Minister Milinda Moragoda opened the discussion with some thought provoking questions about China. Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Center For Policy Research, India): The quick reaction I had was it’s precisely these kinds of questions that make the best case for evidence based policy making. I would contest most of these dichotomies. There are interesting contrasts, but I think his diagnosis is a bit misapplied. On this question of infrastructure and roads, but I think the character of this debate will be very different five years from now.
In December 2009, Sri Lanka Railways will launch a service that will allow the making of railway reservations using mobiles. We congratulate the past and present management of the Railways for taking this innovative step in an otherwise hidebound organization. We are sure they had to overcome some very serious administrative barriers in what is still a government department.
Many countries have yet to open up government information. Even India, which has a freedom of information law, has so many exceptions to the duty to release. Simply releasing information is not enough. We need to have information in usable form. This NYT article shows some good examples.
We are always happy when people use our research. Happier when we are mentioned as the source too. We thank the writer and/or the source for attributing the results to us. While there is no separate data on the number of female subscribers in the country, according to a recent Lirneasia Teleuse Survey (a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank), mobile phone ownership is far lower among females than males in South Asia. Statistical analysis shows that gender has a significant impact on mobile phone adoption at the bottom of the pyramid in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.
Bangladesh government will allow the private sector to plug the country with two more submarine cable systems. They will create redundancy and diversity to the lone SEA-ME-WE4 undersea cable that is state-owned. The regulator has invited response to a public consultation in this regard. The licenses will be awarded through beauty contest. The new players will also deploy optical fibre backhaul up to Dhaka, the nation’s capital.
e Sri Lanka, when designed in 2002-03, broke new ground. Now six years later, it seems opportune to assess whether it delivered on its promise. This assessment was triggered by discussions on how best to respond to the Brazilian government’s invitation to Helani Galpaya to share the learnings of e Sri Lanka. It also builds on our work on indicators and indices and discussions on this site. What did it achieve in its originally allotted five years?
Prof. K. Vijayraghavan, Director of the National Center for Biological Sciences, in Bangalore is one of five recipients of this year’s Infosys Science Foundation prize, given to world-class researchers in social science in India. Along with our friends from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras’s – Rural Technology and Business Incubator, Prof. Vijayraghavan is one of the Investigators of the Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) carried out in the state of Tamil Nadu in India and Sri Lanka.
In a major win for think tanks seeking to bring evidence to the policy process in developing countries, the Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa, by its decision The Competition Commission of South Africa v TELKOM (Case No: 623/2008), has unequivocally overruled the claims of bias leveled against the LINK Centre, then headed by our colleague Alison Gillwald (now heading Research ICTs Africa). In addition to getting its odd argument rejected, Telkom will have to pay a 3.7 Billion Rand fine plus costs. Ouch! Alison is the featured dinner speaker at CPRsouth4 in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on December 7th.
On November 28th an interview about LIRNEasia’s work and the LIRNEasia@5 conference that will take place on Dec 9-11 in Colombo will be aired on Masala Canada. It’s already on the web. MASALA CANADA is an eclectic mix of stories, conversations and music with a South Asian flavour. Hosted and produced by Wojtek Gwiazda, this weekly radio program deals with everything from art and culture, to economics, politics and everyday life. MASALA CANADA is heard on shortwave and the Internet throughout India, South Asia and the world.
Brussels, Nov 25-26 – Third Civil Protection Forum organized by the European Commission. It rains heavily, but fortunately no floods as in Ireland. Ideal environment to discuss disaster risks. I speak at Seminar F titled ‘Innovative Technology for Disaster Management’. I am one of the two speakers from Asia in the entire conference; the other is from Japan.
We were not optimistic about the telecom regulators actually doing something about lowering intra-SAARC phone prices more than one year after the SAARC heads of state said it should be done. The regulators show their independence when it comes to matters such as this. But the prices came down for LK-IN calls without any regulatory intervention. We continue to live in hope. South Asian telecommunications regulators have decided to ask phone companies in the region to reduce international call charges, an official said.
Dream of digital Bangladesh quotes us extensively. Poor people in Bangladesh are more likely to own mobile phones and televisions than the same group in India, but the availability of computers in poor Bangladeshi households is almost zero, according to a recent study. The survey by LIRNEasia – a Sri Lanka-based information and communication technology (ICT) policy and regulation think tank dealing with the Asia-Pacific – also revealed a comparative reluctance among poor Bangladeshis to buy radios.
Based on LIRNEasia’s broadband QoSE research findings, we ran an advertisement in the Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka’s leading English daily) on 24 November 2009. The advertisement focused on four facts. The first three were on value for money, advertised download speed as opposed to actual download speed and bandwidth bottlenecks. The lack of regulation on contention ratios (how many users per “channel”) was highlighted as the fourth fact We pointed out that LIRNEasia’s recommendation about imposing contention ratios of 1:20 (Business) and 1:50 (Residential) had been adopted by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), with minor changes. TRAI mandates contention ratios of 1:30 for Business and 1:50 for Residential.
In the old days, you’d just take over the newspapers and the TV channels. Now you have to take over the phone company too. It is implanting 6,000 Basij militia centers in elementary schools across Iran to promote the ideals of the Islamic Revolution, and it has created a new police unit to sweep the Internet for dissident voices. A company affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards acquired a majority share in the nation’s telecommunications monopoly this year, giving the Guards de facto control of Iran’s land lines, Internet providers and two cellphone companies. And in the spring, the Revolutionary Guards plan to open a news agency with print, photo and television elements.
TRAI Chair Dr J.S. Sarma, Principal Advisor Mr N. Parameswaran and Advisor (Convergence) Mr S.K.
I wish the question mark was not necessary, but the record so far does not allow me exclude it. We started this process in the weeks before the 2008 SAARC Summit. When the issue was mentioned in the SAARC Chair’s speech and included in the Declaration, we were, naturally, pleased. I recall telling a journalist that at most it would take a few months to get this implemented. We raised the issue with the then Chair of the South Asian Telecom Regulator’s Council, Mr Nripendra Misra of India.