CEO Helani Galpaya was invited as an expert participant at the UN-DESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union) organised Expert Group Meeting held at UN headquarters in New York, June 8 – 9th. Helani was invited to talk about issues of access and affordability, and how they contribute towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). LIRNEasia and RIA household survey data, LIRNEasia’s broadband quality of service test data, big data research was used in the presentations and interventions during the two day meeting. Slides here. Numerous UN Agencies, members of Permanent Missions to the UN from various countries (e.
Low connectivity and low regulatory capacity are characteristics of most emerging Asian countries. Any NN regulation needs to take these realities into account. So when we looked at the possible ways TRAI can and should act, we ended somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Read our response here.
We no longer do quantitative and qualitative research on the demand-side of Internet use (except in Myanmar) but it is indeed gratifying to find work that we did in 2012 being described and even replicated at some cost in 2015. In an attempt to replicate Stork and Galpaya’s observations, Quartz commissioned surveys in Indonesia and Nigeria from Geopoll, a company that contacts respondents across the world using mobile phones. We asked people whether they had used the internet in the prior 30 days. We also asked them if they had used Facebook. Both surveys had 500 respondents each.
Today, our CEO Helani Galpaya was on a panel “Harnessing the power of convergence and big data for enterprise success” at a Sri Lankan summit called “Enterprise 2.0: building future ready enterprises” (full video of the panel session is available HERE). I thought some of the ideas she proposed about were worthy of further discussion. LIRNEasia is curently working on utilizing telecom network Transaction Generated Information (TGI) to conduct public interest research using big data. One of her comments was about how companies are not fully appreciating the value of the data that they have.
The results of the newest TRE survey conducted by LIRNEasia are out. We started the survey since before the start of LIRNEasia and have improved it since. The results were released in Dhaka, Bangladesh, at a well attended media event on 12 May 2011. The centerpiece was the sector performance report on Bangladesh by Faheem Hussain, Ph.D.
LIRNEasia COO, Helani Galpaya, has joined the Editorial Board of the Information Technologies & International Development (ITID) journal. The journal was ranked number one in information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) field, according to a 2010 study by Richard Heeks. We congratulate her and wish her the best in this new position!
Helani Galpaya, COO of LIRNEasia, will speak at the 25th EuroCPR conference held from 28 – 30 March 2010 in Brussels, Belgium, at a session on “Impact assessment of information society policies: what worked and what did not work in each region?”. The theme of the conference is on “Policies for a digital Europe: lessons learned and challenges ahead”. Presentation slides are available here. View the full programme here.
LIRNE.NET (through Research ICT Africa) together with University of Cape Town’s Infrastructure Management Programme, is organizing a five-day training course in telecom regulatory reform. The course is to be held from 12 – 16 April 2010, at the UCT GSB Breakwater Campus, V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa. The course is designed to enhance the strategic thinking of a select group of decision-makers in telecom and related sectors in developing countries and emerging economies. The aim of the programme is to address the many challenges posed by the current stage of telecom and ICT reform to governments, regulatory agencies, operators and other stakeholders.
Helani Galpaya, COO of LIRNEasia, was invited by the Strategic Affairs Directorate to speak at a seminar on Alternatives for Infrastructure Development and Broadband Access. Brazil is embarking on an ambitious program to increase broadband penetration, and is currently discussing various options – one of the more interesting being the provision of a government-owned backbone, using the dark fibre that is currently owned by the electricity and petroleum companies. The pros and cons of this, and other options were discussed at the seminar, and a the full day of closed-door discussions that followed between the speakers and the Strategic Affairs Directorate staff. Helani focused on the importance of thinking about the market structure (whether or not there was sufficient competition at all points in the network) and demand stimulation. For example, Nokia’s TCO study shows that Brazil has the highest cost for mobile users among all the countries studied (possibly driven by highly asymmetric interconnection rates and lack of sufficient competition, among other things).
Helani Galpaya, LIRNEasia’s COO, participated at the Asian Telecom Seminar, organized by the Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management in Pune, India, from 25 – 26 September, 2009. She made a presentation on “The political economy of ICT in Asia” and also participated in a panel entitled, “ ICT at Bottom of Pyramid- Bridging the Digital Divide. Where lies the buck?”. More information on the seminar can be found here.
Helani Galpaya represented LIRNEasia at the 4th International Telecommunications Society (ITS) Africa-Asia-Australasia Regional conference, held on 16 – 18 August, 2009, in Perth, Australia. The theme of the conference was on”Mobile Technology and Broadband Application Developments – The Search for Corporate Value Chains.” More information on the conference is available here. Measuring the Effectiveness of the Telecom Regulatory and Policy Environment: Methodology and Results from 8 Emerging Asian Countries Helani presented a paper on “Measuring the Effectiveness of the Telecom Regulatory and Policy Environment: Methodology and Results from 8 Emerging Asian Countries” based on findings from LIRNEasia’s TRE study in 2008. She was also a panel member at a policy roundtable on “Investing in African and Asian telecommunications infrastructure during a global financial crisis”.
Reading an article by Araba Sey on a small-sample study of teleuse among non-owners in Ghana in a special issue of info, edited by two colleagues in LIRNE.NET, I was surprised to see no references whatsoever to our work. We who are at edge of the global academic system had excuses, but really, after Scholar.Google, no one has excuses. Further, I was told that Araba had been at a talk given by Helani Galpaya at USC Annenberg School in October 2007 and had been given an entire set of teleuse@BOP2 findings, which makes the omission even more saddening.
A clinic on Communication for Policy Impact was conducted by Dr. Rohan Samarajiva, Helani Galpaya and Nilusha Kapugama of LIRNEasia at the recently concluded IDRC PAN-All conference in Penang, Malaysia. The necessity of communicating or disseminating good research results to stakeholders such as the policymakers, private sector and media was one of the underlying themes of the conference. The clinic focused on giving participants the necessary tools to formulate a communications strategy for a given project. Some of the key aspects identified were: identification of relevant audience/s and appropriate method/s of communication, importance of story telling timing of the release of results recognition of policy windows The importance of developing a communications strategy at the proposal stage of the project was highlighted.
Dr. Gordon Gow presented the working paper titled; The future of community-based hazard information systems: Insights from the Internet sharing economy. Dr. Gow who was previously at the LSE is now an Associate Professor at University of Alberta. The presentation began by looking at situations where systems/programmes are developed but only to fall to disuse.
The 13th telecom reform course for regulators and stakeholders offered by LIRNE.NET in collaboration with the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town will start on the 14th of April 2009. The LIRNE.NET courses started in the Netherlands, moved to Denmark, then were offered in multiple locations in Africa and the Caribbean, until settling in Singapore since 2005. Now the baton has passed to our colleague Alison Gillwald at the EDGE Institute in South Africa.
Helani Galpaya, COO and Indicators Specialist at LIRNEasia has been invited to make a presentation at the 7th World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators (WTI) Meeting in Cairo, Egypt from 3 – 5 March, 2009. She will be speaking on demand-side data collection work LIRNEasia does, along with some of the supply-side benchmarking and NSO/NRA capacity-building work. An online version of the agenda can be viewed here. The presentation can be viewed here.