The Alliance for Affordable Internet (AA4I) launched their Affordability Report to showcase their newly developed Affordability Index. LIRNEasia’s CEO Helani Galpaya was invited by AA4I to participate in a panel at the launch of the report at the ICTD conference that took place in Cape Town, South Africa in December 2013. Composite indices that compare and rank countries have value because they get the attention of policy makers and regulators – those at the bottom of the table are indignant (and are hopefully moved to improve matters on the ground so they do better next year) and those at the top use it for publicity. In both cases, it is a good way for research organizations or others to start a meaningful dialog with a government or a regulatory agency, to start identifying what actions are needed for the country to perform better (and rise up in the ranking) in the future. The value of these indices increases when they cover a large number of countries.