There was a big story about SMS use declining in India. The response to a question whether Sri Lanka SMS use is declining like in India was answered in the negative by Supun Weerasinghe, the new CEO of Dialog Mobile (Hans Wijayasuriya is now the Group CEO). The question was triggered by the decline of SMS and VAS revenues from LKR 1,468 m in 2006 3Q (8% of total revenues) to LKR 1,223 m in 2007 3Q (5% of total revenues).
i4d, a reputed Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) magazine, recently featured an article co-written by LIRNEasia researcher Ayesha Zainudeen based on LIRNEasia‘s Teleuse at the Bottom of the Pyramid study conducted in 2006. The article highlights the study’s main findings with a special emphasis on the gendered aspects of telecommunications use at the BOP. Phones at the bottom of the pyramid: Telecom Accessibility – i4d Magazine In a 2006 five-country study, which was conducted by LIRNEasia, researchers asked 6,269 respondents in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Thailand about their access to, and use of telephones. Those surveyed were all users at the lowest socio-economic strata in the countries, at ‘the bottom of the pyramid’ (BOP). Their responses revealed many differences between users in the five countries, but more interestingly, inter-country inequalities in phone use between men and women.
Does Sri Lanka have a comparative advantage in tuition? Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math – New York Times A leading candidate to watch, according to analysts, is TutorVista, a tutoring service founded two years ago by Krishnan Ganesh, a 45-year-old Indian entrepreneur and a pioneer of offshore call centers. Concerns about the quality of K-12 education in America and the increased emphasis on standardized tests is driving the tutoring business in general. Traditional classroom tutoring services like Kaplan and Sylvan are doing well and offer online features.
The Lakbima newspaper (30 October 2007) reports that Central Environmental Authority Chairman and Jatika Hela Urumaya politician Udaya Gammanpila is advocating a “green tax” on mobile phones, tyres, electronic equipment and asbestos. It appears that the JHU has a vendetta against the 6 million plus mobile users in Sri Lanka. They originated the idea of taxing mobiles to pay for government expenses (an amended law to this effect was enacted in September 2007); and now they want to impose another tax, this time in the name of the environment. Why not on fixed phones? On computers?
The article below (issued to mark International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction, 11 days late) says that the manner in which warning are communicated “typically disadvantage women.” The “evidence” or illustration used to support this broad claim is strained, to say the least. Our experience with the HazInfo project in Sri Lanka was quite the opposite. It will be interesting to see what others think. OneWorld South Asia Home / News:Opinion & Comment – Disaster lessons from the past Early warning systems are critical to reducing the impact of floods, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and other disasters.
Rural BPO at Mahavilachchiya received wide publicity yesterday, with several local newspapers prominently highlighting the to-be-success story like Sunday Times did below in a first page half page article, and a finance editorial. BPO in the Anuradhapura backwoods IT rumble in the jungle What puzzles us is why some of these articles (Not the Sunday Times story) referred to the venture as a ‘corporate responsibility’ (an euphemism for ‘charity’) of John Keels Holdings (JKH), a top business conglomerate in Sri Lanka. When Indian Tobacco Company (ITC) launched e-Choupal chain in India, nobody branded it ‘corporate responsibility’. It was an online window for its rural suppliers of first tobacco and later other agricultural/aquaculture produce like soya, coffee, and prawns, to interact directly with the company. It was part of ITC business and definitely not charity.
Sri Lankan government withdrew proposed regressive tax of LKR 50 per month of its new tax proposals on mobile subscribers. LIRNEasia’s research evidence from the T@BOP study played an important role in pointing out the likely adverse effect of the proposed regressive tax on the mobile users at the “Bottom of the Pyramid”. The following are the articles/discussions on this topic. Sri Lanka plans to tax mobiles more heavily Taxing Sri Lanka’s mobile customers; Goose or eggs? Sri Lanka drops unfair mobile phone tax, slaps higher usage tax The following is an extract of the The Parliament of Sri Lanka’s Hansard on Mobile Taxation Issue on 6th September 2007.
The Daily Mirror, a leading English daily in Sri Lanka, recently featured an article on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its potential to drive productivity at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The article cited research conducted by LIRNEasia on telecom users at the BOP and the pioneering Grameen microfinance approach to extending telecom access to the poor. The notion that users at the bottom of the pyramid are either unwilling or unable to access telecommunication facilities is effectively dismissed by the findings of the LIRNEasia cross-country research, which indicates that low income users in Sri Lanka averaged about 23 calls per month, while those in India and Pakistan averaged more than 30 and those in the Philippines averaged around 16…A particularly interesting conclusion that emerges from this research is the perception that accessibility to telephony helps in reducing the gap between the rich and the poor and in instilling a feeling of social mobility among the poor. Continue reading ‘Driving productivity at the bottom of the pyramid: How ICT can help’. Print version also available here: .
Prof. Rohan Samarajiva and Tahani Iqbal discuss issues regarding implementing mobile number portability in Sri Lanka in a leading local English daily Daily Mirror. Sri Lankan mobile users and service providers can be optimistic about MNP. It has resulted in better rates even in countries which had lower rates than ours before MNP. It will result in an overall improvement of the quality of services.
Harsha de Silva, who studied the first least-cost-subsidy auction in Asia in Nepal as part of the 3rd cycle of WDR research, draws out the lessons for Sri Lanka in an op-ed piece published in Sri Lanka’s leading English language daily. Now that Nepal is considering another least-cost-subsidy auction, the subject has become topical in Nepal too. The detailed study is available on the web. The article can be downloaded here. :: Daily Mirror – FINANCIAL TIMES :: An effective access regime that will allow optimal use of the existing backbone, better interconnection enforcement throughout the country, transparent licensing that would remove the pall of corruption or allegations of corruption hanging over the Telecom Regulatory Commission and the licensing authorities, more transparent and efficient spectrum management including the complete unlicensing of WiFi frequencies; deregulation of tariffs to the extent possible like in India are the low-cost option that will enable more people to use telecom and Internet services, not high-cost and low-thought subsidy schemes.
Gordon Gow, a lead researcher in the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System (LM-HWS) Pilot (HazInfo project), presented the paper titled – “Community-based Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka: Performance of Alerting and Notification in a Last-Mile Message Relay” at the 1st Wireless Rural and Emergency Communications (WRECOM) Conference in Rome, Italy, Oct 01-02. One of Gordon Gow’s key contributions to the HazInfo project was the Common Alerting Protocol Profile for Sri Lanka, which was a hard case as far as integrating the multi-language scenario as it is the case in Sri Lanka. The CAP Profile for Sri Lanka was designed for disseminations in Sinhala, Tamil, and English languages. Such a complex profile of CAP was field tested in Sri Lanka’s HazInfo project. This was the first time a Multilanguage profile was field tested in the World.
Since Bangladesh was connected to the world through an undersea cable a year or so ago, it has had great difficulty keeping connected. The dry portion of the cable snapped twice in August 2007. Contrast this with Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which have had problems only once each in the past five years. Obviously redundancy is a key issue in Bangladesh. :: bdnews24.
LIRNEasia lead economist Harsha de Silva recently had the honor of hosting 2006 Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus on his weekly television show; Biz1st: In- Focus, which runs on MTV and Shakthi TV in Sri Lanka. A five minute cut on the discussion, where Professor Yunus discusses how a “digital genie” will appear from the “Aladdin’s lamp” [the mobile phone] to empower the poor, has been linked below.
Hutch entered the Sri Lanka telecom market in 1998. Due to various reasons, the entry was not as successful as many expected, and it quietly settled into last place. But a sea change has occurred recently, with the BOI reporting that Hutch is just behind Dialog in investments in the telecom sector. The results are beginning to show, with rapid growth (below); innovation (they were the first to introduce mobile financial transfers between two Hutch customers; Me2U); and more than respectable EBITDAs. Living proof that there is a fortune to be made at the bottom of the pyramid.
On October 1, LIRNEasia’s Director of Strategic Development Helani Galpaya made a presentation at the University of Southern California. Her title is a play on an old song celebrating the golden era of radio: “Video killed the radio star.” The slides she used are available here . USC Annenberg | Annenberg Research Network on International Communication Speaker Series: Helani Galpaya Join students and faculty for a presentation by LIRNEasia’s Director of Strategic Development, Helani Galpaya. Her topic: “Mobile Kills the Telecenter Star.
:The Daily Star: Internet Edition Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka’s largest community-based organisation, and LIRNEasia, a regional ICT policy think-tank, collaborated on a 32-village pilot project that sought to identify the best technologies for reaching villages; to identify the significance of organisational strength and training for risk reduction; and to assess the participation of women in these activities.The community-based approach implemented in the project is different from a public-warning approach, but has lessons for government communications with first responders and for community organisation and training as well. For example, the project field tested addressable and remotely activated satellite radios that have coverage over the entire Bay of Bengal region. Other equipment deployed included Java and Symbion enabled mobile handsets capable of generating loud alarms and multi-language alert messages. The Bangladesh Network Office for Urban Safety (BNUS) of the Department of Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) is co-organising a workshop with LIRNEasia entitled “Sharing Knowledge on Disaster Warning: Community-based Last Mile Warning Systems” to discuss the findings of the Last Mile Hazard Warning System (Hazinfo) Pilot Project as well as share the lessons of community-based last mile warning systems in Bangladesh.