Document(s) 15 of 21

The preceding sections presented rich evidence on different aspects of connectivity assembled by a team of researchers bouncing ideas among each other and with policy makers, regulators, and operators. Some of the evidence has already been incorporated in policy, for instance, the reduction of Indonesian leased-line prices by 50 percent and the inclusion of mobile operators among the potential beneficiaries of Indian Universal Service Obligation funds.

The team hopes that their research will be read by other scholars and cited in literature. But even more, they hope that their ideas will be used to improve policy and regulation in the Asia-Pacific and elsewhere; they hope that this book will contribute to the advancement of LIRNEasia's mission 'to improve the lives of the people of the Asia Pacific by facilitating their use of information and communication technologies; by catalyzing the reform of the laws, policies and regulations to enable those uses; and by building Asia-Pacific-based human capacity through research, training, consulting and advocacy.'

It was thought that responses by three professionals approaching the subject from three widely different vantage points would add greater value to the reading experience than a lengthy summary and conclusion from the team itself. LIRNE asia is known for having a viewpoint, but not necessarily one viewpoint. Yet, on the whole, those who are part of the LIRNE asia team tend to share a greater skepticism of the capabilities and good intentions of governments and place greater weight on the value of broader participation in solving the problems of connectivity. The objective of LIRNEasia is to challenge the ossified orthodoxies that have held back the realization of human potential in the Asia-Pacific, not to build another orthodoxy. It was thought that the considered responses of 'outsiders' who did not necessarily share the core values of LIRNEasia would sharpen the debates and enhance the value of the book for readers. Of course, by the time the book was completed, the outsiders had become valued colleagues.

This section begins with a lengthy engagement with the research presented in the book by Mahinda Herath, the General Manager of Regulatory Affairs at Sri Lanka Telecom Limited, the Sri Lankan incumbent controlling 78 percent of the fixed market, acting as the third-place attacker in the mobile market, and dominating the data market. Understandably, Herath does not agree with many of the conclusions drawn by the researchers. But the disagreements are not very deep. For example, he defends the Indian policy makers for limiting access to universal service funds to fixed operators, essentially the Indian incumbent. But he does not disagree with the recent decision to include mobile operators within the scope of universal service disbursements.

Rajendra Singh, former Secretary of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India, assisted by Siddhartha Raja of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the USA provides a focused reflection on the challenges facing regulators as they seek to serve the next billion, in his engagement with the ideas presented in the book, especially the findings on what teleusers at the BOP want. This reflective practitioner sees users as participants in the innovation process, co-inventing the products and services of the ICT industry. Singh sees the enormous dynamism introduced into the system by the broadening of participation in the design, production, and consumption of ICT products and services by liberalization as liberating, despite the fact that it makes his job so much harder to do than in the good/bad old days when a customer could have any telephone he/she liked in the same standard black and at the same standard price.

The literal last words come from Visoot Phongsathorn, Deputy Director of the Thai-German Programme for Enterprise Competitiveness' Business and Financial Services Component: 'Solutions may lie in unexpected places. Let markets lead you there.' Phongsathorn is an outsider to telecom; the closest intersections between his world and the subject matter of this book being in driving reforms of public utilities within the Thai government and in an abiding interest in transactions and transaction-costs, both in theory as well as in practise. He advocates with Singh the importance of policy and regulatory humility: regulators' main tasks are to let telecom markets move forward with as many unpredictable results as the people outside government are willing to allow. Phongsathorn has a high tolerance for unpredictability, a necessary outcome of the minimally structured decentralized decision-making processes he so passionately promotes.

That, possibly, is what this whole enterprise is about: decentralized decision-making processes enabled by the lowering of barriers to participation in the business of co-innovating the ways in which we connect with other human beings. And for what end? To participate more fully, and unpredictably, in society, the polity and the economy.

Document(s) 15 of 21