to migrate our existing television stations to a digital platform.