It was just a few weeks ago that reports said Asian markets had more or less saved the year for both Ericsson and Nokia. Yet the product launch focuses on Europe and US. Go figure. BTW, these handsets are LTE. Nokia’s chief executive, Stephen A.
Until the 1970s, it was customary to ensure seats for specific under-represented castes in the Sri Lankan Cabinet. It was only in 1989 that a non-leading caste politician got elected President. Caste-bloc voting has ceased to be a major factor in elections in at least the Western Province. These progressive changes are catching on in North India, it appears. South India is more progressive in economic and cultural terms, but caste is deeply embedded in the political practices in the South.
When we started talking about mobile devices being the primary way that people connect to the Internet, we did not think the transformation would be so difficult for the leading device maker. At a conference in London on Wednesday, Nokia intends to present at least two new phones, one aimed at high-end users and one for the midrange mass market, people with knowledge of the presentation said. Time is not an ally for Nokia in the fast-moving smartphone segment of the mobile market, which now accounts for more than half of all cellphone sales in North America and Western Europe. For Nokia, the decision to abandon its own Symbian operating system in favor of Windows Phone came at a price. Operators quickly reduced their stocks of all Symbian devices, both smartphones and basic phones, hurting Nokia’s bread-and-butter business.
It’s always a challenge to decipher the special language of evaluation reports, but this para in the recent evaluation report on the ICT activities of the World Bank does seem like an indictment of universal service programs. 4.28 Equity and integration of marginalized groups have been more effectively supported by Bank support for ICT policy and sector reform than by operations specifically designed to achieve these goals. ICT operations that supported reforms to introduce competition into the sector, when successful in supporting those reforms, have had significant impact, especially in access to cellular telephony services. This increase in overall access has had a spill-over effect of providing access to the underserved.
People have been sending me pictures, not of Qaddafi dead, but of people taking pictures of the dead Qaddafi. I was among those who speculated on the role of cameras in moderating the crackdown in Bahrain (before the real crackdown): “Could the ubiquity of cameras be the differentiating factor? Cameras are everywhere in Tripoli and Manama; images keep coming out, despite confiscations of cameras, SIMs, and whatever picture-snapping gadgets there are. Prabhakaran’s captives had no cameras.” Now here is a report on the use of low-end digital cameras (not very different from mid-range mobile phones) in constraining electoral fraud.
In 1998, I was trying to improve the atrocious quality of service offered by Sri Lanka Telecom. My efforts included persuasion: I brought in a quality advocate from BC Tel, a Canadian telecom operator, and organized a public lecture. There, I recall responding to the main criticism made of my efforts by SLT engineers that I was imposing unrealistic American standards of quality on Sri Lanka. I said that no one obtains a phone to keep in the house as an ornamental object; that they went to all the trouble of obtaining a phone in order to talk to people and for that, they needed dialtone. You can imagine my surprise when I see a New York Times writer saying that fixed phones in America are becoming ornamental objects.
No one knows how they’re defining users of mobile Internet services, but leave that aside. They’re entitled to some latitude in this moment of reprieve. Hans Vestberg, the chief executive of Ericsson, said in an interview that the results indicated that the transition to mobile Internet and smartphones was bucking the general economic downturn. “Increased global smart phone penetration, new devices and the introduction of tiered pricing is driving continued mobile data traffic growth,” Mr. Vestberg said.
The Sri Lanka Institute of Chartered Accountants’ annual conference started yesterday. Big do, with 1,100 participants paying LKR 17k+. Perhaps one of the largest gatherings of professionals in Sri Lanka. I was asked to speak on the subject of BPOs and KPOs on a panel this morning. I started with the government’s target of USD 2 billion in export earnings in 2016 from the IT and BPO sector.
I was too gentle the first time. I thought the UN University was taking a cheap short cut to get publicity in the tough Indian media market. But if people are talking about this comparison of toilets and mobiles one year later, it appears that the cheap shortcut has been effective, more effective than I thought. Mobiles are personal devices; toilets are generally a household amenity. Except in Mukesh Ambani’s house, the number of toilets is generally lower than the number of people living in the house.
This really should not be a mystery. In most countries in the region, the information is available for all to see on either the regulator’s website or on operators’ websites. Domestic leased lines are a key input, important both in terms of interconnection and in terms of providing Internet. There is no reason to keep the prices secret. But they are not publicly available in Sri Lanka.
Not formally part of LIRNEasia’s work, but relevant to the theme of knowledge based economies. Protected economies are not knowledge based. In addition, I start off from what was stated by Michael Spence at Harvard Forum II. This was a LIRNEasia activity. My slideset is here.
A major step in consumer protection has occurred in the US, with customers now being warned when their data usage and bills go above a threshold. Is this a problem for us in South Asia. Yes, for the TOP (top of the pyramid) customers who actually receive bills. But for our clients, the bottom of the pyramid teleusers, there will be no shock; just disconnect. Because 99.
I’ve been fascinated by the Sri Lanka Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2009-10, that is just out. The equivalent in the US is based on their census (ours is based on a 22,000 sample). The mobile-only number is stunning. Would be interesting to compare with Finland, and even with Sri Lanka. Twice as many Americans play computer games as do crossword puzzles.
Behavioral economics is becoming a major component of LIRNEasia’s toolkit. The discussion below refers to the decision architectures that appear to keep the money flowing into Google. But most people, of course, never make that single click. Defaults win. The role of defaults in steering decisions is by no means confined to the online world.
A somewhat broader topic, but still quite an interesting one. I worked this up at the invitation of Caritas, a major charitable organization in Sri Lanka. It shows, among other things, that seven out of nine Provinces in Sri Lanka are no longer seriously deficient with regard to household access to ICTs. Even the two laggards, the Northern and Eastern Provinces that took the brunt of the war, are not too far behind. The slideset also shows how much is spent on transport and communication by households.
I found it interesting how much space Helani Galpaya had given to the demand side in her study of Broadband in Sri Lanka. Looks like the problem is common to us and to the US, according to this NYT report. Only 68 percent of Americans with access to high-speed broadband Internet are using it, while in places like South Korea the rate is 90 percent. More than 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies — including Wal-Mart and Target — require job applicants to apply online. Various studies have shown that the major reasons people do not have broadband are: the cost of Internet services and the cost of computers; not knowing how to use a computer; and not understanding why the Internet is relevant.