SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Telecommunication Systems Laboratory (TSLab), KTH School of ICT, Campus
IT University, Kista

Postal Address: KTH School of ICT/TSLAB, Electrum 229, 164 40 Kista
Visiting address: Isafjordsgatan 39, Kista (how to get there)
Web pages: TSLab webpage now under reconstruction due to reorganisation.
          Old website belonging to Dept. of Microelectronics and Information Technology, IMIT – www.imit.kth.se
          Information about recent development projects available at http://csd.ssvl.kth.se/
Contact person: Professor Björn Pehrson, +46 (0)8 790 4284, mobile: +46 (0)70 625 6140

Research connected to South Asia:

TSLab research is conducting research on strategies for how to build sustainable telecommunication markets in rural areas to provide universal access to communication services, including voice, TV/Video and broadband data services.
The approach is to start with user requirements. An important contribution to the sustainability of local communication markets is the communication requirements of public sector, especially healthcare, education and local administration. The market can be built by procuring the communication services from local entrepreneurs to establish a basic infrastrcuture that can be expanded to meet the needs of private sector and civil society.
The research includes issues related to policy and regulatory frameworks, technical solutions and business models. A model based on open regulatory regimes, low cost technology and small scale access networks operated by local entrepreneurs is being developed and evaluated in testbeds and pilots.
To support local capacity building, the testbeds and pilot networks are established in a way that involves local universities and their graduate students. A problem-oriented, project-driven development framework has been developed involving all stakeholders in a steering committee. Selected experts as advisors and mixed project teams of students from local universities as well as from Swedish universities, to reinforce the peer learning and vicarious learning components. Information about recent projects conducted according to this model is available at http://csd.ssvl.kth.se/

TSLab has partners involved in this research all over South Asia, including Bangladesh (in partnership with the IT University’s Dept. of Applied Information Technology, 2IT), India (University of Mumbai), Pakistan (Higher Education Commission and several major universities in Islamabad/Ravalpindi, Lahore and Karachi) and Sri Lanka (University of Colombo and Jaffna), and in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Laos (National University of Laos).