Earlier this year the TRC appointed a special committee to develop broadband in Sri Lanka. Possibly based on its recommendations the TRC has issued new directives on broadband, placing emphasis on customer’s right to know, an approach we at LIRNEasia also promoted a few months prior to the constitution of the committee. The guidelines had been issued in August. We regret not giving them publicity at the time. With the intention of raising awareness among broadband subscribers, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission has issued a set of guidelines for broadband service providers.
The Real-Time Biosurveillance Program (RTBP) held a news conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka on September 14, 2010 at the Cinnamon Lake Side Hotel. This is list of the articles published in the News papers:
The ITU dataset is the mother lode, mined by all. But sometimes, it is good to interrogate the quality of what the ITU produces. The most recent instance of ITU data being subject to sophisticated analysis without any attention being paid to the quality of the data is by noted ICT4D scholar, Richard Heeks. In a previous essay, Heeks interrogated the numbers emanating from the ITU on “mobile subscriptions.” It is a pity the same was not done in the recent piece on Internet and broadband.
For the perpetually connected, the experience of being unconnected is salutary; but not pleasant. The Sinharaja Forest Reserve is a world heritage site about three hours driving distance from Colombo. I spent two days there and unexpectedly found myself unconnected, except for a single location in the hotel that allowed the sending and receiving of texts if the phone was held high! It is not that the place is completely disconnected from electronic networks. I paid for the hotel using a credit card, which was processed through a fixed line.
Workaround, a term that describes an improvisation when the optimal solution is not available, is a key element in LIRNEasia’s work. Not that we particularly like them, but it seems that workarounds are all there are in our region, because governments fail to provide the optimal solutions. I was planning to write a short piece on the workaround that connected Sri Lanka first to email and then to the Internet back in the early 1990s based on a talk I gave at the .lk conference early July. But since the paper doesn’t look like it will get written right now and because I want to crowdsource the fact checking, I am posting the slides here: Dot LK .
I was impressed when the ICT Agency made a presentation at a recent conference, that included a detailed response to concerns that Sri Lanka was dropping in international rankings in the ICT space. The presentation included action items that would address weak points and would thus result in improved rankings. e government was central to the design of e Sri Lanka and is perhaps the program area that has absorbed most of the USD 83 million funds. Therefore, the UN e gov rankings are very important. Sadly, the 2010 rankings indicate that Sri Lanka’s position has deteriorated in relative and absolute terms.
The key take home from the workshop were: the Regional Epidemiologist – Dr. P. Hemachandra – stressing the need for Syndromic surveillance; especially, the ability to monitor escalating fever like disease and geographic clusters of increase in common symptoms. Dr. Lakshman Edirisinghe (Deputy Director Planning) emphasized the need for comprehensive patient clinical data for becoming a data driven organization that can optimize the resources opposed to speculative expert opinion.
LIRNEasia’s preliminary round of mobile broadband quality testing in selected locations in Western Province unveils both hopes and issues. The good news is that the quality of both key pre-paid mobile broadband services is satisfactory, in majority of locations. However, unusual quality drops in several places indicates that this performance is not always a certainty. In general, a mobile broadband user in Western Province can expect a reasonable quality unless a rare issue like the distance from a tower or a higher number of simultaneous users hinders it. LIRNEasia tested the broadband quality of the popular pre-paid High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) broadband connections of the two key providers.
CHAKULA is a newsletter produced by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). Named after the Swahili word for ‘food’, it aims to mobilise African civil society around ICT policy for sustainable development and social justice issues. The latest issue features an e-interview with LIRNEasia’s CEO Rohan Samarajiva, but it is not the only reason why we thought of highlighting the issue. The content is interesting and very readable. We publish two e-interviews from July 2010 issue here fully, as they are not available on public domain.
We live in an age of hazards. The climate change will make it worse. Be prepared or perish seems to be the nature’s message. At the inaugural public lecture of LIRNEasia’s annual Disaster Risk Reduction events, we will discuss how best to face the future threats and what the communities, government and private sector can do. PRESENTATION Vinya Ariyaratne is General Secretary of the Lanka Jatika Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya.
When we talk about taking research to policy, we say that it is better to change the way policy makers think than change policy. One of our big wins was the inclusion of sustainable dam safety measures in a USD 71 million World Bank credit to the Government of Sri Lanka. Now we read this in the 2010 first budget speech: Hon. Speaker while expanding irrigation infrastructure, we must also devote adequate resources for the maintenance of both minor and major irrigation systems to ensure their safety and improve water management in downstream development. The government has already implemented a programme to improve dam safety in all major irrigation projects and increase water reservoir capacity.
Given the interest rate spread that is generally high, it did not take much effort to make money from banks in Sri Lanka. But state banks are state banks. You’d expect them and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority to be highest revenue earners for the government. But nothing can keep up with what the TRC gives the Treasury: It would take 2.3 billion rupees coming from Bank of Ceylon, 1.
LIRNEasia regularly surveys SEC group D and E (the bottom of the pyramid) teleuse in emerging Asian countries. In the study it was found that less than one percent of the Sri Lankan BOP phone users who are aware of mobile 2.0 services regularly use it. Highlighting this fact we ran an advertisement in the Daily Mirror today. The advertisement’s objective was to show what the policy makers and regulators can do and thereby what the service providers could do to boost up Mobile 2.
We were happy to note that the Telecom Regulatory Commission has pulled the plug on a senseless project that we criticized when first announced and once again, for emphasis. It will be interesting to see how much Surrey Satellite Technology, a firm fronted by the son of an English Lord of some kind, cleared in fees in the past year. I met the man in Colombo. Obviously he would not have paid his way here. The TRC will not proceed with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, the British firm which was commissioned to set up the Sri Lanka Space Communications Company last year, due to the high costs involved.
The Colloquim was conducted by Nuwan Waidyanatha from China while Chamindu Sampath projected the slides at LIRNEasia. Introduction to research The project is taking place in Kurunagala and Tamil Nadu. In 24 health sub centres and 4 public Helath Centres in Tamil Nadu and in Sri Lanka in 12 Hostpitals Disease infomation The system architecture Determinants of Morbidity in India Determinants of notifiable diseases in Sri Lanka RTBP Communication Technology mHealthSurvey mobile application T-Cube Web Interface Sahana Messaging/Alerting Module mhealthSurvey Shortcomings Certification exercises Signal to Noise Ratio Real-Time vs Off-time Semantics and syntax Cost benefits Objective of the Research The basic objective was to see if we can collect data and detect and report the outbreaks. Specific Objectives: Evaluating the effectiveness of the m-Health RTBP for detecting and reporting outbreaks Evaluating the benefits and efficiencies of communicating disease information Contribution of community organization and gender participation Develop a Toolkit for assessing m-Health RTBPs The Data collection is done by Health workers and goes through the mHealthSurvey mobile phone software to the Epidemiologist for spatial and temporal analysis done using T-Cube Web Interface before going to the Sahana Alerting Module Interface and then agian to the health workers. A sequence analysis of the functions […]
A Sri Lanka newspaper article reporting on a talk I gave last week that was based on the Budget Telecom Network Model used the headline “Poor is the future.” Pity the newspaper did not pick up what I said about “more-than-voice” services offered by telcos making the poor less poor; not taking money from their pockets, but putting money in their pockets or at least allowing them to keep their money. The poor is the market for the telecoms industry, a former regulator said. Professor Rohan Samarajiva, former Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (T.R.