Mobiles Surge in Developing Countries - report
The International Telecommunication Union has launched a report on ICT/Telecommunication development in least developed countries (LDCs). The report examines key developments in the information and communication technology (ICT) and telecommunications sector including trends and challenges in the world's poorest countries in the period 2001 to 2005.
ITU's findings reveal that considerable progress has been made to bridge the digital divide and that teledensity targets set by the Brussels Programme of Action (BPoA) have been met by 25 of the 50 LDCs. According to ITU, teledensity has more than doubled in the majority of least developed countries since 2000 with some of them boosting connectivity by as much as 20 times, thanks to rapid growth in the deployment of mobile technologies.
The race towards universal access in LDCs has been mainly led by Small Island Developing States such as Cape Verde, Maldives and Samoa and small to average sized countries such as Gambia, Lesotho, and Mauritania, some of which have achieved teledensities of up to 44 lines per 100 inhabitants surpassing many developing countries.
Growth driven by ICT: mobile and internet
"The mobile sector in LDCs has grown considerably against fixed lines over the last few years, and the number of mobile subscribers almost doubled in 2005", explained Cosmas Zavazava, Head of ITU's Unit for Least Developed Countries, Small Island Developing States and Emergency Telecommunications. "It recorded a significant annual growth of 82 per cent from 2000 to 2005, compared with 12 per cent in the fixed-line sector".
According to ITU statistics, least developed countries with the highest annual growth rate in terms of cellular subscribers over the period 2000-2005 were Djibouti (186%), Democratic Republic of Congo (184%), Niger (171%), Liberia (155%), Mali (142%), Sudan (139%), Yemen (129%) and Lao P.D.R. (119%). Prepaid services, accounting for almost 90 per cent of the entire market, have contributed to the explosive expansion of the mobile sector in LDCs. In Afghanistan, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Haiti, Somalia and Niger all mobile subscriptions were prepaid.
Overall, access to the internet has increased and more interest is on deployment of broadband services in rural areas. By 2005, internet user penetration caught up with fixed line penetration in LDCs, providing access to a host of applications, such as e-education, e-health, e-business, e-agriculture, and e-government. In terms of internet penetration, a number of countries have reached penetration rates of around five percent, including Maldives (5.8%), Cape Verde and Togo (both 4.9%), and Senegal (4.6%). Although the majority of LDCs have not yet launched high-speed internet services, popular demand is encouraging more countries to upgrade from dial-up internet connections to broadband. For instance, by 2005, over 89 per cent of all internet subscribers in Senegal were DSL subscribers, compared with 70 per cent in the Maldives, 17 per cent in Cape Verde and 2 per cent in Lao P.D.R.
Despite recent progress, LDCs continue to face major challenges. Rapid developments in the LDC telecommunications marketplace require new directions to be taken by policymakers and regulators. Many established policies and regulations have become obsolete, leading to inefficient and increasingly untenable restrictions and barriers to the development and dissemination of the benefits of IP convergence. Policy makers and regulators must therefore forge a transition path away from the old regulations that may have served a useful purpose in the past, but are today barriers to progress.
Equally challenging is the task of developing an appropriate policy and regulatory framework that will help realize the full benefits of internet protocol (IP) convergence. In many LDCs policy changes are required that would provide regulators with flexible tools to implement the transition to new network development opportunities and attract investor financial flows into the sector.
The scarcity of ICT infrastructure, the high cost of international bandwidth, the dearth of relevant local content along with the lack of cooperation among development partners and political instability also remain daunting challenges.
"What is really encouraging is the fact that there is incredible enthusiasm among LDCs to be part of the Information Society. This, coupled with the emergence of new, low cost and affordable technologies, especially wireless, will hasten the pace towards universal access", affirmed Zavazava.
You can download the full report (132 pages, pdf format) from the ITU website:
http://www.cellular-news.com/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ldc/pdf/ICTand%20TELinLDC-e.pdf
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/19371.php
Mobiles put the web in your hands
BBC Click's Dan Simmons
By Dan Simmons
Reporter, BBC Click Online
Mobile phones
Nigeria dominates mobile phone access to the BBC's website
For the mobile industry, waiting for people to use the net via their phone has been like waiting for a bus that never comes.
Even though a huge number of mobile phones in use can access the internet, and after the launch of faster third-generation (3G) data services, only 10% of Europeans actually use their handsets to go online.
The situation is the same in almost every other nation apart from Japan and Korea where faster mobile networks are much more common.
The slow take up has been blamed on the restrictions phone firms place on net access, confusion over cost, awkward page layouts and slow browsing speeds.
To make matters worse, 3G handsets have been clunky rather than funky.
"It's like picking a girlfriend or boyfriend. The first and most important decision for people is 'what does it look like?'" said Robert Rawlinson of Mobileshop.com.
He added that phones were now "fashion items" and 3G handsets were lacking the features, such as snap-on cases, common in many 2.5G mobiles.
Custom content
The networks are starting to tackle these problems and smaller handsets are starting to crop up. They are also starting to tailor content more specifically for mobile phones and get familiar web-names onto handsets.
Coronation Street on BT Movio
Major TV broadcasters go mobile
Operators are also starting to dismantle their walled gardens and are giving customers greater freedom to roam the net via their handset. Before now many have limited customers to a few select sites.
"Operators who adopt a walled-garden approach are actually missing the point," said Stuart Jackson of Orange World. "It's not about the content that you can give to the customer, it's about the content the customer wants to access,"
"There's a myriad of content out there and we should be encouraging people to go onto the mobile web, explore it, and find that content that they want to see."
Mobile viewing
A broader industry initiative should make the whole process of going online a far more pleasant experience. From next month anyone will be able to register a .mobi net address. This domain is meant solely for sites that will be navigable by phones and anyone signing up must ensure their site meets a strict set of accessibility standards
MTLD, the organisation behind .mobi, expects 200,000 mobile sites to be registered in the next year.
MOBI BACKERS
Ericsson
GSM Association
Microsoft
Nokia
Samsung
Syniverse
T-Mobile
Telefonica
Three
TIM
Vodafone
More subtle trends in the way that people use technology may also boost the use of the net on phones. For instance, it is now possible to buy a phone that automatically sets up and sends pictures to a photo blog.
Hit video-sharing site YouTube has a dedicated mobile phone portal that allows users in the US to upload clips while they are on the move.
Speed demons
Operators are also tackling the biggest bar to greater net use - connection speed. In the home many net users enjoy speeds in excess of 1mbps. By comparison the 300kbps speed of 3G is glacially slow.
One technology that could boost mobile surfing speeds is the formidably named High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). Operators across the world are adopting the technology quickly.
In the UK T-Mobile was the first to launch a HSDPA service.
HSDPA uses a technology called extended codes, and the point of that is that it gives you a lot more data, but it also means it's very vulnerable to interference
Technology journalist Guy Kewney
Paul Sludden from T-Mobile said: "With HSDPA the testing that we've undertaken on the live network we've found we can achieve up to four times the speed of 3G. That's quite a significant improvement, and an enhancement for the customer."
During a test conducted by Click it took 30 minutes to find a stable signal. Once this hurdle was overcome the test showed that the BBC homepage loaded about four times faster than on a standard 3G phone.
Unfortunately phones do not, yet, show when they are locked on to a strong HSDPA signal which could prove frustrating for mobile users.
"HSDPA uses a technology called extended codes, and the point of that is that it gives you a lot more data, but it also means it's very vulnerable to interference," said technology journalist Guy Kewney.
"There we were, with all the interference that London provides, and we simply couldn't get an HSDPA signal.
"It's not a problem with HSDPA providers, it's the technology, which is vulnerable to interference."
The Click test was not strictly scientific but T-Mobile admit did there were problems in getting a clear HSDPA signal. This can be acute when the phone is equidistant from several masts, as it was during the Click test, or on the edge of a cell.
Cost confusion
How users pay for their net access is also starting to get some long overdue attention
Accessing the internet is such a fundamental part of peoples' day, and is increasingly so.
Robert Rawlinson, Mobileshop.com
"Most customers still have the feeling that they don't know how much it's going to cost them," said Thomas Hussan of Jupiter Research.
"They fear the bill at the end of the month because they don't know how it's priced and how much they will pay for it," he said.
Stuart Jackson from Orange acknowledged that there was fear among customers. "We need to get better at approaching payment for internet services on the mobile in a better way," he said.
Many operators are starting to levy single monthly fees for unlimited web access - like many people do at home via their PC.
"Accessing the internet is such a fundamental part of peoples' day, and is increasingly so, that I think there's going to be more consumer awareness of 'hang on, I don't want to access the internet and look for the restaurant/nightclub/bar in my office or at home, I actually want to do it on the bus going home'," said Robert Rawlinson.
"And I think that whole behaviour with consumers, which is becoming ever more internet-centric, is going to make people realise that it's a bit of a pain not being able to access the internet while I'm moving around."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/5348424.stm
