LIRNEasia’s practice on research –> policy Rohan Samarajiva The research that LIRNEasia does will never get a Nobel Prize. We work on applied research topics that are theoretically informed, but involve for the most part close engagement with what is actually happening on the ground in some country, preferably one that is in Emerging Asia. This allows not only a focus on policy and regulation as actually practised (a signature of our work), but also more effective communication to policy-makers using analogies. However, this does not mean that we do not generate new knowledge. Aggressive interrogation of applied research allows us to abstract certain concepts and methods that are of general applicability.
Sri Lanka agriculture could do with dose of IT – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE Greater use of information technology in Sri Lanka’s largely subsistence agriculture sector will help both farmers and consumers alike by reducing costs, a researcher has said. Harsha De Silva, lead economist at LIRNEasia, a think tank, said a system using IT that addresses the information needs from the decision making phase through the growth and sale of agricultural products will help balance the welfare of both consumers and farmers. “ICT (information and communications technology) can be used to reduce the information and observable transaction costs to create efficiencies in agricultural markets,” de Silva said. “And if we can create efficiencies in agricultural markets, we can create welfare on both sides of the equation,” he told a recent seminar on the role of ICT in agriculture. “The core will definitely have to be a system that marries the decision-making and selling and that is where ICT will take agriculture markets from this point on and that is where we see some variants of commodity exchanges developing.
Beyond Tunis: Changing Policy Rohan Samarajiva Government is about the sustenance of hope. Yet in too many places, government is about killing hope: “you can’t make it because you’re poor/ your ethnicity is wrong / you aren’t from the right school.” When hope is dead, when the pie looks like it’s not expanding, and the game is zero-sum, the path that remains is hatred. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) shake things up. Not necessarily for the better; but with prodding of the right kind and possibly some luck and happenstance, the equilibrium can be broken in a positive way.
Sri Lanka using customs authorities to censor academics: report – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE Another book by Rohan Samarajiva, from LirneAsia, a Colombo-based regional policy think tank, had been detained by customs from December. Samarajiva’s book, “ICT infrastructure in emerging Asia, Policy and Regulatory roadblocks” released by the Indian unit of academic publishing house, Sage, was launched in India in December. Sri Lanka;s customs chief Sarath Jayathilake was quoted in the report as saying that the detention was not brought to his attention and he was not aware why the books were seized. “We usually detain these books if it’s a matter of security and we refer them to Defence (Ministry) or the Government Information Department,” Jayathilake was quoted as saying. The LirneAsia publication had a chapter on telecommunications usage in the Jaffna peninsular.
Mobile Benchmark Studies in South Asia and Latin America | L I R N E . N E T DIRSI’s study on mobile price and affordability also adapts the OECD price baskets to compare the monthly costs of using mobiles in six Latin American countries. The Latin American baskets take into consideration call and SMS volumes and usage data as specified in the OECD methodology,[5] but excludes initial connection charges. The DIRSI study also does not report data on postpaid or indicate whether different MoUs have been applied to prepaid and postpaid. Despite differences in methodology, it is interesting to note the rather large differences in the monthly costs between users in South Asia and Latin America; even though the former takes into account a broader set of costs.
Hopes for Wireless Cities Fade as Internet Providers Pull Out – New York Times Part of the problem was in the business model established in Philadelphia and mimicked in so many other cities, Mr. Settles said. In Philadelphia, the agreement was that the city would provide free access to city utility poles for the mounting of routers; in return the Internet service provider would agree to build the infrastructure for 23 free hotspots and to provide inexpensive citywide residential service, including 25,000 special accounts that were even cheaper for lower-income households. But soon it became clear that dependable reception required more routers than initially predicted, which drastically raised the cost of building the networks. Marketing was also slow to begin, so paid subscribers did not sign up in the numbers that providers initially hoped, Mr.
There were no press invitations/news releases for our event on March 18, as we were only releasing preliminary data. LBO was perhaps the only media interested. Their report was not hundred percent correct saying the SLT (2M/512k) speeds were slower compared to comparable Dialog Broadband package always (They showed more or less on par performances in Dec 2007) but sans that see them presenting a fairly accurate picture . Extracts: Sri Lanka’s internet access quality through broadband within the local boundary is above regional thresholds but sparse local content drives users to access overseas sites at slower speeds, researchers said. The local speeds within Sri Lanka is comparatively higher to what users experience when accessing international web sites, web pages or servers that are located overseas.
Starting a business in Sri Lanka is not the easiest task in the world but how far that impedes Sri Lanka’s entry to global knowledge economy? This is one of the key questions posed by the World Bank publication The report identifies the business environment; information infrastructure; an innovation system; and human resources as four pillars of the knowledge economy. Challenges faced by Sri Lanka in becoming a knowledge economy are examined and the report proposes possible ways that Sri Lanka could move forward to build its knowledge economy under the country’s development strategy as outlined in the Mahinda Chinthana. ‘Building Sri Lanka’s Knowledge Economy’ to be launched Tuesday March 25, 2008 at 4th Floor, DFCC Bank Auditorium 73/5, Galle Road Colombo 3. LIRNEasia is happy to be a partner in publicizing this report perhaps for the first time seriously SWOTs Sri Lanka against similar countries and points out what it can learn from others.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, resident of Sri Lanka, citizen of the United Kingdom, and man of the universe, passed away on the morning of the 19th of March. His was a life well lived. He will be remembered. Sir Arthur imagined what the world could be.
Arthur C. Clarke, 90, Science Fiction Writer, Dies – New York Times Mr. Clarke was well aware of the importance of his role as science spokesman to the general population: “Most technological achievements were preceded by people writing and imagining them,” he noted. “I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon,” he added, if it had not been for H. G.
The State of “Broadband” in Sri Lanka – Take 1 « ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace) Lirneasia’s work (in particular their BOP research, on which I have still to write on in this blog) has helped me more than any other organisation to justify my on-going work with citizen journalism and new media as a means through which one can strengthen democratic governance, peace and fundamental rights. Years ago I began work on ICT4Peace with the hunch that mobile devices / phones would change the way in which citizens communicate with governance and governance mechanisms in the swabhasha, and that wireless internet access / cloud computing and diminishing costs of access would make them producers of content instead of passive recipients and consumers of content dished out to them by e-government initiatives with a downstream emphasis. It’s heartening to see research from Lirneasia supporting the validity of these early assumptions and my continuing work in ICT and peacebuilding. Powered by ScribeFire.
At last report, Hutch Sri Lanka had an ARPU of around USD 3. Sri Lanka Hutch subscribers double in 2007 – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE Subscribers of the Sri Lanka mobile unit of Hutchison Telecom doubled to more than a million in 2007, while revenue growth topped 50 percent, the group said in a statement. Total subscribers had increased by 104 percent to 1,141,000 in 2007 while revenue measured in Hong Kong dollars grew 52.4 percent 189 million dollars (2.6 billion Sri Lanka rupees).
At a well attended public seminar yesterday (March 18) at Institution of Engineers (Sri Lanka), LIRNEasia released its Broadband QoSE testing methodology (named ‘AshokaTissa’, after the greatest collaboration between India and Sri Lanka, the movement of Buddhism across the Palk Strait) and the preliminary test results of three of the most widely used broadband packages in Sri Lanka, SLT Office (2 Mbps / 512 kbps), SLT Home (512 kbps / 128 kbps) and Dialog (2 Mbps / 512 kbps) This was followed by the responses from SLT and Dialog Broadband. The event was jointly organised by LIRNEasia and Institution of Engineers. (Sri Lanka) Speeches/Presentations available for downloading: Comments from the Chair – Rohan Samarajiva Introduction to broadband and Test Methodology – Timothy Gonsalves Preliminary QoSE test results – Chanuka Wattegama
It is with deep regret that LIRNEasia reports the demise of Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Some of us at LIRNEasia had the opportunity of closely working with him in our professional lives. In November 2005, LIRNEasia had its last official encounter with him when few representatives from WorldSpace (our partner in the Last-Mile Hazinfo project) including Dr. Rangarajan met him in Colombo.
Paper Is Out, Cellphones Are In – New York Times the next step is electronic boarding passes, which essentially turn the hand-held devices and mobile phones of travelers into their boarding passes. At least half a dozen airlines in the United States currently allow customers to check in using their mobile devices, including American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest and Alaska. But so far, Continental is the only carrier in the United States to begin testing the electronic passes, allowing those travelers to pass through security and board the plane without handling a piece of paper. Their boarding pass is an image of an encrypted bar code displayed on the phone’s screen, which can be scanned by gate agents and security personnel. Powered by ScribeFire.
Half of the UK’s broadband users are unhappy with the service from their internet providers even though high-speed connections are at their cheapest and fastest, according to a survey by price comparison service uSwitch. With 15 million customers – half the country – spending £3bn on broadband every year, the gap is widening between the companies perceived as best and worst providers, according to uSwitch, which makes money by encouraging consumers to hunt out new deals. Its survey of nearly 11,000 broadband customers suggests four million customers are not satisified with their provider and four out of nine companies have less satisfied customers this year than last. Read the full story in ‘The Guardian’ here.