Role of Universal Service Obligation Fund in Rural Telecom Services: Lessons from the Indian Experience

Despite the tremendous growth of mobile services in most developing countries, these have largely remained limited to urban areas. This has further aggravated the existing urban and rural divide. Policy makers and regulators perceive the need for an effective regulatory and policy environment to reduce the gap, as there are several market challenges in this endeavor, including low commercial viability. However, most such interventions have had little success. This paper outlines India.s experience of increasing rural teledensity, including its recent policy initiative to increase penetration through creation of a Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) that supported a variety of innovative initiatives. USOF.s most ambitious program to date had been the design and deployment of mobile services in rural areas. This paper analyses the outcomes of various programs, especially those of the mobile service provision component of USOF. Despite the innovative design of the USOF program, it had little impact on increasing rural teledensity. On the other hand, positive policy steps that reduced the costs for service provision (revenue shares, duties, ADC) and competition facilitated greater rural penetration. This raises the issue of role of government vis-�-vis private sector in increasing rural teledensities. The lack of accountability arising from the relationship between the government owned incumbent and the USOF administrator and proper evaluation of USOF, the non-ring fencing of the fund and poor quality project management contributed to the low impact. Non-involvement of private operators at an early stage, inability to suitably enforce any penalties for violation of contracts, and non-existent review and feedback mechanism have not allowed USOF to leverage the benefits of an early start. In Peru, strict penalties in non implementation of contracts led to more timely schedules (Cannock, 2001). Since USOF is a highly visible program, it is important to generate high impact outcomes. On the strategic front, USOF needs to be managed by an independent body that is made responsible for outcomes. Third party assessments and greater enforceability of contracts are necessary operational elements of thisdesign. Without this operational framework, the strategic elements of design will not provide the value that was envisaged. This paper also provides a framework for assessment of USOF and relates it to the experience in other countries. USOF must be treated as one among many instruments for increasing rural teledensities and efforts should be made to facilitate policy outcomes on a variety of dimensions.

Barriers and Opportunities to Electric Vehicle Development in Nepal

As the global carbon dioxide level reaches its highest point in human history (407.4 parts per million), energy systems must transition from fossil fuel to renewable-powered sources. Since the transportation sector contributes nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, electric mobility offers a significant opportunity to reduce GHG emissions. Globally, there has been a rise in demand for electric vehicles. In Nepal, a clean energy transition within the context of rising urbanization and air pollution is imperative for quality of life, socio-economic development, and broadly climate change mitigation/adaptation. Furthermore, Nepal’s vast hydropower potential may increase energy independence and provide a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels. Unfortunately, infrastructure is not currently suited for fossil fuel alternatives. Thus, this paper uses a case study to explore the barriers and opportunities for electric vehicle development in Nepal. Methods include document analysis, social media analysis, and interviews with different stakeholders. My discussion centers around stakeholder perspectives and consumer perceptions to find themes and trends of electric mobility in Kathmandu. In reference to these findings, I suggest recommendations to increase EV adoption

Economic Geography - Key Concepts

Economic geography can help us understand why people and firms choose to locate where they do, whether these are good choices from a broader efficiency/resource allocation viewpoint, and what the implications of these choices are for the distribution of income and wealth. This paper is an attempt to synthesise the key pieces of recent literature on economic geography and think about how the concepts may apply to New Zealand. The paper first builds a framework of the key forces affecting the geographic location of people and firms. The framework splits the concepts into exogenous and endogenous forces, with a particular focus on agglomerating and dispersing forces. The framework can be used to think about location decisions both within countries and between countries, and a closer look is taken at how the concepts apply to New Zealand at the international level. The paper then explores whether location decisions can be a problem from efficiency or equity perspectives and looks at possible roles for intervention. The paper highlights that location decisions are influenced by many factors and that density can offer many benefits to people and firms. Fundamental questions are raised about whether New Zealand as a whole can maintain a critical mass of activity. There are also important questions about how we might deal with poor or declining regions.

Sustainability vs. Price: Analysis of Electric Multi-Modal Vehicle Sharing Systems under Substitution Effects

To pave the path for sustainable mobility, Information Systems are a promising tool to encourage users to adopt more sustainable mobility behavior. In this study, we investigate how potential demand management interventions affect the economic and environmental metrics of a multi-modal vehicle sharing operator. To this end, we narrow our focus on two important user characteristics, namely the users\u27 flexibility and willingness to pay an additional premium for more environmentally sustainable vehicles. Our study employs a combined discrete-event and multi-agent simulation approach, which we calibrate with real-world rental data of leading free-floating vehicle sharing platforms. The results show that it is economically and ecologically disadvantageous for both the society and the fleet operator to simply increase users\u27 mode choice flexibility. However, we clearly observe that this picture flips once users are willing to pay a surcharge to rent more environmentally sustainable vehicles

Drone Technology in Precision Agriculture: Are There No Environmental Concerns?

The adoption of drones in precision agriculture is expanding at a rapid rate, and expected to rise even faster as improvements in the technology result in cheaper models. Studies on the economic impact of drone technology in precision agriculture present optimistic projections of increased global food production. But increased food production almost always comes with significant environmental concerns. This paper examines the environmental concerns of drone technology in precision agriculture. The methodology of this paper is theoretical analysis and extrapolation of current literature in order to reveal the gap which future research needs to fill. While proposing a new area that has not received the close attention of experts and researchers, the paper reveals future scenarios of environmental issues around the various methods of drone applications in agricultural practices. Keywords: Drone technology, precision agriculture, agricultural practices, environmental impact, food security words DOI: 10.7176/JEES/10-9-08 Publication date:September 30th 202

Clean Transportation: Effects of Heterogeneity and Technological Progress on EV Costs and CO2 Abatement, and Assessment of Public EV Charging Stations

The advent of Electric Vehicles (EV) in the private transportation sector is viewed as a means of reducing emissions and making significant efforts towards reducing climate change impacts. However, when it comes to adopting and/or promoting a new technology through subsidies, the consumers’ needs are seldom given significant attention. Moreover, most analyses informing policy making assess the potential of new and cleaner technologies like EVs based on an average consumer’s needs and behavior. Given heterogeneity, these analyses miss subpopulations that benefit (or lose) more than an average consumer. In fact, private transportation greatly depends upon how the diversity of consumers choose to commute and what kind of vehicles they choose to possess. Especially in the United States of America (U.S.), each consumer faces different needs for their daily commute, which dictates their preferences for vehicles. This behavioral heterogeneity in addition to the geographic locations of consumers makes the U.S. private transportation sector an intricate system. The locations of the U.S. define fuel prices as well as emissions from electricity production. Therefore, these behavioral and geographic heterogeneities are highly crucial while calculating the benefits and potentials of EVs. The analyses conducted for this dissertation consider these heterogeneities to accommodate the nuances in consumers. This consideration of heterogeneities is the most critical aspect of this work. Chapter 2 of this dissertation builds a Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) for Electric Technology Vehicles (ETVs) which incorporates these heterogeneities, behavioral and geographical. With current gasoline and battery cell prices, result indicate that without federal tax credits, about 1.9% of the population would receive direct financial benefits from purchasing an ETV. This subpopulation drives over 4 times (over 48,000 miles annually) more than the average consumer (11,700 miles). The consideration of the heterogeneities has made it possible to recognize this subpopulation. The scenario analyses are conducted for different fuel and battery cell prices. These analyses shed light on how different subpopulations benefit financially and environmentally from ETVs. In this chapter, the impacts of federal tax credits with and without considering heterogeneities are estimated, suggesting why policy analyses need to incorporate consumer heterogeneities while assessing benefits of government subsidies. Given these results on economic and carbon benefits of ETVs, Chapter 3 builds an integrated model of adoption that includes endogenous technological progress—through learning rates—where due to initial adopters the technology is made cheaper for the future ones. The feedback loop developed in this chapter takes into consideration the cumulative production of the technology and estimates price reductions using learning rates. Reduced capital costs then propel more consumers to adopt ETVs making the technology cheaper, again increasing the consumer base that benefits from them. The economic benefits of buying an ETV versus a conventional one costs depend on battery costs, non-battery EV costs, and the future of conventional vehicles. Results are that the future market penetration (share of consumers economically benefitting) is sensitive to two poorly understood quantities: non-battery EV costs and cost increases in conventional vehicles driven by future emission standards. Federal tax credits are also studied in how they stimulate adoption and in turn technological progress of ETVs. Governments are not only investing in subsidies for consumer purchase of ETVs but also in installing public EV charging stations. These charging stations are expected to motivate consumers to choose ETVs over conventional vehicles and help reduce range-anxiety. In Chapter 4 an assessment is conducted to understand how these public resources are being used. Results reveal the behavior of consumers at the public EV charging stations using empirical data collected in the City of Rochester. A data distillation is first conducted for the raw data to construct the daily charging profiles of the EV users. A pattern analysis is then performed to identify 5 distinct and homogenous clusters of daily charging profiles of the consumers. This work defines the operational inefficiency of the public charging station as the time spent in parking without charging out of the total time a PEV user accessed the public charging station. This analysis uncovers a significant inefficient operation of these public EV charging stations, i.e. EVs remained parked at stations long after charging is finished. An estimation of the opportunity cost of reducing this observed inefficiency in terms of Greenhouse Gas emissions savings is also conducted in this chapter. The main policy takeaways of this dissertation are that identifying key subpopulations who benefit from the ETVs is highly significant and possible only by incorporating behavioral and geographical heterogeneities. This allows a more precise estimation of impacts of policies such as the federal tax credits. Secondly, the initial adopters make the technology cheaper for the latter adopters. However, the future market parity of ETVs with conventional vehicles depends on poorly understood factors such as current costs and learning rates of non-battery EV technologies and future cost increases in conventional vehicles driven by stricter emissions requirements. Lastly, the use of public resources, such as public charging stations needs to be studied. They are expensive to create, and inefficient use may deter possible EV adopters. Furthermore, the possible opportunity cost of reducing emissions by using the charging station more efficiently allows better use of a public resource

Carbon Free Boston: Transportation Technical Report

Part of a series of reports that includes: Carbon Free Boston: Summary Report; Carbon Free Boston: Social Equity Report; Carbon Free Boston: Technical Summary; Carbon Free Boston: Buildings Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Waste Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Energy Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Offsets Technical ReportOVERVIEW: Transportation connects Boston’s workers, residents and tourists to their livelihoods, health care, education, recreation, culture, and other aspects of life quality. In cities, transit access is a critical factor determining upward mobility. Yet many urban transportation systems, including Boston’s, underserve some populations along one or more of those dimensions. Boston has the opportunity and means to expand mobility access to all residents, and at the same time reduce GHG emissions from transportation. This requires the transformation of the automobile-centric system that is fueled predominantly by gasoline and diesel fuel. The near elimination of fossil fuels—combined with more transit, walking, and biking—will curtail air pollution and crashes, and dramatically reduce the public health impact of transportation. The City embarks on this transition from a position of strength. Boston is consistently ranked as one of the most walkable and bikeable cities in the nation, and one in three commuters already take public transportation. There are three general strategies to reaching a carbon-neutral transportation system: • Shift trips out of automobiles to transit, biking, and walking;1 • Reduce automobile trips via land use planning that encourages denser development and affordable housing in transit-rich neighborhoods; • Shift most automobiles, trucks, buses, and trains to zero-GHG electricity. Even with Boston’s strong transit foundation, a carbon-neutral transportation system requires a wholesale change in Boston’s transportation culture. Success depends on the intelligent adoption of new technologies, influencing behavior with strong, equitable, and clearly articulated planning and investment, and effective collaboration with state and regional partners.Published versio

What impressions do users have after a ride in an automated shuttle? An interview study

In the future, automated shuttles may provide on-demand transport and serve as feeders to public transport systems. However, automated shuttles will only become widely used if they are accepted by the public. This paper presents results of an interview study with 30 users of an automated shuttle on the EUREF (Europäisches Energieforum) campus in Berlin-Schöneberg to obtain in-depth understanding of the acceptance of automated shuttles as feeders to public transport systems. From the interviews, we identified 340 quotes, which were classified into six categories: (1) expectations about the capabilities of the automated shuttle (10% of quotes), (2) evaluation of the shuttle performance (10%), (3) service quality (34%), (4) risk and benefit perception (15%), (5) travel purpose (25%), and (6) trust (6%). The quotes indicated that respondents had idealized expectations about the technological capabilities of the automated shuttle, which may have been fostered by the media. Respondents were positive about the idea of using automated shuttles as feeders to public transport systems but did not believe that the shuttle will allow them to engage in cognitively demanding activities such as working. Furthermore, 20% of respondents indicated to prefer supervision of shuttles via an external control room or steward on board over unsupervised automation. In conclusion, even though the current automated shuttle did not live up to the respondents’ expectations, respondents still perceived automated shuttles as a viable option for feeders to public transport systems.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport and PlanningHuman-Robot InteractionIntelligent VehiclesTransport and Plannin

Investigating cooking activity patterns and perceptions of air quality interventions among women in urban Rwanda

Household air pollution (HAP) from biomass cooking with traditional stoves is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) worldwide. Air quality interventions such as improved cookstoves (ICS) may mitigate HAP-related impacts; however, poor understanding of contextual socio-cultural factors such as local cooking practices have limited their widespread adoption. Policymakers and stakeholders require an understanding of local cooking practices to inform effective HAP interventions which meet end-user needs. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to 36 women residing in biomass-cooking fuel households in Kigali, Rwanda to identify cooking activity patterns, awareness of HAP-related health risks and ICS intervention preferences. Overall, 94% of respondents exclusively used charcoal cooking fuel and 53% cooked one meal each day (range = 1–3 meals). Women were significantly more likely to cook outdoors compared to indoors (64% vs. 36%; p < 0.05). Over half of respondents (53%) were unaware of HAP-related health risks and 64% had no prior awareness of ICS. Participants expressed preferences for stove mobility (89%) and facility for multiple pans (53%) within an ICS intervention. Our findings highlight the need for HAP interventions to be flexible to suit a range of cooking patterns and preferred features for end-users in this context