test
Promoting excellence in mobile for masses
Osama Manzar
The mobile revolution has triumphed in South Asia, and now needs regular industry-driven peer-acknowledged awards to highlight the best successes and point the way towards even more benefits, thus the mBillionth Award.
The mBillionth Award acknowledges South Asia as a key hub of the world’s mobile market in terms of penetration and innovation, and promotes the best of mobile applications in the region.
South Asia is one of the world’s largest and fastest growing mobile markets – but still suffers from a significant digital divide. Mobile phones are surpassing all other media in terms of penetration in the region: TV, radio, Internet, newspapers, magazines and landlines. Mobile platforms are becoming the natural choice for extending essential and innovative digital services to the broadest section of the population. From humble SMS and basic voice to smartphones and enterprise workflow, mobile is the choice for new content and services.
The mobile revolution has triumphed in South Asia, and now needs regular industry-driven peer-acknowledged awards to highlight the best successes and point the way towards even more benefits, thus the mBillionth Award.
The annual awards and the accompanying South Asia Mobile Congress promote cross-border exchange of ideas, policy strengths and mobile advocacy. Awards will be given in 10 categories, covering the entire breadth of the mobile ecosystem: platform, business, culture, education, entertainment, government, health, inclusion, environment, news, heritage and travel & tourism.
Sri Lanka & Pakistan lead the south Asia mobile penetration
Have a look at this: Sri Lanka leads the region with 16.27 million mobiles having reached 81.35% of their population; Pakistan follows with 97.58 million, 59.6% of the country covered; India is almost half way through with 584.32 million; Bhutan – 47.8% (327,000), Maldives – 46% (0.14 million); Afghanistan and Bangladesh are almost there with 12.9 million (35%) and 52.43 million covering 34% of the masses; the laggard is Nepal who has covered just 23.22%, making it to only 5.77 million people.
The high penetration of the mobiles in south Asia has one common reason: we are an oral society, and our knowledge and capacity lies in communicating orally. We can be treated illiterate and un-educated if you ask us to read and write, but we can, not only consume huge amount of content and services if you reach us orally, but we can also produce abundance of content, information, knowledge and services if you ask us to contribute orally.
If we go further in analyzing, it is very clear that the mobiles have reached almost 100 percent of the population if we discount the age group below 15. Yet, my observation is that so far, mobile has been used by the industry merely as talking tool and VAS based entertainment content rider. Government on the other hand is far behind in figuring out as how they could reach masses with meaningful content and services through mobile.
The challenges of scalable model and services designed to reach the masses through mobile are not easy, but we have no choice, and the sooner we do it, the better. At Digital Empowerment Foundation, we took this challenge to bring on one platform all kind of Mobile Content and Application providers, so that they get scale through bigger players in the industry, and through government they get chance to get integrated into bigger projects of state and national level. Our gut feeling was not wrong: we immediately realized through the nominations process that there are tremendous efforts taking place by small startups, individuals, and innovators to design and develop content, services and applications which could benefit the general mass in remote areas.
In the first leg, we got 100 nominations, and believe you me, more than 80 percent of them are un-heard of; they are small, unsung, and struggling. The surprise came from Pakistan – thanks to P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses Associatio) and BytesforAll Pakistan, who campaiged heavily for mBillionth Award. I would like to share at least 2 of these nominations.
The See’n’Report project has literally enabled Citizen Journalism service which enables people to report photos and videos directly from their cell-phones as and when they witness a breaking news story. “Our news engine aggregates similar stories and presents a unified view on the Internet, says Sharjeel Ahmad Qureshi. See’n’Report makes news real-time, sensational and engaging. Meet Asim Fayaz, who sends us nomination of ChOpaal which is a free group SMS service, something like bringing in the mass dissemination advantages of Twitting to SMS. ChOpaal lets users create groups which others can voluntarily join. Group members can exchange messages with each other just by sending one message to chOpaal which forwards it to the other group members for free.
Power of ‘M’ = Instant Governance
Let me share few more experiences. Recently, I was in Kolhapur (Maharashtra, India) to conduct a training session with 40 Sarpanches along with their Panchayat Secretaries. It was about making Panchayat website and how the Panchayat team themselves could manage and upload their websites. One of the remarkable outcomes was that each and every Sarpanch and his/her secretary wanted to use their Mobiles as the primary tool to do all basic jobs – like fixing meeting, sending official reminders, conducting meetings, sending complains, and doing rigorous follow ups. They even wanted “not to take the onus of updating the website, but sending the updates to us through mobile and we would upload the final content.”
Extremely high penetration of Mobile has created a great sense of informal methods for using mobile phones for meaningful services. Yet, looking at the opportunity, my observation is that governments have still not taken is to highest level of strategic consideration to plan Mobile as the prime platform for m-Governance services. But I was proved wrong, and none other than Kerala could do that to me.
It is heartening to note that the news of Mobile application and innovative usage of mobile as a media ICT tool could be seen across length and breadth of the country and region. So far, in the mBillionth Award valid nominations list of 165, at least 30 are in the m-Governance category. And the interventions could be observed across as key departments as Rural Development, Panchayati Raj, Social Welfare, Women and Child Development, Policing, Health, Emergency services, Government Alerts, National Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes, Food & Civil Supplies, and various kinds of Citizen Services. For example, in e-Seva centres falling under Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, the centres are sending SMS to applicants and officer(s) concerned on receipt of application for 16 services including issuing Births & Deaths Certificates.
Walking across Himachal Pradesh, the state has integrated services of 14 Government departments through SMS Gateway. Some of these services are: Registration for Voter ID Card, Driving License, Gun License, Vehicle registration, response regarding public grievances, etc.
Down south in Kerala: Using MobShare technology, the deployment of The Mobile Crime And Accident Reporting Platform (MCARP) helps in transferring visual data from crime/accident scene instantly to control room, from mobile phones; images would be captured using mobile-phone cameras and uploaded to the server via MMS/GPRS; Officials can login to the web-based platform of MCARP and view the uploads anywhere/anytime.
it is very clear that the mobiles have reached almost 100 percent of the population if we discount the age group below 15. Yet, my observation is that so far, mobile has been used by the industry merely as talking tool and VAS based entertainment content rider. Government on the other hand is far behind in figuring out as how they could reach masses with meaningful content and services through mobile.
Another example from Police: A quick grievance redressal scheme called ‘Turant Chovis’ (Quick Twenty Four) to cater to the needs of the common man is being implemented in Nasik (Rural) District Police of Maharashtra State. “A mobile SMS based complaints Tracking System has now been developed that caters to the already existing scheme. Here the data regarding all complaints registered in a police station every day, initial action taken within 24 hours and final action taken within 30 days is registered in the main computer with the SP’s office through SMS sent from the police stations. Alert SMS is generated automatically to the concerned senior police officials if action on any complaint is not initiated within 24 hours (preliminary) or 30 days (final), as the scheme envisages. The innovation helps the senior police officers like the SP to keep a track of all the complaints registered in a given police station(s), in a group of police stations or the entire jurisdiction.”
Rural development through broadband, wireless & mobiles
The talk of wireless solutions is certainly the need of the hour. Using various mobile devices networks wireless clusters could be developed in rural areas, which then connected to mobile / cellular phones can deliver information and facilitate civic services delivery. Globally, cellular phones are already part of huge wireless network systems. The benefit of wireless networks is not to be missed. It is an inexpensive and rapid way to be connected to the Internet in countries and regions where the telecom infrastructure is poor or there is a lack of resources, as in most developing countries.
Another option, though as challenging as dial up internet, is establishing a wireless internet connection using cell phones. Though, this may not be the best long-term option, but in certain situations, it can do the basic job in rural areas like obtaining email and searching price rates of agro and commodity products.
The talk of wireless power has already been shown in at least two locations – Nepal and Dharamsala. While the Megasaysay Awardee Mahabir Pun has brought the fruits of Wireless mesh Network in the hills of Nepal through his Nepal Wireless, Air Jaldi has done the same thing in Dharamsala. AirJaldi did it immediately after the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology deregulated WiFi for outdoor use in India. The Mesh backbone in Dharamsala already boasts for installing over 30 nodes connecting more than 2000 computers providing upstream bandwidth up to 6 MBPS.
With 3 nominations from Nepal, they excelled significantly in grabbing the winners list. India contributed whopping 121 nominations followed by Sri Lanka 28, Bangladesh 7, and Pakistan 5.
Towards wireless solutions many options could be weighed. Last mile infrastructure can be encouraged for Internet penetration through Wireless Local Loop and Wireless Mesh Networks. In fact, a policy can be considered as – National Wireless Connectivity Project to reach out to distant areas through wireless technology – involving identified stakeholders to roll out the programme. This can be then integrated to a national m-Governance Platform – initiating steps for basic information services in select departments and ministries towards achieving digital equality goals for rural empowerment.
Let’s go ‘MAD’!
It was in the mid of last year that we decided to launch the mobile award as an advocacy and innovation reference platform, and named it mBillionth to work towards enabling mobile as a tool to make every critical content and service to reach the bottom of the pyramid – the billionth person. With rigorous exercise across south Asia through various partnership and help, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Count this: we got more than 250 entries from all south Asian countries. And the thorough screening left us with still 168 quality ‘nominations’. Our 16 member Grand Jury selected the best we could have imagined, but I am not going to give you a count down on the winners as the enthusiasm of July 23rd when get on the Mobile Congress and Award in Delhi is contagious and we are loving it. What is interesting however is the pattern of nominations in various categories and from different countries, which clearly emits light on how we are doing in developing mobile content and application to reach the un-reached and masses in general.
While the nominations received from 6 countries except for Bhutan and Afghanistan the solitary nomination from Maldives was an oceanic surprise. With 3 nominations from Nepal, they excelled significantly in grabbing the winners list. India contributed whopping 121 nominations followed by Sri Lanka 28, Bangladesh 7, and Pakistan 5. Coming to categories, m-Business & Commerce led with 36 nominations followed by m-Inclusion 26, m-Governance 24, m-Entertainment 20, m-News & Journalism 18, m-Education 13, m-Travel 12 and m-Health 10. We were disappointed that Culture & Heritage and Environment could not get any good nominations. Clearly, there is a lot of work happening in exploiting the entertainment, business and governance as far as mobile content and application development are concerned. What is worth noting is that most of the mobile content developmental works in the governance sector are happening in piece meal and they are mostly not at scale – they are at best at district level and happening because of the proactive district collectors and some individual visionary officer.
For example, “Many to One SMS” m-Governance application collates large volume of real time data related to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and integrate into an organized framework – Ministry of Rural Development should look at this to scale up. The “GPS/GSM based Train Tracking System” is a train location tracking system for Sri Lanka Railways Department aimed at delivering governance through mobile platform – worth an initiative for other regional countries to adopt.
IMImobile’s DaVinci Content Management System (CMS) is an integral part of the DaVinci Content Delivery Platform and supports an array of content types to deliver value added services supporting all consumer touch points including SMS, STK, MMS, WAP, Web, USSD, Voice, Video and CRBT; and, OnMobile’s M-Search is an m-Entertainment music content search and delivery solution which works across Voice, SMS and WAP channels.
Towards m-Inclusion, One97’s Dakia is a rural empowerment mobile service through which people of a region can share relevant information with the members of their group by simply dialing a short code and recording a voice message – I love this as it is a bottom-up empowering tool which enables content creation by the people. Likewise, Drona is an m-Education solution that empowers organizations and trainers to create their own mobile learning courses and applications. In m-Travel, the “AWATAR Mobile Booking” application provides for advance ticket booking for Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) passengers through mobile phone – and it has created revolution in Karnataka showing further possibilities for other state transports.
It is interesting how young companies are showing the roadmap for large scale content integration on mobile platforms – I have two examples: IMImobile’s DaVinci Content Management System (CMS) is an integral part of the DaVinci Content Delivery Platform and supports an array of content types to deliver value added services supporting all consumer touch points including SMS, STK, MMS, WAP, Web, USSD, Voice, Video and CRBT; and, OnMobile’s M-Search is an m-Entertainment music content search and delivery solution which works across Voice, SMS and WAP channels. M-Search could well be the future search engine on mobile across board – watch out.
The other big takeaway from mBillionth platform is that many young companies are not only developing great enabling application for content delivery but contributing aggressively to create further entrepreneurship in the sector by mentoring, funding and creating pool of funds to invest passionately. For example, OnMobile, IMImobile and One97 – all three have created either entities or division to fund new innovations, ideas and projects that could be disruptive and futuristic at the same time.
So finally what we have done is partnered with Internet & Mobile Association of India to create Mobile Application Developers – MAD – Community. The MAD community is going to hold its first one-to-one meeting on 23rd July during the award ceremony between investors and the mBillionth’s those nominees whose innovations are on ground and looking for fast growth and lots of mentorship. The big plan under MAD community is to create a pool of fund which could help through close association with seed ideas, innovations and start-up entrepreneurs – and that could be more in nature of mentorship, guidance and funding that would not really be investment but to support without any expectation of financial return. We hope to make the industry work in tandem with potential ideas to integrate into large scale deployment, especially which could reach volume – mobile for masses!
Last mile ‘m’powerment comes free
India thrives on “innovation by necessity”, an example for you: I was in Nalgonda in Andhra Pradesh couple of years ago participating in a Self Help Group training program. While I was talking to them I observed that most of the present 30 odd women were having mobile, getting erratic calls but none of them attending their calls but allowing it to ring full term on low volume. I asked why they were not attending the calls. Their reply stunned me: “we don’t have to attend the calls; we get message through the number of rings and missed calls as we have code for the same. For example, if I receive three missed calls, meaning my husband is home; 2 missed call means kids have arrived home, and so on”. Can you beat that?
The Introduction written by Osama Manzar is based on his columns he has been writing for Mint newspaper under DEF & Mint strategic partnership for mBillionth Award. You may read his columns at livemint.com via http://mbillionth.in. He can be reached at osama@defindia.net
Related posts
