A major step in consumer protection has occurred in the US, with customers now being warned when their data usage and bills go above a threshold. Is this a problem for us in South Asia. Yes, for the TOP (top of the pyramid) customers who actually receive bills. But for our clients, the bottom of the pyramid teleusers, there will be no shock; just disconnect. Because 99.
infoDev has released the Sri Lanka broadband study authored by Helani Galpaya. The introduction: Sri Lanka, an island nation located in the Indian Ocean just south of India, has lately experienced an explosion in the use of broadband services. This report, part of the Broadband Strategies Toolkit, explores the various factors that have contributed to Sri Lanka’s broadband success, ranging from innovative business models to government investment in e-development services.
We immersed ourselves in agriculture for 3-4 hours yesterday in conversation with visiting colleagues from the University of Alberta, working up a proposal on food security. When asked for a definition of food security, they responded in terms of shorter distances food was transported. I was reminded of the archetypal “bad” food value chain that got much play when there was fire in one of the Swiss road tunnels: potatoes grown in Poland, transported by truck (despite Europe’s vaunted and subsidized railways) to Italy for processing, and then hauled back as French Fries across those same tunnels back to Germany and Poland. It seems common sensical that food that puts on less miles would be better. So what are such value chains in Sri Lanka?
Most people are electronically connected to each other and to their governments. This happened in our countries in the past decade. How does this translate into being treated with more respect as a citizen? Almost everyone has experienced the frustration of going to the wrong office; of going to the right office but being told the right official is absent; of finding the right official and being told the documentation is not complete; of having the required documents but not having the payment in the right form, and so on. For those whose language is not Sinhala, there is the added frustration of not being able to communicate, not being able to read the forms.
The ICT Development Index (IDI) rankings by the ITU are out. Vietnam, a high performer on all composite ICT rankings, has leaped forward from 91st place to 81st place, in a rare 10-place advance. In South Asia, Bhutan advanced four places to 119th; Nepal by three places to 134th; and India and Sri Lanka advance by one place to 116th and 105th respectively. Pakistan and Bangladesh drop two places each to 123rd and 137th, respectively. Maldives, the leader among the South Asian countries, drops one place to settle at 67th place.
The m payments in buses research conducted as part of the Mobile 2.0 component of the 2008-10 research cycle is about to be piloted by the private bus owners association: “The private bus industry in Sri Lanka incurs an immense loss of more than Rs.13 billion annually due to the current system of collecting bus change from passengers. The government incurs an annual loss of about Rs.500 million owning to the production of coins each year.
Our good friend Nalaka Gunawardene has blogged about the difficulties of figuring out how many people are actually using the Internet in Sri Lanka. He shares our frustration with the archaic data reporting by the TRCSL. This produced a total of 2,184,018 — which takes the percentage of population to almost 11%. And if we apply the same average number of 3 users, it could give us 30% of population accessing and using the Internet. But is that assumption of 3 users per subscription equally applicable to mobile devices?
Reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a rite of passage for college students (should still be). The key point I took away from it was the need to focus on quality. My most favorite economics book is Exit, Voice and Loyalty, by Albert Hirschman. Also a discourse on quality. Perhaps because I read Zen at an impressionable age .
A research article that will shortly be published in Information Technology and International Development got me thinking about Engel’s Law, which states that as income rises, the proportion of income spent on food falls, even if actual expenditure on food rises. The article is by Aileen Aguero, Harsha de Silva and Juhee Kang. It’s not about food prices, per se, but about some extensions that allow the identification of necessary goods and luxuries. Their interesting finding is that voice telephony is a necessity in Asia (in the six countries covered by LIRNEasia’s teleuse@BOP research), while it is still a luxury in Latin America. How could the same thing be a luxury in one place and a necessity in another?
Linking Knowledge to Innovation in Government Services: The Case of Solid Waste Services in Local Government in Sri Lanka
LBO.lk has carried a report on the TRE results for Sri Lanka, in relation to comparators. I understand this will also come out on TV on Lanka Business Reports. The telecom survey was conducted in seven countries including Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The survey systematically captures the perception of operators, vendors and public interest groups at top management level.
This is an estimate from a consumer goods retailer that sells 500 laptops a month. When LIRNEasia’s teleuse@BOP results come out later this month we will be able to see what the numbers are at the bottom of the pyramid. Perhaps this was one of the questions asked in the census? We tried to propose some questions, but they closed early. Albert Tung regional director for South Asia at Asus Technology says it is the third best selling notebook brand in the world.
We’re generally in favor of budget business models, but export industries that do not earn enough per employee to pay a decent wage have to be an exception. Here is some analysis I did on the Sri Lanka software export and offshoring BPO industries, based on official figures: The total software earnings of USD 294 million are produced by 27,000 people. That is LKR 99,825 per employee per month. Lower than I expected. On the BPO side, 13,000 people produce USD 98 million.
The World Economic Forum has issued its Global Information Technology Report which includes the NRI rankings. I find the sub indices always more instructive but for now, only the top line aggregate rankings are discussed. The big winner, among the countries LIRNEasia works in and the WEF covers, is Indonesia, advancing from 67th place in 2009-10 to 53rd place in 2010-11, a massive jump of 14 places. Sri Lanka has advanced six places from 72nd to 66th. Bangladesh advances three places to 115th, from 118th.
LIRNEasia’s research on agricultural value chains is in the press. Nilusha Kapugama’s response to a feature on one of the most successful rubber smallholder cooperatives has been carried in the Sunday Times. It covers the topics of start-up costs, law and order issues and the high transaction costs that prevent more auctions being conducted (and Padeniya not expanding): Our research included conversations with a key mover in the Padeniya Thurusaviya society, Mr Berty Lionel. We agree that Padeniya is a great success. Where we differ is on the likelihood it can easily be replicated across the rubber-growing areas.
Starting with a low base, but 62,000 well paying jobs is a great achievement. Sri Lanka’s information and communications technology workforce has doubled in the past four years as the island ramps up training and investment to make the sector a key export industry. A new survey said the number of ICT sector jobs increased by 100 percent to over 62,000 this year from 30,120 in 2006. Over 50,000 people are estimated to have been employed in the IT sector in 2010. The national ITC workforce survey by the state-run Information and Communication Technology Agency covered 80 state institutions, 325 private sector firms, 30 BPO (business processing outsourcing) firms, and 75 IT training institutes.