As LIRNEasia plans its research program for 2008-09, the issue of money transfers through mobiles (first raised in the academic literature, to the best of my knowledge, by Professor Jens Arnbak in his contribution to a book that I co-edited in 2002) is rising in importance in the news as well as in our own thinking. Migrant Cash Is World Economic Giant – Forbes.com _ India is the world leader in remittances, taking in $23.7 billion in 2005 and an estimated $26.9 billion last year, the World Bank says.
Grameen’s famous Village Phone Program lifted thousands out of poverty– and helped Muhammad Yunus win the Nobel Peace Prize. The problem: It’s not working anymore. According to Grameen Telecom, the GrameenPhone affiliate that manages the program, profits per operator have been declining for years and in 2006 averaged less than $70. “The program is not dead,” says its manager, Mazharul Hannan, chief of technical services at Grameen Telecom, “but it is no longer a way out of poverty.” The reason is simple: Technology and GrameenPhone itself have made the village phone obsolete.
Motorola has been ranked at the top of the latest Vendor Matrix released by ABI Research. Nokia claimed the second spot, while Samsung and LG were ranked equally in third place in the company’s most recent evaluation of ultra low-cost handset vendors worldwide. ABI defines ultra low-cost handset that sells below US$50 in the retail outlets. Read more.
The total electronic equipment production in India will reach US$32 billion in 2011, compared to $14 billion in 2006, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 percent, according to Gartner. Semiconductor consumption in India will more than double from $2.8 billion in 2006 to $7.2 billion in 2011. The growth in electronic equipment production is being bolstered by the rapidly growing demand for electronics equipments in India.
The article also contains interesting data on minutes of use by age group. What’s Good for a Business Can Be Hard on Friends – New York Times Unlike traditional landline telephones, which once made callers distinguish between local and long distance, cellphone carriers divide the world into in-network and outside. And because basic plans from the three major cellphone carriers, Verizon, Sprint and AT&T, are all about the same price — under $60 a month — the deciding factor for young people, in particular, is what network friends are on. Carriers are giving customers more options to stay connected with people outside their network. This year, T-Mobile introduced a plan that allows customers to choose five telephone numbers outside its network that they can call free at any time.
NowPublic, the participatory citizen-journalist website that began life in a garage in Vancouver, Canada, has announced it has secured US$10.6 million in venture capital funding. The website allows anyone – from amateurs to professionals – to post news stories and upload images, videos, and audio files. The company, that claims to be the world’s fastest-growing news organisation, says 120,000 people from over 140 countries have contributed to the site since its launch in 2005. The website relies for its content on “crowdsourcing” – that it describes as being similar to outsourcing, but with unpaid or low-paid amateurs.
The telecom sector in Sri Lanka is expected to attract the bulk of the record USD 600 million in foreign direct investment expected in 2007: LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE – LBO Nor has violence deterred the 530 million dollars in foreign direct investment so far this year which is projected to exceed the 600 million dollars in 2006, according to bank figures. Most of the money from overseas has gone into telecom and IT-related services, distantly followed by garments and building of high-rise properties. Powered by ScribeFire.
LIRNEasia places emphasis on developing capacity for ICT policy and regulation in the region, as well as developing the capacity of the members of its own team. Part of the problem, we find, is that organizations do not put their money where their mouth is: while platitudes about the importance of training come easy to leaders of organizations, actually committing money for training and releasing staff for training does not come that easy. We try to walk the talk at LIRNEasia, but obviously we can be more systematic about it. Here is brilliant idea from IBM, which may be too complicated for an outfit that is still 12-14 people depending how the counting is done. But still worth thinking about.
The One Laptop Per Child project is one step closer to releasing the completed machine to millions of schoolchildren in the developing world. But what makes the computer so unique? Find out:http://news.bbc.co.
Many think that VoIP is the solution to all telecom problems. It is a solution, but not to all problems. It does not give you something for nothing, in the long run, though in the short term, something may be had for almost nothing. The articles describes the problems faced by VoIP operators in the US, where the basic infrastructure is already in place. In countries of the South, we have to keep in mind that the fiber has not been laid; the households have not all been connected; etc.
The OECD has published comparative data on broadband speeds and prices. This will help drive prices down and quality up. The rest of the countries need to develop their own benchmarks. BBC NEWS | Technology | Global broadband prices revealed According to the report, broadband prices for DSL connections across the 30 countries have fallen by 19% and increased in speed by 29% in the year to October 2006. Cable prices and speeds followed a similar trend.
Intel and $100 laptop join forces Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop per Child, said: “Intel joins the OLPC board as a world leader in technology, helping reach the world’s children. Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children.” Intel inside The new agreement means that Intel will sit alongside the 11 companies, including Google and Red Hat, which are partners in the OLPC scheme. It will also join rival chip-maker AMD, which supplies the processor at the heart of the $100 laptop. Powered by ScribeFire.
America’s 3rd largest cellphone provider, Sprint, is sending out letters to 1,100 of its subscribers informing them that their service will be summarily terminated by the end of this month. Because they make too many calls to Sprint’s customer service centres and helplines! The letters read, “Our records indicate that over the past year, we have received frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information. While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs. Therefore after careful consideration, the decision has been made to terminate your wireless service agreement effective July 30, 2007.
More mobile innovations. This looks like a body blow to fixed telephony in high-income households. IPhone-Free Cellphone News – New York Times It’s called T-Mobile HotSpot @Home, and it’s absolutely ingenious. It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, and yet enrich T-Mobile at the same time. In the cellphone world, win-win plays like that are extremely rare.
There is no reason why Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and even the microstates of Bhutan and Maldives cannot get BPO business, not in competition with the Indian juggernaut, but in a complementary way. Sri Lanka had no BPO business to speak of prior to 2002, despite similarities with South India where it was booming. It was only after the international liberalization of 2002-03 that BPOs started in a significant way in Sri Lanka, though that promising start has been affected by the unsettled security situation. For the policy makers and implementors in these countries to contemplate: 1 percent of USD 60 billion is USD 600 million. That is not chump change.
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.