In an empirical study conducted in fish markets along the coast of Kerala (South India), Robert Jensen found that the introduction of the mobile phone allowed improved flow of price information that resulted in a more efficient functioning of the market. Before mobile phone were introduced or coverage was available in Kerala, fishermen would generally return to their “home” markets with their catch. Oversupply meant that fish had to be routinely dumped into the sea to keep prices stable even if (unknown to the fishermen) there were markets 10kms away were fish were in greater demand. Mobile phones enabled price information from other markets to be available while the fishermen was still at sea. The fishermen would divert his boat to the market that offered the highest price for his catch.
A version of the increasingly popular Linux operating system Ubuntu will be developed for use on net-enabled phones and devices. The Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded project aims to create the open source platform for initial release in October 2007. The operating system will be developed by members of the Ubuntu community, along with staff from chip giant Intel. Its development was prompted by the growth of power hungry portable devices that place new demands on software. “It is clear that new types of device – small, handheld, graphical tablets which are Internet-enabled – are going to change the way we communicate and collaborate,” said Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman.
Someday, emergency response teams handling a crisis like Hurricane Katrina, or even a major traffic jam, may coordinate their responses using a system that projects a bird’s-eye view of human movement by tracking cell phone signals via computer. Read more
Big Money in Little Screens – New York Times Searching the Web on a mobile phone has been a lot like getting online via dial-up modem circa 1995: slow, tedious and not terribly useful. Typing on tiny buttons, squinting at a list of links and clicking through to a page that won’t display properly is enough to test anyone’s patience. The head of Yahoo’s mobile strategy, Marco Boerries, standing, said overcoming difficult Web navigation would be a challenge. But that is beginning to change. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all trained their sights on cellphones, which they see as the next great battleground in the Internet search wars.
Sri Lanka: Cutting it Mobile phone use is taking off in Sri Lanka – though not, perhaps, in ways that service operators might have hoped. FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT In the world’s poorer countries, the purchase of a mobile phone has become increasingly affordable. Using it, however, can still be a struggle. Low-income mobile phone owners in Sri Lanka are getting around this problem with a novel method for keeping costs down. Known as ring cutting, mobile phone subscribers rely on ring tones to communicate with others, rather than actually staying on the line to talk.
Rohan Samarajiva | LankaBusinessOnline Fixed or Mobile March 28, 2007 (LBO) – It seems like a no-brainer: A mobile phone is better than a fixed phone, especially in Sri Lanka. The costs of getting a connection are lower: a new phone and SIM can cost as little as LKR 4,000, while SLTL charges around LKR 20,000 for a fixed connection and its competitors charge around LKR 10,000. Mobile phones are easy to use. They have built in directories and allow texting, though now these features are now available on the fixed CDMA phones as well. Calling people instead of places that people are associated with seems obviously better, unless you don’t want to be reached.
Sonal Desai | CXOToday.com Mumbai, Mar 27, 2007: Mobile penetration will penetrate the homes of bottom or pyramid (BOP) families in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a study instituted by LIRNEasia has found. Titled, “Teleuse on a Shoestring- A Study of the Financially Constrained in Asia,” it interviewed and maintained diaries of respondents from Thailand and Philippines besides the above mentioned countries. A C Nielsen conducted the fieldwork. International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada funded the research.
Dhaka, March 23 (bdnews24.com) — Grameen Bank’s Muhammad Yunus stunned the world by unveiling a poverty alleviation initiative using mobile phone on March 26, 1997. He buys bulk minutes from Grameenphone’s GSM mobile network and resells among the microcredit borrowers in Bangladesh. The industry now recognises such business model as Mobile Virtual Network Operator or MVNO. Yunus and Grameen shared the Nobel Peace Price in 2006.
In the old days, telecom operators gouged each other’s customers through excessive termination charges (settlements) for international calls. That went the way of the dodo with bypass and calling cards. Then they came up with the idea of gouging the customers of other operators foolish enough to use roaming facilities. Now the EU is trying to tamp it down, at least for its own citizens: “The price of using a mobile phone in another EU country could be capped at 50 cents ($0.66; 34p) a minute.
Sri Lanka’s telecom sector soared in 2006 to 7.3 million users, led by a 59% jump in new mobile phone connections on competition and falling call rates, an AFP report said. Quoting the industry watchdog Sri Lanka Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the AFP report said despite a waiting list of around 366,000 for fixed-line phone services, mobile phones, including GSM and CDMA systems, had allowed rural residents to get phone services immediately. The AFP report further said fixed-line subscribers rose to 1.9 million in 2006 from 1.
Reading the reports from Barcelona, one may think that remitting money using the functionalities of the mobile phone is something new. However, it appears that it is a functioning service in the Philippines, the SMS capital of the world.
Another story that reinforces our emphasis on the emerging Asia-Pacific and the Bottom of the Pyramid: LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Making affordable phones and targeting consumers with smaller budgets have now become priorities for the largest companies in the sector who were all present at this week’s 3GSM trade show in Barcelona. “There are between 2.5 and 2.8 billion people who have a mobile phone: the next billion will come from the high-growth market,” said David Taylor, strategy director for Motorola. The areas representing the most opportunity are Asia, Africa and the Middle East, he said.
Inside the LIRNE.NET community, we have for some time been discussing a program of research centered on what we all mobile multiple play, a convergence of services around the transactional capabilities of the mobile phone and its unparallelled connectivity. Our friend and colleague Abu Saeed Khan is reporting on a major development on these lines from the GSM Congress in Barcelona: :: bdnews24.com :: Spearheaded by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers, GSMA believes the programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than one trillion dollars by 2012.
Hutchison exits India and Vodafone enters. Will this accelerate Indian mobile growth to Indonesia and Pakistan levels? No clear evidence of increased investment; new pricing strategies, etc. yet. BBC NEWS | Business | Vodafone buys Indian mobile firm Vodafone has bought a controlling stake in Indian mobile phone firm Hutchison Essar for $11.
This is not rocket science and Bangladesh can easily achieve similar growth. All it needs is a “literate” leadership and “sane” regulator. Details of Indian and Pakistani markets is in http://www.telecomtv.com/news.
The Philippine ICT Researchers Network through the National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG) of the University of the Philippines will be hosting the first international conference on “Living the Information Society: The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on People, Work and Communities in Asia” which will be held on April 23-24, 2007 at the Renaissance Hotel, Makati City, Philippines (program attached). Early registration (download form) for the Conference is now open and entitles the participant to a 20% discount. This conference funded by the International Development Research Centre – Canada, is being organized in support of the growing community of researchers and practitioners conducting research on the social, cultural, psychological, economic, political, and other transformations brought about by information and communications technologies (ICT) in the Asia-Pacific region. The conference provides a forum for discussing life in the information society. Over 75 papers will be presented by researchers from different countries and disciplines on the usage and effects of ICTs on culture and society.