In June I posted some pictures from Shanghai of payphones that had WiFi signs on them. What the Chinese have already done, the City of New York is debating. The most controversial idea seems to be converting the payphone locations (which already have power) into electrical vehicle charging stations. Sri Lanka has a minuscule number of payphones so this is not a big issue, but for Asian countries that are beginning to think about what to do, the first step should be to look at evidence on the question of whether payphones are obsolete. For the second step, with regard to certain cities in certain countries, the NYC process might have some ideas: Given the amount of red tape involved, it could be years before the phone kiosks are repurposed, if the idea is approved.
We posted that TRAI had said that 143 million Indians were connecting to the Internet over mobile networks. Only 15 million used fixed broadband. Facebook says it has 82 million MAUs in India. Even if assume 15 million come from the fixed side that means 67 million over mobile platforms. Buoyed by surging user base in emerging markets of India and Brazil, the social networking platform’s MAUs globally rose by 21% to 1.
One may argue that demographic trends have little to do with what we at LIRNEasia do. I disagree. Especially when we are talking about knowledge work, service industries and infrastructure, demography is the place to start from. From the colloquium given by Professor Indralal de Silva several years ago, we’ve been fully engaged with these issues. The story on how Germany is failing to respond to the demographic crisis has lessons for all, especially countries that are getting old before becoming rich.
Two days back a Facebook debate ensued over the newly inaugurated deep-draft Colombo South Port being described as China’s port by a friend of mine who is in politics. He had said this in an interview to a Sinhala newspaper where the embers of xenophobia are periodically fanned by various parties, but only rarely by liberal-thinking PhD economists. I was motivated to write up my side of the argument in my column in LBO.LK. Though the immediate subject was a container terminal, the issue was foreign investment.
The last few days, I’ve been preoccupied with the basics of regulation and sector reforms. This was because I was preparing for a regulation course we’re teaching in Naypitaw, Myanmar, for government officials who will form the core staff of the to-be-created ICT infrastructure regulatory agency. The teaching I do these days mostly assumes the basics, but that cannot be done in Myanmar, a country that is a green field in terms of regulation and reforms. In advocating for good regulation, one always searches for the stakeholders who will support your cause. Many moons ago, I used to believe that the licensees who were subject to the authority of the regulatory agency or the government would be the natural supporters of regulatory reform.
So a big European telco is to be fully owned by a developing-economy company? Given the weak management of European telcos, this should not come as a surprise. Europe is not of great interest to us, but we did touch on this. One wishes it was a different company, more efficient, less immersed in a monopoly culture, but still . .
It is reported that the law went through yesterday. No copy is yet available. Given need to translate, may take a few days.
The New York Times carried a story on “big data for development” that featured Global Pulse, the UN initiative seeking to harness the potential of data to address development questions, much like what we are doing in our current research. The efforts by Global Pulse and a growing collection of scientists at universities, companies and nonprofit groups have been given the label “Big Data for development.” It is a field of great opportunity and challenge. The goal, the scientists involved agree, is to bring real-time monitoring and prediction to development and aid programs. Projects and policies, they say, can move faster, adapt to changing circumstances and be more effective, helping to lift more communities out of poverty and even save lives.
Many Americans would have been surprised that Jakarta was the largest contributor of tweets, a city. I was not. It is a large city (10 million), phones with QWERTY interfaces are all the rage, and Bahasa Indonesia uses the Roman characters. What surprised me was Riyadh. It is not an extraordinarily large city (4.
At the recent SATRC (South Asia Telecommunication Regulator’s Council) workshop on Policy, Regulation and Services held in Kathmandu, Nepal, 30 July – 01 August 2013, Wangay Dorji, Head of Telecommunication at BICMA (Bhutan InfoComm and Media Authority) spoke on the state of regional mobile roaming within the SAARC countries. Using LIRNEasia research, he points out the overall high prices South Asian’s pay while roaming within the region in comparison with the favorable tariffs offered in other regions such as the European Union (EU). The presentation confirms that plans are underway in the ASEAN region towards a unified approach. SATRC has also initiated a study for the same. However, given the proliferation of smart phones, and thereby apps such as Viber and Whatsapp, users are now able to communicate across the seas on a no-cost or low-cost basis (access to a reasonably good Internet connection being a mandatory condition).
The effective dissemination of the University of Washington study on telecenters is creating a minor revival in telecenter enthusiasm. We have not had opportunity to examine the Washington study in detail, but a first look surprised us since no LIRNEasia or Research ICT Africa was cited, despite South Africa being a focus country. Observing heavy use of telecenters does not seem to be best evidence, since the alternatives must also be studied for the claim to be supported. Coward and his team scoured the earth, working with local research teams and surveying more than 5,000 computer users in Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Lithuania, Philippines and South Africa. What they found seems counter-intuitive.
For those who doubted our narrative that the future of Internet access in our parts is wireless, here is the proof. It’s not that fixed broadband is not growing (year-on-year is 9 percent), but that wireless is growing faster. There are 15 million fixed broadband subscribers v 143 million connecting over wireless platforms. TRAI’s quarterly performance report.
Internet in Myanmar has suffered outage on July 20, 2013. Since then the country remains choked in terms of connectivity. Officially the breakdown of only submarine cable (SEA-ME-WE3) at 13 kilometers away from the coast was blamed. The Irrawaddy wrote on July 24: “Works are being carried out to repair the fault as quick as possible in coordination with [a] Singapore-based underwater repair and maintenance team. It is expected to take about one month,” the state-owned company said in a brief announcement in government newspaper The New Light of Myanmar.
Intercom was a small telephone network, which allowed calling strictly within the office. That was the Jurassic era of telecommunication when the dinosaurs state-owned incumbents mercilessly harassed the consumers. At that time the ‘sophisticated’ office automation equipment called intercom was a ‘must have’ gadget across the public and private enterprises. Speakerphone or hands-free calling feature was intercom’s jewel in the crown. Unlike the rotary-dial PSTN phones, the “trendy” intercom sets were fitted with a push-button keypad.
I know. Kenya is not in Asia. And M Pesa is in Kenya. But I read this nice blog post and figured that readers of LIRNEasia might appreciate learning a bit more about M Pesa. Few initiatives in microfinance, or for that matter in development, have been as successful as M-PESA: 3 and a half years after launch, over 70% of households in Kenya and more importantly over 50% of the poor, unbanked and rural populations use the service.
A dark cloud has appeared on the horizon of the Myanmar telecom sector in the form of a license granted to a military affiliated company. There is precedent in countries such as Iran. As long as the regulator can regulate, ownership need not be an issue. Usually the problem is the difficulty a regulator has in effectively exerting authority over the incumbent. The Myanmar incumbent is in such bad shape and the network in so undeveloped that this may not be such a huge concern.