The common wisdom is that mobile number portability is an unmitigated good. But the whole point of doing research is challenging common wisdom. Based on evidence, we found that MNP has little relevance for our constituency, those at the bottom of the pyramid. We said so to Indian media, saying it would be a good thing for post-paid and corporate customers. We now find those ideas reflected in Indian media coverage, though not always with attribution, as for example in the Times of India: MNP works best with post-paid customers, as they are the highest paying of the lot.
An external evaluation of the Pan Asian Networking program under which LIRNEasia was funded since 2006 has just been published on the IDRC website. There are many references to LIRNEasia, one of the larger projects funded by PAN, but I found the para below the most intriguing: Influence on telecommunications policy reform has been one of the strongest areas of the program’s outcomes, at least in terms of explicit causality, specifically from the work of LIRNEasia. According to many informants, however, LIRNEasia, is a special case given the organizational culture, the numbers of people devoted to working almost exclusively on policy issues, the specific policy arena in which they work, and the strong personality at the center of the group. While LIRNEasia successes are notable, the external review panel urges the program not to set LIRNEasia as a standard for outcomes, since their achievements would be difficult to replicate elsewhere. The quotation has been taken from the Findings Brief, prepared by the IDRC Evaluation Unit, though the same sentiments are also found in the External Review Report.
Consumers in Asia get less value for money than their counterparts in N America. One reason for this is that the key input of international connectivity is expensive (300% that in Europe and N America). More cables, undersea and terrestrial, are needed to bring these prices down. The Indian Ocean has fewer cables than the Atlantic and the Pacific. The Asian land mass has almost none.
I just received my copy of the book: Biosruveillance methods and case studies edited by Taha Kass-Hout and Xiaohui Zhang. I first met Taha in cyberspace when he was with InSTEDD, we had started a Google group: Biosurveillance, which we use as a knowledge-base. Their approach to disease surveillance was through “event-based surveillance” and our approach was through “indicator-based surveillance” but both converging at finding signals for timely public health alerts that would advocate early control measures. We had contributed three chapters in the context of the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program pilot (RTBP) – Chapter 9: “The role of Data Aggregation in Public Health and Food Safety Surveillance” – Artur Dubrawski Chapter 13: “User Requirements towards a Real-Time Biosurveillance Program” – Nuwan Waidyanatha and Suma Prashant Chapter 14: “Using Common Alerting Protocol to Support a Real-Time Biosurveillance Program in India and Sri Lanka” – Gordon A. Gow and Nuwan Waidyanatha.
Kentaro Toyama argues that so-called ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) doesn’t ensure the alleviation of poverty. He presents a long list of failed projects – like telecenters and OLPC – to substantiate the argument. He says: Technology—no matter how well designed—is only a magnifier of human intent and capacity. It is not a substitute. The myth of scale is the religion of telecenter proponents, who believe that bringing the Internet into villages is enough to transform them.
The bandwidth prices in Asia remain more than 300% expensive than the western hemisphere, said TeleGeography that has been constantly reporting this constant gap. But the Asian leaders seem unmoved about this fundamentally flawed and potentially dangerous trend across the continent. TeleGeography reports only the wholesale prices up to the gateway. Once the backhaul and licensing costs are taken into account, the Asian Internet bandwidth prices become far more expensive. Spectrum had been the only raw material of ICT until the 2G mobile became pervasive.
PTTs wore the hat of “natural monopoly” until last century. They firmly believed, “I am monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute.” That was ended during the post-mobile era. Internet has further disrupted the orthodox dominance. Since then the new breeds of giants kept on emerging: Google, Yahoo, Skype, Facebook, Apple and others.
In its latest QoSE report, LIRNEasia compared download speeds, Round Trip Time (RTT, or the time delays in data transfer), Jitter (the variation in time between the arrival of data packets) and Packet Loss (the percentage of data packets that did not reach its destination) of broadband packages in 11 cities across 7 countries in South and Southeast Asia. RTT is a particularly important measure in systems that require two-way interactive communications and the methodology sets the threshold at a maximum of 300 ms. A high RTT means performance degradation in some of the Internet’s most popular applications such as the World Wide Web (www) and e-mail. Both packages tested in Manila, Philippines Smart’s 2 Mbps and BayanDSL’s 768 Kbps perform badly in this regard, with the latter going up to 570 ms RTT – the worst among the packages tested in the region. Access the QoSE and price benchmark reports here.
There is no free lunch. Costs must be covered, preferably by those who cause them. This has been our position on the simplistic and ideological net neutrality debate. Looks like Europe thinks the same: “We have to avoid regulation which might deter investment and an efficient use of the available resources,” Ms. Kroes said during a meeting on net neutrality held by the commission and the European Parliament.
Bill Gates makes eminent sense, most of the time. One could not be both a college drop out and world’s richest man unless one is incredibly intelligent. In a recent report on the mHealth Summit, the Economist reports thus. Mr Gates, however, warned the participants not to celebrate too soon. Just because an m-health pilot scheme appears to work in some remote locale, he insisted, don’t “fool yourself” into thinking it really works unless it can be replicated at scale.
Cynics among us decry the endless seminars and workshops and conferences that seem to be unavoidable feature of business and political life. But if the Bangladesh Daily Star has reported it accurately, the recent seminar on the Bangladesh telecom sector has actually achieved significant results. One of the major problems in Bangladesh is the lack of certainty about whether or how the licenses of four leading mobiles operators, which expire in 2011, will be renewed. Economic theory and common sense say that unless an investor knows how long he has an asset, he will not invest in it. Thus, theory would predict a steep decline in investment in each of the networks as they approached 2011.
Consider it, “Writing on the wall.” The BOP not only rules the operators’ wallet. Obscure outfits has stormed into the handset world and wounded the giants. Quoting latest findings the Reuters said: Nokia and other established handset makers are quickly losing global market share to a push by Chinese no-brand vendors into emerging markets. It’s all about the form factor and rapidly declining cost of production.
Recent Quality of Service Experience (QoSE) tests carried out by LIRNEasia show that BSNL’s 256Kbps package (offered in Chennai) delivers more than promised in download speeds when compared to a 512Kbps package offered by the same operator in Bangalore. It also performs better in comparison to similar offerings by Airtel and MTNL in Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, including 512 Kbps and 2Mbps packages. Although most Indian packages we tested offer better value for money than similar offerings in neighboring Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan, there are significant quality differences among the eight Indian packages that were subject to this year’s QoSE testing. The majority of the packages tested within India failed to deliver even 80% of the advertised speeds, with Airtel’s 2Mbps package (tested in Mumbai) coming in last, being able to deliver a mere 20% of what was advertised. Access the QoSE and price benchmark reports here.
To learn about the state of broadband in Sri Lanka, one has to rely on the media and on company releases, not the normal source which is the Ministry or regulatory agency. Today LBO carried the following story: Sri Lanka Telecom, the island’s largest fixed access operator said it had added 80,000 new broadband customers in 2010 and its base of 200,000 customers was 70 percent of the market. About 20 percent of the operator’s wireline customers were now using its ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) services, the telco said in a statement. From the above we can conclude that Sri Lanka has roughly 286,000 broadband subscriptions. We have no idea whether this number includes those using dongles, or simply those who subscribed to the “fixed wireless” options provided by LankaCom, Dialog etc.
We have been talking about the Budget Telecom Network Model for sometime. But as the Economist points out, the story is bigger than just telecom. South Asian innovation, driven by the need to sell to poor people, may remake the economic landscape in rich countries too. Most strikingly, Indian companies have produced a new type of innovation, variously dubbed “frugal”, “reverse” and “Gandhian”. The essence is to reduce the price of a product or service by a breathtaking amount—80% rather than 10%—by removing unnecessary bells and whistles.
LIRNEasia’s Senior Research Manager, Sriganesh Lokanathan, was invited to share LIRNEasia‘s work in increasing price transparencies in agricultural markets, at the Annual Portfolio Review (APR) for the Asia-Pacific division of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) which was held in Nanning, China from Nov 1-3, 2010. In addition he also led a discussion for around 30 IFAD practitioners and regional partners on ways to reduce information asymmetry in agricultural value chains. Given the large share of value chain projects in IFAD’s current portfolio, Sriganesh stressed the potential benefits (from connecting stakeholders as well as reducing information asymmetries) of incorporating Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into IFAD’s poverty alleviation strategies. LIRNEasia’s own research has revealed considerable livelihood benefits for farmers from just the provision of real-time market price information to farmers via mobile phones. The presentation slides can be found HERE.