Five years ago, we celebrated the first of our alumni entering a PhD program. And today we celebrate the first of our alumni completing a PhD. Congratulations to Dr Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara who did wonderful work in the short time he worked with us. He is now on the tenure track at Louisiana State University. As a lapsed academic I cannot but be proud of Dimuthu’s achievements.
Harsha de Silva, LIRNEasia’s lead economist, presented a paper co-authored with Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara and Ayesha Zainudeen entitled, “Social Influence in Mobile Phone Adoption: Evidence from the Bottom of Pyramid in Emerging Asia” at an International Conference on Mobile Communication and Social Policy. The conference was held at the Centre for Mobile Communications Studies, Rutgers University, New Jersey, 9-11 October 2009. The paper is based on findings from the Teleuse@BOP3 study. A working paper is available here.
Two of our researchers have been selected to present papers at the 35th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy which will be held in Virginia, USA on September 28-30, 2007. Helani Galpaya will present “The Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) Assessment: methodology and implementation results from six emerging economies” at the session on Trade and Harmonizations of Telecommunication Policies on September 30 2007. Payal Malik will present “India’s Universal Service Obligation for Rural Telecommunications: Issues of Design and Implementation” at the session on Promoting Universal Connectivity on September 29 2007. The papers are available on the TPRC website: ‘Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) assessment: Methodology and implementation results from five emerging economies,’ by Rohan Samarajiva, Helani Galpaya, Divakar Goswami and Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara ‘India’s Universal Service Obligation for Rural Telecommunications: Issues of Design and Implementation,’ by Payal Malik The TPRC, a non-profit organization, hosts this annual forum for scholars engaged in publishable research on policy-relevant telecommunications and information issues, and for public- and private-sector decision makers engaged in telecommunications and information policy. The purpose of the conference is to acquaint policy makers with the best of recent research and to familiarize researchers with the knowledge needs of policy makers.
The colloquium is on the proposed structure and content for the TRE Manual which is to be completed by the end of May by Lara Alawattegama, Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara and Shamistra Soysa, based on the TRE Assessment paper.