Ensuring what tomorrow brings

Rajnesh D. Singh

Innovation is not limited by  the applications and services which can be accessed by the mobile phone. There is innovation at the device level itself with today's highly converged smart devices which are more a multi-functional computer than anything else

The evolution of the mobile phone over the last several years from a device for making wireless voice calls to today's multi-functional and "smart" phones has been truly amazing. Equally amazing has been the various applications which have been developed to exploit the mobile phone as a tool in diverse sectors such as healthcare, agriculture and banking amongst many others.

The rapid uptake of mobile phones has been one reason that is has become a popular and somewhat ubiquitous platform to deliver various non-voice related services, apart from voice calls itself. Mobile penetration rates have increased rapidly globally, and particularly in the developing world. In India, we crossed 600 million mobile subscribers recently, and the impressive growth continues not only in India, but the rest of South Asia and beyond.

Much of this growth is due to the fact that the cost to own, obtain a service plan, and use a mobile phone is far cheaper, faster and easier than it has traditionally been to obtain a fixed line phone. Prepaid service plans have done away with the need for deposits and credit checks - allowing people from all levels of society the opportunity to connect and to communicate. It no longer takes weeks and months to obtain a telephone line, but literally a matter of minutes. Added to all this is the fact that the learning cycle required to use a mobile phone is very short, and most phones are quite intuitive to use - by all sectors of society.

Across Asia in particular, one of the most used functions in a phone is SMS - a relatively cheap way to communicate. SMS is used for everything from personal messages to news and weather updates to banking. And in India we make great use of the "Missed Call Feature". Depending on the context, one missed call may mean "I will be home soon" or "I have reached my destination", two missed calls may mean "I will be late" or "Dad is home", and so on. The caller and called party seem to have a nearly telepathic connection on the message portrayed by the missed call feature. This is "user innovation", its "free", and it works!

Innovation itself on the mobile platform has been highly dynamic, to say the least. Innovation is not limited by the applications and services which can be accessed by the mobile phone. There is innovation at the device level itself with today's highly converged smart devices which are more a multi-functional computer than anything else. Manufacturers have also innovated to meet market needs - from including a flashlight in a mobile phone to embedding a FM radio receiver or GPS receiver. And then of course, there are the innovative business models that service providers have come up with to sustain and grow business.

The mobile platform has come a long way since the early "brick-like" devices. Much of this progress has been market driven, and let us work to keep it that way. Let us encourage innovation and evolution and let us recognise those that have helped create the mobile phenomenon. But most of all, let us ensure that we have an environment in place, both at the policy and technical level, that will allow innovators to keep innovating, and for us to experience applications and services we cannot even think of today. Let us open the doors out wide so that we can experience what tomorrow brings.

Rajnesh D. Singh is Regional Bureau Manager for Asia, The Internet Society (ISOC). He can be reached at singh@isoc.com

It requires more than mobile to economically empower

Rajat Kathuria

On the contrary, academic research has shown the vital importance of complementary skills and other infrastructure. Unless they are in place, the full potential of better access to telecommunications will not be realized.

Mobiles currently provide more than 600 million points of connectivity in India, through which information and opportunity flows.  Citizens with access to telecommunications can tap into the benefits of broad economic and social growth much more easily than those who are unconnected. This result is all the more important for two reasons, one internal and one external. The first is that India is at a stage in its development when there is a large-scale movement of the population from the countryside to the towns, posing new challenges for both rural and urban economies. The second is that the global economic environment has become harsher, and it will be essential to take advantages of all possible opportunities to sustain growth.

Of course, access to mobile telecommunications is certainly not the only thing that matters to economic growth. On the contrary, academic research has shown the vital importance of complementary skills and other infrastructure. Unless they are in place, the full potential of better access to telecommunications will not be realized. There is no benefit in farmers knowing the prices that their produce could be sold for in different markets if the roads are too poor for them to be able to transport the goods to those other markets. Improving productivity and rural incomes requires an array of enablers in the economic cycle, which runs from planting to the final sale of produce; access to information is just one such enabler.

Equally, there is no value in mobiles offering SMEs the potential to introduce different business models which would deliver greater efficiency unless the entrepreneurs and their workforce have the basic literacy skills to use the technology appropriately.  Evidence shows that entrepreneurs using mobiles can exploit the potential for improved productivity, incomes and employment. Telecommunications cannot be seen in isolation from other parts of the development process.

While some parts of India are clearly enjoying the benefits of new found access to telecommunications, other parts are still lagging behind.  Clearly there is need to invest in other, complementary, infrastructure, so that the impact of the interaction between telecommunications and other infrastructure can be significantly enhanced. Mobile telephony has an important role to play because it provides a means of the exchange of information and learning, but it is only one element in the process of productivity growth.  For example, 52% of the working population in India is engaged in agriculture and the barriers to raising agricultural productivity gains go far beyond communications access.

Therefore, access to telecommunications needs to be seen as a foundation on which other initiatives can be built.  The current Indian regulatory environment has stimulated investment in communications on an unprecedented level. However, the focus on voice connectivity led to high speed data connectivity to be neglected. High-speed data services and the internet are seen as a critical capability that will drive future global competitiveness in technology and services. This debate has begun in India and it is a positive sign. Weaknesses in physical infrastructure will constrain the potential productivity and growth benefits of access to communications unless systematic and integrated set of development policies are put in place to ensure that the benefits of growth are more widely shared as the economy grows.

Rajat Kathuria is Professor with ICRIER (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations). He can be reached at rajatkathuria@gmail.com

Mobile Media: Centre Stage in ICT4D?

Madanmohan Rao

Mobile marketing allows for rich personalisation. It can beimpulse-driven, and with high-reach and high retention. Mobile campaigns can help companies get valuable customer and campaign insights for launching bigger mass media campaigns later

Those ICT4D activists who may have been disheartened with the slow pace of Internet diffusion in emerging economies should take note of the rapid diffusion of mobile media and reinvent themselves!

Mobile phones across the world are surpassing penetration of other media. Worldwide penetration of mobile phones is 4.3 billion, as compared to cars (800 million), TV (1.5 billion), credit cards (1.4 billion), PCs (850 million), Internet (1.1 billion). There are 400 million m-commerce users worldwide. In 2009 there were 850 million m-payment transactions. Navteq mobile maps are used by 100 million users every day.

In India, mobile phones (564 million) have overtaken TV (470 million), newspapers (172 million), radio (168 million) and Internet (60 million). 90% of GSM handsets in Indonesia support GPRS/MMS. Yahoo reports more traffic in Indonesia via mobiles than PCs. The Philippines has 85% mobile penetration, and the average user sends 25 SMS messages per day.

The entry of IT and Internet giants Google, Microsoft and Apple into mobile media has made the mobile industry sit up and realise it must grab the opportunity fast.

Mobile marketing allows for rich personalisation. It can be impulse-driven, and with high-reach and high retention. Mobile campaigns can help companies get valuable customer and campaign insights for launching bigger mass media campaigns later.

Mobile is ‘the’ medium to reach out to the unreached. Well-designed mobile campaigns can deliver a lower cost per conversion than desktop targeted ads. SMS as a CRM tool can be twice better than email. Location can make local search more actionable on mobiles.

But mobile is not yet seen as a must have or integral channel for many big ICT4D agencies. For many Asian languages, mobile communication is also restricted by handset limitations and low user awareness.

Mobile payment is seen by operators as a major avenue of investment and growth. In terms of commercial and social marketing, mobile can be deployed at multiple marketing phases: trigger, inform, consider, choose/buy, experience/advocacy. It can be used in typical marketing activities: acquisition, retention, brand building.

Mobile is a good connector; it extends and enhances other media, with the advantages of portability, location, immediacy and personalisation. Mobile is a good medium to fill the “third space vacuum” when the user is out of the home and out of the office.

Mobile gives activists an increase in response methods and formats. Mobiles can be used to create ongoing dialogues. The increasing diffusion of smartphones and mobile Internet will make mobile media even more complicated and intricate, and the time to learn is now.

A huge array of intermediaries is emerging in mobile marketing space, eg. mobile content aggregators and ad networks. Consolidation is imminent in this space. Better collaboration is called for between tech players for inventory and dashboard services.

Mobile operators should share data more aggressively with advertisers to grow the medium. Frequent comparisons are made with television; TV really took off in countries like the US after industry-sponsored ratings were adopted.

Mobile has worked for some of the big brands, but for true industry growth it must extend to small and medium enterprises as well, who form the bulk of the economy in most countries, and to NGOs and individual independent freelancers.

On the creative side, mobile forces communicators to be brief, concise, to the point. Mobile screens are held inches away from the face, and appear larger than TV screens: thus they are as much of a pull medium as a push medium. With permission marketing, mobiles can be the ideal CRM channel and tool. A new kind of creative class for mobile ad messages is called for.

SMS still has a long shelflife thanks to its ubiquity and brevity. SMS is still a good fit for cost-conscious communicators. SMS is a great channel for permission marketing while traveling overseas - mobile Internet roaming charges are way too expensive!

Social media currency will impact mobile media as well as the Internet. Social media will drive digital content creation and linking, and thereby social discovery and social marketing. The Internet itself is moving from a Web of pages to a Web of streams, and this will be reflected in mobile social media as well.

Emerging economies are “Mobile First” markets, ie. mobile is the first and most important screen for communication. Mobile can be better than radio in terms of penetration in rural Asia. Many new mobile subscribers in countries such as India are not literate, hence audio ads on mobile have a huge potential. The power situation is bad in smaller towns of India; TV is often off, but at least mobile phones are on, and thus more accessible for marketing messages.

The mobile device is becoming an extension of persona. Mobility is not just a technology, it is a behaviour. An interesting range of mobile user categories is emerging, eg. alpha exec, mobile native, mobile hobbyist, mobile a “necessary evil!” Other categories of users include: tech mover,

prgamatic striver, basic introverts, digital extroverts, hypersocials. Consumers are using three screens simultaneously (TV, Internet, mobile). People who use Internet on mobile use social media more on mobiles than on PC. Once people start using mobile Internet, they use it a lot.

People who use Internet on mobile use social media more on mobiles than onPC. Once people start using mobile Internet, they use it a lot

A number of catchy acronym lists for mobile media success are emerging: 3Cs (choice, control, consideration); 3Ps (privacy, permission, preference; or profiles, push, permission). Mobiles are a key part of the “N3 Web” (now, new, near) and marketers should understand the mobile-PC continuum for digital users.

Mobile media must avoid the distaste of spam as in the case of Internet email. Deep profiling can help produce a win-win for the operator, subscriber and advertiser.

To make mobile ICT4D successful, more scale and sustainability are called for. Good local case studies are needed in many markets, especially in instances where development agencies have a wait and see mentality. Local capacity building can be spurred by ICT4D agencies via internal specialist teams or external specialist firms.  Mobile media is not just about profits and customers, but concerned citizens and social causes. For instance, MobileGiving raised $41 million for Haiti earthquake relief via SMS in North America.

Interesting trends to watch in the long term which will impact mobile media include: augmented reality; cloud computing; communication speed; realtime analytics; and digital discovery. LTE is just around the corner, and WiMax phones could be a game changer.

Mobile banking and payment has the potential to explode. Interesting trends to watch include flash coupons integrated with NFC-based payment. Mobiles open new ways of multi-monetisation.

In sum, this is the most interesting time in the history of ICT4D, ever! But to go from hype in the sky to success in the hand will require concerted cooperation by mobile and ICT players.

Madanmohan Rao is Mobile Media Consultant and Editor, “Asia Unplugged”  http://twitter.com/MadanRao

The Path of least Resistance

Sidin Vadukut

Many of the nominees and winners have used the mobile phone in fantastic ways to deliver change. One nominee has a voice enabled ERP system that can help farmers interact with contractors more efficiently. Another nominee has created a system to obtain, fill and submit college admission application forms purely using the mobile. Still others have created banking platforms that liberate remote rural inhabitants from financial stasis

Being a jury member of the inaugural mBillionth awards was an experience that left me with a lot of hope. Even more so than perhaps the Manthan Awards, the mBillionth nominees showcased how bridging the digital divide was not only possible, but also life changing for so many people in so many countries in the region. And how the lifecycle of some of these projects from idea to pilot to scale could now be measured in weeks and not years.

There is a tendency to look at initiatives like the Digital Empowerment Foundation, the Manthan Awards and the mBillionth awards and think that the problems these movements are trying to solve are not primary ones. DEF does not give free food away, Manthan does not build homes for the homeless, and the mBillionth winners aren’t children needing schools.

This is a justifiable perspective. Like governments tend to do cyclically, you could advocate a helicopter approach to social change: throw food, cash and clothes from the sky and hope it reaches people. There is no institution building here, merely tactical responses to systematic problems. To use a cricketing analogy, this is like coping with lack of local pace bowling talent by laying only dead pitches.

The mBillionth Awards are about building sustainable, institutionalized solutions to long-standing social and business issues. How can a farmer get his produce to market? How does he know what are the right prices? Is there a storm coming? Should he be thinking of selling as soon as possible? Or hold? Has the local school opened? Can he send his children there? But what if he can’t write? Who will fill the form?

You can’t throw education, sustainable income or livelihoods out of a helicopter.

Which is where the mobile phone comes in. The mBillionth awards recognize people who have looked at the mobile phone as more than a communication device. Many of the nominees and winners have used the mobile phone in fantastic ways to deliver change. One nominee has a voice enabled ERP system that can help farmers interact with contractors more efficiently. Another nominee has created a system to obtain, fill and submit college admission application forms purely using the mobile. Still others have created banking platforms that liberate remote rural inhabitants from financial stasis.

The phone, the awards reveal, are an institution unto themselves.

The ideas are innovative, implementable and realistic. People can and will use them. Around half the population in India have mobile phones, five times as many as the people who have access to toilets. For this reason alone the mBillionth Awards is an award that recognizes not the ‘ideal’ but the ‘realistic’. Many of these winners will change lives, some will make money and all of them will inspire future innovators.

Also helping the mBillionth movement will be some of the inherent benefits of the mobile platform. First of all mobile solutions are scalable. One tower extends connectivity to hundreds. Second, mobile applications and solutions have become cheaper to design and develop, especially in comparison to computer-based apps.  This opens up the field for many small and one-person operations. (In fact one of the winners this year is a one-man team.)

Thirdly, regional collaboration will help spread good mobile ideas. With various nations in the region at various points on the mobile technology curve, there is tremendous scope for collaboration.

Fourthly, the learning curve for final adopters is not steep. They don’t need to sit in a computer institute, own a wired Internet connection, or learn a foreign language. Most of the mBillionth projects need no greater sophistication than the ability to make a call or send an SMS.

Finally, unlike conventional computer-based empowerment, the mobile platform does not need governments to extend themselves extensively. There is no need to pull wires, provide computers and maintain hardware. Mobile phones are easy to obtain, easy to hook to the network, cheap to repair, or even replace.

The learning curve for final adopters is not steep. They don’t need to sit in a computer institute, own a wired Internet connection, or learn a foreign language. Most of the mBillionth projects need no greater sophistication than the ability to make a call or send an SMS

For all these reasons mobile digital empowerment is a revolution waiting to happen. The mBillionth Awards are the first salvo in this uprising. The future is bright. Perhaps what we need to drop from helicopters is not rice, or clothes or cash. But mobile phones!

Sidin Vadukut is author of “Dork: The Incredible

Adventures of Robin “Einstein” Varghese” who has sold more than 20,000 copies. He is also managing editor of LIVEmint. He can be reached at sidin.vadukut@gmail.com

The ideas are innovative, implementable and realistic. People can and will use them. Around half the population in India have mobile phones, five times as many as the people who have access to toilets. For this reason alone the mBillionth Awards is an award that recognizes not the ‘ideal’ but the ‘realistic’. Many of these winners will change lives, some will make money and all of them will inspire future innovators

The Internet Is Changing…Can You Feel It?

Manish Dalal

Today, consumers have ushered in the “Any Era” demanding access to any information, from any device, any time and anywhere they want it. And they not only want access; they want the ability to contribute, personalize and socialize. Consumer generated websites such as Facebook, Wikipedia and Flickr have elbowed out many traditional companies to rank in the top 20 websites in the country

We live in an exciting world. One that is changing dramatically every day. YouTube, Second Life, MySpace, iPhone. You probably hadn’t even heard of these a few years ago, but today they dominate the discussion about societal trends and the future of communications and the Internet. Once upon a time, e-commerce drove the Internet debate, but now it’s clear we have entered a new era and you can feel the Internet changing daily.

Today, consumers have ushered in the “Any Era” demanding access to any information, from any device, any time and anywhere they want it. And they not only want access; they want the ability to contribute, personalize and socialize. Consumer generated websites such as Facebook, Wikipedia and Flickr have elbowed out many traditional companies to rank in the top 20 websites in the country. These increasingly popular social-networking sites are accounting for such huge volumes of domain name system (DNS) queries and bandwidth consumption that carriers and corporations are scrambling to keep pace.

At VeriSign, we have been living this transformation for more than 12 years - from the early days of basic Internet access and web sites to the adolescent years of e-commerce and e-business to the high school years of Web 2.0, ubiquitous instant messaging, voice over IP, smart phones, RFID and broadband video delivery. It’s thrilling to consider the myriad possibilities for the Internet that have not even been thought of yet, but that same exciting unknown also holds equally dangerous pitfalls. Until recently, the Internet has grown largely based on services designed for the IP network, and that organic growth was visible and measurable. Now, with the migration of existing infrastructures such as telephony and TV to Internet Protocol - services that were not originally designed to migrate to the Net - we are seeing explosive, bursty growth.

This volume increase is reflected in the number of queries made of the .com and .net DNS infrastructure every day.

The following data further demonstrates this emerging use and growth of the Internet:

• YouTube consumes as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in year 2000
• Internet-based TV subscribers are expected to reach 100 million by late 2010, up from 3 million in 2006.
• There are 15,534,550 SMS transactions every 5 minutes
• Total VoIP subscribers worldwide are projected to grow to over 55 million in 2009 from 16 million in 2005
• The wireless industry is adding 40 million new connections a month
• Wireless gaming revenues will double from 2006 to 2008, to $1.6 billion.

These developments reflect what is likely to be the continued meteoric growth of the Internet user population.

It’s thrilling to consider the myriad possibilities for the Internet that have not even been thought of yet, but that same exciting unknown also holds equally dangerous pitfalls

Increasing Threats to the Internet

At the same time, the growth of Internet users, broadband capacity and number of Internet-enabled devices has created an opportunity for hackers, organized criminals and even more serious terrorists to attack our networks through SPAM, spyware, identity theft, viral attacks, and denial of service exploits.  Some do so for technical trophies, some for political objectives, but today, most of the attacks on the Internet are done for financial gain.

Specifically, the very devices and increased bandwidth that make the Internet more robust and consumer-friendly are now deployed to compromise the Internet. Computers are always-on, so they are easily accessible for hijacking by hackers and other criminals. The increased bandwidth and computing power available literally gives hackers more ammunition to use against the infrastructure. While a Jupiter Research report in 2004 found that the typical home needed less than 3 Mbps of bandwidth, that level has steadily grown and given the demands of gaming and video that capacity is expected to grow to 57 Mbps by 2009. That means that hackers will have 19 times the computing capacity available to them in the PCs they hijack in that period.

Indeed, security exploits have grown by 700 percent since 2000 and in fact, we expect to see cyber attacks rise 50 percent in each of the next two years. A series of attacks on the Internet infrastructure in early 2007 reflect how these incidents have grown in frequency and sophistication - some 100 times more threatening than attacks conducted just a few years before.

The Internet is often taken for granted because it works so well. But we are now entering an unprecedented new era of the Internet and we can’t take for granted that it will remain always-on, let alone secure, with no effort on our part. Internet users must stay vigilant about cyber attacks. Infrastructure operators must prepare for their worst-case scenarios - and then prepare for even worse. And governments must work more closely with industry to ensure that the systems that protect our national security and economic prosperity are truly up to the task

Given the increased usage and mounting threats, the Internet infrastructure must be continually fortified. At VeriSign, we have the responsibility of ensuring that at any given moment in time, any and all Internet users can reach the .com and .net domain names worldwide. Just six years ago, we managed one million DNS queries a day. Today, we do that same volume in minutes. That number of DNS queries will only continue to grow, and likely skyrocket.

Keeping the Internet Always-On

The Internet is often taken for granted because it works so well. But we are now entering an unprecedented new era of the Internet and we can’t take for granted that it will remain always-on, let alone secure, with no effort on our part. Internet users must stay vigilant about cyber attacks. Infrastructure operators must prepare for their worst-case scenarios - and then prepare for even worse. And governments must work more closely with industry to ensure that the systems that protect our national security and economic prosperity are truly up to the task.

Manish Dalal is Vice President, APAC, VeriSign. He can be reached at Mdalal@verisign.com

Given the increased usage and mounting threats, the Internet infrastructure must be continually fortified. At VeriSign, we have the responsibility of ensuring that at any given moment in time, any and all Internet users can reach the .com and .net domain names worldwide

Made to order - Rural VAS offerings

Kunal Bajaj

Mobile marketing allows for rich personalisation. It can beimpulse-driven, and with high-reach and high retention. Mobile campaigns can help companies get valuable customer and campaign insights for launching bigger mass media campaigns later

The telecom industry has been witnessing increasing focus on rural subscribers by the service providers. As rural subscribers comprise approximately 45% of total net additions, carriers are being forced to consider how to appropriately address this rural growth opportunity. Apart from increasing their rural network footprint, carriers are now focusing on expanding their VAS offerings targeted at these subscribers.

This increased focus on rural VAS is primarily driven by the opportunity to capture additional revenues from this incremental subscriber base. As the current ARPU of rural subscribers is low, carriers are thinking about innovative and relevant rural VAS offerings to encourage these subscribers to spend more. For instance, the ARPU of incremental rural subscribers is in the range of INR 60 to INR 80, causing very low or even negative margins for operators. Carriers are trying to sell a variety of customized rural VAS offerings such as agri-information services, health alerts and educational information updates to gain whatever additional revenues they can from this low ARPU subscriber base and thus contribute to increasing overall margin.

However, the challenges in rural markets are unique and require solutions that are different from those in urban areas. The three key challenges in increasing adoption of rural VAS are literacy, utility and affordability.

Carriers are tackling the literacy issue by introducing voice based rural VAS offerings. These offerings are likely to see a higher adoption than the other channels, as voice overcomes the low literacy rates in rural India and regional language issues related to text based services.

The utility issue is being addressed by developing customized VAS for the rural subscribers. Earlier, only agri-advisory services were the key focus area, but now carriers are launching rural VAS for healthcare, banking, education and governance related information updates. Even in the established agri-advisory segment, there is increasing innovation. Instead of providing only text based market updates, initiatives are being rolled out to create products and services that extend beyond the basic updates and provide greater utility to the farmers. New services and applications are looking to generate better “returns” for users on the “investment” they make in purchasing or subscribing to VAS services through the utility that is delivered.

Finally, to resolve the affordability challenge, carriers are experimenting with billing innovation. They are offering targeted rural VAS offerings using daily and weekly pay per use models, with some offerings priced as low as INR 1 per day.

All of these examples of innovation are represented in the submissions for the mBillionth Awards.  The applications and services are trying various unique ways to accelerate growth for their target base of rural communities, G2C services consumers or inclusive growth efforts. The mBillionth platform should be able to highlight and raise the awareness around such innovations, and facilitate their acceptance into the mainstream so that their ability to scale is accelerated.

While challenges will remain for the foreseeable future in this segment, this is an important step in the journey.

Kunal Bajaj is Country Head - India with Analyses Mason. He can be reached at Kunal.Bajaj@analysysmason.com

Mobile services next growth frontier is rural India

Vishwanath Alluri

Rural India brings with it many peculiarities and uniqueness. Undoubtedly the rural sector of India’s population is unlike its counterparts in the urban areas. In the urban areas cricket and Bollywood forms the major part of VAS consumption coming mainly from the youth segment. In the rural areas, with limited discretionary spending at their disposal, they are looking at critical information about weather, markets, government policies, schemes, healthcare and education

Riding on India’s growth story, the Indian telecom penetration continues to grow at a phenomenal rate of +15 million subscriber additions per month totaling to + 600 million mobile phone connections. In addition to near saturation in urban centres, mobiles have penetrated steadily the remotest corners of India giving the population a critical connect with the rest of India. This has brought their near and dear ones working in the urban centres closer to them and critically made accessible in times of any emergency. However, in spite of this phenomenal growth, there still exists a huge gap in terms of rural India’s information needs. We are now trying to bridge this gap by empowering them with information that improves their living conditions.

The opportunity that rural India presents is huge and all the companies in the VAS (Value Added Services) ecosystem clearly know that their future is here in the heart of India. 70 percent of India’s population lives in the rural areas and importantly, 64 percent of the nation’s expenditure and 56 percent of its income comes from the villages. Mobile Services next growth frontier is definitely rural India, which is triple the size of Urban Market. India’s rural tele-density currently stands at 13 percent and is expected to grow multi-fold. Working in tandem with telecom operators, MVAS (Mobile VAS) providers are also ready to explore rural India. The increasing rural penetration of telecom players is going to drive a jump in ARPU (Average Revenue per User) once past the tipping point. However, for this windfall to happen the VAS industry needs to be given a bigger play by the telecom operators. This will help them drive innovations in applications and content catering to the specific needs of the rural masses.

Rural India brings with it many peculiarities and uniqueness. Undoubtedly the rural sector of India’s population is unlike its counterparts in the urban areas. In the urban areas cricket and Bollywood forms the major part of VAS consumption coming mainly from the youth segment. In the rural areas, with limited discretionary spending at their disposal, they are looking at critical information about weather, markets, government policies, schemes, healthcare and education. This category of information can be termed utility services for rural India as it helps them improve their living conditions. The VAS industry should understand this unique need and deliver in a medium which is easily reachable and usable.

We can look forward to a healthy and empowered rural population which in turn helps build a stronger economy.

Vishwanath Alluri is Founder & CEO of IMImobile. He can be reached at vish@imimobile.com

The opportunity that rural India presents is huge and all the companies in the VAS (Value Added Services) ecosystem clearly know that their future is here in the heart of India

Mobile miracle for underprivileged

Ananya Raihan

As a member of the Jury, I saw how diverse is the development endeavours and how big is the potential of deploying mobile phone-based solutions for citizens. I am happy to see that majority of the solutions will benefit the poor and marginalized people of South Asia

I frequently visit rural Bangladesh to work with grassroots organisations to introduce or experiment various kinds of services, which also includes mobile phone-based services. Recently, I showed a fellow in a remote village how he can listen to Internet radio using his mobile phone. When he could listen to the music, he jumped and hugged me and ran to his other fellows to show this ‘miracle’. Back in 2004, when the mobile phone based help line ‘Pallitathya Help Line’ was first introduced in Bangladesh, Salma, a mobile lady in remote northern district visited an ultra poor household and connected poor women with an MBBS doctor. That lady did not believe that the person at the other end was a doctor. Salma tried relentlessly to make people believe that the people on the other side of the helpline are experts. Subsequently, the expert team visited the village and Salma introduced them to the villagers and told, “Now on you can call and they will respond to your queries”. After that introduction, the service became very popular. Now, Bangladeshi expatriate workers can send money to their relatives at home, wherever they live, thanks to pro-people policy and innovations of private sector and NGOs.

The e-Content award had a category ‘mobile content’. Given the potential of mobile telecommunications, it was felt that promoting young talents and enterprises for mobile content development and solutions is very important. And ‘mBillionth Award’ came at the very right time. As a member of the Jury, I saw how diverse is the development endeavours and how big is the potential of deploying mobile phone-based solutions for citizens. I am happy to see that majority of the solutions will benefit the poor and marginalized people of South Asia. I feel proud to be associated with the endeavours.

While innovators and service providers trying to bring in new services and products for the people, whether our policy makers and regulators are able to understand and ready to facilitate them - is a big question. We need to exchange views with all stakeholders on a regular basis and get ourselves above any narrow interest. Collaboration among players in South Asia is a key.

Dr Ananya Raihan is executive director of D.Net and also a member, Digital Bangladesh Task Force. He can be reached at ananya@raihan.net

While innovators and service providers trying to bring in new services and products for the people, whether our policy makers and regulators are able to understand and ready to facilitate them - is a big question

Beyond Song & Dance

Ibrahim Ahmad

There were many such eye opening stories. Unfortunately we do not hear about these initiatives. One reason is that for many operators these services do not make much sense as they do not make any money. The operators are more keen on games, songs, and movie clips, as that’s where the moolah is. I, however, believe that if these services can be packaged well, they can be a win win for everybody-the developer, the operator as well as for the consumer.

Participating in the ‘mBillionth Grand Jury’ held in Sri Lanka, left me both humbled as well as surprised. There is altogether another world of mobile phone applications that many of us too worried about the corporate business, are not even aware of.  There are real and meaningful innovations happening in the south Asian region that could transform the lives of common people.

Students and faculty members of a regional university in Bangladesh, for instance, have worked out an SMS based college admission system, once students have been selected after an admission test. Thousands of students and their parents are saved from the torture of getting their children admitted to a college, because it involved travel by trains and buses, carrying loads of documents and money. Similarly in Pakistan, there is a mobile service which is offered free of cost to citizens to alert them about various medical tests and vaccinations they are due for, including vaccinations for the new born babies and infants.

Then there is a mobile users group of dairy and poultry farmers in Sri Lanka, who keep in touch with each other to network and be updated on new schemes, fodder availability, FAQs, business opportunities and so on. Members of this group, to everybody’s amazement, exchange notes more than five times a day, which is often more than you call up your home or office every day. Back home in Andhra Pradesh, there is a scheme for 1,50,000 school students, where the class teacher sends SMSs on every students’ health data points to a central database for building a medical record of every student, and the state health department will take the required action on that.

However, most of these mobile applications were pretty basic and rudimentary, perhaps not emanating from a revenue motive. In many cases, the conceptualizers and developers of these ideas have not been able to sit down with the telecom operators or professional companies to see how it can be developed and taken to the masses. One reason that these application and content developers say is that, the application companies steal their ideas if they go to them, or they get a very raw deal if they go to the operators.

There were many such eye opening stories. Unfortunately we do not hear about these initiatives. One reason is that for many operators these services do not make much sense as they do not make any money. The operators are more keen on games, songs, and movie clips, as that’s where the moolah is. I, however, believe that if these services can be packaged well, they can be a win win for everybody-the developer, the operator as well as for the consumer. Who would not want to pay for services that make life better. Perhaps, the government needs to play a role here. Such mobile applications will truly empower the common people.

Ibrahim Ahmad is Group Editor with Cyber Media. He can be reached at ibrahima@cmil.co.in

Mobiles and development policy

Dr. Amir Ullah Khan

With mobile telephony the big hurdle in reaching to the targeted population also gets solved and the subsidy debate which often ends with the clinching argument that all subsidy goes to the undeserving can be put to rest

One of the most fascinating applicators of the mobile phone to Governance is the lowly camera that comes attached to almost every instrument now. See someone taking a bribe; click. Some hapless citizen being denied entry where he has a right to go; click. It’s really amazing how the camera works.

You can massage someone’s ego by asking him for a picture to be taken and can scare someone by threatening to click. I have seen toughened policemen desist from kicking the daylights out of people they have always done, just because some person has a camera there. Now everyone has a mobile. The photograph may not constitute evidence, a smart lawyer can always claim it was doctored, but it is enough to scare official and politicians who dread the bad publicity, because they know this pictorial evidence can reach newsmagazines, Television channels, their bosses and even their wives.

Bangaru Lakshman will never do a prison term but a really bright political career got stamped out by people using really poor quality cameras and putting out acutely hazy images. The various Godmen claiming divine powers will get bailed out, but there reputation, on which their livelihood rests, can get devastated.

Where there is no video evidence of malpractice, misgovernance or corruption, the mobile phone has another feature that helps; a recorder that can store audio bytes. This can now be used to explain to a superior why his junior needs to be reprimanded for false promises, delaying tactics and rude behavior. The mobile is indeed a really powerful instrument, and like all technology can be misused.  This misuse lends itself to skepticism among those who historically have made spurious correlations between technology and illegal or immoral behavior. Evidence of this being the sporadic banning of cell phones and SMSs in Kashmir, while encouraging BSNL to increase number of its towers in Chattisgargh.

Despite this anomaly, it is the mobile phone that is empowering those who are often poor, illiterate, have no access to roads or to doctors and have little power to even use a most friendly Right to Information Act. With innovation, convergence and the freeing of spectrum, mobile usage will only deepen and get more accessible. Its application to high end services will enable the PURA that Kalam has talked about, the provision of urban facilities at least virtually in rural areas. Economists argue that what really exploits a section of the population and keeps them deprived is the lack of free and perfect information.

With mobile telephony the big hurdle in reaching to the targeted population also gets solved and the subsidy debate which often ends with the clinching argument that all subsidy goes to the undeserving can be put to rest. With mobile density now at one phone for two individuals in the country, there is no excuse any more to reach out exactly to the person who is the rightful recipient of government assistance. With government offices at all levels mobile enabled, the SMS, armed with voice messaging capability, becomes a most convenient, non intrusive, quick, inexpensive and pervasive tool of development policy.

Dr Amir Ullah Khan is economist and a passionate teacher. He is currently Dean & Research Director at Bangalore Management Academy. He can be reached at amir@bmaindia.com

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