Siddhartha Raja's blog

He deserves an apple

I'm happy to share that the ICT Sector Development Project for Afghanistan, a US$50 million IDA emergency grant, was approved by the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank on April 26, 2011. The Project is now effective and promises to be an exciting continuation of our partnership with the Government of Afghanistan in developing the ICT sector.

Read more about the Project here.

Convergence is radically changing the possibilities for broadband

 The United States Institute of Peace will be webcasting an event live on June 24, 2010 from 9am to 1pm (EDT) entitled " Can You Help Me Now? Mobile Phones and Peacebuilding in Afghanistan."

This event will bring together experts on international peacebuilding and mobile phone technology to focus on the use of mobile phones in one of the most difficult conflict environments today: Afghanistan.

With my co-author, Rajendra Singh, I had written two reports in 2008 on the topic of ICT convergence. These reports have been compiled with an updated introduction and are now available as a book published by the World Bank. I will be happy to answer any questions through this blog. 

You may also browse through this book in its entirety by clicking on the preview at the bottom of the page.

With broadband becoming an important topic in ICT policy discussions, it seems like the right time to publish a new report on what strategies and policies might help countries boost broadband access and use.

With the generous funding of the Korean Trust Fund for Information and Communications for Development (IC4D), I along with co-authors Yongsoo Kim and Tim Kelly, have prepared a report that does just that. 

What Jedi Grand Master Yoda might teach us about broadband*

A friend told me a while ago that a key reason why videocassette players and recorders (VCPs and VCRs) became a household phenomenon in the U.S. was the popularity of the Star Wars movie franchise. The first movie had its theatrical release in 1977. At that time, less than 1 percent of TV owning households in the U.S. had VCRs. By 1985, however, soon after Star Wars was released in VHS format, that number had risen to over 20 percent.

Lessons from the mobile revolution

The spread of the mobile telephone over the past decade has been nothing short of a revolution. According to market tracking firm Wireless Intelligence, in September 1999 there were about 340 million mobile telephone subscriptions worldwide. Ten years hence, that is less than the number of subscriptions in India or China alone, and worldwide the number has grown to 4.5 billion. There are valuable lessons from this revolution for the transformation we are hoping to see in broadband access and use.

Blurring distinctions between computers and mobile telephones promise increased access