DIRSI's projects - Overview

This page provides a brief overview of the components of DIRSI's research program, including the overarching themes that guide DIRSI's phase II regional research, the various research projects that address those themes, research support and capacity building activities available to ICT policy actors and young researchers, and links to completed research projects.

Themes

Two overarching research themes, Emerging Models for Universal Access and ICT Indexes, provide a framework for collaborative regional research during the 2009-2011 cycle. Each theme is addressed by two or more research projects. 

• Bandwidth for All will examine the conditions that would enable viable and efficient delivery of affordable voice and data to all economic sectors in the region while devising regulatory frameworks that will avoid the problems of uneven network development and insufficient market efficiency.
• Mobile Opportunities 2.0 will extend the reach and scope of DIRSI's 2006-07 Mobile Opportunities study by mapping the availability advanced mobile services for the poor and identifying the regulatory and policy practices that are conducive to their faster deployment and wider use.

• Mobile Affordability and Pricing will develop indicators and tools that will allow ICT policy actors to track affordability levels of mobile telephony as tariffs and macroeconomic variables change over time.
• Broadband Affordability and Access Inequality will build on DIRSI's earlier work on mobile use by the poor and extend it to examine broadband services. Further, it will adapt the tools developed in the Mobile Affordability and Pricing study to include broadband service provision.

Research support and capacity building activities 

• When exploring policy alternatives policymakers and advocacy groups alike often lack expertise that would enable them to identify and analyse available options or to develop ideas for innovative policy solutions. Known by its Spanish acronym, MARTA is the Support Mechanism for Telecommunications Regulation in Latin America (Mecanismo de Asistencia para la Regulación de las Telecomunicaciones en América Latina). It is a program designed to facilitate the work of regional experts and researchers with current regulatory themes. Regulatory agencies, government bodies and advocacy groups will be invited to submit requests for projects.
• From its inauguration in 2007, there has been enthusiastic participation in DIRSI’s Young Researcher Competition, which provides financial support and capacity-building opportunities to young Latin American scholars. A call for project proposals on key DIRSI research themes will be disseminated and selected projects will be provided with financial support, mentoring, peer review, and coaching on how to submit their work to journals.

Completed research projects

• During 2006-07 DIRSI conducted a multi-component regional study on ICT access strategies and usage patterns by the poor, with a specific focus on mobile telephony. The results of the Mobile Opportunities: Poverty and Mobile Telephony in Latin America and the Caribbean research project confirmed the extent and depth of the diffusion that mobile telephony has achieved among poor households.

• Also during its 2006-07 cycle DIRSI, in cooperation with LIRNE.NET, published Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) assessment studies in six countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region (Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Uruguay). These studies are periodically updated.

• Completed in 2006 DIRSI's work on Digital Poverty was a pioneering effort to explore the challenges faced by low-income users in their efforts to be part of the information society. The work culminated in the book Digital Poverty: Latin American and Caribbean Perspectives.