For World Telecom and Information Society Day, I wrote a column on the wrong-headed telecenter policy being implemented by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka with World Bank funds, where I referred to lessons from South Africa that were taken into account in the design, but ignored in the implementation. Here are some more lessons from Africa: Creative destruction: izi killed the public phones « abaporu project on technology appropriation All of a sudden, users don’t need the ‘public phones’ any more. In Senegal most of these télécentres have gone out of business. Bassirou Cissé, the general secretary of Unetts(*) says that “In 2000, there were 18,000 télécentres in Sénégal, accounting for 33% of the Senegalese operators’ revenues and 30,000 jobs. Today, most of them have closed down.
LIRNEasia is beginning its planning for the next research cycle on mobile multiple play, or how the mobile handset is beginning to emerge as the access point for a plethora of services, of which synchronous voice communication will be only one. Sports news, which Dialog introduced in Sri Lanka around 1998-99, will be an important product. Yes, the Screen Is Tiny, but the Plans Are Big – New York Times ESPN is clearly onto something. More than nine million people visit its cellphone Web site each month, a following that surpasses the audience of most computer-based Web sites. Some sports fans apparently cannot wait to reach their homes or offices to check the score of a Patriots game or to see if their favorite pitcher has tossed a no-hitter, so tens of thousands of them receive an average of 22 ESPN text messages on their phones each week.
LOW-INCOME TELEPHONE USERS IN ASIAHello, can you connect us? By Francis Hutchinson & Lorraine Carlos Salazar, For The Straits Times Source: The Straits Times, June 12 2007 – Review Section See print version NEW research on the use of telecommunications among low-income groups in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand challenges the conventional wisdom that, in developing countries, customers for high- technology goods are to be found only among high-income groups. According to a multi-country survey, the poor are already accessing telecommunications and form a large untapped market with significant unmet demand. This wide and deep client base offers vast opportunities for enterprising telecommunications companies if they can develop appropriate business models to cater to them.
14 June 2007) Rohan Samarajiva, Joseph Wilson, Harsha de Silva and Tahani Iqbal presented recent research conducted by LIRNEasia at a media and stakeholder event organized by the Pakistan Telecom Authority in Islamabad today. Following opening remarks by Chairman of PTA, Major General (R) Shahzada Alam Malik, Samarajiva and Wilson presented the new improved version of the six-country Telecom Regulatory Environment study, with emphasis on Pakistan. de Silva discussed the results of the Teleuse @ the Bottom of the Pyramid (T@BOP) survey conducted in five countries, including Pakistan. Among other things, he discussed the disparate access to ICTs between men and women at the BOP as well as the tremendous progress made in connecting large numbers of people at the BOP in the past few years. Iqbal presented comparative analysis of mobile prices in three countries of South Asia, using a basket methodology adapted from one used by the OECD since 1995.
Sri Lanka would soon be making mobile telephone numbers portable, telecom minister Rauf Hakeem said addressing the Sri Lanka Economic Summit 2007. Financial Times – Daily Mirror – 09-June-2007 The telecom industry will be ensured with a mobile number portability that is expected to result in more growth, Posts and Telecommunications Minister Rauff Hakeem said yesterday.
Sri Lanka’s Dialog Telekom has signed an investment agreement with the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BoI) to invest a further US$300 million in the country’s Telecoms and Media sectors within the next 2 years. A substantial portion of the total investment will be in fixed line Telephony and Broadband services via Dialog Broadband Networks (DBN), and Digital Television Broadcast services via Asset Media, respectively. The investments in DBN will be directed towards the growth of CDMA-based Rural Fixed Telecommunications Infrastructure, WiMax based wireless broadband infrastructure and for the deployment of a National Fibre Optic backbone. Read more.
European Parliament – News – Headlines – Article – Post Tsunami reconstruction – triumph or tragedy? Mr Jayantha Samarasinghe of the Sri Lanka reconstruction agency told MEPs of how reconstruction efforts were proceeding. Among the figures he cited were that 134 of the 183 damaged schools were back in action, 80 railway bridges had been rebuilt and 75% of the fishing sector had been restored.In terms of early warning he said that the Dutch government had donated 50 Tsunami early warning towers. He also said that villages in coastal regions in danger of flooding had all worked out “escape routes” to higher ground.
Rohan Samarajiva and Helani Galpaya discuss how research can influence the policy process. We are an evidence-based policy organization. We work around: Inputs (money, people, etc etc) Outputs (reports, training courses, etc) Outcomes (positive changes in the policy process) IDRC: Putting money into research organizations which produce knowledge produces development. Not just putting money into ICTs. Ways that research can affect policy: 1.
We have periodically carried stories on non-traditional uses of mobiles. Here is one about buying accident insurance that are bought and paid for through the mobiles. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO The accident insurance cover package premiums are priced between five and 20 rupees which can be paid at any Dialog reload centre in Sri Lanka that entitles the connection holder up to 50,000 rupees worth of claims. The accident cover targets the population who does not have comprehensive knowledge of insurance and low-income families. Customers can apply for the ‘eZ insurance’ cover at the time of a reload and the cover expires when the credit of the reload finishes.
The usually well-informed LBO.LK appears to have gotten confused in the “fog of war” created by interested parties seeking to extract rents from the sale of 25% of SLTL shares by NTT to GTH, both private companies, and by the unfortunate opacity of the transaction (something that is quite surprising because SLTL is a publicly traded company and the interests of thousands of shareholders are affected by the transaction). The source quoted by LBO below appears to have been quite familiar with the ORIGINAL shareholders agreement signed between the Government of Sri Lanka and NTT in 1997, but appears to have been comatose since then. Provisions regarding no universal service obligations (USO) and international exclusivities were in that agreement and did bind the Government of Sri Lanka. The no-USO provision continues to date, though the international exclusivity ended with the issuance of external gateway licenses in March 2003.
The title of the article “Sri Lanka to de-regulate payphone business,” is a little deceptive, but then that is probably not the fault of the Director General, but of the editor of LBO. LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Sri Lanka plans to allow third parties to operate payphone booths in an attempt to popularise them in far flung areas outside the city of Colombo, a top official said.The island’s eight public switched telephone network (PSTN) operators will now be allowed to appoint a third party to operate and maintain a public phone booth on a revenue sharing model. “Its a scheme similar to selling lottery tickets, where the lottery operator does not undertake the burden of running, maintaining and collecting the money,” the head of Sri Lanka’s telecom watchdog, Kanchana Ratwatte said.
It is good to have a confident Minister. Of course, we would sleep better if we were shown the results of some on-the-ground simulations, rather than given bland assurances. After all some of us remember his statements about the large number of warning towers that would be erected and operational by the second anniversary of the tsunami (and the actual outcome was . . .
The HazInfo paper on CAP titled — Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka: Challenges of Internetworking with Common Alerting Protocol, has been published in the ISCRAM proceedings. The conference took place from 13-16 May 2007in Delft, The Netherlands. The final program of the 4th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management available on their website. It contains the complete program, including the abstracts of all papers and presentations. Conference was held at the Techniche Universiteit Delft.
LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO The theme of the 2007 World Telecom and Information Society Day (May 17th) is connecting the young. It is difficult to connect the young without also connecting the old. The young usually connect within the context of economic and other decisions made by family units. This column examines what is required to connect families at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) in Sri Lanka, drawing from the findings of a five-country Teleuse@BOP study. Powered by ScribeFire.
Today, at a ceremony to sign a large number of investment agreements at the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka, it was revealed that Bharti Airtel, Sri Lanka’s fifth mobile operator, is planning to invest USD 150 million. This amount is below industry expectations and suggests that Bharti will start slow, with a conventional rollout concentrated in the Northwestern, Western and Southern provinces. Pity.
Informa: TM doubles international budget Telekom Malaysia (TM) has earmarked to spend MYR8 billion (US$2.3 billion) this year expanding its international mobile businesses in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which is considerably more than the MYR2.8 billion it spent on its overseas units last year. TM chief executive Datuk Abdul Wahid Omar said TM’s foreign operations are expected to make 30% of group revenue this year, compared with 25% in 2006. However, the group is planning to trim its 87% stake in Sri Lankan mobile operator Dialog Telekom to not less than 80%, Wahid is quoted as saying.