Wireless communication and development in the Asia-Pacific: Institutions matter Rohan Samarajiva Executive Director, LIRNEasia SLIDA, 28/10 Malalasekera Mavata Colombo 7, Sri Lanka samarajiva@lirne.net +94 11 452 7647 (v); +94 11 452 7648 (f) Abstract: Wireless technologies play an enormously important role in extending access to voice and data communications by hitherto excluded groups in society, especially in the world’s most populated region and now the largest mobile market, the Asia-Pacific. The present rates of growth and levels of connectivity could not have been achieved without wireless in the access networks, for mobile as well as for fixed, and in the backbone networks. But the solution is not simply wireless, it is wireless combined with new investment; it is wireless combined with other inputs and systems. Ability to participate in the supply of services to meet pent up demand in the form of removing barriers to entering hitherto monopolized markets is an essential condition for applying wireless technologies to extend connectivity. Although more than half the Asian countries now allow some form of market entry in basic services (higher in mobile, etc.), even where entry is allowed the conditions are not optimal for investment. For innovations using wireless, the creation of a better telecom regulatory environment constituted by better policies, regulation and implementation with regard to market entry, management of scarce resources, interconnection and access, and the enforcement of regulatory and competition rules is essential. In sum, wireless matters, but only when the institutional arrangements allow it to matter.