The Colloquim was conducted by Arusha Cooray from Australia. Joint study by Arusha Cooray, Nirmali Sivapragasam and Harsha de Silva Remittance inflows into the developing economies have increased tenfold from US $31,058 million to US$ 327,591 over the 1990 to 2008 period Initiatives taken by policymakers of developing economies to promote the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in particular mobile phones specifically targeting individuals outside the reach of traditional banking services. Benefits of ICT are well documented by the literature. Jensen (2007) – the use of mobile phones by fisherman contributed to a fall in price dispersion and reduction in waste, leading to increases in consumer and producer welfare in Kerela de Silva (2005) – mobile phone based ICTs can reduce information asymmetries in the agricultural market, enabling farmers to reduce transaction costs and search costs associated with locating sales outlets. Sivapragasam, Aguero and de Silva (2010) – the use and awareness of the mobile phone as a mode of remitting money.
Ranmalee took this photograph of Supun Sudaraka, testing mobile broadband connections on the move, using Mobile AT-Tester, the family of test tools developed by LIRNEasia. Broadband quality testing isn’t a desk job anymore. We simulate real conditions. Unlike in case of fixed connections, mobile broadband usage is always, er, mobile. This was one of the many odd locations we conducted testing.
They love to talk but reluctant to pay. This is how the telecoms minister has characterized almost every organ, including the offices of the President and the Prime Minister, of Bangladesh government. Even the country’s anticorruption department has gracefully joined these disgraced defaulters. The minister has disclosed a long itemized list of unpaid bills amounting almost US$10 million in the parliament. Interestingly, the telecoms ministry is also one of the shameless phone bill defaulters.
LIRNEasia’s advertisements last week, while highlighting the limited usage of Mobile 2.0 services by ‘low income’ users, suggested steps to be taken by regulators/policy makers and operators to make Mobile 2.0 galore. . We think this is the right time for Emerging Asian mobile operators to adopt what we call an Mobile Application Store or ‘App-Store’ model.
Who’s got the phone? Gender and the use of the telephone at the bottom of the pyramid Ayesha Zainudeen, Tahani Iqbal and Rohan Samarajiva Many studies conclude that a significant gender divide in access to the telephone exists, particularly in developing countries. Furthermore, women are also said to use telephones in a different manner from men — making and receiving more calls, spending more time on calls and using telephones primarily for ‘relationship maintenance’ purposes. Much of this research is based on small-sample studies in affluent developed countries. This article shows that a significant gender divide in access to telephones exists in Pakistan and India, to a lesser extent in Sri Lanka, but is absent in the Philippines and Thailand.
Spectrum allocation and pricing in Pakistan and India have differed considerably, one following market-based price discovery mechanisms through auctions, and the other, arbitrary pricing. Two articles, one by Mr. Muhammad Aslam Hayat, a regulatory consultant at Grameenphone, Bangladesh, and the other, by Payal Malik, LIRNEasia Senior Research Fellow, examines the past and present spectrum policy in Pakistan and India, respectively. Hayat writes: Pakistan introduced mobile cellular telephony early, in 1990. Although there was no clear spectrum management policy or roadmap available prior to 2004, the issuance of four mobile cellular licenses and the assignment of spectrum to those licensees were remarkably well thought out.
Myanmar’s telecommunication authorities are planning to expand GSM coverage to the border areas next to its Southeast neighbours, aimed at providing better GSM phone line services to link the region, Cellular News reported quoting the local Myanmar Newsweek. The pilot project to link Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore as well as China is underway. Meanwhile, the authorities has also planned to add 33 more GSM radio stations in the biggest city of Yangon to expand GSM coverage which will be launched by local private companies on competitive tender system, an earlier report said.
Two years back Frost & Sullivan predicted the abysmal future of WiMax. And it has been absolutely right all the way. China has never granted visa to WiMax while the Chinese vendors have been happily exporting the hardware. Deng Xiaoping’s disciples have also pioneered TD-LTE, a civilized alternative of WiMax. It has been consistently writing the epitaph of WiMax in the USA, Japan and Russia.
Was Sri Lanka’s reaction to tsunami alert today early morning effective enough? Did we observe the dos and don’ts? We do not jump to conclusions. The information is inadequate and contradictory at times. We will try reconstructing from what we heard, from mass media and other sources.
Much has been written about Kenya’s m-money system. Here the Economist highlights a Gates Foundation paper that highlights an aspect that has not been much written about, the need to balance e money and real money in the hands of the retailers. There are many elements to a successful mobile-money scheme: the right technology, simple marketing, partnerships with banks, support from regulators. But keeping it all going are people like Gaudencia, moving bundles of cash around, on buses and in vans, behind the scenes.
LIRNEasia regularly surveys SEC group D and E (the bottom of the pyramid) teleuse in emerging Asian countries. In the study it was found that less than one percent of the Sri Lankan BOP phone users who are aware of mobile 2.0 services regularly use it. Highlighting this fact we ran an advertisement in the Daily Mirror today. The advertisement’s objective was to show what the policy makers and regulators can do and thereby what the service providers could do to boost up Mobile 2.
TeleGeography has revealed the transpacific bandwidth costs five times more than the transatlantic price. The prices of a 10Gbps wavelength between London-New York (transatlantic) costs only US$9,000 to $20,000 per month. The same product, however, varies from $65,000 to $80,000 per month in Tokyo and Los Angeles (transpacific) route although this price has fallen at a compounded annual rate of 21% during last two years. Worst part of the story is – the same 10Gbps wavelength between Tokyo and Hong Kong is marginally less than the Tokyo-LA price (See the chart). The transpacific bandwidth costs are expected to slide furthermore once the new cables get commissioned.
We were happy to note that the Telecom Regulatory Commission has pulled the plug on a senseless project that we criticized when first announced and once again, for emphasis. It will be interesting to see how much Surrey Satellite Technology, a firm fronted by the son of an English Lord of some kind, cleared in fees in the past year. I met the man in Colombo. Obviously he would not have paid his way here. The TRC will not proceed with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, the British firm which was commissioned to set up the Sri Lanka Space Communications Company last year, due to the high costs involved.
We have had occasion to tangle with the Luddites, especially the critics of the mobile phone. It was somewhat comforting and definitely educative to see a nice summary of historical and current facts related to the topic in this review of a techphobic book by Nicholas Carr, the head priest of Internet criticism these days: Socrates started what may have been the first technology scare. In the “Phaedrus,” he lamented the invention of books, which “create forgetfulness” in the soul. Instead of remembering for themselves, Socrates warned, new readers were blindly trusting in “external written characters.” The library was ruining the mind.
Nokia’a latest move will make MNP further irrelevant while it’s a great news for consumers at the BOP. The Finnish mobile behemoth will release four new cheap phones ranging between €30 and €45 and the cheapest one supports dual connection. The operators would better start pampering the BOP. Nokia introduced also its first bicycle charger, targeting especially consumers with limited access to electricity, and it will go on sale for roughly 15 euros price, depending on market, later this year, said the company’s press release.
We said all you can eat pricing for users at the BOP will not work. Looks like it will not work for others as well if the move described in the NYT story holds. On Wednesday, AT&T pulled away the trough. And other wireless carriers could do the same. AT&T said it would no longer offer an unlimited data plan to new users of iPhones and other smartphones.