Contrary to jingoistic claims that foreign owned telcos draining out local resources, the telecom sector continues to bring in new investment from outside. In Pakistan, at one point, 50% of the FDI was telecom. If the breakdown is provided, it may well be that the telecom sector accounts for 50% of FDI in Sri Lanka too. “The BoI recognized Dialog Telekom as the company with the highest level of realized investment in 2007 totalling 328 million dollars in 2007.” Dialog Telekom, which has over four million subscribers, secured the top slot in investment rankings for the third year in succession having being recognized as Sri Lanka’s largest investor in 2005 and 2006 with investments of 90 million dollars and 150 million dollars.
While Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka awaits public comments on its ‘National Backbone Network’ proposed to be installed mostly as a fully government owned infrastructure to provide islandwide broadband links, New Zealand Government says it would be a huge waste of taxpayer money to put $1.5 billion into ultra-fast broadband access. New Zealand’s National Party leader John Key announced the ambitious plan to put broadband into every home and business through fibre cables over the next six years if his party wins the next election. Mr Key said that with the fibre network he wanted, people would be able to use the internet at lightning speed – essential if the country was to increase productivity and remain internationally competitive. But Communications Minister David Cunliffe saw nothing but problems and trouble.
The colloquium notes Lara Alawattegama (LA): Monopoly means ‘a market with a single supplier’ Why a monopoly happens: 1. No close substitutes 2. Legal barriers to entry 3. Resource barriers 4. Unfair competition -predatory pricing Rohan Samarajiva (RS) : Lack of competition leads to monopolies.
Do mobile phones pollute the environment? Sri Lanka’s Environment Minister Champika Ranawaka thinks so. That was why he wants to impose a so called ‘environment tax’ on mobiles, (in fact all phones, but the above newspaper article focuses on mobiles) at two points, when you purchase it and use it. This is on top of the rest of the tax components the mobile users already have to pay. No information to that mobile usage is a serious threat to Sri Lanka’s environment.
The 2008 Global Information Technology Report prepared for the World Economic Forum shows the five big countries of the SAARC backsliding in the rankings with small exceptions in the case of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which advanced from 86th place to 76th (using only 2006 countries; otherwise to 79th place) and from 118th place to 116th (again using only 2006 countries; if not, it would be in 124th place), respective.ly. India went from 44th place to 48th (2006 countries only; if not 50th). Pakistan from 84 to 85 (actual rank 89) and Nepal from 108th place to 111th (actual rank 119). The full report is here
Last week, Lankadeepa, the largest selling daily in Sri Lanka, published this photo of elephants eating the unsold vegetables at Dambulla econimic centre. The waste: 25 tons. The loss: entirely to farmers, according to Lankadeepa, as the vendors purchase them on credit and pay only for sold quantities. Primary wastage in vegetables and fruits is estimated to be more than 40% of the output in Sri Lanka. In other agri products it is more than 20% (Devagiri, 2005) While the reasons can vary, there is no doubt proper planning and management can reduce it.
23/03/08: Mobile phone service costs in Sri Lanka are cheap, even for the poor (Sinhala), Ravaya, Sri Lanka 25/03/08: Mobile is cheaper in Sri Lanka, even for the poor, The Daily News, Sri Lanka Two recent studies have found that Sri Lanka is among four countries that offer the most affordable mobile services to the poor in emerging Asia and the world. The first study conducted the LIRNEasia, a regional policy and regulation think tank, has found that the costs of using mobile telecom services are among the lowest in South Asia for all types of users. For the low user, essentially the poorer user, the average monthly cost of using a mobile in Sri Lanka is as low as US$ 3.83 per month if using prepaid. Sri Lanka came in fourth place in the affordability rankings for low users, not too far behind Bangladesh (USD2.
Sri Lanka agriculture could do with dose of IT – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE Greater use of information technology in Sri Lanka’s largely subsistence agriculture sector will help both farmers and consumers alike by reducing costs, a researcher has said. Harsha De Silva, lead economist at LIRNEasia, a think tank, said a system using IT that addresses the information needs from the decision making phase through the growth and sale of agricultural products will help balance the welfare of both consumers and farmers. “ICT (information and communications technology) can be used to reduce the information and observable transaction costs to create efficiencies in agricultural markets,” de Silva said. “And if we can create efficiencies in agricultural markets, we can create welfare on both sides of the equation,” he told a recent seminar on the role of ICT in agriculture. “The core will definitely have to be a system that marries the decision-making and selling and that is where ICT will take agriculture markets from this point on and that is where we see some variants of commodity exchanges developing.
Beyond Tunis: Changing Policy Rohan Samarajiva Government is about the sustenance of hope. Yet in too many places, government is about killing hope: “you can’t make it because you’re poor/ your ethnicity is wrong / you aren’t from the right school.” When hope is dead, when the pie looks like it’s not expanding, and the game is zero-sum, the path that remains is hatred. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) shake things up. Not necessarily for the better; but with prodding of the right kind and possibly some luck and happenstance, the equilibrium can be broken in a positive way.
Sri Lanka using customs authorities to censor academics: report – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE Another book by Rohan Samarajiva, from LirneAsia, a Colombo-based regional policy think tank, had been detained by customs from December. Samarajiva’s book, “ICT infrastructure in emerging Asia, Policy and Regulatory roadblocks” released by the Indian unit of academic publishing house, Sage, was launched in India in December. Sri Lanka;s customs chief Sarath Jayathilake was quoted in the report as saying that the detention was not brought to his attention and he was not aware why the books were seized. “We usually detain these books if it’s a matter of security and we refer them to Defence (Ministry) or the Government Information Department,” Jayathilake was quoted as saying. The LirneAsia publication had a chapter on telecommunications usage in the Jaffna peninsular.
There were no press invitations/news releases for our event on March 18, as we were only releasing preliminary data. LBO was perhaps the only media interested. Their report was not hundred percent correct saying the SLT (2M/512k) speeds were slower compared to comparable Dialog Broadband package always (They showed more or less on par performances in Dec 2007) but sans that see them presenting a fairly accurate picture . Extracts: Sri Lanka’s internet access quality through broadband within the local boundary is above regional thresholds but sparse local content drives users to access overseas sites at slower speeds, researchers said. The local speeds within Sri Lanka is comparatively higher to what users experience when accessing international web sites, web pages or servers that are located overseas.
Starting a business in Sri Lanka is not the easiest task in the world but how far that impedes Sri Lanka’s entry to global knowledge economy? This is one of the key questions posed by the World Bank publication The report identifies the business environment; information infrastructure; an innovation system; and human resources as four pillars of the knowledge economy. Challenges faced by Sri Lanka in becoming a knowledge economy are examined and the report proposes possible ways that Sri Lanka could move forward to build its knowledge economy under the country’s development strategy as outlined in the Mahinda Chinthana. ‘Building Sri Lanka’s Knowledge Economy’ to be launched Tuesday March 25, 2008 at 4th Floor, DFCC Bank Auditorium 73/5, Galle Road Colombo 3. LIRNEasia is happy to be a partner in publicizing this report perhaps for the first time seriously SWOTs Sri Lanka against similar countries and points out what it can learn from others.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke, resident of Sri Lanka, citizen of the United Kingdom, and man of the universe, passed away on the morning of the 19th of March. His was a life well lived. He will be remembered. Sir Arthur imagined what the world could be.
The State of “Broadband” in Sri Lanka – Take 1 « ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace) Lirneasia’s work (in particular their BOP research, on which I have still to write on in this blog) has helped me more than any other organisation to justify my on-going work with citizen journalism and new media as a means through which one can strengthen democratic governance, peace and fundamental rights. Years ago I began work on ICT4Peace with the hunch that mobile devices / phones would change the way in which citizens communicate with governance and governance mechanisms in the swabhasha, and that wireless internet access / cloud computing and diminishing costs of access would make them producers of content instead of passive recipients and consumers of content dished out to them by e-government initiatives with a downstream emphasis. It’s heartening to see research from Lirneasia supporting the validity of these early assumptions and my continuing work in ICT and peacebuilding. Powered by ScribeFire.
At last report, Hutch Sri Lanka had an ARPU of around USD 3. Sri Lanka Hutch subscribers double in 2007 – LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE Subscribers of the Sri Lanka mobile unit of Hutchison Telecom doubled to more than a million in 2007, while revenue growth topped 50 percent, the group said in a statement. Total subscribers had increased by 104 percent to 1,141,000 in 2007 while revenue measured in Hong Kong dollars grew 52.4 percent 189 million dollars (2.6 billion Sri Lanka rupees).
At a well attended public seminar yesterday (March 18) at Institution of Engineers (Sri Lanka), LIRNEasia released its Broadband QoSE testing methodology (named ‘AshokaTissa’, after the greatest collaboration between India and Sri Lanka, the movement of Buddhism across the Palk Strait) and the preliminary test results of three of the most widely used broadband packages in Sri Lanka, SLT Office (2 Mbps / 512 kbps), SLT Home (512 kbps / 128 kbps) and Dialog (2 Mbps / 512 kbps) This was followed by the responses from SLT and Dialog Broadband. The event was jointly organised by LIRNEasia and Institution of Engineers. (Sri Lanka) Speeches/Presentations available for downloading: Comments from the Chair – Rohan Samarajiva Introduction to broadband and Test Methodology – Timothy Gonsalves Preliminary QoSE test results – Chanuka Wattegama