These comparisons are, of course, problematic. But still engaging especially in the context of the launch of the Alliance for an Affordable Internet. Thailand yields no data. And I assume they work off advertised speeds rather than real . The Economist provides a nice interactive map.
Earlier this year (April 2013) we pushed for Demand Side Management (DSM) in Sri Lanka to managing the burgeoning electricity demand in the country. Hence we were quite happy when the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lankan (PUCSL) recently released draft regulations for the institutional framework conducting DSM activities in the electricity sector. Today, at a consultative workshop on the draft regulations, we recommended the following: Coordinate the market research design that each of the 5 distribution licensees have to conduct prior to initiating DSM activities. Make use of behavioral economics and Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) for high impact since it is the most effective way to understand consumer behavior and “nudge” them to more energy-efficient and energy-conserving behavior. The impact could be even higher if Sri Lanka were to quickly scale up the use of smart meters.
The Team Leader of LIRNEasia’s Human Capital Research Unit has published an analysis of a policy draft presented by the Ministry of Education. The proposed policy may be downloaded from here.
Ranjula Senaratna Perera CRPsouth2013 Mysore, India
The survey was conducted among the low-income, urban micro-entrepreneurs (MEs) in three countries, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The study defined micro-entrepreneurs as those who employed less than ten hired workers, i.e 0-9. The hired workers are paid employees or full-time equivalent, excluding the owner. This is an adaptation of international definition followed by World Bank and European Commission1.
There was a lot of discussion here when Airtel entered the market. So much so that we used to receive phone calls asking for employment! Part of what we said then was they hurt themselves by being slow to enter after the announcement. It appears the damage could not be undone. India’s Economic Times said citing two unnamed sources said Standard Chartered was advising Airtel on the sale and the firm was valued at between 110 to 130 million US dollars.
The widespread casualties caused this year by fast moving weather systems in Uttarakhand and in Pakistan have caused experts to call for real-time data sharing among the region’s meteorological departments. This seems to call for increased reliance on ICTs. The monsoon has been erratic in recent years. Last year, the monsoon failed in Sri Lanka, and parts of the country’s northern, eastern and southern regions went through a drought that affected at least 1.2 million people.
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 Lankadeepa of 22 July 2013 carried report about the Leader of the Opposition arguing that electricity tariffs be adjusted to account for the larger contribution from low-cost hydroelectric generators to the overall supply mix of the Ceylon Electricity Board. This reflects a recommendation made by LIRNEasia in its submission made at the Public Hearing on the electricity tariff: The cost models that underlie the tariff proposal are based on assumptions of levels of use that may change because of the radical redesign of the tariff structure. If demand is lower than projected, especially at the peak, it is possible that the proposed tariff will yield excessive earnings. Therefore, the approved tariff should include provisions for monitoring revenue levels and for periodic adjustments and/or the return of excess earnings to consumers. These kinds of adjustment mechanisms are not difficult to embed within tariff decisions.
In 2011 I analyzed some earnings and employment data and initiated a debate on the health of the Sri Lanka IT and ITES sector. Links to the first and second columns. It appears that new data has come to light (though a source is not given and no reference is made to the sector study by the Export Development Board that I referred to in 2011). “As an industry, we made significant progress over the last five years. Our export revenue grew from $213m in 2007 to an estimated $600m in 2013 (182%).
These are impressive numbers, but they should be made available on TRC or ICTA website as a regular monthly/quarterly report. TRC reports much lower numbers. Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) CEO Reshan Dewapura noted that today, there are close to four million Sri Lankan citizens on the internet, which is a 20% penetration of the population. Over half of them access the internet through either mobile phones or wireless broadband dongles, which has grown eight times more than what it was in 2010. He also estimated that the total data consumption in Sri Lanka via mobile sims both on wireless broadband dongles or mobile phones is currently estimated at 2,000 terabytes per month.
In 2011, we wrote about the end of the telegram in Sri Lanka. When telecom and posts were bifurcated in Sri Lanka, telegrams went with posts, somewhat illogically. In India, they went with telecom, so they lasted a little longer. But BSNL’s failure to offer improved service and features while keeping price below costs did the telegram in nevertheless. The telegram or taar, once the bearer of urgent news, good or bad, will disappear once and for all on July 15, outpaced in the age of text messages and emails.
We are not even sure how many have died. But we are sure that too many have died as result of the strong winds that lashed the west coast the past few days. I could write a long essay. But instead, I will link to what we wrote after the mini cyclone of November 2011 off Matara-Weligama that saw the loss of too many lives and the usual calls for investigation and blame. The old post that includes outline of a solution.
For most of its existence the South Asian Telecom Regulators’ Council (SATRC) has been a talk shop, not particularly noted as being on the leading edge of anything. Therefore I was very pleased to see that it is being cited as the pioneer in implementing the APT’s 700 MHz band plan that will provide enough low-frequency spectrum for quick rollout of wireless broadband, an absolute necessity for a region that has very little wires connecting homes (and still not able to justify the costs of FTTH given what people are willing to pay for broadband). The only down note is about Sri Lanka (which prides itself as the first to introduce new technology in the region) keeping out of the South Asian consensus along with Iran. This is perhaps because the government handed out the 700 band frequencies to a large number of private TV broadcasters for nothing (for Treasury) over the past few years and is thus constrained. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report (November 2012), LTE networks are expected to cover 60% of the population in Asia Pacific by 2017, up from an estimated 1.
Several Sinhala newspapers and webpapers have reported that the government will henceforth give priority to delivering e gov services over mobile interfaces. I assume the English media will pick up this story in due course. This is good news for a country where mobiles are ubiquitous, but conventional desktop computer use is not. We at LIRNEasia have been hammering home the message that mobile must be given priority based on our Teleuse@BOP survey research since 2005. Specifically, this was a key message in the 2011 and 2012 Future Gov conferences in Colombo.
When LIRNEasia people were on the field interviewing BOP teleusers in Indonesia in 2011, we saw the proliferation of cheap smartphones. It appears from this report that this trend is moving to Sri Lanka as well. But the company says they will offer smart phones for as little as 15,000 rupees to close in the market gap of feature phone in the island. “We will offer smart phones at low prices to the masses to close the market gap of feature phones” Kalpa Perera, Samsung’s manger, mobile business in Sri Lanka said. Last year the phone company had sold half a million handsets of all types in Sri Lanka.